Prosperity Doctrine Quotes

Summer has never been the same since the 2000 Presidential Election, when we still seemed to be a prosperous nation at peace with the world, more or less. Two summers later we were a dead-broke nation at war with all but three or four countries in the world, and three of those don't count. Spain and Italy were flummoxed and and England has allowed itself to be taken over by and stigmatized by some corrupt little shyster who enjoys his slimy role as a pimp and a prostitute all at once--selling a once-proud nation of independent-thinking people down the river and into a deadly swamp of slavery to the pimps who love Jesus and George Bush and the war-crazed U.S. Pentagon.

God is not glorified when we keep for ourselves (no matter how thankfully) what we ought to be using to alleviate the misery of unevangelized, uneducated, unmedicated, and unfed millions. The evidence that many professing Christians have been deceived by this doctrine is how little they give and how much they own. God has prospered them. And by an almost irresistible law of consumer culture (baptized by a doctrine of health, wealth, and prosperity) they have bought bigger (and more) houses, newer (and more) cars, fancier (and more) clothes, better (and more) meat, and all manner of trinkets and gadgets and containers and devices and equipment to make life more fun. They will object: Does not the Old Testament promise that God will prosper his people? Indeed! God increases our yield, so that by giving we can prove our yield is not our god. God does not prosper a man's business so that he can move from a Ford to a Cadillac. God prospers a business so that 17,000 unreached people can be reached with the gospel. He prospers the business so that 12 percent of the world's population can move a step back from the precipice of starvation.

I see the Bush Doctrine as an American-style “enabling act,” giving dictatorial powers to any sitting president.

In Rome there was no doctrine as such, no holy book and hardly even what we would call a belief system. Romans knew the gods existed; they did not believe in them in the internalised sense familiar from most modern world religions. Nor was ancient Roman religion particularly concerned with personal salvation or morality. Instead it mainly focused on the performance of rituals that were intended to keep the relationship between Rome and the gods in good order, and so ensure Roman success and prosperity.

I have brought peace to this land, and security," he began. "And what of your soul, when you use the cleverness of argument to cloak such acts? Do you think that the peace of a thousand cancels out the unjust death of one single person? It may be desirable, it may win you praise from those who have happily survived you and prospered from your deeds, but you have committed ignoble acts, and have been too proud to own them. I have waited patiently here, hoping that you would come to me, for if you understood, then some of your acts would be mitigated. But instead you send me this manuscript, proud, magisterial, and demonstrating only that you have understood nothing at all." "I returned to public life on your advice, madam," he said stiffly. "Yes; I advised it. I said if learning must die it should do so with a friend by its bedside. Not an assassin.

I had thought myself lost, had touched the very bottom of despair; and then, when the spirit of renunciation had filled me, I had known peace. I know now what I was not conscious of at the time—that in such an hour a man feels that he has finally found himself and has become his own friend. An essential inner need has been satisfied, and against that satisfaction, that self-fulfilment, no external power can prevail. Bonnafous, I imagine, he who spent: his life racing before the wind, was acquainted with this serenity of spirit. Guillaumet, too, in his snows. Never shall I forget that, lying buried to the chin in sand, strangled slowly to death by thirst, my heart was infinitely warm beneath the desert stars. What can men do to make known to themselves this sense of deliverance? Everything about mankind is paradox. He who strives and conquers grows soft. The magnanimous man grown rich becomes mean. The creative artist for whom everything is made easy nods. Every doctrine swears that it can breed men, but none can tell us in advance what sort of men it will breed. Men are not cattle to be fattened for market. In the scales of life an indigent Newton weighs more than a parcel of prosperous nonentities. All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming—a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness.

Today God is known as the God of huge cathedrals and massive church complexes, but he wants to be known as the God who loves and cares for the poorest of the poor,

This Bush Doctrine stands today and is assumed by President Obama to be legitimate as he carries out a secret drone war worldwide with no congressional input or oversight.

the devil, the prince of the impious city, when he stirs up his own vessels against the city of God that sojourns in this world, is permitted to do her no harm. For without doubt the divine providence procures for her both consolation through prosperity, that she may not be broken by adversity, and trial through adversity, that she may not be corrupted by prosperity; and thus each is tempered by the other,

Now, perhaps thou wouldest say, If I rejoice in God, when I am prosperous, because it is His mercy; what am I to do when I am in sorrow, in tribulation? It is His mercy, when I am prosperous; is it then His cruelty, when I am in adversity? If I praise His mercy when it is well with me, am I then to exclaim against His cruelty when it is ill? No. But when it is well, praise His mercy: when ill, praise His truth: because He scourgeth sins, He is not unjust....

The Bush Doctrine was created to justify ongoing and future interventions on the basis of America’s “moral” responsibility since becoming the only superpower left standing. More succinctly, the Bush Doctrine is about pursuing a world empire.

Unlike old-fashioned Britain, where Tony Blair recruited Lord Levy to encourage his 'Friends of Israel' to donate their money to a party that was just about to launch a criminal war, in America Alan Greenspan provided his president with an astonishing economic boom. It seems that the prosperous conditions at home divert the attention from the disastrous war in Iraq. Greenspan is not an amateur economist, he knew what he was doing. He knew very well that as long as Americans were doing well, buying and selling homes, his President would be able to continue implementing the 'Wolfowitz doctrine' and PNAC philosophy, destroying the 'bad Arabs' in the name of 'democracy', 'liberalism', 'ethics', and even 'women's rights'.

Associated with the Bush Doctrine is preemptive war, the assassination of Americans and foreigners without due process, secret military prisons, extraordinary rendition, and torture. How anyone can argue that this makes America safer and more respected is beyond me. Common sense should tell us that such actions are a sure way to create more enemies. Resentment toward the US grows with each new attack. Resentment also grows with the sweep of the US military, and US support of dictators and insurgents, around the world.

