Latest Parable
Your Best Death Now
“When radicals are allowed to roam free in the body, they can lead to cancer. Spiritually, it is the same for the Body of Christ,” said The Reverend T.V. Cash, Overlord of the First Church of Blessed Material Hope, Inc. “Radicals must be uprooted or their deadly cancer will spread.”
Cash, like many rich and wannabe famous preachers, is up in arms over the underground publication of a pamphlet called Your Best Death Now.
Cash, known for his best selling self-help books Suffering Is For Suckers, Triple Tithing Your Way Up God’s Prosperity Mountain, and Jesus Is Lord, But Cash Is King!, is a leading proponent of what is called The Prosperity Gospel, the belief that God wants his children filthy, stinking rich.
Cash built the foundations of his religious empire in the shifting, sandy shores of Prosperity Bay and preaches a curious blend of right wing hyper nationalism and unquestioning obedience to the military coup government sprinkled with a few select Bible verses about prosperity. He says the label “preacher” is passé and offensive and so he prefers the moniker Life Coach.
His popular message is that the good times will come again – if you sacrificially sow into his ministry. Cash is one of the few ministers allowed to preach on mass media, a testament, he says, to God’s favor on his ministry. He grins when declaring his love for all denominations, but as his followers know, his favorites are $50’s and $100’s.
“Sin is an illusion. Why speak of it? The government is right to discourage the use of the word. Sinners? No! Each person is an unfulfilled dream of God waiting to find expression and fulfillment. Submission to the State is submission to God. The key to fulfilled destiny is seed faith giving. It unlocks the Secret of blessing. We’re not sinners, but rather we’re like seeds waiting to bloom into our own potential godhood. Amen,” intones the high priest of Prosperity.
After evangelical Christianity was labeled a hate crime, many professing Christians in the West went underground meeting in homes, in back rooms of hotels, even in traveling Winnebagos. Without the familiar centuries old crutches of buildings and programs, many disillusioned Christians began rediscovering two old fashioned disciplines: prayer, and Bible reading. And they rediscovered the actual words of Jesus.
Prayer and Bible reading are what re-ignited the Reformation.
Your Best Death Now, the pamphlet at the center of the controversy, was written by former prosperity power couple Marti & Lou Thure who have renounced the Gospel of Greed. In the forward to their incendiary pamphlet, they wrote:
We were deceived. We preached the GOP Jesus, the right wing Savior to whom America could do no wrong, the Savior who honored the weekly sacrifice of the dollar instead of daily self-denial and loving, sacrificial obedience. What a shock to discover that we were just as off as the left wing liberals. Right and left wingers both serve a god of their own creation. We began seeking for the real Jesus, the Jesus without wings – no right wing, no left wing, just the red letter teachings of Jesus in the Bible.
“By denouncing the Prosperity Gospel, the Thures have betrayed the faith once sold to the saints. My ministry is offering both an eternal and a cash reward for their arrest and relocation to a government re-education center,” pontificated the always entrepreneurial Coach Cash, who has been the object of numerous fiery denunciations given by Marti & Lou Thure. “Their unprofitable babbling about finishing the Reformation is nonsense. Can’t we all just prosper and get along?”
Your Best Death Now is a radical call to obedience to Jesus based on Luke 9:23. “Then he said to them all: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.’”
Said Lou Thure, “The only way to follow Jesus is to deny ourselves, pick up our cross, and daily follow hard after the Lamb wherever He goes. The cross speaks of being dead to the world and alive unto God. Not a popular message, but it’s the truth. Preach happiness and you will draw a crowd. Preach holiness, without which no one will see the Lord, and you sign your own death warrant.”
Brother Thure said, “I was once a wolf just like T.V. Cash, deceiving and being deceived. He loves this present world system and will be judged along with it. Jesus rebuked the church in Laodicea for confessing that they were rich and in need of nothing. Cash twists that very sentence into what he ignorantly calls a ‘faith confession’ to ‘prove’ that God want him rich! The Bible truth is that he and his followers are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked. They need Jesus, the real Jesus.”
Preaching from his Star Chamber production studio, Cash issued yet more Prosperity Bull: “Who could believe that one little pamphlet could cause so much trouble? If the radicals won’t repent of their fundamentalist, anti-material poison, then killing them will be counted as service unto God.” Scary thing considering Cash has just been appointed the State’s High Inquisitor.
You won’t find a copy in your local religious bookstore. It’s even hard to find on the Internet, yet Your Best Death Now keeps popping up taped to church doors, on road signs, in mailboxes, and in bathroom stalls.
WARNING: Reading this tract may quite literally ruin your comfortable life and milquetoast faith. Jesus’ claims on his followers are absolute. Finding eternal life first involves embracing the living, sacrificial daily death of picking up your cross and following Him. And it will prepare you for an eternity of ruling and reigning with Jesus Christ.
Jesus asks, in Mark 8:36, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
Calling all radicals. The Reformation is on!
Bryan Hupperts
© 2008
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