Apocalypse and the Deification of Wealth and Power
An unveiling is happening in our culture, and it presents an opportunity for spiritual communities to confront distorted prosperity teachings that sanctified wealth while eroding accountability.
Apocalypse: A Definition
Let’s get a definition out of the way before diving in. Most people hear the word apocalypse and think of an end-of-the-world catastrophe. That is not its classical meaning. The word comes from the Greek apokalypsis, meaning an unveiling or a revealing. It refers to something hidden being brought into the light.
That is what is happening in our culture right now.
Power Protecting Power
The release of court documents and testimony connected to Jeffrey Epstein has exposed documented associations between wealth, influence, and the protection of harmful behavior. What has become disturbingly visible is how power can create protective ecosystems. Networks of influence, reputation, and access can delay or dilute accountability.
Even if the harm had only involved Epstein himself, that would have been too much. But what is being unveiled is not only individual wrongdoing. It is the way accumulated wealth and social power can function as insulation from consequence. No amount of money or influence should negate liability. Systems that allow years of unaccountability are deeply problematic.
Spirituality and Prosperity Teachings
As unsettling as this is, it reveals something larger. It exposes a collective shadow that can also be found in many contemporary spiritual communities.
I speak primarily about the New Thought movement because it is the community where I have invested much of my life. It is the system I know best. There have always been overlaps between New Thought, New Age, and broader “spiritual but not religious” philosophies. Within these spaces, the language of personal responsibility has often been confused with individualism. Spiritual development framed as something that primarily benefits the self rather than activating responsibility toward the collective.
The Original Vision of Prosperity in New Thought
The early New Thought vision was not personal salvation or private enlightenment for its own sake. Individual God-realization and self-actualization were understood as catalysts for social transformation. Many of the early leaders imagined spiritual awakening contributing to systemic economic and social change, not simply personal comfort.
Prosperity was a major theme in early New Thought teaching. Books and curricula were created around the idea that prosperity was an innate right and natural inheritance. Individual prosperity was included in that vision. But the purpose of prosperity was different from much of what is preached today. Over time, the emphasis shifted from prosperity that benefits the collective good to a personalized version that in many ways comforts the ego. It became a strategy for the individual rather than a means of activating broader responsibility within society.
Wealth and Holiness
Many modern prosperity movements that trace their roots to early New Thought, including strands of the Prosperity Gospel and “name it and claim it” traditions influenced by metaphysical Christianity, focus heavily on wealth as a sign of spiritual attainment.
The danger is subtle. When wealth accumulation becomes associated with consciousness, wealth begins to function as a proxy for virtue. What follows is a quiet deification of wealth and those who possess it. Excess for the purposes becomes aspirational.
Yet many early New Thought teachers were explicit about the moral limits of accumulation.
Myrtle Fillmore wrote:
“God is all-intelligence; there is but the one Mind... A full realization of this great truth would do away with all selfishness, the cause of all the misery of earth. We must understand clearly that the real life of all men is identical with our own and that aside from the one life all is illusion; that all seeming differences in people are caused by selfishness or desire for something separate and apart from God, or our fellow men. Hence, all undue accumulations of money or power by individuals are in direct violation of the divine law. Just to the extent that man tries to claim anything as his personal property, so does he wander away from God the Principle of goodness, equity, love, truth, justice, health, and harmony.” – How to Let God Help You
That language is not ambiguous. “Undue accumulations of money or power” are described as violations of divine law.
The Purpose of Prosperity
Modern prosperity teachings often put the cart before the horse. The purpose of abundance becomes unclear. The message shifts from activating responsibility to avoiding responsibility to secure comfort. The goal becomes the right job, houses, cars, spouses, or lovers rather than the freedom to serve.
But the original metaphysical emphasis was not responsibility for the sake of accumulation. It was personal responsibility for the sake of expression. The aim was to actualize divine purpose within the self and allow that purpose to express itself in service to humanity.
In Healing Letters, Myrtle Fillmore wrote:
“The feeling that one is doing something to help in the establishment of the kingdom of heaven in the earth is great compensation for the hours of prayer and the effort to swing clear of the old commercial bondage and ways.”
Notice the phrase “commercial bondage.” Prosperity was not meant to enthrone commerce. It was meant to liberate consciousness from it.
The Parallel We Cannot Ignore
When prosperity is taught as a means of avoiding responsibility rather than activating it, it distorts spiritual life. When wealth functions as insulation from accountability, harm multiplies. These are not identical phenomena, but they share a common root: the belief that accumulation exempts one from obligation.
Emma Curtis Hopkins, often called the “Teacher of Teachers” and described by scholar Gail Harley as the organizational founder of the New Thought movement, taught extensively on prosperity while also warning against egoic possession. Prosperity was never intended to sanctify the consolidate unchecked power.
We are living in a moment of unveiling. Not an end of the world, but an exposure of what our systems reward and protect.
A Question for New Thought and Other Spiritual Communities
The founders of the United States sought freedom from a permanent rulership class. Yet we now face concentrations of wealth and influence that shape public life in profound ways. Some of this persists because we have equated wealth with virtue. We have treated financial success as evidence of moral superiority.
For those of us in spiritual communities, the question is uncomfortable but necessary: What is my core motivation for prosperity? Is it to deepen accountability and expand service? Or is it to secure personal comfort?
In my years within New Thought spaces, I have noticed that hyperindividualistic prosperity messaging often resonates most strongly among those who have already benefited from structural privilege. The most telling comment I ever heard came from a trans Black woman who visited a Unity church in 2019. After the service she said plainly, “Oh, I get it, it’s rich white people church.”
That sentence has stayed with me.
If apocalypse means unveiling, then perhaps this moment is an invitation. Not to abandon prosperity, but to reclaim its original purpose. Prosperity was never meant to free us from responsibility. It was meant to free us for it.
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You may also be interested in these reflections:
Much wisdom in here James. I think it is important to clarify the true meaning/goal of New Thought prosperity teaching.