False Prophets on the Mountain
Church in the 1970s and 80s was a staple in the Black community. My grandmother lived on Comstock Street in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and nearly every house on that block was a two-parent home. Almost every family went to church. My grandmother attended First Baptist Church in Somerset, and that was her foundation.
““Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.””
But my mother’s generation was different. They did not go. They seemed to develop a disdain for church, perhaps because of the control they associated with Christianity. Anything that forces you to sacrifice something can feel like control, whether it is belief in God, the lure of getting high and partying, or the illusion of being grown and independent. Their parents forced them into church, and they rebelled.
By the 1970s, church itself had changed. It began to look more like business. Success was measured by who could preach the most stirring sermon, who could pray the loudest prayer, or who could raise the most money. Black churches began to mirror white churches, and tithes and collections became central. As our community grew more educated and more prosperous, pastors learned to exploit our emotions.
This idea that Black people were finally free created a kind of rebellion. Many in my mother’s generation chose sex, drugs, and a false sense of freedom over church. I remember one particular birthday party at my grandmother’s house. My grandmother’s home was always the family gathering place for holidays, weekends, and every summer day. But on that night, things ended in chaos. A lemon meringue cake went flying across the room during a fight. It was my aunt’s sixteenth birthday. I can still see her, standing near the radiator, blowing out candles while holding a can of Budweiser, a gift for turning sixteen. That moment said everything about where my family was headed.
My aunt went on to live a hard life of drugs, alcohol, prostitution, and brokenness. And she was not alone. Nearly all of her siblings struggled with addiction, abuse, and poverty. Many of them died from drugs. That whole generation had turned away from church, and devastation followed. Drugs infiltrated our communities, creating what the world later called crack addicts, alcoholics, and junkies.
My father’s side was not much different. His mother had thirteen children, one of whom was among the first AIDS cases in New Brunswick. My father himself was an addict, though I do not know if he would ever admit it. He had a dysfunctional relationship with alcohol. Though he eventually recovered, he was never really present in our lives. For years, he lived under a bridge. Even after getting clean, he disappeared and never looked back for his daughters. I never held it against him, because I always understood his struggle was not just personal. It was tied to systems that oppressed so many Black communities.
The single common denominator with most of my family was this: none of them were saved. Church was not a consistent part of their lives. My mother did send us to church on Easter, though. She would buy us new outfits every year and send us off, even if she stayed home.
Not all families were like mine. For many, church remained central to Black life, even in the midst of drugs, addiction, and public housing. But when the crack epidemic came, it devastated communities, taking lives and filling prisons with young Black men. For many, church became an afterthought.
When I turned sixteen or seventeen, something in me wanted to go to church. Faith became my anchor. I did not always stay the course, but somehow God kept pulling me back. I remember one turning point clearly. I was a single parent, broke and struggling, working a temporary job when a friend invited me to a prayer service. As people prayed, I began to weep. An older woman came up to me and said, “God told me to tell you, He’s sick of you.” Those words shook me, because that was my own private language. Whenever I sinned, I would think to myself, God is going to get sick of me. She could not have known that. But God did. And in that moment, I knew He was speaking directly to me. It changed my life forever.
Glancing Back at the 70s
When I look back at the 70s and 80s, I see how the church was already losing its hold on people my mother’s age. They turned away, but part of what fueled that turning was the way books and television were shaping new narratives. Art and media told us that the church was not the answer but the problem.
James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain was one of those works. It captured the hypocrisy of Christians, especially through the figure of Gabriel, and showed the church as a place of judgment and oppression. Baldwin’s brilliance was in telling the truth about how painful church life could be, but the danger was that his story aligned with the idea that Christianity itself was corrupt. Faith was portrayed as a mask for human weakness, not the cure for it.
Compare that with Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoevsky also wrote about greed, corruption, and hypocrisy in the church. But he never abandoned God. He showed that all men are flawed and in need of redemption, but his answer was not to walk away from faith. His answer was that belief in God is the only solution to mankind’s flaws.
I love Baldwin’s books, but there is always something judgmental in the way he writes about God. It is as if his own struggle with sexual identity bled onto the page, and often his words disparaged the church. That struggle was not his alone. It reflected the spirit of the time, the zeitgeist of the Black community. The struggles of this world were so overwhelming that many turned away from the church. They saw churches that wanted their talents, their service, their compliance. So they turned to the world instead, without realizing the world demanded something greater in return: their soul. Many gave it away freely.
Even Baldwin’s John embodies this tension. His confusion, questions, and ambiguous “conversion” mirror the author’s own wrestling with God, faith, and identity.
The Church Today
Today, many American Blacks have returned to the four walls of the church. We have overcome in many ways, and though we still struggle, church is always there. Unfortunately, what we find now is a different problem. Too many pastors teach lies. The prayer warriors that once stood at the altar are missing.
We have a large population of successful African Americans in this country, yet we are also among the most exploited. Too many pastors promise blessings if we give, prosperity if we tithe, breakthrough if we believe hard enough. It reminds me of Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor and how easily people can be manipulated if you dangle the hope of salvation before them. It also reminds me of Job, when he lost everything and his friends assumed he must be the problem. Is that not what society teaches us now? Either you are prospering, or you are the problem.