Rome’s success was, its people believed, owing to the favour of chief god, Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Roman religion was not one of doctrine, improvement or salvation but one of ritual and lifestyle, based on sacrifices to a pantheon to ensure success and prosperity.

In our day civil governments have a vested interest in protecting marriage because strong families constitute the best way of providing for the health, education, welfare, and prosperity of rising generations. But civil governments are heavily influenced by social trends and secular philosophies as they write, rewrite, and enforce laws. Regardless of what civil legislation may be enacted, the doctrine of the Lord regarding marriage and morality cannot be changed. Remember: sin, even if legalized by man, is still sin in the eyes of God!

Study, therefore, to be established in the doctrines of the Lord and the apostles, that so all things, whatsoever ye do, may prosper both in the flesh and spirit; in faith and love; in the Son, and in the Father, and in the Spirit; in the beginning and in the end; with your most admirable bishop, and the well-compacted spiritual crown of your presbytery, and the deacons who are according to God. Be ye subject to the bishop, and to one another, as Jesus Christ to the Father, according to the flesh, and the apostles to Christ, and to the Father, and to the Spirit; that so there may be a union both fleshly and spiritual. Study,

The Bush Doctrine defends the US killing a supposed enemy 6,000 miles away who has never attacked and cannot attack America. Those who struggle and sacrifice to expel foreign invaders from their homeland are the monsters that must be stopped according to the logic of Presidents Bush and Obama, who take their cues from the neoconservatives.

The greatest danger to the church today is not humanism, paganism, atheism or agnosticism. The greatest danger is not increasing hostility against our faith from the culture. Our greatest danger is apostasy on the inside, arising from false teachers- theological liberals who deny and distort biblical doctrine and lead others down the same path.

In 1858, during his debate with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln predicted a future crisis over “the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants.” But he also saw hope for a solution, right in front of all Americans: “When in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began.”56 In other words, Lincoln came to Independence Hall with as clear a purpose as Thomas Jefferson had in 1776. He had spent his entire life approaching this stage.

The Bush Doctrine has continued in force and expanded in application under President Obama. If the Bush Doctrine is not reversed, it will become a major contributing factor one day to a financial crisis associated with a national bankruptcy. It will then invite all the peoples of the many countries that we have offended with our aggressive interventions to pile on big time. Retaliation will be vicious. All Americans will be blamed and “punished” even though the tragic mess was orchestrated by the few who manipulated foreign policy for their own benefit. The greatest fault of the American people has been that their complacency prevented effective resistance to the government overstepping its bounds and acting in a lawless manner.

The political antagonisms of today are not controversies over ultimate questions of philosophy, but opposing answers to the question how a goal that all acknowledge as legitimate can be achieved most quickly and with the least sacrifice. This goal, at which all men aim, is the best possible satisfaction of human wants; it is prosperity and abundance. Of course, this is not all that men aspire to, but it is all that they can expect to attain by resort to external means and by way of social cooperation. The inner blessings—happiness, peace of mind, exaltation—must be sought by each man within himself alone. Liberalism is no religion, no world view, no party of special interests. It is no religion because it demands neither faith nor devotion, because there is nothing mystical about it, and because it has no dogmas. It is no world view because it does not try to explain the cosmos and because it says nothing and does not seek to say anything about the meaning and purpose of human existence. It is no party of special interests because it does not provide or seek to provide any special advantage whatsoever to any individual or any group. It is something entirely different. It is an ideology, a doctrine of the mutual relationship among the members of society and, at the same time, the application of this doctrine to the conduct of men in actual society. It promises nothing that exceeds what can be accomplished in society and through society. It seeks to give men only one thing, the peaceful, undisturbed development of material well-being for all, in order thereby to shield them from the external causes of pain and suffering as far as it lies within the power of social institutions to do so at all. To diminish suffering, to increase happiness: that is its aim. No sect and no political party has believed that it could afford to forgo advancing its cause by appealing to men's senses. Rhetorical bombast, music and song resound, banners wave, flowers and colors serve as symbols, and the leaders seek to attach their followers to their own person. Liberalism has nothing to do with all this. It has no party flower and no party color, no party song and no party idols, no symbols and no slogans. It has the substance and the arguments. These must lead it to victory.

Universally that person’s acumen is esteemed very little perceptive concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitably by mortals with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that which the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in them high mind’s ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general consent they affirm that other circumstances being equal by no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferent continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of omnipollent nature’s incorrupted benefaction.

The traditional religion of Rome was significantly different from religion as we usually understand it now. So much modern religious vocabulary–including the word ‘religion’, as well as ‘pontiff’–is borrowed from Latin that it tends to obscure some of the major differences between ancient Roman religion and our own. In Rome there was no doctrine as such, no holy book and hardly even what we would call a belief system. Romans knew the gods existed; they did not believe in them in the internalised sense familiar from most modern world religions. Nor was ancient Roman religion particularly concerned with personal salvation or morality. Instead it mainly focused on the performance of rituals that were intended to keep the relationship between Rome and the gods in good order, and so ensure Roman success and prosperity.

