Miami Pastor's Conference Take 2

Okay, in the interest of full disclosure it’s highly unlikely that you’ll meet the one and only Dan Marino at the Miami Pastor’s Conference. Nor can I promise you that God is obligated to honor your great faith (the size your faith of course being directly proportionate to the size of your seed offering ) and somehow bless you with a Dandy Dan sighting, chat session and autographed football. Sounds absurd doesn’t it. I mean didn’t Tetzel sell indulgences five hundred years ago promising people that for an offering God could be manipulated into giving them what they wanted? Surely no one in this day and age would attempt a similar stunt would they?

Check this out… Melvin Jones who runs the pulpit pimps website has once more exposed the tactics of one of our modern day Tetzels. The charlatan in question (I.V. Hilliard) is busy about his father’s business which is deceiving people and filling his own pockets. He sent brother Jones a letter and a gold cloth. The letter told him to write on the gold cloth and complete the ‘Send Me Money’ form so that God can begin doing wondrous things in his life. Of course he had to be sure and send in a seed offering to demonstrate his faith and you guessed it the bigger the offering the more certain his faith. Don’t have any cash right now? No problem God takes Visa and MasterCard.

This kind of sheer, ridiculous nonsense would be utterly laughable if not for two things. First of all it is rampant within what we know as the Black church. Charlatan Hilliard claims a following of over 28,000 souls at his New Life Christian Center and holds and annual conference that draws over 700 churches. Secondly, it is the type of Christianity that hundreds of thousands if not millions of souls lay claim too. It is this kind of rank medieval superstition that passes for the gospel today.

That’s why you need to attend the Miami Pastor’s Conference the theme of which is ‘What Is The Gospel’. For those thinking that we in the African-American community have bigger fish to fry please consider this. If con artists like Hilliard and his ilk continue to poor the cancer of false doctrine into the black community you may wake up in the not too distant future and find little if any evangelcal witness in the very communities you care so much about. As drastic as it may sound all of our problems pale in comparison to the looming challenge of having tens of millions of black people spending a lifetime hearing and practicing a false, deviant and destructive gospel.

How important is it for you to attend this conference? I’ll tell you what. I’m willing to pay for two (2) folks who’ve embraced reformed theology, have a desire to spread it into the black community and would like to attend the conference but don’t have the money to. I’ll pay for the cost of your registration and your hotel room all you have to do is get there. Drop me an email at lance@reformingchurches.org by Monday, Oct. 8 by 7:00 p.m. EST and tell me why you wish to attend the conference. I’ll make this offer to a married couple or just two individuals who’d like to spread biblical theology in their community and want to attend the conference. You could be a pastor, seminary student or just a brother or sister who has embraced reformed theology is alone and needs some fellowship and encouragement.

And guess what? You don’t have to send me a seed offering, magic candle, ‘anointed cloth’ or blessed bess wax. And no you probably won’t see number 13 and I don’t even claim that this conference will be a ‘life-changing’ experience for you. But I do believe that you’ll hear the gospel from some godly men, enjoy warm fellowship with the saints of Glendale Baptist Church, have some great food and maybe just maybe become part of the movement that arrest the cancer spreading into our communities.

To Him Who Loves Us…
Pastor Lance