White House spiritual advisor offers “supernatural blessings”

White House spiritual advisor Paula White-Cain is facing backlash for seeming to promise “seven supernatural blessings” in exchange for donations of “$1000 or more.” White, who leads President Trump’s White House Faith Office, posted a Passover sermon online on March 23, encouraging viewers to observe the Old Testament feast by making a financial offering. 

Citing Exodus 23, where God promises the Israelites that He will prepare the way to the promised land, White tells viewers that when they observe Passover, “God will assign an angel to you, he will be an enemy to your enemies, he will give you prosperity, he will take sickness away from you, he will give you a long life, he’ll bring increase in inheritance and he’ll bring a special year of blessing.” One of the ways White recommends Christians celebrate is through a financial offering. 

Elsewhere in the video, an advertisement lists these seven blessings and encourages viewers to donate $1000 or more to White’s ministry in exchange for several gifts, including an olive wood communion set and a Waterford Crystal cross. While White does say that donors are not donating “to get something” from God, her appeal, along with the advertisement, seems to indicate just the opposite.

White’s video has attracted criticism from Christian and secular circles, with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow saying White is “selling miracles on the side.” Several pastors took to X (formerly Twitter) to accuse White of being a false teacher and encouraged President Trump to remove her from the White House Faith Office.

White denies promising blessings in exchange for donations and promoting the prosperity gospel. A spokesperson for Paula White Ministries told The Christian Post that this characterization of the sermon is “a deceptive smear” and emphasized that “donations to the ministry do not directly benefit Pastor White.” 

However, this is not the first time White has claimed that a financial gift would bring donors “spiritual blessings.” In 2016, White encouraged donations of $1,144 to her ministry for “deliverance from a spiritual death sentence,” taking the contribution number from the story of Lazarus in John 11:38-44.

Why don’t Christians celebrate Passover?

Passover commemorates the deliverance of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. Before God sent an angel to strike down the Egyptian firstborn, he instructed the Israelites to put the blood of a lamb over their doorposts and eat the lamb with unleavened bread and bitter herbs (Exodus 12:7-8). When the Lord struck down Egypt’s firstborn, he spared the homes with blood on the doorpost. For centuries, Jews celebrated the Passover in commemoration of God’s mercy and deliverance. 

The first Passover foreshadowed Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice on the cross when he “bore our sins in his body . . . that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.” For Christians, Jesus is our “Passover lamb,” whose blood ransoms us from death (1 Corinthians 5:7). 

Most Christians today come from Gentile rather than Jewish backgrounds and do not celebrate Passover. It is, of course, permissible for Christians to do so as a way to remember Christ’s sacrifice. Paul, for example, encourages Jewish Christians to “keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians 5:8).

However, encouraging Christians to celebrate Passover with a financial gift to “unlock seven spiritual blessings” comes dangerously close to prosperity gospel teachings.

What is biblical abundance?

The prosperity gospel holds that God’s will for us is always to be healthy and wealthy while promoting a transactional relationship with God–one in which we worship him and do good works so that he will bless us. Like the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son, we condition our service to God on whether he blesses us, and grow angry and disillusioned when our worship has no material reward (Luke 15:29). 

By contrast, the true gospel teaches us that we worship God for who he is, not for any blessings he may choose to give us. Job, after losing all of his wealth and his children, “fell on the ground and worshiped,” saying, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:20-21). 

Whether God blesses us materially or not, he has already done “abundantly more than all we could ask or imagine” by sending his only Son to die in our place so that we might be reconciled to him forever (Ephesians 3:20).

So why do you worship God? How can you honor him for who he is, rather than what he can do for you?

If you’re a Christian, then you probably know the answers you are supposed to give to those questions. But God cares far more about whether we are actually motivated by those correct answers than he does about our knowledge of them. 

So how closely do your answers mirror your actions? Is there a bit of the prosperity gospel that’s worked its way into your thoughts and expectations of the Lord?

If so, today is a great day to let him remind you of what it truly means to experience his abundance.