When Mammon Fails: The Next Heresy After the Prosperity Gospel

By Oluwasogo M. Faloye

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.”
—Galatians 1:6 (ESV)

For decades, the Nigerian church has been caught in the whirlwind of the Prosperity Gospel. This theology promised wealth, health, and success in exchange for faith-filled declarations and generous offerings. It swept through pulpits and prayer meetings like wildfire, offering a seductive gospel centred not on the cross of Christ, but on the crown of material blessing.

But a shift is coming. As the glimmer of prosperity fades under the weight of economic hardship, unemployment, and national frustration, a new ideology creeps into Christian thought. It promises justice for the poor, liberation from oppression, and vengeance on corrupt elites. It speaks the language of liberation but not of regeneration. It claims to fight for the oppressed, but it does so with clenched fists rather than open hands.

This article is a warning to the Church in Nigeria; as Mammon fails, the next heresy which I termed “Religious Marxism” is rising. It may wear the clothes of righteousness, but it bears a foreign spirit. Like the Prosperity Gospel before it, it is another gospel, and therefore no gospel at all.

The Prosperity Gospel boldly proclaims that God’s foremost desire is to bless His children abundantly in all aspects of life, especially materially. Drawing on powerful scriptures like 3 John 2 and Deuteronomy 8:18, it highlights the biblical promise of divine entitlement to wealth. This movement has transformed pastors into motivational speakers, turning altars into sacred transaction points where believers can claim their blessings. One prominent advocate of this false gospel passionately asserts that God has commissioned him to raise billionaires, a mission he won’t abandon. Another preacher states that God is raising financial apostles right here in Nigeria. Imagine a world where believers harness divine favour to achieve financial success and impact! This is the promise and purpose of the Prosperity Gospel. But this is a lie.

This false gospel flourished because it exploited a genuine context of poverty, unemployment, and systemic hardship. However, instead of directing people to Christ crucified and risen, it encouraged them to sow “seeds” for financial breakthroughs. It transformed faith into a formula and God into a cosmic banker.

Many who gave faithfully have remained in cycles of poverty. Year after year, the long-awaited “open heaven” didn’t materialise. Despite attending all-night vigils, engaging in fervent fasting, and sowing dangerously into “anointed” projects, their economic conditions never truly improved. The disillusionment is no longer a quiet frustration, it’s becoming a loud and visible discontent.

The spectacle of church leaders living in luxury such as private jets, palatial homes, designer wardrobes while the average member struggles to afford food or pay school fees, has reached a breaking point. What once was tolerated as “evidence of divine favour” is now being re-evaluated as exploitation. The internet and social media have further exposed this imbalance, fuelling the scepticism and even cynicism of a younger generation.

In some quarters, this disillusionment has evolved into outright anger. Anger that they were manipulated in the name of God. Anger that the church failed to teach the whole counsel of God, especially the parts about suffering, perseverance, and contentment. Anger that spiritual leaders enriched themselves while their congregants remained stuck in economic hardship.

As the Prosperity Gospel begins to lose credibility, something else is creeping in to take its place: a new ideological heresy that offers a different kind of hope—one not built on faith in Christ, but on resentment, activism, and class struggle. I called this new ideology the “Religious Marxism.”

It tells the poor, “You’re not lacking faith—you’re oppressed.” It tells the angry, “Your suffering is not a test—it’s a crime.” And it tells the church, “Your mission is not to save souls—but to liberate classes.”

This new teaching does not confront sin; it redirects it. It does not preach grace; it preaches grievance. It does not build the church; it stirs resentment within it.

Religious Marxism is the spiritual repackaging of Marxist ideology which is centered on the idea of class struggle between the oppressed and the oppressors, but now cloaked in Christian language.

In this view, the Bible becomes a manifesto of revolution. Jesus is no longer the Saviour from sin, but a political activist. The Exodus is no longer a story of redemption, but a template for social upheaval. Passages like Luke 4:18 (“He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor…”) are used to support economic redistribution rather than spiritual renewal.

This distortion presents the church not as a community of saints called unto holiness, but as a base for agitation. The pulpit becomes a platform for protest, not proclamation.

Religious Marxism is deceptively attractive. It speaks to real pain like poverty, injustice and marginalisation. It uses biblical terms like justice, liberation, and equality. But it redefines them outside of their Christ-centered meaning. In true Christianity, Biblical justice is rooted in God’s character and law (Micah 6:8; Isaiah 1:17), not human ideology, Liberation is first from sin, not from class status (John 8:36) and Equality in the church is spiritual (Galatians 3:28), not economic coercion.

