(Ver 2.0)  I will get back to teaching on faith and healing very soon.  However, I will warn you again today up front that this Bible lesson will potentially offend some people.  This is now Part 2 of a lesson series that I have been teaching about a modern day problem that has been running wild in almost every Christian church and ministry in the world.  I was not going to write a part 2, but the Spirit of God did not allow me to drop the subject, so here I go again today.  We live in a complex world with vast numbers of pressures that are presented to men and women of God and we must all have money to survive and pay our bills.  But, this mentality and pressure has caused many Christian ministries of God to justify a selling of the Gospel that only allows for a few rich people to hear and learn the truth of God and it places unjust limitations upon all those who cannot afford to buy it.  There are a few exceptions that I can name like Keith Moore who runs Moore Life Ministries and Andrew Womack who runs Andrew Womack Ministries, who both allow you to copy their ministry materials and freely give them to others.   They both also freely distribute the Gospel for free.  I guess I should point out some minor differences between the two; Andrew Womack has an online store where they post suggested prices for their materials but I assume if you cannot afford those prices they might send them to you anyway.   They do say that on their TV show, that if you cannot afford the CD that they are talking about that day that they will send it to you anyway.  I also learned today that they have many of their materials available as a free download as MP3 files.  Prais God for them!  Keith Moore is more technology savvy and will post the entire MP3 file and the WMV video file of his meetings on the internet to allow you to watch or listen to them on your iPod or MP3 player device.  Search the internet and look for churches who give away MP3 files of their sermons for free for you to download and listen to and you will see that there are a growing number that have purposely chosen not to prostitute the Gospel for a few dollars so that everyone in the world can hear it for free.  These are all examples of innovative new types of ministries of God who care more for people than they do for money.  However, it is funny how God works when He sees people who care for what He cares for.  It seems that God will always meet the needs of those who are reaching out to people for free and cause them to prosper.  You see Keith Moore, who does not charge for the Gospel, flies a jet airplane and is significantly blessed by God and this is an awesome example of God’s blessings on a man who is teaching others the truth and being blessed to do it.  This is how it supposed to work in every ministry.    Jesus taught us very clearly “freely you have received, so freely give” and if you are not doing this, then you are guilty of spiritual prostitution and I will talk about this directly today.

If you have not read “Part 1” I would truly advise you to start reading there first and then come back and continue with this lesson so that you will better understand what I am preaching today.  Many times the Bible and the Truth of God are very difficult to swallow for some people.  Some Christian people and even ministers see things in their minds as being acceptable, but in the eyes of God and the eyes of men on the outside it is self-evident to be the wrong approach.   Today’s Bible lesson is about the Christian Prostitution of the Word of God and that is a potentially offensive subject to many today, yet this subject needs to be preached regardless of what people think of it at first.  A prostitute in the natural world is usually a female who sells herself to others for the sexual pleasures of those who pay her money for what they desire.  If you do not understand what prostitution is, you are either blind or extremely naïve.  Prostitution is legal in Nevada and some other countries in the world, but just because something is legal does not mean it is right in the eyes of God.  That is why I can preach against ministries who are selling their Gospel using the laws of the government to justify their approach to the distribution of the Gospel.  Just because Spiritual Prostitution is legal in this country, it does not make it right in the eyes of God either.  There are two questions that enter into my mind when I think about the subject of prostitution.  First, what makes a woman do this?  And second, what makes a man want what she is selling?  For the woman, it is usually a desire for the money.  For the man who is buying it, it is usually just a lust or the fact that he has a very strong desire for sexual gratification.   He obviously sees value in what she is selling and is willing to pay her price.  What am I preaching about today?  When a man has sex with a woman it is called “knowing” her in the Bible.  The Bible says Adam “knew” his wife and she conceived a son (Gen 4:1).  This natural sex act is often times called “carnal knowledge”.  The “knowing” of a woman is the covenant act of marriage.  This is true whether you thought it was true or not.  It is also true if she is a paid prostitute or your real wife (1 Cor 6:16).   But, we can also have spiritual “knowledge” of God by hearing His Word taught by a preacher or a teacher and this is why I am teaching you about prostitution.  There is a direct correlation in the Bible between natural sex to spiritual knowledge if you did not know it!  The Word (Logos) of God is called His “seed” in Luke 8:11 and 1 Peter 1:23.  The sperm of a man is also called ‘seed” in Leviticus 15:16-18 and Numbers 5:28.  Therefore we can conclude the Word of God is His spiritual “seed” sown to give man the knowledge of the truth.  So I am discussing a very mature subject today when I describe people who are on the internet selling the “knowledge” of God for money.  The selling of the knowledge of God’s Word is equivalent in the spiritual realm to the natural sexual knowledge of a prostitute if it is done for money or profit.   Getting or giving the knowledge of God is exactly like having sex in the natural.   You need to get a hold of this concept very fast if you are a preacher who is selling your knowledge of God for money!   I believe that this is a very serious subject and that is why I am preaching it today at the risk of offending my spiritual brothers.  If you know of anyone that is doing this, please share this message with them ASAP!

