# Bishop Barron – The Truth About the Prosperity Gospel

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 26 Aug 2026, 7:41.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/73269768/bishop_barron_on_the_prosperity_gospel.mp3



## Transcript

[0:10] Speaker 1: The recently, I was reading an article in The Atlantic
[0:12] Speaker 1: Monthly magazine that bore the rather startling title did Christianity
[0:16] Speaker 1: cause the Crash? I know a lot of people in
[0:18] Speaker 1: the secular media want to blame Christianity for almost everything,
[0:21] Speaker 1: but I thought this was a little bit much.
[0:23] Speaker 2: It soon became clear.
[0:24] Speaker 1: Though, the culprit in the mind of the author was
[0:27] Speaker 1: the so called prosperity Gospel, the view that is propagated
[0:31] Speaker 1: by a lot of people today that if you follow
[0:33] Speaker 1: God's will, follow God's command, great things will happen to
[0:36] Speaker 1: you in the material sense of the term. And the
[0:39] Speaker 1: argument was that a lot of Christians who believe this
[0:43] Speaker 1: gospel were making bad and risky investments, and this led
[0:47] Speaker 1: to the collapse of the housing market, and the collapse
[0:49] Speaker 1: of the economy, and so on and so forth. Now
[0:51] Speaker 1: I don't know how seriously I take that particular argument,
[0:54] Speaker 1: but I must say my interest was piqued in this
[0:57] Speaker 1: phenomenon of the prosperity Gospel. The roots of it, at
[1:01] Speaker 1: least in America, probably go back to Oral Roberts, the
[1:04] Speaker 1: famous evangelists who just died. Oral Roberts said to his
[1:08] Speaker 1: many listeners, expect a miracle trust in God, and great
[1:13] Speaker 1: things will happen at the material level of your life.
[1:17] Speaker 1: Probably the most prominent prosperity gospeler today is Joel Olstein.
[1:23] Speaker 1: Joelstein who is the pastor of the biggest church in America,
[1:27] Speaker 1: who has millions of readers and listeners with books and
[1:30] Speaker 1: radio broadcasts. He also was a former student at Oral
[1:35] Speaker 1: Roberts University, where he probably picked up this theology. But
[1:38] Speaker 1: Joelstein pretty much announces the same gospel. Don't settle for
[1:43] Speaker 1: a mediocre life. Trust in God's promises, follow God's will,
[1:47] Speaker 1: and you can expect more money, a better house, a family.
[1:51] Speaker 1: You can be proud of all kinds of material benefits.
[1:55] Speaker 1: Now to give the prosperity gospelers their due, there is
[1:58] Speaker 1: a biblical warrant this point of view. Look in the
[2:02] Speaker 1: book of Deuteronomy. You'll find over and over again this promise.
[2:06] Speaker 1: You follow God's commands, you will prosper. You don't follow
[2:11] Speaker 1: God's commands, you will suffer. And you find that again
[2:14] Speaker 1: reiterated often in the book of Deuteronomy. You look in
[2:17] Speaker 1: the Psalms, you find similar things of trusting in the
[2:20] Speaker 1: Lord and then.
[2:21] Speaker 2: Expecting great benefits.
[2:23] Speaker 1: Jesus himself says, seek ye first the Kingdom of God
[2:28] Speaker 1: and his righteousness, and the rest, meaning presumably of wealth
[2:32] Speaker 1: and clothing and food and the things you need. The
[2:35] Speaker 1: rest will be given unto you. And he speaks even
[2:38] Speaker 1: of the birds of the air that neither reap nor sow,
[2:41] Speaker 1: but God cares for them. And certainly throughout the Bible,
[2:46] Speaker 1: Old Testament and New we hear the command to trust
[2:50] Speaker 1: in God's great providence. Okay, but we have to be
[2:54] Speaker 1: careful at this point, I think, because the Bible itself
[2:59] Speaker 1: knew ass and specifies this claim of the Book of Deuteronomy.
[3:05] Speaker 1: The great counterweight, the counterpoise to the Book of Deuteronomy.
[3:09] Speaker 2: Is the Book of Job. And what do we hear
[3:11] Speaker 2: In the Book of Job.
[3:13] Speaker 1: We hear about a man who is perfectly righteous, who
[3:18] Speaker 1: follows the commands of the Lord, who follows the commands
[3:21] Speaker 1: of the Book of Deuteronomy, who does what God wants,
[3:24] Speaker 1: and yet massively suffers in.
[3:27] Speaker 2: One fell swoop.
[3:29] Speaker 1: Job loses everyone and everything he holds, dear, loses his family,
[3:33] Speaker 1: loses his livelihood, loses all his wealth, loses.
[3:36] Speaker 2: Even his health.
[3:38] Speaker 1: His friends come and they commiserate with him, and they
