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GUARANTEED JACKPOTS

Would it be more fun for you to give money to the Lord if you absolutely knew, beyond any doubt, that you were soon going to get back a hundred times as much? I mean, guaranteed. You just add on two zeroes to every offering, and within a few weeks you get back one hundred times your offering donation. A five-dollar bill gets you back 500. Ten bucks yields a thousand on the other end. A hundred dollars in gets you ten thousand back, and so on. Again, let me ask: if that were the arrangement heaven offered, would you enjoy giving?

I know a lady who had it work out even better than that. In the spring of 1996, I was over in the Philippines participating in something we called Target 50,000, where the Christians there aimed to baptize 50,000 people in just that calendar year. What a miracle! And they made it by December 31 with plenty to spare.

Now obviously, for a spiritual campaign like that to work, every single church member had to participate. Everyone had to have a spirit of sacrifice. And this one particular woman went to a planning session in the city of Dumingag, in the West Mindanao area. Pastor Paterno Diaz, the district leader, really inspired the troops with this challenge: winning 50,000 people to Jesus Christ.

And then they took up an offering. And knowing the sacrificial mentality of these Christians, Pastor Diaz put an asterisk on his appeal. “Give your very best offering,” he said. “But at least do save enough money to get home tonight.” He knew that some of these believers were in the habit of just completely emptying their purses and wallets; that’s how much they loved God.

Well, this one woman took that advice. She had with her 25 pesos — that’s one U.S. dollar. So she gave 15 of those pesos, and kept ten for the bus ride home.

Well, a little bit later another pastor, Jun Rivera, got up and had an appeal especially for the Christian ladies. They wanted to begin a women’s ministry that would span that territory of the Philippines. Could they pass the plate again? Well, our dedicated friend just couldn’t resist. In went those last ten pesos, her last 40 cents. Her bus fare. Now she had no way home.

She stayed with her sister that evening, and the next morning as they visited, the other woman pulled an envelope out of a dresser drawer. “I’ve had this for months,” she said. “I just kept forgetting to give it to you.”

Well, her sister opened it up . . . and you can already guess what was inside. Money. Lots of it — from an old, long-ago-forgotten debt. After putting in the plate 25 pesos, this envelope had in it four thousand pesos, a hundred and sixty dollars. That’s a sixteen-thousand-percent return on your investment.

But back to our original question. Would it give us joy if we could always get back 160-1 or even a mere hundred to one? What would that do to our relationship with God? Would we be happier Christians?

The Bible talks in some ways that make us think that the offering plate really is like a rigged slot machine, and that you’re going to line up three cherries with every single nickel. Here’s what Jesus Himself said in Luke 6:39:

“Give, and it shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over.”

Back in the Old Testament, the people of God are encouraged to bring to church not just a good offering, but what we would call the “firstfruits.” The rosiest apples from your orchard, the fattest calf you’ve got in your herds. Today we’d say the very first royalties from your new software corporation. And again, the Bible hints that those who give are going to collect on their way out of the sanctuary. Notice:

“Honor the Lord with your possessions, and with the firstfruits of all your increase; so your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine.”

These Bible passages seem to indicate that giving is going to be a lot of fun, don’t they? Specifically because those who give are going to have full barns and well-stocked alcohol-free wine cellars. Our bank accounts will soon be running over, it sounds like.

Well, friend, let me encourage you to join me in digging deeper. Because let me be very frank with you. Right now there’s a theology sweeping across North America that Christians can guarantee back to themselves a hundred-fold return on every penny they “(quote) invest” in giving. In fact, this new theology is specifically called “the hundredfold message.” In a recent book entitled God’s Will Is Prosperity, the author — wife of a famous televangelist — writes this:

“Give $10 and receive $1,000; give $1,000 and receive $100,000. I know that you can multiply,” she writes, “but I want you to see in black and white how tremendous the hundredfold return is.” Then she adds even a bit more: “Give one house and receive one hundred houses or one house worth one hundred times as much. Give one airplane and receive one hundred times the value of the airplane. Give one car and the return would furnish you a lifetime of cars. In short, Mark 10:30 is a very good deal.”

Right here you may be frantically fumbling in your glove compartment for a pencil so you can write down that Scripture reference: Mark 10:30. What exactly does this Bible text promise, and will we all soon have one hundred airplanes parked in the one hundred garages of our one hundred houses? Here it is; in fact, let’s lead in with Mark 10:29:

“I tell you the truth,” Jesus says. “No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for Me and the gospel” — now here’s verse 30 — “will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age.”

Is this Bible promise going to be fulfilled always in cold, hard cash? One hundred times your gift returned each time? A recent exposé of today’s Word-Faith movement tells how a prominent minister took this message to the poorest parts of Nigeria, and promised the poverty-stricken Christians there this very kind of bonanza. Then he took an offering, and before they’d finished with the first row, even, the little bowls were filled with money. They got out pillow cases and filled those. People, desperate to cash in on this promise, began throwing money out of the balcony, their last pennies. Finally the preacher and his assistants had to call out: “Stop the giving! Stop the giving!” But even during the closing prayer more coins kept flying down from the upper sections.

Was this promise, then, literally fulfilled with money, Nigerian currency? Or, bringing the question back home, when a congregation embraces this hundredfold teaching, what does the church parking lot soon look like? Is it nothing but Rolls Royces, or do the adherents of this doctrine seem to drive the same kinds of cars as the rest of us? Putting it even more bluntly: if those who teach this really believed in the hundredfold return, wouldn’t they be out on the streets giving away their own money as fast as they can instead of constantly taking up collections?

Friend, let’s return to the Word of God and finish reading that verse, Mark 10:30, which I deliberately cut short. Here it is again:

“No one who has left home” — or families, etc.” — “will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields — AND WITH THEM, PERSECUTION).” And then Jesus adds: “And in the age to come, eternal life.”

And you know, if you read all the way through this chapter, it’s very clear that Jesus isn’t guaranteeing a literal hundred dollars back for every one put in. In fact, it’s ironic that just exactly five verses before this, Christ made His famous statement about it being harder for a rich person to get into heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

And what kind of lasting, real, spiritually mature joy would we actually have if heaven were just a kind of hot-wired slot machine? Would we love God more? Would we learn to trust Him, really lean on Him during hard times . . . or would we be too busy counting our millions and wasting money in decadence and sinfulness?

Consider with me instead what happens if we interpret this promise spiritually? I’m grateful for the paraphrasing of this verse I find in the Clear Word. Here it is:

“No one,” Jesus says, “who has left everything he has, including his house, brothers, sisters, parents, wife, children or lands, because he loves Me and wants to spread the gospel will be shortchanged. He will receive one hundred times more satisfaction than money, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, or property can give him, even though he may be persecuted for what he believes. In addition, he has the gift of eternal life.”

Friend, I think that’s a mature rendering, a wise way to interpret these two verses — and also the way that leads to real, lasting, eternal joy. I look at some of the media millionaires who have preached this false gospel . . . and I don’t see much joy there. Do you?

But then I go back to that Filipino Christian who got a-hundred-and-sixty to one for her gift, a whole purseful of pesos. What did she do with that bonanza? Splurge? Take a junket to Vegas? No; I know for a fact that she turned right around and gave most of that money to the Lord’s work — hopefully, after taking out ten pesos this time for that one-way bus ticket. And the rest of her story tells of the joy that came when her friends, her neighbors, an eighty-nine-year-old “(quote) lost sheep” and even the local Mafia chief came to know Jesus Christ. A hundred and fifty people made decisions for God because of this woman’s dedication and the pesos she gave.

Now that . . . is joy!