Fleece My Sheep?

Miracles, signs, wonders, healings, financial breakthroughs, ecstatic spiritual experiences are most of the teachings propagated from very many pulpits today. Are these truly the rewards of Christianity to which members are expressly entitled?

Charismatic preachers are competing for space on the world stage of 'celebrities' as they accumulate wealth and riches with a continual lust for more...but their wealth, supposedly a reward from God, is limited to the leaders! The congregation continue to invest their hard-earned cash and wait endlessly for their promised multiple-fold and miraculous returns. If this is God's promise as is taught, then why do the promises from ministers who preach those messages never actually materialise?

Did Jesus Christ receive all the insults and abuse from His enemies, have Himself nailed to the cross, wear a crown of thorns, and have His body mutilated, just to make His followers financially secure and ensure they never again experience physical illnesses? If that were so then we can rightly conclude that Jesus' mission failed because Christians still suffer poverty and sickness. Did the Apostles fail to realise the financial rewards of Christianity as they lived self-abasing and sacrificial lives? Are Christians entitled to and promised personal miracles by God?

Since the healings and financial rewards of hard work that is claimed by many Christians today to be 'miracles' delivered by their 'powerful' ministers are also common to unbelievers, then can we rightly assume that unbelievers are saved because they have received the rewards of Christianity?

These are questions we must urgently address for us to ascertain whether the practice of Christianity in most churches in the world today, lead to the all-important saving faith in Jesus Christ. If the answers to the questions do not directly point to salvation in Jesus Christ and peace with God, then more souls than can be imagined are being lost and are in real danger of hell, the dreaded and abandoned word in modern-day Christianity, but a place about which the Lord warned us severally during His earthly ministry.