To tighten the synergy between beliefs and rituals, the gods evolved desires and commandments that motivated people to participate in rituals, stick to fasts, maintain taboos, and make credible vows. The new doctrinal rituals more effectively transmit the faith, and, in turn, the new faith motivates the reinforcing rituals through the threat of supernatural punishment. This interlocking cycle helps perpetuate the faith from one generation to the next.50

Malachi 3: 8-9 is probably the most misrepresented scripture tithing advocates quote in the Bible. They contend that anyone that does not pay tithe is robbing God and will be cursed. However, Malachi was not speaking to the Jewish nation he was speaking to the priests. The priests were the ones criticized for robbing God and received the curse for failing to follow God’s ordinances. They were withholding the best meats for themselves and offering God “blemished” sacrifices. Pastors that knowingly deceive others by preaching a false tithing doctrine are the real thieves and are no different than the priests that Malachi rebuked. They are blind guides that lead God’s people astray. They have cherry picked certain principles from God’s tithing system and turned it into something that looks nothing like Moses’ design. It is an inequitable system that does not provide for the poor and allow prosperity preachers and false teachers to profit far beyond the members of their congregation.

Dear Friend: Are you a Christian? What have you done to-day for Christ? Are the friends with whom you have been talking traveling toward the New Jerusalem? Did you compare notes with them as to how you were all prospering on the way? Is that stranger by your side a fellow-pilgrim? Did you ask him if he would be? Have you been careful to recommend the religion of Jesus Christ by your words, by your acts, by your looks, this day? If danger comes to you, have you this day asked Christ to be your helper? If death comes to you this night, are you prepared to give up your account? What would your record of this last day be? A blank? What! Have you done nothing for the Master? Then what have you done against Him? Nothing? Nay, verily! Is not the Bible doctrine, 'He that is not for me is against me?'  "Remember that every neglected opportunity, every idle word, every wrong thought of yours has been written down this day. You can not take back the thoughts or words; you can not recall the opportunity. This day, with all its mistakes, and blots, and mars, you can never live over again. It must go up to the judgment just as it is. Have you begged the blood of Jesus to be spread over it all? Have you resolved that no other day shall witness a repeatal of the same mistakes? Have you resolved in your own strength or in His?

3 If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 he is conceited and understands nothing. ... 5 ... who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain. 6 But godliness with contentment is great gain. 7 For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. ... 9 People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wondered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. (1 Timothy 6:3-10) (NIV)

14 "To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God's creation. 15 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16 So, because you are lukewarm--neither hot nor cold--I am about to spit you out of my mouth. 17 You say, `I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. 18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. 19 Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. (Revelation 3:14-19) (NIV)

The doctrine of the supremacy of the individual to himself, of his originality and, as regards his own character, _unique_ quality, must have had a great charm for people living in a society in which introspection, thanks to the want of other entertainment, played almost the part of a social resource. In the United States, in those days, there were no great things to look out at (save forests and rivers); life was not in the least spectacular; society was not brilliant; the country was given up to a great material prosperity, a homely _bourgeois_ activity, a diffusion of primary education and the common luxuries. There was therefore, among the cultivated classes, much relish for the utterances of a writer who would help one to take a picturesque view of one’s internal possibilities, and to find in the landscape of the soul all sorts of fine sunrise and moonlight effects.

In the late 1800s a certain man taught Sunday school for over 20 years in a Baptist church; he eventually became the wealthiest man in the world. He also did not pay tithes. He was not generous toward anyone, quite the opposite, he was the reason that journalists came up with the term, "Robber Baron." The man was John D. Rockefeller. He engaged in ruthless and illegal business practices and built an oil company called Standard Oil that was so large that, when it was broken up by antitrust laws, several major oil companies were created from that one company. Over one hundred years ago, John D. Rockefeller was worth over one billion dollars, which would be 50 to 100 billion dollars in today’s money. If he did pay tithes it would have meant an income of 100 million dollars (5 to 10 billion today) to his local church. It was not God that "blessed" him with great wealth; it was Satan, the god of greed. God does not lead people to engage in ruthless and illegal business practices in a desire for more, more, more. Even in his old age, he displayed his greed by giving away dimes. He always had dimes in his pocket so he could generously give one to people he met! What lessons are we to learn from this? One very important thing is that very often Satan will give people lots of money because Satan knows that money is very deceitful and can make even the most devout Christian materialistic and greedy. Let's take a look at another example. There is today a man who planned to become a missionary when he was young, but he not only turned against his calling, he turned against Christianity. Do you suppose that God has blessed this man? He is today a multi-billionaire, media-mogul. The man is Ted Turner, who started CNN and is a partner in Time-Warner and other media companies. Can we use him as an example that God blesses a righteous man? No, actually, the opposite is most likely true, that Satan prospers those who turn from the straight way.

Christianity in its fullness and truth has been restored to the earth by direct revelation. The restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the most significant fact since the resurrection of Jesus Christ. What was restored? In a very real sense, the true Law of the Harvest was restored – the law of justice, the law of mercy, the law of love. It was restored in a free country under the influence of a God-inspired Constitution which created a climate of freedom, opportunity and prosperity. The basic virtues of thrift, self-reliance, independence, enterprise, diligence, integrity, morality, faith in God and in His Son, Jesus Christ, were the principles upon which this, the greatest nation in the world, has been built. We must not sell this priceless, divine heritage which was largely paid for by the blood of patriots and prophets for a mess of pottage, for a counterfeit, a false doctrine parading under the cloak of love and compassion, of humanitarianism, even of Christianity.

While originating in acts of imagination, orthodoxies paradoxically seek to control the imagination as a means of maintaining their authority. The authenticity of a person's understanding is measured according to its conformity with the dogmas of the school. While such controls may provide a necessary safeguard against charlatanism and self-deception, they also can be used to suppress authentic attempts at creative innovation that might threaten the status quo. The imagination is anarchic and potentially subversive. The more hierarchic and authoritarian a religious institution, the more it will require that the creations of the imagination conform to its doctrines and aesthetic norms. Yet by suppression of the imagination, the very life of dharma practice is cut off at its source. While religious orthodoxies may survive and even prosper for centuries, in the end they will ossify. When the world around them changes, they will lack the imaginative power to respond creatively to the challenges of the new situation.

