Prosperity Gospel
If God does not exist - nothing matters.
If God does exist - nothing else matters.
The Bible teaches at least four promise-sets of Prosperity Gospel - unmistakable Divine promises of direct reward for good conduct - which apply to every person of every nation.
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(1) "Keep My statutes and My ordinances, which, if a man, he shall live in them. I am THE LORD." (Leviticus 18:5). The promise is, to live life not just in this world but in the World to Come.
The promise goes to every man, or person - that is, not just to one or a few Jews, or all "Israel," or "seed of Abraham" - of every race and nation.
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(2) "He who is gracious to the poor lends to THE LORD." (Proverbs 19:17). This, too, includes not just Jews in its scope but every human being of every clime and country (See Rainbow Covenant, p. 322 and the citations in footnote 50 on p. 327). Similarly:
"Blessed is he (or "one") who considers the poor, THE LORD will deliver him in time of trouble." (Psalm 41:1)
"THE LORD will preserve him and keep him alive, and he shall be blessed upon the earth; and You will not deliver him unto the will of his enemies" (41:2). The promise here is plainly universal. Similarly, the prophet Ezekiel fingers the Sodomites - not Jews, but Noachides of the nation called Sodom - for "not strengthening the hand of the poor and needy" (Ezekiel 16:49), among Sodom's other abominations. God punished them for it, too.
Even though giving charity is not commanded in the Seven Noachide Commandments - in the Seven Law system, government is not obligated to punish people for failing to give charity - good people will always try to do the opposite of what the Seven Commandments forbid.
The 7M - the Seven Mitzvot - forbid stealing: taking what isn't yours. The opposite of stealing is giving charity: giving away what's yours - or, really, what fell to you from God.
The people of Sodom weren't good enough to treat their troubled brothers charitably. For that, Ezekiel remembers, God "took them away as [He] saw fitting." (16:50). God wrote kaput to Sodom.
So - this is Prosperity Gospel with a bite. Don't fail to do what is good and righteous, even if you conduct yourself within the outer boundaries of the Seven Commandments. That is, even if you refrain from committing the awful felonies and atrocities that they ban, you should still expect punishment from On High for your bad conduct. Do what is right, in other words. Do the opposite of what God abhors!
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(3) I will bless them that bless you, and those who curse you I will curse." (Genesis 12:3).
The blessed one, the "you" in "bless you" isn't just Abraham but his direct inheritors; "the seed of Abraham."
Note that his excludes Abraham's first sons - the descendants of Ishmael.
The Torah specifically cuts out Ishmael and his descendants:
"For in Isaac [that is, not Ishmael] your seed shall be called." (Genesis 21:12). The birthright then passes from Isaac to his son Jacob [cutting out Isaac's other son, Esau].
Jacob is the prophet whom God re-named Israel, plus his family: the twelve "children of Israel" - that is, the Jews, or Hebrews, who make up the core of a great world-historical movement connected directly to Moses and Sinai and liberation from slavery - God commanding Israel while freeing them Egypt, to serve Him eternally as "a kingdom or priests and a holy nation" (Exodus 19:6).
So this "you" here isn't just a people but also a cause, a mission, a liberation struggle. The Jews alone wouldn't be worth so much of the Bible's attention if they didn't embody the cause that the Living God entrusted to them. As the prophet says, the Jews are given over to the human race in every generation "for a light of the nations" (Isaiah 42:6), "to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house." (42:7).
The mission, obviously, is on-going. God has and still does use the Jews to help raise up the human race.
This may be tiresome to those who've always followed us... On the other hand, people are born every day who are new to it: So we have, for instance, John Adams, student of history, the American founding father, declaring, thousands of years after Isaiah lived:
"The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nations. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations." (See Rainbow Covenant, p. 4, and p. 14 fn 11).
Similarly: "The Jew is that sacred being who has brought down from heaven the everlasting fire, and has illumined with it the entire world. He is the religious source, spring and fountain out of which all the rest of the peoples have drawn their beliefs and their religions." Leo Tolstoy (Russian Noachide, author of War and Peace), "What Is a Jew?" (1891)]
We could write a whole guidebook, "How to Bless Israel," and still not cover all its ramifications. But "blessing" surely involves some measure of recognition, approval and acceptance... Anyway, the promise here is principally addressed to non-Jews.
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(4) "The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon; those that He planted in the house of THE LORD shall flourish in the courts of our God; they shall still bring forth fruit in old age; vigorous and fresh shall they be; to declare that THE LORD is upright ["yasher" - square, fair, honest]." (Psalm 92:13-19).
This thought immediately follows: "He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him." (92:19).
The promised benefit here, for living one's days proclaiming God to be just, is a long and fruitful life, extending the time for the beneficiary of the blessing to bless THE LORD by teaching that, contrary to all the blasphemies, defamations and false philosophies that people think and utter, He's genuinely a good, great, just, completely with-it God.
The promise here is - obviously - universal, just as God, the Creator, Master and Judge of all things, is universal, Whose son or daughter is every human being.
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By Michael Dallen
