Lifestyles of the rich and Christian

[Doubting Thomas]

Interesting website I just read about the lavish lifestyles of televangelists:

http://www.inplainsite.org/html/tele-eva...tyles.html

Pretty lengthy read but well worth the time. The website does go into "they're not preaching the real gospel" at times but the other criticism is valid.

Estimates of Pat Robertson’s net worth vary between 140 million and a billion dollars. While the exact figure is not known, there is little doubt that he is a wealthy man... An extremely wealthy man, with a “mammoth media, educational, and legal empire”.

Looks like I went into the wrong profession. I should have just started telling people that God wants them to be rich and will make them that way if they send me money.

[Tonus]

If you are charismatic enough you can gain a very devoted following. I can remember watching a minute or so of Jimmy Swaggart's blubbering apology when he was caught getting together with a prostitute. His performance was comically over-the-top, but when the camera panned to the audience there were many of them with tears streaming down their faces (and not, as you would imagine, from laughter). His site boasts that even today he has a show that broadcasts "nationally and internationally to a potential viewing audience of over 80 million. The weekly Jimmy Swaggart Telecast and A Study in the Word are seen nationwide and abroad on 78 channels in 104 countries and live over the Internet."

[Anomalocaris]

Interesting website I just read about the lavish lifestyles of televangelists:

http://www.inplainsite.org/html/tele-eva...tyles.html

Pretty lengthy read but well worth the time. The website does go into "they're not preaching the real gospel" at times but the other criticism is valid.

Estimates of Pat Robertson’s net worth vary between 140 million and a billion dollars. While the exact figure is not known, there is little doubt that he is a wealthy man... An extremely wealthy man, with a “mammoth media, educational, and legal empire”.

Looks like I went into the wrong profession. I should have just started telling people that God wants them to be rich and will make them that way if they send me money.

I would start a new ministry that preaches the joy of god is in expropirating the ill gotten wealth of pastors.

[Doubting Thomas]

Rev. James Eugene Ewing
Once a traveling tent-revival preacher, the Rev. James Eugene Ewing built a direct-mail empire from his mansion in Los Angeles that brings millions of dollars flowing into a Tulsa post office box. The approach reaped Ewing and his organization more than $100 million since 1993, including $26 million in 1999, the last year Saint Matthew's made its tax records public.

Ewing's computerized mailing operation, Saint Matthew's Churches, mails more than 1 million letters per month, many to poor, uneducated people, while Ewing lives in a mansion and drives luxury cars.

The letters contain an alluring promise of "seed faith": send Saint Matthew's your money and God will reward you with cash, a cure to your illness, a new home and other blessings. They often contain items such as prayer cloths, a "Jesus eyes handkerchief," golden coins, communion wafers and "sackcloth billfolds." Recipients are often warned to open the letters in private and not discuss them with others.

These are the same assholes who kept sending me letters over and over, offering "prayer cloths" if I sent them a big enough donation. After politely sending them back requests in their postpaid envelopes to take me off their mailing list since I was already an atheist, but even if I weren't I wasn't going to send them any money because their scam was transparent, I started printing out pictures from the nastiest porn sites I could find and mailing them back to them. Eventually the letters stopped, but I'm not sure if it was because they weren't getting any money from me or the nasty porn did the trick.

From what I understand they tend to target low-income neighborhoods and other people down on their luck, people who are desperate and gullible, and get them to send money in. Why they ever sent money requests to me I have no idea, since I lived in a decent, middle-class neighborhood.

[Minimalist]

And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
Matty. 19:24

Again, stolen from the Greeks but WTF.

Hypocritical bastards.

[Captain Colostomy]

Hell, it ain't just christians. Between abuses of trust over cash and sex, I can recall The 'Kablahblah' Center, Scientology, Hare Krishnas, Mormonism, numerous Swamis, the 'Eck's, many Tibetan gurus, the San Fran Zen Center, sertain Sufis....

The only thing more damnable than a cloudy eyed seeker is the person who takes advantage of them. But hey!...it's the will of god, allah, good karma, Xenu...

It's a shameful display that no demographic is immune from.

[Doubting Thomas]

You're right, but Christianity specifically follows a character who preached against amassing wealth. It's right there in their holy book. So if they preach the prosperity gospel then they're not following their holy book very closely.

Hell, some of those hucksters claim that it's OK to be rich because Jesus was, too:

The man (T.D. Jakes)who, in 2006, received a brand new convertible Bentley from friend Paula White, justifies his lifestyle by using Jesus as an example of a rich Christian, insinuating that

"Jesus "employed" 12 people to help spread his message, Jakes says, as though the apostles were on salary".

Adding ..

Why else would Roman soldiers have gambled for his cloak as Jesus lay dying on the cross, if the cloak hadn't been unusually valuable? ..."The myth of the poor Jesus needs to be destroyed, because it's holding people back,"

I guess the part about camels and eye needles doesn't matter.