These communities, by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: ``We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'' This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began---so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.

The mid-seventeenth-century conflict is usually presented as a war between king and Parliament, the latter representing the rising merchant and manufacturing classes. The final “glorious revolution” established the primacy of Parliament. And also registered victories for the rising bourgeoisie. One not inconsiderable achievement was to break the royal monopoly on the highly lucrative slave trade. The merchants were able to gain a large share of this enterprise, a substantial part of the basis for British prosperity. But there also were wild men in the wings—much of the general public. They were not silent. Their pamphlets and speakers favored universal education, guaranteed health care, and democratization of the law. They developed a kind of liberation theology, which, as one critic ominously observed, preached “seditious doctrine to the people” and aimed “to raise the rascal multitude … against all men of best quality in the kingdom, to draw them into associations and combinations with one another … against all lords, gentry, ministers, lawyers, rich and peaceable men.” Particularly frightening were the itinerant workers and preachers calling for freedom and democracy, the agitators stirring up the rascal multitude, and the authors and printers distributing pamphlets questioning authority and its mysteries. Elite opinion warned that the radical democrats had “cast all the mysteries and secrets of government … before the vulgar (like pearls before swine),” and have “made the people thereby so curious and so arrogant that they will never find humility enough to submit to a civil rule.” It is dangerous, another commentator ominously observed, to “have a people know their own strength”—to learn that power is “in the hands of the governed,” in Hume’s words.

Since the eighteenth century, clerical and military critics of liberalism have pictured it as a doctrine that achieves its public goods, peace, prosperity, and security by encouraging private vice. Selfishness in all its possible forms is said to be its essence, purpose, and outcome. This, it is said now and then, is inevitable once martial virtue and the discipline imposed by God are discarded. Nothing could be more remote from the truth. The very refusal to use public coercion to impose creedal unanimity and uniform standards of behavior demands an enormous degree of self-control. Tolerance consistently applied is more difficult and morally more demanding than repression. Moreover, the liberalism of fear, which makes cruelty the first vice, quite rightly recognizes that fear reduces us to mere reactive units of sensation and that this does impose a public ethos on us. One begins with what is to be avoided, as Montaigne feared being afraid most of all. Courage is to be prized, since it both prevents us from being cruel, as cowards so often are, and fortifies us against fear from threats, both physical and moral. This is, to be sure, not the courage of the armed, but that of their likely victims. This is a liberalism that was born out of the cruelties of the religious civil wars, which forever rendered the claims of Christian charity a rebuke to all religious institutions and parties. ... The alternative then set, and still before us, is not one between classical virtue and liberal self-indulgence, but between cruel military and moral repression and violence, and a self-restraining tolerance that fences in the powerful to protect the freedom and safety of every citizen, old or young, male or female, black or white. Far from being an amoral free-for-all, liberalism is, in fact, extremely difficult and constraining, far too much so for those who cannot endure contradiction, complexity, diversity, and the risks of freedom.

Eighteen centuries have now passed away since God sent forth a few Jews from a remote corner of the earth, to do a work which according to man's judgment must have seemed impossible. He sent them forth at a time when the whole world was full of superstition, cruelty, lust, and sin. He sent them forth to proclaim that the established religions of the earth were false and useless, and must be forsaken. He sent them forth to persuade men to give up old habits and customs, and to live different lives. He sent them forth to do battle with the most grovelling idolatry, with the vilest and most disgusting immorality, with vested interests, with old associations, with a bigoted priesthood, with sneering philosophers, with an ignorant population, with bloody-minded emperors, with the whole influence of Rome. Never was there an enterprise to all appearance more Quixotic, and less likely to succeed! And how did He arm them for this battle? He gave them no carnal weapons. He gave them no worldly power to compel assent, and no worldly riches to bribe belief. He simply put the Holy Ghost into their hearts, and the Scriptures into their hands. He simply bade them to expound and explain, to enforce and to publish the doctrines of the Bible. The preacher of Christianity in the first century was not a man with a sword and an army, to frighten people, like Mahomet,—or a man with a license to be sensual, to allure people, like the priests of the shameful idols of Hindostan. No! he was nothing more than one holy man with one holy book. And how did these men of one book prosper? In a few generations they entirely changed the face of society by the doctrines of the Bible. They emptied the temples of the heathen gods. They famished idolatry, or left it high and dry like a stranded ship. They brought into the world a higher tone of morality between man and man. They raised the character and position of woman. They altered the standard of purity and decency. They put an end to many cruel and bloody customs, such as the gladiatorial fights.—There was no stopping the change. Persecution and opposition were useless. One victory after another was won. One bad thing after another melted away. Whether men liked it or not, they were insensibly affected by the movement of the new religion, and drawn within the whirlpool of its power. The earth shook, and their rotten refuges fell to the ground. The flood rose, and they found themselves obliged to rise with it. The tree of Christianity swelled and grew, and the chains they had cast round it to arrest its growth, snapped like tow. And all this was done by the doctrines of the Bible! Talk of victories indeed! What are the victories of Alexander, and Cæsar, and Marlborough, and Napoleon, and Wellington, compared with those I have just mentioned? For extent, for completeness, for results, for permanence, there are no victories like the victories of the Bible.

