If you don’t believe that it’s God’s will to bless and prosper you financially, you’ll probably sabotage your finances when they do come.”
This statement is often repeated by Dr Charles Vance, the American pastor scheduled to give a public lecture on financial empowerment at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre on Thursday night.
Vance, who lived under the poverty line in West Virginia, the poorest state in the United States, and is now ranked among the top one per cent of the world’s richest, is always quick to credit his achievements to the favour of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Vance said it was only after a pastor pointed out to him God’s desire to prosper his children in all areas of life, that he realized he had been repeatedly sabotaging his own progress in his struggling construction business.
“The light came on and I started applying biblical teachings on how to prosper to my own life,” Vance said in a recent interview on Sid Roth’s It’s Supernatural show that is screened in the US and many parts of the world.
“If Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever and if His word changes not, then it is my responsibility not only to develop faith in the word of God but also to take action, for faith without works is dead,” stressed Vance, who has produced an audio teaching titled: Prospering In Hard Times.
Vance’s Empowered Church, a sprawling complex in West Virginia, has so far raised about six millionaires, who faithfully applied to their lives the biblical teachings which include tithing and giving.
Vance, who became the senior pastor in 1994, taking over from his father, also testifies about being miraculously healed of a blockage in the small intestine, which doctors had diagnosed as cancer. Though in excruciating pain, he stubbornly refused to undergo surgery.
In an interview, he admitted he was deeply concerned that as a pastor who had seen many instances of miraculous healing in his church and had preached about it on television, he was now laid up in hospital, apparently helpless to get any healing.
On his hospital bed he said he addressed the devil. “I told the devil if you kill me, you have done nothing; you are already a loser; but if I beat this thing with my faith, I am going to rub it in your face.”
The blockage disappeared, he said, leaving doctors to conclude it was a miracle that took place on May 8, 1994.
“We are still celebrating 17 years later and we have lost count of the numbers who have been healed of cancers especially,” said Vance, who has been invited to Barbados with his wife, Kelli, by the local chapter of Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International.
Vance will be the guest speaker at the chapter’s monthly breakfast at Divi Southwinds Hotel on Saturday.
Next Sunday, the Vances will minister at the Trinity Outreach Ministries service at the Samuel Jackman Prescod Polytechnic in the morning and at People’s Cathedral in the evening. (HM)
