John Avanzini, the word faith wolf – “Rub stones and get rich”

The following excerpts of a longer article by Ingrid Schlueter is from the website here. This sort of behavior within Christ’s church so grieves me and I feel like words fail me. Following on from the Benny Hinn fiasco in South Africa, here, what can I really say? I just want to weep…………..

“After a rambling, free-ranging talk about the worsening economy and the price of gas, John Avanzini told us that he would give us all two things to help us get through perilous times. The first was a list of 7 Bible promises, as he called them, that he had printed up on a card. The mixture of truth and error was very evident here.

The list, which is seen at left, gave the following “seven anchors for these perilous times”. Note that the word prosperity as he uses it is referring to material wealth. Spiritual wealth was never mentioned that night.

1. God has already made plans for your prosperity. Jeremiah 29:11

2. Everything you will need and want has already been provided for you by your great God. 2 Peter 1:3

3. God has already given you his best so there is no need to worry about him denying you anything else. Romans 8:32

4. God wants you to live with limitless supply. Judges 18:10

5. Your wealthy place is always on the other side of the perilous times you are facing.

6. It gives God great pleasure to prosper you in good times…in bad times..at all times. Psalms 35:27

7. In good times or in bad times, God is willing to make you rich. Proverbs 10:22

On the show today, I pointed out that there is truth and error mixed here. All of those Scripture verses given do talk about the prospering of God’s people. The idea that this is always referring to physical wealth is patently absurd. Avanzini and all of his huckster compatriots only use Scripture as proof texts for their own ridiculous claims that God wants everyone wearing Brioni suits and Rolex watches.

Avanzini told a story of how his grandchildren sometimes sit and watch him count money at the table. He described his stacks of 100’s, 50’s, 20’s and so on. He mocked at how his daughter told them, “don’t ask for anything, children.” He told us that she should have been teaching them to ask for money. He again mocked how she taught the children to say, “thank you” when he would give them money.  He claimed that what they should have said instead was, “Can I have some more?” Avanzini apparently believes in training children early to be greedy and ungrateful.

The next thing Avanzini said he would give us to help us through “perilous times” was a stone. He went through several Bible references where stones “talked” in the Old Testament. Here Avanzini introduces the stone idea. He strolled down the aisles, his ring winking in the lights, and held out a shiny stone for a woman to hold. Avanzini told the assembled crowd of about 650 people that these stones should be rubbed whenever people faced rising prices or higher prices at the pump. The ushers went down the aisles with buckets of shiny, smooth stones and handed them out. (No, that’s not an unhappy face on the stone, just a weird stone we ended up with. Maybe someone could sell this stone-with-a-face on ebay.)

This moved him on to the seque phase of his message. He began transitioning to his real message by telling the story of Gideon’s sacrifice as recorded in the book of Judges. Repeatedly, Avanzini described the poverty of Gideon and how his offering of a goat was such a sacrifice for someone who lived in a cave. He described how the angel of the Lord IGNITED the offering on the rock. We, who were in possession of the lucky rubbing stones, would need to ignite ours. I’ll give you a guess how that should be done.

At this point, Avanzini turned to the pastor in the white suit, sitting in the audience and asks innocently, “Do I have a few more moments?” Well, not surprisingly, the pastor agreed. It’s a good thing, because as it turns out, Avanzini had a whole new doctrinal revelation to tell us about: the doctrine of reverse entrapment. If you’ve never heard of that before, that’s because God just showed it to him right there. Reverse entrapment is when you put a gift to Avanzoni on a credit card and outsmart the lenders who are trying to get rich off your debt. When you put a gift on a credit card, I quote, “something happens in the spirit world.”  Here he tells everyone how to have a credit card breakthrough. Turns out Avanzini has a way for you to get rid of your mortgage debt. All you have to do is to give him a gift the size of your house payment and God will see that your mortgage gets paid off right away. If you don’t have a house, $500 will do nicely for future debt. Avanzini assured us that it worked for him.

Perhaps the man sensed a few hostile vibes from the audience (from our row in particular) because he warned us not to let the devil keep us back from getting free from debt by putting a gift for his ministry on our credit card. The credit card “invitation” began as the keyboardist began to noodle around with some mood music. Then Avazini warned everyone again not to let the devil keep us away. The people streamed down to the stage area and wrote out their credit card numbers and house payment gifts and left them at the expensively shod feet of the speaker. While the people came down to the front to divest themselves of their money, Avanzini appropriately chose to tell an Al Capone joke. I doubt if one other person in the house recognized the irony.

Avanzini then prayed an igniting prayer over the stones everyone was clutching. Presumably, we still have to ignite our own with a credit card gift, but maybe his igniting prayer was considered the first step.”