By pressing the doctrine of disinterestedness and love into the foreground, Christianity by no means elevated the interests of the species above those of the individual. Its real historical effect, its fatal effect, remains precisely the increase of egotism, of individual egotism, to excess (to the extreme which consists in the belief in individual immortality). The individual was made so important and so absolute, by means of Christian values, that he could no longer be sacrificed, despite the fact that the species can only be maintained by human sacrifices. All "souls" became equal before God: but this is the most pernicious of all valuations! If one regards individuals as equals, the demands of the species are ignored, and a process is initiated which ultimately leads to its ruin. Christianity is the reverse of the principle of selection. If the degenerate and sick man ("the Christian") is to be of the same value as the healthy man ("the pagan"), or if he is even to be valued higher than the latter, as Pascal's view of health and sickness would have us value him, the natural course of evolution is thwarted and the unnatural becomes law. ... In practice this general love of mankind is nothing more than deliberately favouring all the suffering, the botched, and the degenerate: it is this love that has reduced and weakened the power, responsibility, and lofty duty of sacrificing men. According to the scheme of Christian values, all that remained was the alternative of self-sacrifice, but this vestige of human sacrifice, which Christianity conceded and even recommended, has no meaning when regarded in the light of rearing a whole species. The prosperity of the species is by no means affected by the sacrifice of one individual (whether in the monastic and ascetic manner, or by means of crosses, stakes, and scaffolds, as the "martyrs" of error). What the species requires is the suppression of the physiologically botched, the weak and the degenerate: but it was precisely to these people that Christianity appealed as a preservative force, it simply strengthened that natural and very strong instinct of all the weak which bids them protect, maintain, and mutually support each other. What is Christian "virtue" and "love of men," if not precisely this mutual assistance with a view to survival, this solidarity of the weak, this thwarting of selection? What is Christian altruism, if it is not the mob-egotism of the weak which divines that, if everybody looks after everybody else, every individual will be preserved for a longer period of time? ... He who does not consider this attitude of mind as immoral, as a crime against life, himself belongs to the sickly crowd, and also shares their instincts. ... Genuine love of man kind exacts sacrifice for the good of the species it is hard, full of self-control, because it needs human sacrifices. And this pseudo-humanity which is called Christianity, would fain establish the rule that nobody should be sacrificed.

Classical liberalism has been reproached with being too obstinate and not ready enough to compromise. It was because of its inflexibility that it was defeated in its struggle with the nascent anticapitalist parties of all kinds. If it had realized, as these other parties did, the importance of compromise and concession to popular slogans in winning the favor of the masses, it would have been able to preserve at least some of its influence. But it has never bothered to build for itself a party organization and a party machine as the anticapitalist parties have done. It has never attached any importance to political tactics in electoral campaigns and parliamentary proceedings. It has never gone in for scheming opportunism or political bargaining. This unyielding doctrinairism necessarily brought about the decline of liberalism. The factual assertions contained in these statements are entirely in accordance with the truth, but to believe that they constitute a reproach against liberalism is to reveal a complete misunderstanding of its essential spirit. The ultimate and most profound of the fundamental insights of liberal thought is that it is ideas that constitute the foundation on which the whole edifice of human social cooperation is Liberalism: A Socio-Economic Exposition constructed and sustained and that a lasting social structure cannot be built on the basis of false and mistaken ideas. Nothing can serve as a substitute for an ideology that enhances human life by fostering social cooperation—least of all lies, whether they be called "tactics," "diplomacy," or "compromise." If men will not, from a recognition of social necessity, voluntarily do what must be done if society is to be maintained and general well-being advanced, no one can lead them to the right path by any cunning stratagem or artifice. If they err and go astray, then one must endeavor to enlighten them by instruction. But if they cannot be enlightened, if they persist in error, then nothing can be done to prevent catastrophe. All the tricks and lies of demagogic politicians may well be suited to promote the cause of those who, whether in good faith or bad, work for the destruction of society. But the cause of social progress, the cause of the further development and intensification of social bonds, cannot be advanced by lies and demagogy. No power on earth, no crafty stratagem or clever deception could succeed in duping mankind into accepting a social doctrine that it not only does not acknowledge, but openly spurns. The only way open to anyone who wishes to lead the world back to liberalism is to convince his fellow citizens of the necessity of adopting the liberal program. This work of enlightenment is the sole task that the liberal can and must perform in order to avert as much as lies within his power the destruction toward which society is rapidly heading today. There is no place here for concessions to any of the favorite or customary prejudices and errors. In regard to questions that will decide whether or not society is to continue to exist at all, whether millions of people are to prosper or perish, there is no room for compromise either from weakness or from misplaced deference for the sensibilities of others. If liberal principles once again are allowed to guide the policies of great nations, if a revolution in public opinion could once more give capitalism free rein, the world will be able gradually to raise itself from the condition into which the policies of the combined anticapitalist factions have plunged it. There is no other way out of the political and social chaos of the present age.

By seeking to remake all the existing traditions and institutions deemed to be flawed beyond reform, totalitarian democracy came in full collision with its liberal rival and became, in [Jacob] Talmon's words, 'an exclusive doctrine represented by a vanguard of the enlightened who justified themselves in the use of coercion against those who refused to be free and virtuous.' Liberal democracy, he argued, proceeds differently. It acknowledges uncertainty, imperfection, and limited knowledge and works with the assumption that individuals may not be coerced into following a predetermined path and that they are capable of reaching a state of order and prosperity through a gradual process of trial and error.

