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I just finished watching a fantastic documentary, American Gospel – Christ Alone, contrasting the Gospel with its predominant portrayal in American culture, today. The filmmaker, Brandon Kimber, did a masterful and thorough job on this 2 hour and 19-minute film.

The buzz around American Gospel is how it defines and addresses the problems of the prosperity Gospel. While it does accomplish that vital task (something I’d hoped for, but didn’t find in “Blessed”), it does much more than that. It first presents the authentic Gospel (first 40 minutes), contrasts it with faith vs. works fallacies, what the Bible really says about suffering and evil, and highlights some of those associated with the NAR controversy though none of these things are its primary focus.

Some ‘Blessed” Questions Answered

In my review of “Blessed”, I posed questions about prosperity and the Gospel the author did not address:

What is the relationship, if any, between the Gospel and human prosperity? How could salvation of the lost have nothing, whatsoever, to do with human flourishing?Every believer with a heartbeat might have an opinion on such questions. But, what is the truth contained in the Biblical text?

What might a believer seeking the whole counsel of God, conclude? Have some, or all, of these prosperity gospel preachers been fleecing the sheep or does the fulfillment of one or more of the missions of Jesus Christ involve prosperity and believers?

American Gospel” solidly answers the last question with scriptural references that will leave the viewer inspired yet with no doubts about the spiritual crimes of a half-dozen or so of these gospel hucksters.

Soon to Become a Handy Video Reference

Given its quality and thoroughness, I’ll likely be referring to American Gospel as a resource for illustrating, if not altogether resolving, many of questions and issues that come up on forums and in conversations. Therefore, I’ll need to re-watch this documentary and capture timestamps and summaries of the many problems this film handles and illustrates so well. That will take some time since the work, while quite entertaining, is rather comprehensive in its coverage.

If you’re looking for a one-stop resource to clearly delineate many of the ways the predominant modern portrayal of the Gospel in the American culture differs from the Biblical Text, this film is the best single resource I’ve seen on the subject.

Modern Money Changers

There’s plenty in the film that may have you relating to Christ’s anger at the money changers in the Temple. But it’s the trail of needlessly ruined or impoverished lives and the thwarting of those genuinely seeking God that’s probably the greater cost.

The hoarded and fraudulently gained earthly wealth of these hucksters is the best demonstration and proof of their genuinely held values: that the Gospel is just a mesmerizing tale that keeps the attention of believers long enough to separate them from their wallets and purses.

For the benefit of Benny Hinn’s $20k nightly stays in Dubai, the un-healed believer with cerebral palsy spends a lifetime questioning why his faith is not strong enough to convince God to heal him. Too bad he doesn’t know that Benny’s handlers screen out the hard cases before they get too close to the stage.

Pentecostal Lunacy

Kenneth Copeland plagiarizes his loony mentor (Kenneth Hagin) and takes “Ye shall be as gods” to the next level claiming he has Jesus’ DNA. With such exalted genetic street-cred established, it’s perfectly natural to demand another $60 million for a second jet for his private airport. After all, the contributing believers would be entitled to their own earthly empires if they only had the “wisdom” to ask.

Here’s an episode in Copeland’s apprenticeship with Hagin, his psychopathic mentor:

Passing the Baton

Here’s Copeland “passing the baton” to Todd White. Can we look forward to subsequent references to this episode described as Todd’s “anointing?”

In “American Gospel,” Todd White demonstrates what is apparently his schtick: a super slow manipulation of the ankle to make it look like he’s called the power of the Holy Spirit down to even up the lengths of a seeker’s legs and putting an end to chronic back pain.

The Beginning of the End, Hopefully

Is walking to the head of every line and claiming to be first proof of “God’s plan for your life” or just common lousy behavior? Is a graceful walk through the long process of sanctification only necessary because I don’t understand what my Bible really says, like Copeland or White?

For all “American Gospel” does to clarify the true Gospel and expose the false, it also does a wonderful job in championing God’s word and its role in fostering and deepening a relationship with our Creator. Let’s pray that “American Gospel” is the beginning of the end of the horrible spiritual destruction that follows in the wake of the false prosperity gospel.

After King Henry VIII broke from Rome in 1534, England began enforcing Anglican religious uniformity. Some wanted to purify the Anglican Church from the inside, being given the name “Puritans.” Others separated themselves completely from the Anglican Church as dissenters. Of those were Thomas Helwys, John Murton and John Smyth, who founded the Baptist faith in England.

