Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel

Product Information

Andrew Sach , Pastor, Grace Greenwich Church, United Kingdom; coauthor, Pierced for Our Transgressions and Dig Deeper She studies the cultural stories we tell ourselves about success, suffering, and whether (or not) we’re capable of change. She wrote the first and only history of the American prosperity gospel—the belief that God wants to give you health, wealth, and happiness—before being unexpectedly diagnosed with stage IV cancer at age 35. While she was in treatment and not expected to survive, she wrote two New York Times bestselling memoirs, Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved) and No Cure For Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear). After years of being told she was incurable, she was declared cancer-free. But she was forever changed by what she discovered: life is so beautiful and life is so hard. For everyone. Excellent. Clearly describes the history and make-up of the prosperity gospel. Bowler's care in explaining the difficulty in defining a proponent of the prosperity gospel is a useful category for Christians to have (namely, they rarely take the specific name, there aren't specific denominations, etc; but they are often connected by where they have studied, who the read, and so on). Transformative Personal Application:Every chapter asks and answers the question, What does it mean to hear and keep this part of Revelation and thereby experience its promised blessing? Blessed, by bestselling author and speaker Nancy Guthrie, provides individuals and small groups a friendly yet theologically robust guide to understanding the book of Revelation.

Yes from a young age he has a passion for the tings of God. But it was also something he worked at and strived for. After watching the recent documentary American Gospel: Christ Alone, I wanted to deepen my understanding of the prosperity gospel, which if it’s not the quintessential American religion right now, it’s certainly one of a set. Michael Horton ,J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics, Westminster Seminary CaliforniaBlessed is practical, not only in each chapter’s closing sections but throughout the book as a whole. Guthrie explains that “Revelation is actually less about when Jesus will return and more about what we are to do, who we are to be, and what we can expect to endure as we wait for Jesus to return to establish his kingdom,” and this focus is evident in her writing. I recommend reading this book slowly, taking adequate time to reflect and pray, as each paragraph contains new practical implications.

As Guthrie implies, the discerning reader can draw fairly confident conclusions about her hermeneutical perspective. She interprets the images in Revelation as symbolic, noting the influence of earlier biblical passages in our understanding of the text, as well as how they corresponded to the realities of first-century believers. The symbols are “not a system of codes waiting to be matched for meaning with people and events in our current day. Rather, they have theological and spiritual meaning pertinent to the first readers [that] . . . must inform how we interpret their meaning for us today” (19). To interpret these images symbolically is not to minimize the truth of the text, but to interpret according to its genre, recognizing that John spoke in metaphor and analogy to describe unseen realities in terms we can somewhat understand. Nancy Guthrie reminds us that Saint John wrote about dragons, eagles, and beasts—not to fuel twenty-first-century speculation about their precise, physical referent, but to motivate the church towards godliness in the midst of a pagan culture. Revelation invites the church to gather around the throne of the holy God, Lamb, and Spirit and worship in every aspect of life. We need more books such as this on the capstone of the Bible’s storyline, and I’m eager to see how God will use this volume for his glory!”At times, the prosperity gospel hovered so closely to its nationalistc alter ego, American civil relgion, that it appeared to be its pentecostal twin, each offering an account of transcendent truths at the core of the American character. But rather than sacralizing the founding of the United States or visions of manifest destiny, the prosperity gospel [deified] and ritualized the American Dream: upward mobility, accumulation, hard work, and moral fiber. The two shared an unshakably high anthropology, studded with traits that inspire action, urgency, as sense of chosenness, and a desire to shoulder it alone." (226). Belief that Jesus conquered poverty, that "faith operated as a perfect law," "drawing a straight line between life circumstances and a believer's faith. . . . any irregularities meant that the believer did not play by the rules." You can lay out a set of mortgages from a huge investment risk on the table and command God to pay them, and it will happen. In Blessed in the Mess, beloved Bible teacher Joyce Meyer shows us how to be blessed even amid life's most challenging circumstances. The Bible is filled with instructions on how to handle ourselves when difficulty comes our way, and Blessed in the Mess collects that wisdom into poignant and practical teaching that equips us to remain stable and hopeful in every situation. No matter what unpleasant circumstances we may face, we can remain joyful and patient, trusting God as He works on our problems. If you have not handled your problems well in the past, then with God's help, you can begin to handle them better, starting now.

Some Christians avoid the book of Revelation, thinking it is only for the brilliant or the paranoid. In this clear and engaging book, Nancy Guthrie walks us through the meaning of this crucial book of the Bible, showing us how it is about blessing. This book wouldn't fit in a conspiracy theorist’s underground bunker, but it is needed for people who wonder how the fears and worries and regrets of our lives can be transformed by what Jesus showed John on the island of Patmos two thousand years ago. After reading Blessed, you will never again skip past Revelation in your Bible reading but will turn there with wonder and confidence, expecting to see Jesus. It will leave you informed, pondering, and, yes, blessed.” What this book has to offer is far greater than popular theories about the apocalypse—real hope as we navigate a fallen world and anticipate Christ’s second coming.Bowler approaches this topic as an ethnographer, which means she is much more interested in describing the movement than taking a position on it, but I certainly would have welcome some insights from her into how she feels this highly popular stream of Christianity fits with her own personal theological views. Can we truly find peace and even blessing amid the chaos, the disappointments, and the messes that life brings our way? Many debates center around Revelation 20’s mention of a 1,000-year period of time in which Satan is bound and Christ reigns. Guthrie seems to take an amillennial approach, which understands this period not as a literal millennium, but as a complete era inaugurated in Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension and continuing through its consummation at his second coming. This is a fascinating look at the roots and major influences shaping the so-called prosperity gospel. The best known current practitioners are Joel Osteen, T.D. Jakes and Joyce Meyer, and the oversimplified summary is that God wants you to be healthy, wealthy and victorious in this life over every problem and challenge. Understand the Book of Revelation:Helps readers make sense of Revelation’s unique apocalyptic symbolism, visual imagery, and Old Testament allusions