There is, in fact, a very perilous passage in the life of democratic peoples. When the taste for material enjoyments develops in one of these peoples more rapidly than enlightenment and the habits of freedom, there comes a moment when men are swept away and almost beside themselves at the sight of the new goods that they are ready to grasp. Preoccupied with the sole care of making a fortune, they no longer perceive the tight bond that unites the particular fortune of each of them to the prosperity of all. There is no need to tear from such citizens the rights they possess; they themselves willingly allow them to escape. The exercise of their political duties appears to them a distressing contretemps that distracts them from their industry. If it is a question of choosing their representatives, of giving assistance to authority, of treating the common thing in common, they lack the time; they cannot waste their precious time in useless work. These are games of the idle that do not suit grave men occupied with the serious interests of life. These people believe they are following the doctrine of interest, but they have only a coarse idea of it, and to watch better over what they call their affairs, they neglect the principal one, which is to remain masters of themselves. Since the citizens who work do not wish to think of the public, and the class that could take charge of this care to occupy its leisure no longer exists, the place of government is almost empty. If, at this critical moment, an ambitious, able man comes to take possession of power, he finds the way open to every usurpation. Let him see to it for a time that all material interests prosper, they will easily release him from the rest. Let him above all guarantee good order. Men who have a passion for material enjoyments ordinarily find out how the agitations of freedom trouble their well-being before perceiving how freedom serves to procure it for them; and at the least noise from public passions that penetrate into the midst of the little enjoyments of their private lives, they wake up and become restive; for a long time, fear of anarchy holds them constantly in suspense and always ready to throw out their freedom at the first disorder.

The last chapter has been concerned with the contention that orthodoxy is not only (as is often urged) the only safe guardian of morality or order, but is also the only logical guardian of liberty, innovation and advance. If we wish to pull down the prosperous oppressor we cannot do it with the new doctrine of human perfectibility; we can do it with the old doctrine of Original Sin. If we want to uproot inherent cruelties or lift up lost populations we cannot do it with the scientific theory that matter precedes mind; we can do it with the supernatural theory that mind precedes matter. If we wish specially to awaken people to social vigilance and tireless pursuit of practise, we cannot help it much by insisting on the Immanent God and the Inner Light: for these are at best reasons for contentment; we can help it much by insisting on the transcendant God and the flying and escaping gleam; for that means divine discontent.

Our lack of understanding and proper application of successful biblical principles has caused us to stay in a state of lack and insufficiency for too long. As a result, when believers stay in a state of insufficiency for too long, we are tempted to create doctrines to justify the position we are in to protect our weaknesses or lack of knowledge. But the truth is, the scripture says people perish for lack of knowledge.

The beneficent intentions • The first four years of William's reign, during which he governed in his own sense, and with great judgment and levity, was a period of real prosperity for Ireland. The doctrines of Doctor (expelled the council) had yielded for a time to the liberal and Christian philosophy of the Bishop of Kildare and Dr. Synge.—(Curry's Review, v. ii. p. 205.) It was true, indeed, that within two months after the treaty of Limerick, William, compelled it is to be hoped by his necessities (though this is a humiliating apology for a hero), had assented to the English bill, imposing a variety of oaths in direct violation of the 9th of these articles; but this iniquitous enactment had little influence on of the sovereign were, in execution, converted into curses, or intercepted by the personal and party policy, the blighting atmosphere of Irish Protestantism, through which they had to pass.

The word-faith and seed-faith doctrines are taught as ‘spiritual keys’ but they really serve to exalt man and eliminate God’s sovereignty. These ‘keys’ are used to extract, and some may argue, attempt to extort, blessings from God. They teach that a person who claims a Scripture verse with seed-faith can hold God hostage to His Word and therefore God must give them prosperity, power and miracles. It’s a demonic doctrine when man attempts to coerce or compel God to do anything. It’s shameful and repugnant! Christians need to understand that God is God and they are not.

Prosperous countries are content with an easygoing religion; where there is poverty and misery, something sterner and darker is required. This is why Presbyterianism later made such an appeal in Scotland, and why Methodism flourished among the bleak and rainy villages of Cornwall. There is also something in the Manichean doctrine that appeals to the deep romanticism in human nature, the feeling that this world is hell and that man’s happiness lies in ‘another sphere.

Choose my instruction instead of silver, knowledge rather than choice gold, for wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her. (Prov. 8:10-11) (NIV)

Take care lest you forget the LORD your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, 12 lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, 13 and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, 14 then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God . . . (Deut. 8:11, 13-14) (ESV)

Reject Inspiration – 2 Pet 3 Reject virgin birth Reject miracles Reject resurrection Reject prophecies Reject the Rapture Word faith movement– 1 Tim 6 Prosperity doctrine– 1 Tim 6 Psychology Women clergy – 1 Tim 2 & 3

Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come… saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.’ For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.” 2 Peter 3:3-6   Word Faith Movement In 1 Timothy 6, Paul says it is an error to assume godliness is a means of financial gain. Today this manifests as the “Word Faith Movement” and the “Prosperity Doctrine.”   “…men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.” 1 Timothy 6:5   Received Text We have been told by the ancient church fathers

18 And they did prosper aexceedingly, and they became exceedingly rich; yea, and they did multiply and wax strong in the land. 19 And thus we see how merciful and just are all the dealings of the Lord, to the fulfilling of all his words unto the children of men; yea, we can behold that his words are verified, even at this time, which he spake unto Lehi, saying: 20 Blessed art thou and thy children; and they shall be blessed, inasmuch as they shall keep my acommandments they shall prosper in the land. But remember, inasmuch as they will not keep my commandments they shall be bcut off from the presence of the Lord.

