I picked up the TV remote in my hotel room anticipating catching up on my favorite shows. We don’t have satellite or cable TV at our house so I rely on motel stays to keep me up to date. This usually works out because they air reruns all day before the new episode plays in prime time. If you add up what we save by not having a satellite, it basically pays for 12 hotel rooms each year. I was disappointed to find out that none of the 2 or 3 series that I binge watch were on that night. With 120 channels, surely I can find something else...
Oh, and find something else I did! I found 19 religious broadcasting channels. Yes, I said nineteen because I counted them twice. The first thing I noticed was that the prosperity preachers don’t have enough faith to reverse the effects of aging. Many of the same old charlatans were still on the air twisting Scripture and stealing money. Only now they do it with bent backs, wrinkled faces, gray hair, and glasses. Their were some new faces which gave me the hope that at least one of these 19 channels would have a solid Bible teacher. Sadly, every new preacher I encountered was hawking the same old falsehoods for his own personal gain.
I turned it off after an hour or so of going back and fourth between those “Christian” broadcasts. I thought to myself, nearly one in every six channels in this cable market is a Christian channel. Are Christians around here demanding more channels or is Christian television marketing a very lucrative venture? Well, I’ll let you be the judge of that. Then I got to thinking that about one in six Americans are practicing some form of the Christian faith. So maybe 19 channels is about right? But none of these channels would be considered biblically sound. All but two Catholic channels were preaching some form of the self help prosperity gospel. That means that the average Joe just flipping channels probably thinks this is what Christianity looks like. And I would say he’s right, this is what American Christianity looks like.
That bothered me for a while, what I saw on TV is just a reflection of where we are as a nation. Then a light bulb went off! We’ll start a real Christian TV network! RCTV! We’ll air nothing but solid Bible preachers 24/7! Now all I need to do is find some sponsors. Let’s see, who would pay a God hating media network to air these unpopular preachers who are delivering offensive messages to an uninterested audience? Yep, that’s where my dreams for RCTV ended. We have 19 channels of false gospel for the same reason we have small churches with the real gospel. The gospel of Jesus Christ has never been popular but it is still being proclaimed as it should, in His Churches.
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