For Richer or Poorer--Prosperity Gospel Misleads On Needs

[TlalocW]

4. The psychology and the "magic" behind prosperity gospel is interesting to me

They use what is called the Shotgun Method (also used by other con artists like talkers to the dead). If you have a big enough audience then the prediction, promise, or prophecy you make to them is undoubtedly going to come true for some of them. So if you tell them that God will repay you back even more if you "plant a seed" by donating to the ministry, obviously some people are going to get a bonus/raise at work; an inheritance; even someone paying back some money they owed. These people will attribute it to not only God rewarding their faithfulness but sing the praises of the minister. This will encourage other people to keep the faith and keep holding on waiting for THEIR boon. For people who get discouraged, they will keep quiet so as to not look bad in front of the minister and the rest of the congregation. It might even inspire both groups to add on to their initial seed sowing to prove their faithfulness to God.

And it works - just not the way the parishioners think. It allows their "ministers" to buy private jets, huge homes, fancy cars, etc.

The KC minister mentioned seems to me like he's either ignorant of how the con is run and is just greedy and expects his parishioners to give him fancy stuff because he's a minister, or he knows about it but is too lazy to put in the work to get the con going. The Brooklyn minister, I don't know about, but I've seen the video of the robbery and instead of saying, "... were robbed of reportedly $1 million of jewelry," it should say, "...were reportedly robbed of $1 million of jewelry." There are a lot of things that are "sus" as the kids say these days, and I think there's a good chance it was staged.