Jesus and your money

When you come right down to it, Kendra Todd is a promoter of the so-called "prosperity gospel."

In a recent article at the 700 Club, called "Turn Passion into Prosperity," Terri Simmons describes how Todd, an "investment-related real estate agent," is all about "teaching people how to develop a healthy attitude and mindset towards money."

The title of Todd's "best-selling" book says it all: Risk & Grow Rich. According to Simmons, Todd's "team's main mission is to match buyers with properties that fit their goals, and to help people grow one step closer to financial freedom. [But] ... her main goal is equipping people with the knowledge that success and wealth comes from God."

Uh, oh.

Wait, it gets better. "I'm a strong Christian," says Todd [that's opposed to a "weak" Christian], and I'm getting ready to launch a Christian biblical based approach to making and saving money, tithing and giving. I am getting ready to do what I am passionate about. I want to empower people to create a real positive relationship with and perspective on money, and realize it's all God."


If she left out the "God" stuff, she might make some sense, but then, of course, she'd be no different than all the other real estate shucksters filling up the market with books on how to invest and get rich.

Where she bites the dust, is her horsehockey about God and money, and how "it's all God," and "that success and wealth comes from God."


In the Gospels, the character of Jesus is shown to have quite a different viewpoint. In fact, one might even conclude that Jesus had an opposite viewpoint to Ms. Todd's.

Consider:

"'Man cannot live on bread alone.'" (Matthew 2:4)

"He went round the whole of Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, preaching the gospel of the Kingdom..." (Matthew 4:23)

"Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth..." (Matthew 6:19)

"You cannot serve God and Money." (Matthew 6:24) See also Luke 16:13)

"Set your mind on God's kingdom and his justice before everything else." (Matthew 6:33)

"If anyone wishes to be a follower of mine, he must leave self behind; he must take up his cross and come with me. Whoever cares for his own safety is lost..." (Matthew 16:24-25)

"I tell you this: a rich man will find it hard to enter the kingdom of Heaven. I repeat, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
(Matthew 19:23-25). See also Mark 10:23-27.

The Parable of the sheep and goats explicitly states that only those who saw Jesus in the hungry, the thirsty, the homeless, the naked, and in prison and offered help will enter the kingdom of Heaven. (Matthew 25:31-46)

"But alas for you who are rich; you have had your time of happiness. Alas for you who are well-fed now; you shall go hungry." (Luke 6:24-25)

"Have no fear, little flock; for your Father has chosen to give you the Kingdom. Sell your possessions and give in charity. Provide for yourselves purses that do not wear out, and never-failing treasure in heaven, where no thief can near it, no moth destroy it. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Luke 12:32-34)

"So also none of you can be a disciple of mine without parting with all his possessions." (Luke 14:33)

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus. (Luke 16:19-31)


I have not verified this, but I remember reading that, in the Gospels, Jesus used parables 38 times to get across his messages. Sixteen of these involved money, the use of money, the danger of money. Jesus spoke more about money than love, prayer, or sin.


Back to Kendra Todd and her "passion into prosperity" nonsense. Todd won Season 3 of The Apprentice and worked one year with the Trump organization renovating a $125 million estate in Palm Beach.

Now she's working with HGTV, hosting "Your House is Worth What?"

And it's all God.


Now I think it's wonderful that this young lady has reached a certain level of material success and a celebrity status in our society. Nothing wrong with that.

Except that Kendra wants us to believe that "success and wealth come from God." And that, simply put, is horseshockey!

Obviously, either Kendra Todd has never read the Gospel stories about Jesus or she simply does not believe the Bible. Jesus said, over and over again, that success and wealth are oppositional to God's will for out lives.

Believe it or not.


Read the entire article here. Todd's website is here.

McNeill Stokes finds Jesus' missing links?

[Image of part of the Qumran ruins near the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.]


Well, he didn't really.

McNeill Stokes is an attorney. He's written a book which, according to christiannewswire, "compares the Dead Sea Scrolls with the teachings of Jesus and the beliefs and practices of early Christians to allow readers to answer questions about where Jesus spent his missing years."

It's titled Missing Links to Jesus: Evidence in the Dead Sea Scrolls... I have not read the book.

I will not read the book. I hate to waste my time.

I have read material dealing with the Dead Sea Scrolls. I have read what numerous scholars think about this material. I know that there has been a lot of discussion as to what, if any, connection there might be between Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Most biblical historians are skeptical of a connection.

The fact is we know almost nothing about Jesus as a real human person. That's why more and more scholars these days are thinking of him in mythical terms. The birth stories are clearly legendary and borrowed from other ancient god-man tales. There is nothing about his childhood in the New Testament gospels except for one silly little incident where his parents "accidentally" leave him behind and then find him "teaching" the elders in the temple - which again, is clearly legendary.

Nothing. We know nothing. The Gospel writers begin their real story with a series of vignettes about a man who is supposed to be 30 years of age or so. Mark, the earliest gospel, does not have a birth story, as it hadn't been created yet. There is no information as to how he got to be 30 or what he learned getting there, or where he had been for 30 years.

Anything anyone writes about those missing years is pure guesswork.


Stokes wants to tie Jesus to the Essene movement as described in the Dead Sea Scrolls. I know of no biblical scholar that would do that today. Similarities between the teachings and practices of Jesus and the Essenes are not clear in the least. The only way you can make those connections is to ignore a number of Essene teachings as well as much of what Jesus said and did. The Essenes were a sect of apocalyptic ultra-Orthodox Jews who stressed religious purity, among other things and awaited the coming of the Messiah. They also had a "War Scroll," which seems to be their battle plan for the coming of the end of the world. Can't hardly see that in Jesus' hands.

In fact, there is probably more dissolve between Jesus and the Essenes than there are connections. Jesus, as described in the Synoptics, was certainly not concerned much with religious "purity," although he did stress the need to keep the Law.

Stokes wants us to believe that because of the similarities between Jesus and Essenes (notions of salvation and judgment, and heavenly rewards, faith healings, exorcisms, etc.) Jesus must have lived and been schooled as an Essene.:

"Pattern evidence is presented of the high probability that the Essenes raised and influenced Jesus, his cousin John the Baptist, and his brother James. All three exhibited similar Essene values, beliefs, and practices."

This is pure horsehockey.


For more correct info on the Essenes, click here. You can find out what Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, [who never mentions Jesus, by the way, in spite of one small Xtian forgery] thought about the Essenes here.

For another take on Jesus' "missing links," click here. Some gnostic tales here.