Like Satan in the wilderness, it quotes Scripture but out of context and against the purposes of God.

Religious Marxism is not merely another theological trend; it is a threat to the very foundation of Christian faith and life. It replaces the Gospel with ideology. It preaches systemic change without personal conversion. It ignites resentment, creating “holy wars” between classes instead of reconciliation through the blood of Christ (Ephesians 2:14–16). It politicises the church, drawing pastors and members into partisan battles instead of gospel witness. It undermines sanctification, encouraging blame-shifting instead of repentance and growth in holiness.

At its heart, Religious Marxism promotes worldly sorrow; a grief rooted in envy, resentment, and a sense of victimhood, rather than godly sorrow, which leads to repentance and transformation, as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 7:10, “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.”

This distinction is crucial. Godly sorrow acknowledges sin before a holy God. This sorrow that breaks the heart because of rebellion against divine righteousness. It leads to confession, repentance, and the pursuit of holiness. It draws the sinner closer to Christ, resulting in spiritual life and restoration.

Worldly sorrow, on the other hand, is man-centered. It laments personal discomfort or perceived injustice, but refuses to see the root problem as sin. It breeds anger, bitterness, and blame toward others, often toward those in positions of authority, wealth, or influence. Rather than bringing one to the cross, it pushes people toward human solutions such as vengeance, revolution, or systemic upheaval.

Religious Marxism exploits this worldly sorrow by spiritualising it. It is recasting bitterness as “righteous anger,” envy as “prophetic justice,” and class resentment as “kingdom advocacy.” But it leads neither to repentance nor reconciliation. It produces death, not only spiritually, but communally. Churches that adopt this ethos risk replacing the gospel of grace with a gospel of grievance. And in doing so, they forfeit the transforming power of Christ for the fleeting allure of cultural relevance.

The Gospel does not deny oppression or ignore injustice. But it begins at a deeper level: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Rich and poor alike need salvation, not from political systems, but from sin and its judgment.

The true Gospel offers peace with God through justification by faith (Romans 5:1). It creates a new humanity, not built on class or tribe, but Christ (Colossians 3:11). It promotes generous care for the poor (2 Corinthians 8–9), not coerced redistribution. It calls us to take up the cross, not raise the fist (Luke 9:23).

The Nigerian church must be vigilant. Satan is not creative, but he is strategic. When one false gospel collapses, he offers another. Believers must test every teaching by Scripture (1 John 4:1). Pastors must resist the pressure to become social revolutionaries and return to preaching Christ and Him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2). The church must seek biblical justice, but with humility, grace, and cross-shaped love.

The time has come to earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3).

As the Prosperity Gospel fades, we must not run into the arms of another heresy. Let us not flee from Mammon only to kneel before Marx.

The Church in Nigeria is at a sobering crossroads. The golden promises of prosperity have proven hollow for many. The veneer is cracking. But as the crowd begins to abandon the altar of Mammon, a new altar is being prepared—a seemingly nobler one—built not on greed, but on grievance. Yet make no mistake: both Mammon and Marx are false gods. One tempts us with riches, the other with revenge. One flatters the ego with promises of luxury; the other feeds it with moral outrage and entitlement. But neither leads to the cross of Christ.

When this false gospel is fully materialised, we will not have a reformation, but a redirection from one deception to another.

Some will say, “We’ve been oppressed. We’ve been exploited. Now it is time for the Church to rise in social power and economic justice.” But if that “justice” is divorced from the atoning work of Christ, from personal repentance, from the new birth, it is no Gospel at all.

In 2 Timothy 4:3–4, Paul warns, “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions…” That time is not merely coming, it is here.

So, the question before us is urgent and clear: Will we return to the apostolic Gospel of Christ crucified, risen, and reigning? The Gospel that calls sinners to die to self, pick up their cross, and follow the suffering Servant-King? Or will we embrace another gospel; more palatable, more popular, more politically charged but powerless to save?

This is not the time for compromise. This is the time to preach Christ, not a Christ rebranded as a community organiser or class warrior but the true Christ who reigns from heaven, who will return in glory, and before whom every ideology will bow.

Let us not trade one false hope for another. Let us not abandon the prosperity preacher only to crown the activist prophet. Let us not fall into the ancient trap of exchanging the truth of God for a lie (Romans 1:25).

The Church must return to her first love, to her unchanging message that “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). For in Him alone is the power of God unto salvation, not in Mammon, and certainly not in Marx.

 “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.”
—Galatians 1:8

May the Lord give us eyes to see, hearts to discern, and courage to stand for the truth.

Oluwasogo Faloye sent this from Ibadan.