Pastor Enoch Adeboye Proclaims His Own Bible: Give First
This article is mainly on the following Open Heavens daily devotional for September 20, 2017, published by the Redeemed Christian Church of God and Pastor Enock Adeboye. It is a clear aspect of the occult and anti-christ nature of the teachings of Pastor Adeboye and the ‘Redeemed’.
May God have mercy on all men and women that consume these devotionals and wake them up to the open, cobra-invested, pits they are blindly walking into.
[sgmb id=”1″]————-
OPEN HEAVENS DAILY DEVOTIONAL!
DATE: WEDNESDAY 20TH SEPTEMBER 2017
THEME: GIVE FIRST!
Memorise:
“I will sing unto The Lord, because He hath dealt bountifully with me.” Psalm 13:6
Read: 1 Chronicles 16:2-3, Acts 20:35
1 Chronicles 16:2. And when David had made an end of offering the burnt offerings and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in The Name of The Lord.
1 Chronicles 16:3. And he dealt to every one of Israel, both man and woman, to every one a loaf of bread, and a good piece of flesh, and a flagon of wine.
Acts 20:35. I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember The Words of The Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.
Message:
A.
- Generous divine provision is the benefit of those in the sheepfold of The Great Shepherd.
- God prepares a table of abundance for His Sheep.
- Psalm 23:5. “You prepared a table before me in the presence of my enemies”
- No wonder David in Psalm 13:6 said: “I will sing unto the Lord, because he hath dealt bountifully with me.”
- This Scripture is a personal testimony of David.
- 5. After God had blessed him beyond measure, he began to testify of God’s goodness through songs.
- If you carefully study the life of David, you will discover that the secret of his prosperity lay in the principles he lived by.
- One of such principles is demonstrated in today’s Bible reading: he believed giving to be the key to receiving.
- Can you imagine a man giving a loaf of bread to every citizen of a country?
- This was what David did, and he even gave much more!
- We often wonder why most of us are not flowing in God’s Abundance, even though God has resources to cater for more than we could ever need.
- One likely reason for this is that we do not strictly follow Divine Financial Principles.
- Jesus, in Luke 6:38, said: “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.”
B. Let us draw a few lessons from this.
- Firstly, if you ever want to receive, it is your duty to first give.
- If you fail to sow, you would be deceiving yourself to expect a harvest.
- Many of us refuse to give, and yet we continue to pray, fast and do all other things right.
- If you want to receive, first give. It is important to note that God will never owe anyone.
- If you give, you will receive a harvest, no matter how long it takes, as long as the seed is not uprooted.
- However, the way the harvest comes and when it will come are issues that may not be too clear to you.
- For instance, you may be expecting your harvest for a particular seed in form of physical cash, not knowing that God has already given it to you as a harvest of peace in the time of trouble, or as protection when the enemy came calling.
- 9. Sometimes, you cannot tell how the harvest of a given seed will come, although if you key into The Holy Spirit, He can sometimes reveal to you that a particular harvest you receive was from a particular seed you sowed.
- Moreover, God who knows our needs should be given the freedom to determine when and how our harvest should come.
- Just make sure that a lifestyle of giving and sowing seeds is an indelible part of you.
- Do you give to His servants? Do you give to the needy? How often do you give?
Action Point:
Giving is an act. Giving is also a spirit. Pray that God will give you The Spirit of Giving in Jesus’ Name. Amen!
BIBLE IN ONE YEAR:
AUTHOR: PASTOR E. A. ADEBOYE
———-
Our General Comments
The effects of the attacks on the main teachings of the Bible and, by extension, the magnificence of the Work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross from Word of Faith and Prosperity preachers are deadly. And they are often subtle. You would not know when or how that seemingly good sermon you just heard has eaten up all the trust you had in God’s goodness and mercy from your heart. The ‘faith’ teacher has succeeded, without you ever suspecting what was going on, in draining away from you the little faith you had in God’s mercy and unfathomable goodness!
Pastor Enoch Adeboye And Anti-Christ Giving
A vintage example of this is this September 20, 2017 daily devotional from The Redeemed Christian Church of God and Pastor Enock Adeboye. Note it is titled Give First.
In a world where people knew a little of their Bible, no one calling himself a servant of God would dare use that title. Give First? Who did the first giving? The Star Verse of the Bible, on which every other verse from Genesis to Revelation hangs, John 3:16, reads: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”.
God is the One that gave first, not you. He also gave last and in-between. That is the simplest and, yet, the most powerful truth of Christianity. It is so simple most of humanity miss it. It is too simple for the Muslim: he would conquer heaven by the quantity and the frequency of his alms and the strengths of his exertion for God! He does not know that the Bible declares that all our good works are like filthy rags before God (Isaiah 64:6). It is too insulting to the Catholic: his prayers, fasting, self-denial and the goodwill of the ‘saints’ would bring him there! It is too foolish for the moral man: his good works and helps to his neighbors would crack open the vault to life! The totality of true, biblical Christianity revolves firmly around the Person, Gift and Works of Jesus Christ, The True God who was born by a virgin and rose from the dead.