What makes a prostitute think that she is worthy of this money that she earns?  It is usually because she is attractive and does not know of any other way to get money.  In other words her looks make her desirable to others and this causes her body to have monetary value.  If no one wanted what she had, there would be no prostitutes in the world today, this is just how it works.   Here is the major problem that I am talking about today.  The Word of God is a highly desirable substance to many people like me.  Over twenty years ago I began to hunger for the knowledge of God, so much so that I spent thousands of dollars to obtain this knowledge.   I valued what many men of God were teaching so much that I bought it like a natural man after a sexy prostitute.   Since this was the fastest and only way that I could get this knowledge, I paid their price.  Since I was not a rich man that limited me to what I could give in offerings to them.  But, I sacrificed the one for the other.  So if I was the John looking for the “knowledge” of God, what does that make these ministers who were selling this knowledge?   Wow, that does not leave too many choices does it?   Obviously there are many ministries in the world who are spiritual prostitutes of the knowledge of God.   This is why when I asked Kenneth Hagin Ministries for permission to copy their materials and give them away for free, that I was shocked when they said to me “NO”, I could not do that.  They obviously liked the money more than they liked to help people learn about God.  For a ministry that teaches “faith” predominately I do not understand why they do not live by what they preach.  You see if there was no demand for this ministry’s materials, there would be no prostitution going on by them selling it.  However, since God’s Word has great value to many people in the world they have a golden opportunity to sell their knowledge for a great price.  This may be not what they think they are doing, but nonetheless it is what is going on.  Jesus actually spoke of this in terms of a man who sold everything he had to buy the pearl of great price.  The pearl of great price is actually the knowledge of God that He was speaking of in parable form (Mat 13:45-46).

You see I do not preach against the message that is being taught, it is a great message.  I know I have over a 1000 of them on my MP3 player.  But, how much do think that it cost me to get all of these?  Do you think I got them for free?  If you go to their website you will find that they sell MP3 files for $5 each, Tapes and CDs for $7 each and DVDs for $15 each.   You do the math and see how much you think I spent.  Now, some of these tapes that I bought did not come from them directly.  I bought some of them off of eBay and those usually cost me more than what they would have sold them for but, since they were discontinued sets and they did not sell them anymore, I had to do what I had to do to get them.  You see the Unnamed TV Ministry has created an artificial state of demand by limiting their materials.   Much like the world diamond market controls the number of diamonds on the market so that they can cause the prices to rise.   Anytime you put limits on what you are selling this is what you are doing regardless of what you think you are doing.   Since you cannot find many of the tapes anymore on their websites, you have to buy what comes up for sell by the chance of people selling them that do not know what they have.  Many times people would die and leave their tapes to their children and they would not have a clue what they were so they would sell them in a garage sell or on eBay.  This is where I would buy them.  For example, Unnamed TV ministries has two yearly meetings where they have a week of intensive training and Bible studies.   I have nearly every set of tapes of these meetings going back 25 to 30 years.  Sometimes I paid upwards of $10 a tape to buy them off the internet.  When there are 16 to 20 tapes in one set, you do the math and tell me how much it cost me.  So why did it cost me so much?  It is because I was bidding against 10 other people who knew the value of the information on those tapes.   It would be like having one hot prostitute and 10 Johns bidding to see who was going to have her tonight.  I’m sorry if I’m too blunt sometimes, but somebody needs to wake up to see the truth!

Modern technology permits people to spread the Word of God for the cost of pennies and the majority of the ministries on the earth are still charging many dollars for their valuable spiritual copyrighted information.  If you look at my picture that I have included in this paragraph you will see a very small computer chip that I own.  On this computer chip I have 500 Kenneth Hagin sermons.  So I still value these like the great Words of God that they are.  These are the pearl of great price that I have sought after with my money and these are not all of the sermons that I own.  I will tell you that I have nearly 2000 of just Kenneth Hagin messages and then I have many other Bible teachers of God for a total of over 10,000 MP3 sermons all together.  God knows my heart and sees my hunger to know the truth and God has blessed me tremendously more than I could say.  So I appreciate all that I have and I wanted to share it with others around the world and I have been struggling because of the resistance that I have been getting from ministers of the Gospel found in the body of Christ.

