1 Timothy 6:9
1 Timothy 6:99Those who want to be rich, however, fall into temptation and become ensnared by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction.
JWs deploy against televangelists and the prosperity gospel — and they are right to do so. The Watchtower contrasts Copeland's jets, Osteen's mansion, and Dollar's Gulfstream with unpaid JW elders and a simple Bethel lifestyle, using Paul's warning ("those who are determined to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and many senseless and harmful desires") to frame mainstream Christianity as a movement captured by money.
Do not defend the prosperity gospel. Agree out loud — name the names (Copeland, Osteen, Dollar), name the Gulfstream, name the private jet. Every serious confessional Protestant tradition — Reformed, Lutheran, Wesleyan, Anabaptist, Catholic, Orthodox — condemns the prosperity gospel, and John MacArthur's Ashamed of the Gospel is one of many sustained critiques written from within evangelical Protestantism.
Then, gently, apply the same test back. Paul's warning in is about "those who are determined to be rich" — any organisation whose money flows do not match its rhetoric. The Watchtower sits on billions in real estate. Beth Sarim was built in 1929 with donor funds for the "ancient worthies" who never arrived. The September 2017 letter to congregations directed local Kingdom Halls to send surplus funds to Warwick. Elderly Witnesses are repeatedly encouraged to leave estates to the organisation. Paul's rule cuts in every direction: ask not "whose clergy is paid" but "where does the money flow, and why?"