[3:41] Speaker 1: sit in silence for seven days, and that was pretty
[3:43] Speaker 1: good move. But then they open their mouths and what
[3:46] Speaker 1: comes out is a kind of a typical standard Deuteronomy
[3:51] Speaker 1: reading of things. Job, you must have done something wrong to.
[3:56] Speaker 2: Be suffering in this way.
[3:57] Speaker 1: You must have offended God in some way. But Job
[4:02] Speaker 1: knows he's righteous, and we know he's righteous, we hear
[4:04] Speaker 1: reading the book, and so Job protests against this. What
[4:09] Speaker 1: do we hear in God's great speech? Read it in
[4:12] Speaker 1: the thirty eight, thirty ninth, and fortieth chapters of the
[4:14] Speaker 1: Book of Job. We hear not a standard Deuteronomy reading
[4:18] Speaker 1: of like, yes, Job, you did offend me in some ways. Rather,
[4:22] Speaker 1: Job's suffering is placed in the context of God's unfathomable
[4:27] Speaker 1: permissive will. There isn't a strict correspondence between Job's suffering
[4:32] Speaker 1: and Job's virtue or lack thereof.
[4:35] Speaker 2: There's a cautioning. I think of the deuteronomistic.
[4:39] Speaker 1: Point of view, well, how do we solve this problem,
[4:42] Speaker 1: this dilemma, maybe within the Bible itself. I think we
[4:45] Speaker 1: solve it by looking at prosperity, not from our perspective,
[4:50] Speaker 1: but from God's.
[4:52] Speaker 2: It is true.
[4:53] Speaker 1: I would say that following God's will leads to prosperity,
[4:57] Speaker 1: but not necessarily in a worldly s Following God's will
[5:03] Speaker 1: rightly orders the soul. It rightly orders me toward my
[5:07] Speaker 1: proper end and makes my life in the spiritual sense joyful.
[5:13] Speaker 1: That is the prosperity I can infallibly expect from following
[5:18] Speaker 1: God's commands, not necessarily prosperity in this world. In many ways,
[5:23] Speaker 1: the Book of Job is meant to caution us lest
[5:26] Speaker 1: we move in that direction. I'll give you a good
[5:28] Speaker 1: example of this. Saint Thomas Moore, one of my heroes.
[5:32] Speaker 1: Thomas Moore was a very prominent figure, important political player
[5:37] Speaker 1: in the court of Henry the eighth, a very wealthy man,
[5:40] Speaker 1: socially prominent man.
[5:42] Speaker 2: He followed his.
[5:43] Speaker 1: Conscience at a key moment, he followed God's command.
[5:47] Speaker 2: What happened He lost everything.
[5:49] Speaker 1: He lost his family, lost his home, lost his status,
[5:52] Speaker 1: lost his political position, lost his wealth.
[5:54] Speaker 2: And in the end lost his life.
[5:57] Speaker 1: Yet Thomas Moore was in the only relevant sense a
[6:02] Speaker 1: prosperous man, meaning he had the great joy that comes
[6:06] Speaker 1: He had that ordered soul that comes from following God's commands.
[6:11] Speaker 2: He had.
[6:11] Speaker 1: If you want treasure in heaven, here's another perspective on
[6:15] Speaker 1: it from another hero of mine, saying Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas
[6:19] Speaker 1: wrestles with that problem that we all do. How come
[6:22] Speaker 1: wicked people seem to prosper in the world and good
[6:25] Speaker 1: people seem to suffer.
[6:28] Speaker 2: What gives it seems as though God is not just?
[6:30] Speaker 1: Quinas said, be careful look at it, not from our
[6:33] Speaker 1: narrow perspective, but from God's. That wicked person who receives
[6:38] Speaker 1: all kinds of material benefits, Aquinas said.
[6:41] Speaker 2: He might be being being punished.
[6:44] Speaker 1: How come because those material things that he gets are
[6:47] Speaker 1: taking him away, perhaps from the spiritual good that really matters.
[6:51] Speaker 1: How about the good person who receives no great material advantage, He, perhaps,
[6:57] Speaker 1: Aquinas said, is being rewarded because it's the very absence
[7:02] Speaker 1: of material distractions that allows him to be spiritually upright.
[7:07] Speaker 2: In other words, be.
[7:08] Speaker 1: Careful how you read prosperity, what prosperity means, and so
[7:13] Speaker 1: is the prosperity gospel?
[7:14] Speaker 2: Right?
[7:15] Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say in that sense that you follow
[7:18] Speaker 1: God's commands, you follow the will of God, you will
[7:22] Speaker 1: prosper But don't expect primarily treasure on earth. Expect treasure
[7:28] Speaker 1: in heaven.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.