There is an evangelist named Paula White who asks her followers to send in an entire month’s salary to her so that they get off to a good start with their god in the new year. Failing to do so, she warns, has consequences. And that is not all the tripe that she peddles. She claims that she can bring the dead back to life.
White, who opened the National Day of Prayer Event at the White House last year, has drawn criticism from many Christians over the years, including her business in which she sells believers “resurrection seeds” that will grant them eternal life for the low price of just $1,144.
Eternal life for $1,144 may strike many people as a bargain. I wondered whether White offers a money-back guarantee if it does not work out. She does not but explains why it may not always work.
But if someone purchases the “resurrection seed” and finds that it has failed to resurrect anyone, White explained that it’s probably user error. “Cause there are things I’ve prayed out of ignorance or asked out of my own desire and I said God, but your will be done. ‘Cause I knew, His word is His will. See His will is for whatever is dead in your life to come back to life. How do I know? John 10:10. Jesus came to give you life and give you life more abundantly,” she explained. “So click on and minimize that screen and right now sow your miracle resurrection seed as we stand in faith together and I believe God for your miracle.”
Got that?
Remember, these people’s religious rackets are all tax-exempt. It should not be a surprise that she is a ‘spiritual advisor’ to fellow huckster Donald Trump. They have both mastered the art of conning the gullible.
Mano,
Of course a single positive result would make her the richest person in history.
Also, I have to wonder what magical numerology is involved with 1442?
Jeff
This reminds me of the late medieval Catholic Church teaching that donations of money to the church could deduct from the amount of time that the donor or the donor’s relatives souls would have to spend in purgatory*. Officially, the donations were only effective if they were accompanied by sincere repentance, but in practice it was run as a straightforward of promising quicker entry into heaven in exchange for cash. This was famously one of the issues that pissed off Martin Luther and helped start the Protestant reformation.
*in the Catholic belief of the time, purgatory was a sort of temporary hell where the souls of those who were believing Catholics but who had still committed a goodly number of sins would suffer for a limited period of time before being admitted into heaven
“There’s someone that God is speaking to, to click on that donation button by minimizing the screen. And when you do to sow $1,144,” she told the crowd. “It’s not often I ask very specifically but God has instructed me and I want you to hear. This isn’t for everyone but this is for someone. When you sow that $1,144 based on John 11:44 I believe for resurrection life. You say, Paula, I just don’t have that, then sow $144. I don’t have that. Sow $44 but stand on John Chapter 11:44.”
Funny how she didn’t suggest either $114 or $11, but made sure the 11:44 was contorted to a larger number…
Well Harold Camping predicted the end of the world in 2011 and seemed to persuade thousands of people to send him all their money.
If the world is no-more, where does one spend that money, Heaven’s cafeteria?
By this standard Paula White is totally convincing.