​The vital condition of every true state is a well-defined climate: the climate of the highest possible tension, but not of forced agitation. It will be desirable that everyone stay at his post, that he takes pleasure in an activity in conformity with his own nature and vocation, which is therefore free and desired for itself before considering utilitarian purposes and the unhealthy desire to live above one’s proper condition. If it is not possible to ask everyone to follow an ‘ascetic and military vision of life’, it will be possible to aim at a climate of concentrated intensity, of personal life, that will encourage people to prefer a greater margin of liberty, as opposed to comfort and prosperity paid for with the consequent limitation of liberty through the evitable economic and social influences. Autarchy, in the terms we have emphasised, is a valid Fascist formula. A course of virile, measured austerity is also valid and, finally, an internal discipline through which one develops a taste and an anti-bourgeois orientation of life, but no schoolmarmish and impertinent intrusion by what is public into the field of private life. Here, too, the principle should be liberty connected with equal responsibility and, in general, giving prominence to the principles of ‘great morality’ as opposed to the principles of conformist ‘little morality’. A doctrine of the state can only propose values to test the elective affinities and the dominant or latent vocations of a nation. If a people cannot or does not want to acknowledge the values that we have called ‘traditional’, and which define a true Right, it deserves to be left to itself. At most, we can point out to it the illusions and suggestions of which it has been or is the victim, which are due to a general action which has often been systematically organised, and to regressive processes. If not even this leads to a sensible result, this people will suffer the fate that it has created, by making use of its ‘liberty’.​

Our questioning—again echoing Ghazali—of the likely impact of development efforts (“prosperity,” in his formula) also flew in the face of received wisdom. For years, the notion had prevailed that the best way to sway Afghan “hearts and minds” was by giving away stuff: blankets, bags of wheat, wells for drinking water, schoolrooms. Among the conditions fueling extremism, commentators and policy makers often repeat, is economic malaise, aggravated by demographic shifts or such externals as drought. Foreign assistance is seen as a palliative to those ills. Evolving U.S. military doctrine even referred to “money as a weapon system.” But examination of extremist leaders’ sociological backgrounds casts doubt on these presumptions. Studies by such analysts as Andrew Wilder have found that in Afghanistan, infusions of development resources often exacerbated local conflict rather than reducing it, by providing new prizes for opposing groups to fight over.6

Fighting unemployment by methods far more costly than the opening of bread lines and soup kitchens would not have been given serious consideration, regardless of which party might have been in office. Since 1932 all that is reversed. The Democrats may or may not be less concerned with a balanced federal budget than the Republicans. However, from President Eisenhower on down, with the possible exception of former Secretary of the Treasury Humphrey, the responsible Republican leadership has said again and again that if business should really turn down they would not hesitate to lower taxes or make whatever other deficit-producing moves were necessary to restore prosperity and eliminate unemployment. This is a far cry from the doctrines that prevailed prior to the big depression.

It is arguable, especially in retrospect, that the Marshall Plan had some unfortunate, though unintended, consequences. Together with the Truman Doctrine, it greatly alarmed Stalin, who more than ever suspected that these American efforts were part of a concerted conspiracy to encircle him.56 Stalin, expecting that the ERP would bolster European prosperity, may have called for the coup in Czechoslovakia to prevent the Czechs from joining with the West. It is also true, as revisionists have emphasized, that the Marshall Plan was "selfish" in the sense that it did much for well-placed American business interests.

typically God expects Christians to be the hands and arms of God reaching out to do his work. God is not going to send angels to preach the gospel, so also he expects us to feed the hungry.

exercise is better for the human heart than reaching down to lift up another person.

What is this brightness – with which God fills the soul of the just – but that clear knowledge of all that is necessary for salvation? He shows them the beauty of virtue and the deformity of vice. He reveals to them the vanity of this world, the treasures of grace, the greatness of eternal glory, and the sweetness of the consolations of the Holy Spirit. He teaches them to apprehend the goodness of God, the malice of the evil one, the shortness of life, and the fatal error of those whose hopes are centered in this world alone. Hence the equanimity of the just. They are neither puffed up by prosperity nor cast down by adversity. "A holy man," says Solomon, "continueth in wisdom as the sun, but a fool is changed as the moon." (Ecclus. 27:12). Unmoved by the winds of false doctrine, the just man continues steadfast in Christ, immovable in charity, unswerving in faith.

The two revolutions, therefore, taken together, must be understood as a centuries-long process of fundamental change in which the triumphant Western worldview of colonial days is replaced by a planetary understanding of the meaning of human existence that so transcends particular national differences as to enable the human species to create a planetary peace in the absence of an imperial power to enforce its particular institutions on anyone. In short, a coming to maturity of the human species. A transformation of this profound a depth must necessarily take form in the actions of the most capable nation on the planet, and Revel, after surveying the various claimants to leadership, decided that the United States fulfilled the basic requirements such a role entailed. He acclaimed the United States as the prototype nation in a process of world transformation. He cited many factors present in the United States but absent or improperly developed in other nations as justification for his choice. The United States had a continuing pattern of growth and economic prosperity unmatched by any other nation, a technological excellence unrivaled by anyone else, and a high level of basic research that would continue to provide increasingly sophisticated insights into the nature of basic scientific and social problems. Revel also felt that the United States was culturally oriented toward the future, whereas the European countries were directed toward the past, and the Communists were mired in theoretical and doctrinal considerations, rendering them incapable of confronting rapid and continued change. The

It is dreadful to hear time and again that National Socialism is a return to barbarism, to the Dark Ages, to times before any new progress toward humanitarianism was made, without these speakers even suspecting that precisely the secularization of life that accompanied the doctrine of humanitarianism is the soil in which such an anti-Christian religious movement as National Socialism was able to prosper.

And now there was nothing in all the land to hinder the people from prospering continually, except they should fall into transgression.

Indeed, superpowers, in other words, veto rights doctrine supremacy, are like a cat, whereas the United Nations and the IMF are a cat's paw to their rat states. Whenever the cat wants, she licks her legs and plays and grabs objects with her paws, and she also clutches the subjects of peace and prosperity in her claws to swallow. Sure, it is a true and accepted definition.