About 20 years ago, I was a part of a very large church in a city located in the Bible belt of America.  This was a church that was growing and had increased in size to be one of the largest churches in the city.  Our senior pastor was on TV teaching the Word of God and ministering to people nationwide, and making a lot of money from it.  Our Sunday morning church service was broadcast live to the city on TV.  Our church had over 5000 members in it and we thought we were doing very well and were certainly in the perfect will of God.  Over time the ministry was attacked by Satan and the news media and things started to change and deteriorate quickly.  The senior pastor was under such pressure that he isolated himself and started surrounding himself with ungodly council and advice.  He eventually got deep into error, departing from the Word of God and abusing his anointing from God to go in a different independent direction.   In his eyes he was just fine and thought nothing was wrong with him.  Even after leaving his wife and taking up with another woman he thought he was justified in what he was doing.  Well that church does not exist anymore; it went from over 5000 members to zero in a matter of a couple of years.  That church building was sold to the city and it is now a convention center.  Please learn from the mistakes of this ministry example that no man is justified to do what is right in his own eyes and think they will always have a ministry that can never fail or cease to exist.  I know, I was there and I saw it firsthand.  I tried to help and do what I could, like I am doing right now but I was pushed out like an enemy of the church and ignored.  So it is today in my fight against my brothers in Christ who seem to deny what they are doing is wrong by selling their copyrighted Gospel.

I have learned one very important lesson that if it was not for God and His grace, I would not be doing what I am doing today.  Therefore, what I teach and preach is not mine to control, copyright or limit.  I am smart enough to see that if it were not for the knowledge of God and the anointing of God I would have absolutely nothing to teach that is worth a dime to anyone.  Too many times preachers begin to think too highly of themselves and their abilities and they fall into a trap of believing that they have accomplished and created such a great ministry by their own abilities and talents.  When you fall into this trap, it is very easy to think that you own what you are teaching and not give God the credit for what you have that is so valuable to others.   When I see the anointing of God on me and what I teach, I stand in awe of the Greater One who is at work and I do not dare to think that I can copyright it since it was not my words to begin with.   This is the error that too many ministries have fallen into and they are now so deep in it that it will be extremely difficult for them to get out of it unless they fall on their faces and repent quickly and change.

In my first Bible lesson on this subject, I taught the message of Jesus casting out the money changers from the temple of God and I related this to what is happening today because these men were using their knowledge of God and His Word to create a business.  Today I want to continue this Bible lesson with another story that is found in the Bible that certainly applies directly to what I have been teaching you.  You can turn to this story in the Book of Acts and find it in chapter 18 so please turn and read it with me and observe what is being said very closely:

Act 8:18  And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money,

Here is a man named Simon and he observes the anointing of God in action in the lives of the apostles.  Peter is basically laying his hands on new believers in Christ and they are being filled with the Spirit of God with the evidence of speaking in other tongues and Simon offers them money for the power to do this also.   Since I am preaching about money, the anointing and ministers today this story certainly applies, doesn’t it?  Or at least it should, if people would open their eyes and see what is going on:

Act 8:19  Saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.

So Simon desires to have the same power and anointing that is present on Peter to do what Peter was doing, but he is wrongly motivated primarily by greed.  He is thinking within himself that with this power, he will be able to get rich.  By buying the anointing he will be able to do exactly what Peter was doing and use it for a new spiritual business.   Wow, I hope and pray that you can read and see what God is saying here!   Here is Peter’s reaction to this offer of prostitution from Simon.  You did hear what I just called it, didn’t you?

Act 8:20  But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.

Apparently Peter was not motivated by money and he saw things differently than a lot of modern ministries on the earth do today who seem to be motivated or stimulated by money offers that are coming to them.  It is very obvious to me that Peter did not take any money for what he knew was not his to begin with to sell.   Are you still listening to what I just said?

Act 8:21  Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God.

When you do something wrong does it matter the intentions of why you do it?  Then on the other hand can you have perfectly good intentions and still do the wrong things?  Both of these are certainly possible today.  Here is where it begins to get infinitely more complex.  People do many things in the world today out of ignorance even though they are still clearly the wrong things to do.  I hope and pray that this is the situation for the ministries that I have named in these lessons and all of the others that I did not name.  That is why I like to think that modern ministries are not willfully and intentionally prostituting the gift of God that has been given to them to make a profit from it.  However, Peter was smart enough to see that it was wrong either way and that it was not wise for him to partake of the money that was being offered to him.  Having the right knowledge of God is the power to say no when a situation is presented that appears to be very good on the surface.  Modern ministries today have been presented a very attractive offer for the use or I should say the abuse of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and they have fallen into the trap that has turned the selling of that which does not belong to them into a positive thing for the benefit of what they are doing for God.   Could not Peter think the exact same thing in Acts 8?  Couldn’t Peter had justified, that this money could be used to help spread the Gospel, so he better take it and just let God figure out what to do next with Simon.  Think with me, Peter was a called man of God.  Peter was an anointed man of God.  Peter was taught by Jesus himself!  So Peter had the same things going for him that preachers like Kenneth Hagin or Kenneth Copeland have going for them.  I guess I should clarify that Kenneth Hagin went to be with the Lord in 2003, so he is not technically in charge of his ministry anymore and his son runs it today.  His son Kenneth W Hagin is on TV and this is probably a part of what is feeding the problem.    Maybe you think I am being a critic because I do not like these ministries, but since you do not know me, you would think wrong.  It is only because I like them so much that I mention them at all.  You see I consider Kenneth Hagin to be a spiritual father of mine, so it hurts me to no end that I have to teach what they are doing is wrong!  You have no idea how much I cried when I wrote the first article.

