Bishop Charles Agyinasare said poverty is not a ticket to heaven and urged Christians to seek prosperity in their lives.
The renowned preacher said this during the second service of church on Sunday, 24 November 2019.
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“A lot of the time, the world wants us to believe that once you’re a Christian or if you’re a pastor, you should only be teaching the people about poverty and they go as far as saying: ‘As poor as a church rat’ but God never had that in his concept when he had a church,” he said.
“It’s important that, as Christians, we stop making people feel that because they are poor, they are holy. Being poor doesn’t make you holy, otherwise all the poor people we have in the third world would be holy, there’ll be no need to preach to them, they will go to heaven.
“So, we shouldn’t make people feel that because they are poor, they are holy. It doesn’t work like that. You can be poor and be a sinner just like you can be rich and also go to heaven."
Bishop Agyinasare explained that people often misquote the Bible by saying ‘Money is the root of all evil’.
This, he said, is misconstrued, pointing out that what the Bible says in 1 Timothy 6: 10 is that: ‘For the love of money is the root of all evil’.
“They take the scripture where Jesus said: ‘It will be difficult for a rich man to go to heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle’ as another proof of their argument. So, they say that anybody who is rich cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.
“…Well, there are two kinds of people who can go to heaven: One of them is Lazarus, who was poor with sores around him [and] dogs licking his wounds; he went to heaven. And then there is Abraham, who also went to heaven and Abraham had silver and gold while he was here on earth. And if you ask me: ‘Among the two, who do I like to go to heaven like?’ I want to go like Abraham,” Bishop Agyinasare added.