Thomas Helwys wrote “A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity,” 1612, considered the first English book defending the principle of religious liberty: “Queen Mary … had no power over her subjects consciences … neither hath our Lord the King … power over his subjects consciences. … The King is a mortal man, and not God, therefore he hath no power over the mortal soul of his subjects to make laws and ordinances for them and to set spiritual Lords over them. …”

He continued: “If the King’s people be obedient and true subjects, obeying all humane laws made by the King, our Lord the King can require no more: for men’s religion to God is betwixt God and themselves; the King shall not answer for it, neither may the King be judge between God and man.”

Thomas Helwys was arrested and thrown into London’s notorious Newgate Prison, where he died in 1616.

Another Baptist dissenter, John Murton, was locked in Newgate Prison as punishment for spreading politically incorrect religious views. Prisoners were not fed, but instead relied on charity of friends to bring them food, such as bread or bottles of milk.

Roger Williams referred to John Murton in his work, “The Bloody Tenet (Practice) of Persecution for the Cause of Conscience,” 1644: “The author of these arguments against persecution … being committed (a) prisoner to Newgate for the witness of some truths of Jesus … and having not use of pen and ink, wrote these arguments in milk, in sheets of paper brought to him by the woman, his keeper, from a friend in London as the stopples (corks) of his milk bottle. … In such paper, written with milk, nothing will appear; but the way of reading by fire being known to this friend who received the papers, he transcribed and kept together the papers, although the author himself could not correct nor view what himself had written. … It was in milk, tending to soul nourishment, even for babes and sucklings in Christ … the word of truth … testify against … slaughtering each other for their several respective religions and consciences.”

Williams wrote: “Persecution for cause of conscience is most contrary to the doctrine of Christ Jesus the Prince of Peace. … Enforced uniformity is the greatest occasion of civil war, ravishing of conscience, persecution of Christ Jesus in his servants.”

Roger Williams was a contemporary of John Bunyan, who wrote “Pilgrim’s Progress” while in prison for conscience sake. When the government sought to arrest Roger Williams for preaching religious liberty, he fled to Boston, Massachusetts, on Feb. 5, 1631.

To his dismay, Puritans in Massachusetts had begun enforcing Puritan religious uniformity. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black wrote in Engel v. Vitale, 1962: “When some of the very groups which had most strenuously opposed the established Church of England found themselves sufficiently in control of colonial governments … they passed laws making their own religion the official religion of their respective colonies.”

A controversy raged among inhabitants of Massachusetts, between “a covenant of grace” versus “a covenant of works.” The “covenant of grace” leaders were Sir Henry Vane, Rev. John Cotton, Rev. John Wheelwright, and his sister-in-law, Anne Hutchinson.

Rev. John Wheelwright fled Puritan uniformity in Massachusetts in 1637 and founded Exeter, New Hampshire. Roger Williams was briefly the pastor a church till “notorious disagreements” caused the Massachusetts General Court to censor his religious speech. Upon hearing the sheriff was on his way to arrest him and send him back to England, Williams fled again, in freezing weather, January of 1636. For weeks he traveled alone till he was befriended by the Indians of Narragansett. He founded Providence Plantation, Rhode Island – the first place where the church was not controlled by state.

Roger Williams wrote in 1661: “I having made covenant of peaceable neighborhood with all the Sachems (Chiefs) and natives round about us, and having in a sense of God’s merciful providence unto me in my distress called the place Providence … a shelter for persons distressed of conscience.”

A historical plaque reads: “To the memory of Roger Williams, the Apostle of Soul Liberty, Founder of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation.”

The reverse of the plaque reads: “Below this spot then at the water’s edge stood the rock on which according to tradition Roger Williams, an exile for the devotion to the freedom of conscience, landed. 1636.”

In 1638, Roger Williams organized the first Baptist Church in America.

A plaque reads: “The First Baptist Church, Founded by Roger Williams, AD 1638, The Oldest Baptist Church in America, The Oldest Church in this State.”

Physician John Clarke came to Rhode Island and founded another Baptist Church in Newport. Other dissenters arrived in Williams’ Rhode Island Colony, such as William Coddington, Philip Sherman, and Anne Hutchinson. Anne soon left again to settle in the Dutch settlement of the Bronx in New York City, where all her family was scalped and beheaded by raiding Indians in 1643. There was only one survivor, Anne’s nine-year-old daughter Susanna, who was taken captive. After several years, she escaped and married an innkeeper, Samuel Cole. Their descendants included three U.S. presidents.

