The evangelistic campaign started small, just a guy talking in the streets about Jesus but soon it took off like a wildfire. There’s a revival happening. The crowds are coming out and the word races through the streets. Miracles! Healings! Signs! Power! People are being delivered from evil spirits, the lame and paralyzed get up and walk. Joy abounds. Hallelujah, God be praised. No wonder there are crowds.

Simon is witnessing some extraordinary stuff but extraordinary is not new to Simon. In fact Simon is a dab hand in these sorts of things himself. He practiced magic for years, and was so good at it that people said, “This man is the divine power known as the Great Power” or even “This man is called the Great Power of God.” Yet, Simon had not seen anything like this. In other words the signs and miracles he saw through Philip astonished even him.

Now Simon had believed and had been baptized (Acts 8:13) and followed Philip around. But the story develops a little further because when Peter and John visit from Jerusalem they do something that Philip doesn’t seem to have done. They lay hands on a whole bunch of baptised people and they receive the Holy Spirit. As an aside v.16-17 has something to upset everybody. Why didn’t Philip pray for them? Was the giving of the Holy Spirit only something the Apostles could do? If people believed and had been baptised, how come they didn’t have the Holy Spirit? Isn’t this evidence of a separation of regeneration and subsequent blessing?

However you answer those questions, the receiving of the Spirit was something you could observe. You could tell when someone had got it. Simon observed the connection. The Apostles pray. They lay on hands. People receive the Spirit. Something happens that you can see or hear. But Simon, baptised believer that he is, still has a lot to learn and just responds out of his old habits. He’s zealous but immature. He offers the Apostles money for the gift. Peter’s response is hard and makes you think Philip didn’t do his due diligence before baptising him. Is Simon, the church’s first baptised unbeliever? Who knows, but he certainly wasn’t the last.

Let’s pause a moment though and consider Simon’s offence. Peter forcefully rejects the suggestion, “May your money perish with you, because you though you could buy the gift of God with money! You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord.”

Which, I think Simon does in v.24.

If wanting to buy a gift from God receives such an strong condemnation, what of those who try to sell the gifts? Would that not be worse? The answer is surely yes. The one who seeks to buy the gift merely deceives himself. The one who sells can deceive many. Which is exactly what we see. At the very least Peter’s condemnation stands to the one who offer answers of prayer for money, healing for money, hope for money, Jesus for money.

The false teachers of prosperity (I refuse to append gospel to it because it is not good news) essentially seek to sell the benefits of the gospel in return for cash.

“The lord loves a cheerful giver,” proclaims a preacher as she warms up the congregants for Bishop David Abioye’s third service of the day in the 15,000-seater Living Faith church near Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. “As you drop your offerings today, your financial captivity will be turned around for good,” she promises. Slipped in among the Bible verses are instructions on how to pay by cheque or online. What the Lord thinks of your correspondent’s reluctant gift is left unsaid.

As ushers wielding lime-green baskets take the offerings, a choir croons, “I’m restored and I’ve been rewarded.” Mr Abioye, resplendent in a pinstripe suit and gold tie, explains how God repays prayer with hard cash. “This week people will be giving to you,” he proclaims. Congregants jump up and cheer. “As I’m speaking they are already looking for your telephone number,” he shouts. All this, he says, is thanks to the “purchasing power” of Jesus’s blood.

Mr Abioye is a pastor in a Pentecostal empire known as Winners Chapel. It is led by Bishop David Oyedepo, who practises the prosperity he preaches. He zips around in private jets. He once dismissed a report that he was worth $150m as an “insult” and “too small”. His business model combines the power of the pulpit with the slickness of corporate marketing. His books include “Understanding Financial Prosperity” and “Satan Get Lost!”

Nigerian megachurches practise the prosperity they preach

The prosperity theology originated in the land of the capitalists but has since gone from defrauding America’s poor to defrauding Africa’s poor. It deserves every ounce of anger you can muster. Whatever else you might think John Piper was right about this (here’s the background to that video). It is a blight upon Christianity, it is the shame of Pentecostals, it is a heresy and the world knows it.

Critics do not mince their words. The logic of prosperity churches is similar to that of Ponzi schemes, says Mr Obadare, but with the added advantage that when people do not get rich, pastors can promise that their riches will come in the next life. Criticism of these beliefs may be expected to come from intellectual institutions such as universities, he adds, but in many cases these have bought into the churches’ view of the world. The result in Nigeria, where more than 80m people live on less than $1.90 per day, is that church “members are getting poorer and poorer”, says Francis Falako, a professor of religious studies at the University of Lagos. “And the pastors are getting richer and richer.”

Nigerian megachurches practise the prosperity they preach

To paraphrase Peter a little, “May their money perish with them, because they thought they could sell the gift of God for money! They have no part or share in this ministry, because their heart is not right before God. Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord.”