What I want you to learn today is that Peter was in town preaching the Word of God and ministering to the people when he was offered what appeared to be a large sum of cash to give what he did not own to another man.  If you do not understand how this applies to the modern world, then you are a spiritually blind man or woman.   If you are selling your anointed teaching or preaching materials for a profit you are accepting money for something that you did not produce or could produce without the power of God’s participation.  Maybe some of my readers do not understand what the anointing is and we should back up briefly and talk about that.  The anointing is God’s Power and Ability for you to do what you have been called to do.  The anointing of God is a gift of God like Peter was discussing in Acts 8.   In other words, you might have been called to preach, but yet if you are trying to do it all in your own abilities and talents you are laboring in vain and wasting your time (Ps 127:1).  To “anoint” is a Bible term that means to smear or rub with oil.  The oil is usually viewed to be a type of the Holy Spirit in the Word of God.  So to anoint with oil, is a concept that is an outward representation of something that actually transpires internally in our hearts (spirits).   That was a brief lesson on the anointing and I know I did not cover it very well.  But, since I’m teaching about Peter in Acts, let’s review a statement that Peter makes in his letter to the church:

1Pe 4:10  As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.

1Pe 4:11  If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

I hope that you can see what God is saying to the church in these verses.   Since Peter is the scribe for these words, they directly apply to what we just read in Acts 8.  Peter basically says that it is the ability that God has given to him that has caused him to do what he has done and it was not him that was doing anything.  Think with me about the life of Peter recorded in the scriptures.  It was not the same Peter in Acts chapter 2 who stood up and preached to thousands that it was the Peter who denied Jesus 3 times in John 13.  What changed or happened to Peter to cause such a drastic transformation to a man who was fearful of other men to a man who was bold to preach the Word of God?   The change occurred when God anointed Peter with the Baptism of the Holy Spirit which gave him supernatural power and abilities.  I do not mean he could fly like a superman, I mean he had the Power of God upon him and working through him to do things that his natural man could have never accomplished.   This is the anointing and the gifting of God that he was describing.

I use to be like the Peter who denied Jesus three times.  You see I use to know nothing; I use to have no understanding of the Word of God and I use to have no teaching ability.  I may have been called by God as a young child or even still in my mother’s womb as it says for many men of God in the Bible, but, I could not fulfill my destiny using my own determination or skills.   It was not until the Holy Spirit came into me, filled me, then anointed me to teach and taught me what to teach that I could dare to teach the Bible at all.  This is an essential lesson to learn for anyone in the ministry.  It is always the anointing of God that must be present to produce anything of any spiritual value for others.  So if you are teaching the Bible without the anointing you are just an entertainer that is making money and you ought to charge admission to your shows.  But, if you are anointed by God then you are a man or a woman that is depending on Him to show up and work through you.

Most modern ministries with any integrity would never think of charging you an admission or an entrance fee into one of their meetings like it was a rock concert or a Broadway show.  To charge money to allow you to hear the Gospel message of salvation would be a clear violation of the Word of God.  However, to charge you money for past Bible lessons that they have recorded seems to be another story entirely in today’s world.  I really do not understand how they see these two things to be different.  A live teaching and a taped teaching contain the same words, the same message, the same meanings, the same anointing and the same power to save, heal or deliver the people who are listening to it.  Why is it permissible in their eyes to charge great deals of money for these old Bible lessons that they do not charge for their new live ones?   Why the gift of God is not sold live, but is sold in copies later, I really do not understand?  That is a very narrow minded interpretation of the scriptures if you think one is permissible and the other is not.  That is being inconsistent and ignorantly irresponsible of what God has given to you as a free gift.  Do you not understand these concepts?  Am I speaking empty words to empty heads?   Or have you closed your mind to what the truth of God is telling you because we live in a modern world?  Heaven help us all to get on the same page and work in unity and harmony to reach the entire world for God.  I hope that you learned something from this series of lessons and if you agree with what I am saying, please share it with others so that the truth will prevail.  God Bless you!