There is still a remnant. I believe that to be true. But too many pastors with large congregations are like feigns.
False Prophets
I listened recently to a sermon by T.D. Jakes. His message has always been about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps while reminding people of their responsibility to give to the church. Today, his preaching feels weaker, almost like a snake slithering slowly. After preaching about the ram in the bush, not as a foreshadowing of Christ but as a personal promise that God has a “ram” for each of us, he asked for $220, tied to Genesis 20. He justified it by saying most people spend more than that on fake hair. It was a sad moment.
This is not about T.D. Jakes. I pray for him. I pray he wakes up to repentance. This is about Jamal Bryant.
After listening to Jamal Bryant, I had a visceral reaction, almost a sick feeling. That Sunday he preached from Exodus, the story of God delivering the Israelites out of Egypt. That passage reveals God’s majesty. It is about His power to free His people from slavery, to open the Red Sea, and to lead them safely across on dry ground. It points to salvation, to baptism, to God’s faithfulness through history.
But Jamal Bryant did not speak about any of that. As he stood on his large stage, the backdrop behind him was a giant dollar bill. Instead of focusing on God’s deliverance, he twisted the story into a message about money. His words were: “God had to divide the debt so Israel could come across.” He was not talking about the sea at all. He turned it into a metaphor about financial debt.
To take one of the most powerful demonstrations of God’s hand in history and reduce it to a shallow prosperity metaphor was not only empty. It was idolatrous. The dollar bill looming behind him said it all.
After that sermon, I turned to Philip Anthony Mitchell of 2819 Church. That Sunday he preached from Matthew 28 about Jesus Christ, His return, the coming war when He establishes His kingdom on earth, and the hope of the church to be resurrected. He spoke about Jesus. And that alone made all the difference.
I have also been listening to podcasts like Trackstarz, where one episode discussed 2819 Church. They shared how a false prophet once walked in accusing the congregation of idolatry. And yes, idolatry can happen anywhere, even in a church where sound doctrine is preached. People can idolize a pastor, and that is a danger. But what struck me is that Philip Anthony Mitchell is clearly preaching Christ. Christ crucified. Christ resurrected. Christ returning. His message is consistent: evangelism, discipleship, Jesus at the center.
And it made me ask: what is the alternative? In Atlanta, you can put Jamal Bryant next to Philip Anthony Mitchell. One preaches heresy. The other preaches the Word. The difference is undeniable.
This tension reminded me again of The Brothers Karamazov and the “Grand Inquisitor” parable. Written in 1879, it describes how the church can become an institution that robs people of true faith, offering false hope while exploiting their trust. And here we are in 2025, watching the same thing play out. Jamal Bryant uses God’s Word as a hook, but he feeds people empty promises.
If you do not own a home, how thrilling it must sound when he declares that if you tithe faithfully, God will give you a house. People’s hearts leap. Their ears tingle. But what they are being fed is a lie. And this is not an isolated slip. It is a pattern:
He cheated on his wife, fathered a child during the affair, and still leads from the pulpit.
He has publicly supported abortion, even calling it “good for Black women,” while holding a baby dedication on the same day.
He once claimed Jesus Christ was “out of order” 85% of the time, reducing our Lord to nothing more than a flawed man.
He openly affirms LGBTQ lifestyles, twisting Scripture to justify it, while dismissing biblical convictions as merely “self-righteous.”
This is hypocrisy. And it is dangerous. Because when a pastor preaches lies from the pulpit, he does not just corrupt the message. He corrupts the faith of those who follow him.
This is what I mean by a pastor turning himself into the god and money into the redeemer. The stage becomes a brand. The sermon becomes a slogan. The people become customers. And the backdrop tells you what you are really supposed to worship: a dollar bill. Not the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Not the Lord who parts seas and brings His people out of bondage. A dollar.
Place that beside Philip Anthony Mitchell preaching Christ from Matthew 28, calling people to repentance, evangelism, and the hope of the resurrection. One points you to Jesus. The other points you to your wallet. The first feeds faith. The second feeds appetite.
This is how churches keep the machine running. Tithes from the hopeful. Programs funded by the state. Groceries in a bag to keep bodies in seats. Then another Sunday sermon about breakthrough if you give, overflow if you sow, and increase if you believe hard enough. None of that is the Gospel. The Gospel is Christ crucified, buried, and raised. The Gospel is deliverance from sin, not a down payment on a house.
Final Word
The Black church was once the bedrock of our families, the place our grandparents turned for strength and stability. But somewhere along the way, we let wolves climb into the pulpit. They preach money, politics, and empty promises while souls go hungry for the Word of God.
We cannot keep pretending that these men are shepherds when they are nothing but hirelings. Jamal Bryant is not the exception. He is the example. He is what happens when we trade holiness for hype, truth for applause, Christ for cash.
If we continue to follow false prophets, then we will have no one to blame but ourselves when the next generation grows up rootless and lost. The time for compromise is over. The time for discernment is now.
But there is still hope. There is still a remnant. There are still pastors lifting up Christ, still churches teaching the Word, still saints on their knees praying for revival. And there is still the Gospel. It has never changed.
Jesus Christ is not a marketing plan. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is our deliverer, our redeemer, our only hope. My prayer is that we stop chasing personalities and turn back to Him.