Fall River, an old mill town fifty miles south of Boston. Median household income in that city is $33,000, among the lowest in the state; unemployment is among the highest, 15 percent in March 2014, nearly five years after the recession ended. Twenty-three percent of Fall River’s inhabitants live in poverty. The city lost its many fabric-making concerns years ago and with them it lost its reason for being. People have been deserting the place for decades.14 Many of the empty factories in which their ancestors worked are still standing, however. Solid nineteenth-century structures of granite or brick, these huge boxes dominate the city visually—there always seems to be one or two of them in the vista, contrasting painfully with whatever colorful plastic fast-food joint has been slapped up next door. Most of these old factories are boarded up, unmistakable emblems of hopelessness right up to the roof. But the ones that have been successfully repurposed are in some ways even worse, filled as they often are with enterprises offering cheap suits or help with drug addiction. A clinic in the hulk of one abandoned mill has a sign on the window reading, simply, “Cancer & Blood.” The effect of all this is to remind you with every prospect that this is a place and a way of life from which the politicians have withdrawn their blessing. Like so many other American scenes, this one is the product of decades of deindustrialization, engineered by Republicans and rationalized by Democrats. Fifty miles away, Boston is a roaring success, but the doctrine of prosperity that you see on every corner in Boston also serves to explain away the failure you see on every corner in Fall River. This is a place where affluence never returns—not because affluence for Fall River is impossible or unimaginable, but because our country’s leaders have blandly accepted a social order that constantly bids down the wages of people like these while bidding up the rewards for innovators, creatives, and professionals. Even the city’s one real hope for new employment opportunities—an Amazon warehouse that is in the planning stages—will serve to lock in this relationship. If all goes according to plan, and if Amazon sticks to the practices it has pioneered elsewhere, people from Fall River will one day get to do exhausting work with few benefits while being electronically monitored for efficiency, in order to save the affluent customers of nearby Boston a few pennies when they buy books or electronics.15

Those who were oblivious to, or content with, the situation lived relatively peaceful lives, but those who exercised their democratic right to advocate for change – either from inside or outside the system – were bullied, ignored, discredited, or terrorised, while systemic corruption within the police force and sections of the government (and that government’s perversion of the Westminster doctrine of separation of powers) allowed criminal elements to prosper. The situation in which the public was monitored and restricted while corrupt police sanctioned criminal behaviour was hardly conducive to social or recreational bliss. Activists and alternatives devised their own entertainment, and those with a penchant for illegal casinos and prostitutes were well catered for; but the people of mainstream Brisbane took turns in the Hilton’s glass elevator.

Expanding prosperity contributed to the popularity of the doctrine of the harmony of interests in three different ways. It attenuated competition for markets among producers, since fresh markets were constantly becoming available; it postponed the class issue, with its insistence on the primary importance of equitable distribution, by extending to members of the less prosperous classes some share in the general prosperity; and by creating a sense of confidence in present and future well-being, it encouraged men to believe that the world was ordered on so rational a plan as the natural harmony of interests. It was the continual widening of the field of demand which, for half a century, made capitalism operate as if it were a liberal utopia.

The doctrine that low taxes on the wealthy are the secret of prosperity has been tested again and again since the 1980s. It was tested in 1993, when Bill Clinton raised taxes, and conservatives predicted disaster; instead, he presided over a huge economic expansion. It was tested under George W. Bush, who cut taxes again, and whose supporters promised a boom; what he actually got was lackluster growth followed by financial collapse. It was tested in 2013, when Barack Obama allowed some of the Bush tax cuts to expire, while raising some other taxes to pay for Obamacare; the economy just kept chugging along. It was, finally, tested by Donald Trump, who passed a big tax cut in 2017 amid promises of another economic miracle; even as late as early 2019, the Trump tax cut was looking like a big fizzle. There were also tests at the state level.

let us remember, that for five hundred years, during which religion was in a more prosperous condition, and a purer doctrine flourished,

When neoliberalism prevails, only the rich prosper. When democracy prevails, the prosperity of the poor, and of society as a whole, is enhanced.

Christianity spoke again and said: ''I have always maintained that men were naturally backsliders; that human virtue tended of its own nature to rust or to rot; I have always said that human beings as such go wrong, especially happy human beings, especially proud and prosperous human beings. This eternal revolution, this suspicion sustained through centuries, you (being a vague modern) call the doctrine of progress. If you were a philosopher you would call it, as I do, the doctrine of original sin. You may call it the cosmic advance as much as you like; I call it what it is - the Fall.

It is no coincidence that the new phase of American debt imperialism has also been accompanied by the rise of the evangelical right, who—in defiance of almost all previously existing Christian theology—have enthusiastically embraced the doctrine of “supply-side economics,” that creating money and effectively giving it to the rich is the most Biblically appropriate way to bring about national prosperity.

That many were interested in his life story was evident from the queries he received. Ezra Stiles of Connecticut was one of the more forward. “As much as I know of Dr. Franklin, I have not an idea of his religious sentiments,” Stiles wrote Franklin. Would he be so kind as to enlighten an old friend? “It is the first time I have been questioned upon it,” Franklin replied. Here is my creed. I believe in one God, creator of the universe. That he governs it by his providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental principles of all sound religion, and I regard them as you do [Stiles shared Franklin’s tolerance] in whatever sect I meet with them. As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the good consequence, as it probably has, of making his doctrines more respected and better observed, especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of the world with any peculiar marks of his displeasure. I shall only add, respecting myself, that, having experienced the goodness of that Being in conducting me prosperously through a long life, I have no doubt of its continuance in the next, though without the smallest conceit of meriting such goodness.

Oral argued that the main problem with evangelism was its focus on correct doctrine. Christians, he said, needed to adopt a person-centered approach.6

And the people of Nephi began to aprosper again in the land, and began to multiply and to wax exceedingly strong again in the land. And they began to grow exceedingly rich. 49 But notwithstanding their riches, or their strength, or their prosperity, they were not lifted up in the pride of their eyes; neither were they aslow to remember the Lord their God; but they did humble themselves exceedingly before him.