I do have a problem with people like Rod Parsley, Mike Murdock, and Todd Koontz. Their broadcasts aren't sermons - they're infomercials. According to them, God wants to bless me - but he can't do it until I send them my $ 300.00 "Faith Seed", and the check clears. (If you don't want to send a check, God also accepts Visa and MasterCard.)
My husband says if they really believed God blesses if we sow "seed" money...then why aren't they sending out the checks to their members/listeners instead of asking checks to be sent to them.
Mike Murdock makes me nuts! What a scam he runs. It is always and only about the money with him and his camp followers.
Reprinted from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 3/02/2003
PROFIT in the pulpit
By Darren Barbee
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
First of three parts
Mike Murdock peers into the television camera, seemingly able to see the people watching him. He says he can sense that the poor, the struggling and the lonely have tuned in to his program.
“You’ve got to have a breakthrough,” he tells them.
Murdock offers the solution to all their problems: Give money to a man of God.
Murdock’s unwavering message – on his program, at his seminars and in his books – is the Law of the Seed: Plant a seed and reap a harvest from God. The seed can be time, patience, love. But Murdock specializes in encouraging people to give money.
In return, Murdock promises, God will restore relationships, heal the body and provide financial salvation. The reward will be 100 times the gift.
All of the money, the Denton televangelist says, allows the Mike Murdock Evangelistic Association to spread the Gospel to the four corners of the earth.
“If any of this money is for Mike Murdock’s personal gain,” he often says, “may a curse be upon me and my ministry and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”
But a six-month Star-Telegram examination shows that the ministry, which Murdock founded as a nonprofit corporation, spends more than 60 percent of its revenue on overhead.
Read the rest of the article here:
http://trinityfi.org/press/murdock01.html