I just got a letter from ‘St. Matthew’s Churches.’ That would be a letter requesting I pray on their ‘prayer cloth’ then have someone else pray on the ‘prayer cloth’ and then send the ‘prayer cloth’ back in an envelope (hopefully with some money) with some checkboxes checked for what we need prayer for. I put quotes around ‘prayer cloth’ because its a cheaply printed picture of a very white Jesus with his eyes closed. And, if I have enough faith Jesus will open his eyes and look at me.
Yuck! This scam is rather annoying, here’s an article talking about the organization. Seed faith my rear-end. No amount of money that I might pour into some random ‘churches’ is going to bring money to me. What a blind bunch of morons that are sending in $26,000.00 or more a month to this group of schemers. Check out some of the schlockery in the ‘letter’ they send:
- “Read what God is doing here at St. Matthew’s churches.” And by ‘here’ they mean at their attorney’s office where the checks go. Not at their California mansions where the grand schemer lives.
- “Dear… Someone connected with this Address,” I swear I’m not making that up. It says someone connected to this address. They don’t even have their software putting names on these things.
- “Now, we must talk to you about something we see, in the Holy Spirit, concerning you and your family’s needs.” Oh, boy! They’ve got special revlation – what is it? “God’s holy blessing power is in the enclosed anointed prayer rug we are loaning you to use!!!” Yippee!!! Now they’re loaning out God’s blessing to “Someone connected with this address” so that we can have ”
“holy blessing power” in our lives. Gee, surely this isn’t a scam. - “You … are about to be blessed through this unusual, Bible Faith, Church, Prayer Rug…” Unusual all right! It is ugly, printed on paper, and can be recycled. I’m hoping that God will bless me for being environmentally sound with my recycling of this prayer rug.
I could keep going but I’m going to stop. I have to draw the line somewhere, and there’s already enough heresy in this one blog post to cause God to smite my site with a database failure [yes, that too is an attempt at humor].
The upside with all of this is that I know I’ve been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies (Ephesians 1:3), I’ve been given discernment against those who would use religion for personal gain (see contentment: 1 Timothy 6:6-8), and I have a good sense of humor that makes this entertaining. Poor folks who fall for this junk.
I’m praying for my superhero costume to go with my unicycle.