He gave Himself. The message from the Bible is “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”, Rom 5:8
Some people may disagree with this line of thought by saying John 3:16 is talking about spiritual giving while pastor Adeboye is speaking about material and financial giving.
Such people and their ideas are not supported by the Bible. Romans 8:32 has “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” Can you find where it stated you should give first there before you are supplied all things? None. All things are supplied to God’s children by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. James 1:17 says “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning”. Do you see any precondition of you giving first there?”
In fact, Rom 11:35 asks this same question almost rhetorically: “Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again?”
But Pastor Adeboye asks you to give first!
To demonstrate his total hatred for the Sacrifice of Christ on the cross and the blasphemy against God’s majesty in what he is teaching, he even says you can expect to receive nothing except you do as he commands! This, against the God who not only give men life but also makes his sun to shine and his rain to fall on the just and the sinner every day?
Detailed Assaults From Pastor Enoch Adeboye
Almost to the last item, the verses Pastor Adeboye and the Redeemed Christian Church of God quoted to support this teaching that you must give to God first are quoted out of context. You can find NO supporting texts in the whole of the Bible, except where you are forcing strange meanings to plain writings, that God is waiting in the wings for your gift before giving you anything. That is nothing short of insult to God.
Shall we check the quoted verses together?
- The Memory Verse: Psalm 13:6: No hint anywhere in Psalm 13 or any other psalm before or after that God’s gifts to David were as a result of David’s prior gifts to God or to any other ‘servants’ of God. The memory verse is quoted out of context.
- 1 Chronicles 16:2-3. There is no evidence whatsoever that God gave any special rewards to David for giving food to people around him. These verses do not support Pastor Adeboye’s preaching to give first.
- Acts 20:35. What main things do we have in Acts 20:35? Work and support the weak and, “it is more blessed to give than to receive”. These are a very weak plank to support the teaching of give first, or else…or, are they not?
-
The Message (From the Devotional, above)
Items 1 to 5 do not give us any Bible passage to support the teaching to give first. Such passages cannot be found in the Bible.
Items 6 and 7 are misleading: David did not live by ‘principles’ but by his faith in, and the guidance from, the living God. Strictly speaking, these are not mere principles issue, as if you can learn them in some school. The phrase, “he believed giving to be key to receiving” cannot be found anywhere in the psalms or any writing of David or anywhere else in the Bible. That statement is from the occult.
The premise being drawn in item 10 and the conclusion in item 11 are erroneous. They cannot be found in the Bible. God does not work by any “Divine Financial Principles”. There are no such principles in the Bible. These teachings are all from Word of Faith: they all came from the writings of Napoleon Hill, the author of Think And Grow Rich. Napoleon Hill stated that his ideas were dictated to him by disembodied entities, aka demons.
Item 12 and the gross misapplication of Luke 6:38
You do not have many more verses misquoted in all of the Bible to support the erroneous teaching that God expects you to give to Him first before He can give to you than Luke 6:38. Almost everyone thinking of the best passage to quote to strengthen your giving to God calls up this verse. It is the go-to passage for making people open their wallets in the church. Very few people know this verse has nothing to do with giving money or material things to God and very little with giving any of these items to anyone else.
Please open your Bible, the KJV version, to Luke 6:38. It is necessary to start from verse 37, particularly on the little colon sign (:) at the end of verse 37.
Open your bible before proceeding further. Do you see the colon (:)? The relevant rule of writing is that the colon (:), is used to expatiate on the main theme or idea in a sentence or phrase. It is used to list the definite qualities of an item or idea mentioned in the earlier part of a sentence. Verse 38 is an explanation or expatiation of the ideas in verse 37. It is not a stand-alone verse: you must read verse 37 anytime you want to read verse 38 otherwise you are reading what the writer never intended. In fact, grammatically speaking, you can do away with verse 38 without losing the meaning and the import of what the Lord is expatiating on in verse 37.
And what is verse 37 about? It’s about mercy and forgiveness. Yes, you must give mercy and forgiveness to your fellowmen if you would receive them.
Read all of Luke 6, preferably starting at the end. It is all about mercy and forgiveness. Verse 38, which is almost parenthetical, is put there to emphasize the absolute importance of these acts before God. But Pastor Adeboye and the Redeemed are using this parenthetical verse to formulate and support a doctrine unknown to the Bible.
B The Lessons (From the Devotional)
You must pay keen attention to the details of the lessons Pastor Adeboye and the Redeemed Christian Church of God want you to learn from these teachings. Their teachings are in red letters and in italics, our comments are in plain print.
