Chapter one of Brian Abshire's unpublished book "Wealth and Poverty: Restoring Christian Wealth" A new chapter will appear in each future issue.

Discussing wealth and poverty can be tricky in Christian circles. On the one hand are the "health, wealth and prosperity" heretics who sucker the gullible with deviant theology in order to prosper themselves at the expense of their "pigeons." On the other hand, pietism and neo-gnosticism have so subtly infiltrated the modern evangelical church that many Christians have unwittingly adopted unbiblical presuppositions on the issue. "Pietism" is the belief that the essence of true Christianity is a private, personal and subjective religious experience, personally meaningfully, but socially irrelevant. Hence, pietism has little to say about the "real" world, especially how to achieve material blessings in it. "Neo-Gnosticism" is an ancient offshoot of Greek philosophy that sees matter as inherently bad and spirit as inherently good (with the idea that the path to true godliness is through secret knowledge). Thus, any concern about prosperity in this life is simply "unspiritual," "worldly" or even "sinful!" No, far better to spend our time poring over our prophecy charts trying to discern the next candidate for the anti-Christ than waste one's time on filthy "mammon."