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It Is Written

Sabbath School 2nd Quarter 2024: The Great Controversy

Mark Finley

Eric Flickinger

01 The War Behind All Wars

02 The Central Issue: Love or Selfishness?

03 Light Shines in the Darkness

04 Standing for the Truth

05 Faith Against All Odds

John Bradshaw

Money, Money, Money

06 The Two Witnesses

07 Motivated by Hope

08 Light from the Sanctuary

09 The Foundation of God’s Government

10 Spiritualism Exposed

11 The Impending Conflict

12 Earth’s Closing Events

13 The Triumph of God’s Love

Coming up next, please stay tuned for It Is Written, presented by Pastor John Bradshaw.

I think the truth is most everybody needs it.

And when people get it, it seems that what they want next is more.

It seems as though we can never be satisfied with the amount of money that we have.

We read in the Bible that God is willing to bless his people, but sometimes it can be that those blessings are allowed to become curses.

Let me read to you from Matthew chapter 19, where Jesus shared 1 of the most curious verses in all of the Bible.

Matthew 19 and verse 24, he said, and again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Now that's a fascinating verse.

To talk with me about that and other aspects of the subject, I'm glad to welcome my special guest from Queensland, Australia, Julian Archer.

Julian, as an international speaker and as an author, you speak a lot about money.

And 1 of the things that you've discovered in your studies and in your own experience is this.

It seems that as people's prosperity increases, that person's commitment to God can decrease.

It's a bit like a teeter-totter or a seesaw, isn't it?

It'd be great if it didn't, but it often does.

So can we talk about cases, chapter and verse, empirical data?

I recently read an article produced by a Canadian news agency that said as nations prosper, religion diminishes.

I think a lot of us have met rich people who feel like they have no needs and don't even need God.

Of course, we're not going to say that that applies to all wealthy people.

And eventually we'll get around to talking about what a person can do about it.

The data has been coming out for many years.

Credit Suisse, a very respected financial services agency out of Switzerland, has a lot of data on it.

The Gallup Poll, 1 of the most respected research agencies in the world.

As they study around the world, they find that the richest nations, not necessarily the biggest or the highest GDPs or whatever, but those nations where the adults in those nations actually have the highest private wealth.

Those nations are the ones who are the least religious.

You'll be looking at Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the UK, even the US.

They're the nations that are showing this teeter-totter issue.

Those nations, interestingly enough, are primarily founded on Christian principles.

Historically, we'd refer to those as Christian nations, whether that label is accurate or not, but these are places where Christianity has flourished.

So in the past there was a strong Christian ethic, now there's a strong secular ethic, a strong emphasis on wealth, and you're saying that the data shows that these countries where adults are earning the most, that's where people are less or least committed to God.

So if you go to a nation like my home nation, and Gallup Poll comes in with their survey, they're surveying 200 nations, they get to Australia, and they say, 1 of the questions, is religion an important part of your daily life?

Is religion an important part of your daily life?

2 thirds, 67 per cent of Australians say no, religion is not important in my daily life.

You go across to somewhere like Sweden or Norway, you're looking at over 80 per cent of people saying, no, religion is not important in my daily life.

You go across to somewhere like Sweden or Norway, you're looking at over 80% of people saying, no, religion is not important in my daily life.

It's a significant teeter-totter situation.

Those nations, those top 10 richest nations, were all founded on Christian laws, Christian principles.

They used to be, as you say, Christian nations.

Are we calling this correlation or causation?

If you get the statisticians onto the data and they will say, you know, we'll take it down to a certain coefficient and all the rest of it, they say this is rock solid.

This is a statistically solid analysis that as a nation's wealth increases, it has a direct impact on the religiosity of the people in that nation.

So then, 1 would see this as a red flag, I think.

Before we go any further, are we saying that it's wrong or bad to be wealthy?

Even from a Christian, even from a biblical point of view, there is nothing wrong with that.

But we must remember though, that for Abraham, God said to him, he said, I will bless you to be a blessing.

Okay, so these guys, they didn't have masses stored up for themselves, they had a lot of money going through them and God was using them to bless other people.

So it's okay to be wealthy, but Jesus said it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter into heaven.

I've heard people say that this is merely symbolic, Jesus was just making a point.

If he was just making a point, it's a point that is very solidly backed up today in the data.

Even you go to Hinduism, you've got Mahatma Gandhi and he says that once financial stability is assured, spiritual bankruptcy is also assured.

So this isn't just a Christian thing, This is human nature, that as our affluence goes up, we tend to become very self-reliant and think less of God or relying on God or needing God.

I think the blessings that God gives us, because he wants to bless us, they are there for us to share.

If we put a wall on the dam and stop the flow or even severely limit the flow, still let some out, but I need to keep building mine bigger and bigger, then that's where it starts to mess with us.

What happens, to illustrate it, is the inside of my heart, for example, when I was going through this situation, the inside of my heart was being filled up with the blessings, material blessings.

I was so busy maintaining them, insuring them, trying to make them grow, trying to ensure that nobody stole them, or whatever it was, they took so much of my time and energy that I simply didn't have the time and energy for God anymore.

I think it's worth pointing out here, you've alluded to the fact that you've been a very successful business person.

And I'd like you to take a moment to talk about the deleterious effect that had on your spiritual walk.

To the extent you wrote a book called Help, I've Been Blessed, which is interesting because in Christian circles, again and again and again, people are saying, we've got to do everything we can to get God's blessing and the measuring blessing by dollars and cents and possessions and cars and houses and jet aircraft and so forth.

Walk us through some of this to the place where you had to write about this, calling the book, Help!

There is a lot of material out there that says how to be blessed.

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Series

Sabbath School 2nd Quarter 2024: The Great Controversy

Money, Money, Money

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

True Riches

44m

Financial Freedom Seminar

Counting the Cost: Saving, Spending, and Budgeting

56m

The Hyve Podcast Season 1

Profit is Evil. Right?

35m

God’s Plan for Financial Security

33m

The Parables

The Rich Man And His Barn

45m

Conversations with Julian Archer

58m

Does God Want Me to be a Millionaire?

1h 2m

Windows in Heaven

28m

Young Professionals

Unlocking Your True Potential

1h 10m

Homesteading Track

Gardening in the Last Days

1h 4m

Sound Doctrine