“1. Firstly, if you ever want to receive, it is your duty to first give”. This is ‘pastor’ Enoch Adeboye teaching an anti-christ idea: nothing short of heaping an insult on God. It is a libel against the Person and goodness of God. It is an occult teaching. In any case, how much have you paid for oxygen and sunlight in the last ten years?
“2. If you fail to sow, you would be deceiving yourself to expect a harvest”. The blood of the Lord Jesus Christ counts for nothing if this were true. This is a conclusive proof Pastor Adeboye and the Redeemed are into an anti-christ religion. Their main object is the money they get from their victims, and, in achieving their objective, they don’t mind rubbing the Blood of Christ in the mud. There is nothing in the Bible about sowing money: only the word of God can be sown into the hearts of hearers. Mark 4:14, Matthew 13:3-23, Luke 8:5-15.
“3. Many of us refuse to give, and yet we continue to pray, fast and do all other things right”. This statement is evil. It is an attack on faith. It is attempting to add terms and conditions unknown to the Bible to getting answers to prayers. How much did Samuel’s mother give to God or Eli before God answered her prayers?
In the Bible, you do not receive because you gave: you receive as a result of the mercy and goodness of God.
“4. If you want to receive, first give”. This is an affront to the goodness of God. He makes His munificence available to the good and the evil.
5. It is important to note that God will never owe anyone. Our own Bible says God owns everyone.
“6. If you give, you will receive a harvest, no matter how long it takes, as long as the seed is not uprooted”. Is this not laughable? Seed uprooted? By who?
“7. However, the way the harvest comes and when it will come are issues that may not be too clear to you”. Why not? If the seed is clear, the harvest should be, except some con man is getting to the end of his tethers here.
“8. For instance, you may be expecting your harvest for a particular seed in form of physical cash, not knowing that God has already given it to you as a harvest of peace in the time of trouble, or as protection when the enemy came calling”. That is fudging. If God had told you to collect money as seed from people, you should clear the terms of the returns with Him before you embark on the collection. The fudging is evidence the seed-collection was never commanded by God to start with.
Please read again those words in red under item 8. Is pastor Adeboye not teaching that God seizes agreed returns on seeds sown since He had paid by other means the sower is not aware of? Is our pastor not obviously teaching that peace is God’s payment for material investments made to Him? Apparently the people in Yemen, Somalia and North East Nigeria have not sowed enough!
Is this not another example of someone who does not know anything about God trying to represent Him?
“9. Sometimes, you cannot tell how the harvest of a given seed will come, although if you key into The Holy Spirit, He can sometimes reveal to you that a particular harvest you receive was from a particular seed you sowed”. No farmer would sow any seed under these conditions. Open your eyes: pastor Adeboye and the Redeemed, and much of the so-called Christian church in Nigeria are one big Ponzi scheme. They are no servants of the God of heaven or His only begotten Son. They do not know God or fear Him at all.
A Lie Against The Holy Spirit
Did you notice the lie against the Holy Spirit in that statement? Read John 14:26, John 15:26 and John 16:13-14. The true Holy Spirit speaks ONLY of and about Jesus Christ. Pastor Adeboye’s own ‘holy spirit’, however, is a financial accountant that marks off blessings against ‘seeds’ sown! Pastor Adeboye, obviously being higher and holier than the Lord Jesus Christ, is assigning another set of functions to the Holy Spirit here!
Readers should also note the occult idea, “key into the Holy Spirit” subtly introduced by Pastor Adeboye in that statement, with our pastor forgetting to guide us on where the ‘key’ can be found or how we are to use it.
“10. Moreover, God who knows our needs should be given the freedom to determine when and how our harvest should come”. God has nothing to do with these. It is His Son He asks you to seek after, not some fake harvest.
“11. Just make sure that a lifestyle of giving and sowing seeds is an indelible part of you”. That is if you do not care about true godliness.
“12. Do you give to His servants? Do you give to the needy? How often do you give?” This is self-serving. You are mainly commanded to give to the poor and to real work of God, not to self-serving people who do not even know God and whom the Lord said He never knew.
These errors are not mere mistakes: they are at the core of prosperity teachings and Word of Faith pastor Adeboye and ‘The Redeemed‘ preach. Though seemingly wrapped in Christian lingo, the teachings are sourced from Eastern mysticism and the occult – particularly Hinduism and Buddhism.
Paul called all doctrines that are not part of the received teachings of the Apostles ‘another gospel’. He pronounced curses on anyone propounding any other gospel, even if such a person were an angel. Galatians 1:6-9. We pray Pastor Adeboye and the members of the Redeemed Christian Church of God will wake up and seek the Lord before it is too late for them.
“Mat 7:22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
Mat 7:23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity”.
Very revealing. O that every child of God will study his Bible and meditate on it diligently for clarity from the Holy Spirit.