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| years gone by |
| 11.16.04 (8:58 am) [edit] |
So what's new? |
posted by: Aro (reply)
post date: 11.17.04 (12:54 am)
If giving up everything you have and being blessed over and over means sexual affairs, fraud, material excess, divorce, a 45 year prison sentence, etc . . . I´m not sure that´s a road I want to head down.
I have a hard time believing that people who truly trusted God with everything would end up as low and morally corrupt as the Bakkers did.
posted by: Erin (reply)
post date: 11.17.04 (6:03 am)
Aaron:
That's not fair to say. Are who we are or were always determined by what the end result is? Are you saying they were never Christians in the first place?
Of course things obviously went wrong w/ the Bakkers- they probably didn't have people who held them responsible, or maybe they didn't ask God what they should do w/ what He gave them, or who knows what . .
And you know what else? Do you know how many people came to Christ or have a closet, more relationship w/ Him because of their ministries? God can bring people to HImself through anybody, and I for one am glad they freely shared Him, and I may not agree w/ many things they've done, but I do believe they at least started off right and were genuinely serving HIm.
and you can hold onto anything you want to, but chances are you'll lose it at some point.
posted by: Aaron (reply)
post date: 11.17.04 (7:55 am)
The end result does not always determine who we are. But it often can point to where we´ve been or how we got there. Two people who gave their relationship completely up to God would not end up divorced or have to pay others to not talk about their affairs.
I´m not saying they were never Christians, or that they aren´t Christians now. But I would say that based on the results (divorce, fraud, etc) they were not trusting God all the way or giving everything up to Him.
They may have started out well and with the right intentions, but that´s not all there is to the story. Certianly there ARE good things about them -- although I haven´t read it, I appreciate the simple fact that Jim Bakker published a book called "I Was Wrong" -- but I feel much more comfortable taking their ministry as something to learn from rather than something to imitate.
Something to think about, too, since I don´t have an answer to it: people have come to Christ through their ministry. But from what I understand, a lot of their ministry was based on principles of Prosperity, and they themselves demonstrated a huge excess of wealth as evidence that they were blessed by God. However, the Bible at times scorns wealth (at times it also celebrates it) and Jesus said that it´s easier to put a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into Heaven. Is it possible, in this case or in others, for someone to be preached a Gospel that is corrupt in some way, allowing them to believe things contrary to God´s will and therefore giving them a false sense of security ? I´m not saying this was the case with the Bakker´s ministry at all, I´m just wondering if it could happen. And if it CAN happen, what are the repurcussions?
(sorry, didn´t mean to write so much!)