The Governor of Massachusetts from 1636 to 1637 was Sir Henry Vane, who helped found Harvard. He supported the efforts of Roger Williams. Due to the “covenant of grace” versus “covenant of works” controversy, Governor Sir Henry Vane was not reelected, being replaced by John Winthrop.

In 1639, Sir Henry Vane returned to England where he backed the Puritan Revolution, led by Oliver Cromwell, though he did not support the Rump Parliament which beheaded Charles I.

During the brief English Commonwealth, Vane helped draft for Roger Williams the Patent for Providence Plantation, which was unique in that it did not acknowledge a king, and it guaranteed freedom of religion and conscience. Vane later defended the Patent on behalf of Roger Williams against a competing charter.

Roger William wrote of Vane in April of 1664: “Under God, the great anchor of our ship is Sir Henry Vane … an instrument in the hand of God for procuring this island.”

A statue of Sir Henry Vane is in the Boston Public Library with a plaque that reads: “Sir Henry Vane … An ardent defender of civil liberty and advocate of free thought in religion. He maintained that God, Law, and Parliament were superior to the King.”

The Plantation Agreement at Providence, Sept. 6, 1640, stated: “We agree, as formerly hath been the liberties of the town, so still, to hold forth liberty of conscience.”

The Government of Rhode Island, March 19, 1641, stated: “The Government … in this Island … is a Democracy, or Popular Government; that is to say, It is in the Power of the Body of Freemen orderly assembled.”

Roger Williams responded to Puritan leader John Cotton’s accusations by publishing “The Bloody Tenet (Practice) of Persecution for the Cause of Conscience and Mr. Cotton’s Letter Lately Printed, Examined and Answered in 1644.” In this, Williams first mentioned his now famous phrase, “wall of separation”: “Mr. Cotton … hath not duly considered these following particulars. First, the faithful labors of many witnesses of Jesus Christ, existing in the world, abundantly proving, that the Church of the Jews under the Old Testament in the type and the Church of the Christians under the New Testament in the anti-type, were both separate from the world; and that when they have opened a gap in the hedge, or wall of separation, between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broken down the wall itself, removed the candlestick, &c. and made his garden a wilderness, as at this day. And that therefore if He will ever please to restore His garden and paradise again, it must of necessity be walled in peculiarly unto Himself from the world, and that all that shall be saved out of the world are to be transplanted out of the wilderness of the world and added unto His Church or garden … a separation of Holy from unHoly, penitent from impenitent, Godly from unGodly.”

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by Ronnie Floyd

Dear Friends in Christ Who Will Pray for America,

Now is the time to pray for America. The year of 2019 before us yearns for God’s people from all over the world to pray for America. We are living in serious and critical times.

Call upon your church, friends, colleagues, and any leader in this nation: We need to pray for America.

Below are three prayer priorities I am asking you to agree upon with us at the National Day of Prayer. Please do all you can to forward and assist in this manner. Now is the time to pray for America.

Prayer Priority #1: Oh God, may You begin to raise up a Love One Another movement across America that forwards and advances Jesus’ words to us: Love One Another. 

“Love one another. Just as I have loved you.” John 13:34

  • Jesus tells us to love one another just like He loves us. This includes every person in America as well as every person in the world.
  • Jesus wants us to love every person sacrificially, willfully, and unconditionally because this is the same way He loves us.
  • Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to empower us to do the things that only God can do through us. Therefore, call upon God to move in our nation miraculously, replacing hate with love, division with unity, and criticism of one another with love for one another.
  • Jesus, raise up a Love One Another movement across America.

Prayer Priority #2: Our Heavenly Father, we pray we will be used of God to build up America by blessing and adding value to each town and city in our nation.

“A city is built up by the blessing of the upright, but it is torn down by the mouth of the wicked.” Proverbs 11:11

  • Heavenly Father, we are Christians, the ones made right by You; therefore, as the upright, may we fulfill Proverbs 11:11 in every town and city in the United States. May we bless each town and city by adding value to it in any way we can.
  • Heavenly Father, Proverbs 11:11 says the wicked tear down with their words the towns and cities of our nation; but as the upright, may we choose to add value and bless them.
  • Heavenly Father, we ask You to raise up godly Christian men and women in their towns and cities who will run for local office and use their influence to add value by forwarding and blessing the future generations in these towns and cities.
  • Heavenly Father, we ask You to bless each town and city with the message and encouragement of Jesus Christ when He said, “Love one another” in John 13:34.

Prayer Priority #3: Lord, we ask You to be with the leaders in our local, state, and national governments as they work and make decisions together for the good of our nation. 

Call out their specific names to God if you have them:

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