Many people want to join our churches in India, because they see many hospitable, generous people in our midst. But if we are not careful to weed out such people immediately, very soon every poor person in India will want to join our churches, and we will have remarkable “church-growth”!! We will get “converts” who are interested in money, not in righteousness.

For many Christian workers in India today, “serving the Lord” is a profession and not a calling. Many people have prospered financially by joining the church. If their prosperity came because God honoured them for being righteous in their life, that is all right. But if their prosperity has come because of the wealthy contacts they got by joining the church, then they have missed the will of God completely – because Christianity is not a way of making financial profit.

The church is a place to sacrifice and give – not a place for profit and gain. It is a sad fact that many “Christian workers” in India today earn five to ten times what they would have earned if they had been in a secular job. Many “Christian workers” have never worked a single day in a secular job. Jesus never called anyone to be His apostles who were not already working in a secular job. Christian work has become a source of immense profit for many in India today. Non-Christians look at them and say, “This person has become a Christian worker to make money.” And they are right! How shall we shut their mouths? Only when Christian workers can show that they could have made more money in a secular job than what they get in Christian work.

In Acts chapter 5, at a time when everyone was selling their property and giving it to the apostles to distribute to the poor, Ananias and Sapphira thought, “How can we appear spiritual while still keeping our money?” So when they sold their land, they did not give all of their money. Their sin was not that they did not give all their money. God loves cheerful givers and doesn’t want anyone’s money. Peter said to Ananias, “When your land was not sold, it was yours to do what you liked with it. And even after it was sold, the money was yours. But why do you tell a lie” (Acts 5:4). Ananias’ sin was hypocrisy – pretending to be wholehearted. If he had said, “We sold that land for 50,000 rupees. But we feel we should give only 20% of that. We want to keep the rest for our own needs. So here is 10,000 rupees.” Peter would have blessed Ananias – and he and his wife would have remained alive. Ananias never said anything. He told a lie without opening his mouth, by just standing in the line with all the other wholehearted people. But Peter was a man of discernment. Both Ananias and Sapphira were exposed by him and they died for their hypocrisy.

Why doesn’t God act like that today? Because very few will be left alive in the churches then! Ananias and Sapphira were in the midst of a very pure and powerful church – and that is why they died. If they had been in some dead, carnal church (like the one in Corinth), they might even have been elders there. It is dangerous to join a church that is pressing on to perfection, if you are proud and a hypocrite. God will smite you and remove you from their midst, in one way or the other. But there are not many churches like that nowadays. So you will survive in most churches today. If you want to remain alive and be proud and a hypocrite, then choose a dead church to join.