I'm just going to post a short post. (Is this even possible for me? LOL) Hopefully, Ariel, I will get back to your request as to what is wrong with Osteen later. I have a real life, (just saying!) and yesterday was a bad one. I was a 9/10 pain, not just RA, but fibromyalgia out of control, and back and neck issues that seemed unfixable. (Thanks for those who prayed for me, the pain eased at night, and without medications, God is good!)
My concern with Osteen is twofold.
1. He is a pastor, he has a huge and growing following. A pastor is required by God to preach the Bible correctly! Osteen and others do not!
2. He preaches a false gospel that appeals to the flesh. He refused to preach the gospel on Larry King. He is more interested in making friends and influencing people (Dale Carnegie!) than actually bringing people to a saving relationship with Christ.
When I was in seminary, I met people who had been totally fleeced by Prosperity Preachers. One woman said they gave $50,000 "seed money" and were told they would get $500,000 back. Of course, they got nothing, lost all their retirement savings. She and her husband didn't walk away from God, but they decided they needed to study the Bible, in context, to find out what it really said. But worse, she said, were the huge numbers of people who gave their life savings, got nothing and walked away from God forever. Were they saved in the first place, or just in it for the money? Not my call.
BUT, when people walk away from God, because a false gospel which twists Scripture, with bad hermeneutics and exegetics destroys people's faith and shames the name of Jesus Christ, then no, we do not wait for the Holy Spirit to move on those heretical teachers to show them the truth of the gospel.
Why do we not wait for the Holy Spirit to move on false teachers?? Because these people do not listen to the Holy Spirit! They listen to their own lusts and desires. (Lust is about wanting things! Not just about sexual lust! Could be lust for food, for money, or lust for evil!)
"All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved." Eph. 2:3-5
So these preachers have not walked away from their former life, and they cater to the flesh Those who follow them, are they most interested in catering to the flesh, the craving for money and power, or just being people happy? The point is, God does use people to call people, to Christ, who preach the Word of God, which is the gospel. Without the Holy Spirit, no one would come to Christ. But what about those who claim to belong to Christ, and yet fleece the flock instead with a false gospel?
"Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron." 1 Tim. 4:2
Out of context? Perhaps! Paul was addressing Judiazers and/or ascetics. That was the heresy making the rounds in Ephesus, and Paul addressed it clearly, for Timothy. But, I think it addresses the hardening of the heart that occurs when any teacher goes off the track Biblically, and leads a LARGE congregation into that lie!
If Joel Osteen was shut up in his church, with a few diehard elders and supporters who were not going to listen to anything anyone shows them in the Bible, I would leave this thread immediately!
But he doesn't do that! His ministry spreads, his bad influence continues. People are deceived, they lose their money and walk away from God. Somehow this makes them "happy" as some people have suggested, because JO is so "positive!"??
He is leading the sheep astray, and using social media and any method he can to do that. This is not about some small isolated church in the backwoods of Texas. This is about, preaching a gospel to the whole world that is false!
And he is not the only false teacher doing this. Back in the 1980's a friend got into Kenneth Hagin, and then Kenneth Copeland. She gave me all their books to read. I talked about this with a Catholic friend, who became totally apostate (she had been baptized and committed her life to Christ in my Pentecostal Church!) SHE warned me against these teachers! Does this mean the Word Faith teachers are correct? No, it means even a Catholic could see through the lies!
Then the long story about my RA, the woman and another men condemning me for not being healed. When my woman friend died, I felt sort of justified. But I realize now, she never cared for the Prosperity Gospel. She was already rich, and never used a penny of her own money to spread the gospel I imagine she didn't give that much to the cause, either. She told me God wanted her to go to Malaysia and preach the gospel, and would I support her? I didn't reply, because we were poor, and I knew how much money, investments, homes, etc, she had. To say nothing of bankrupting her husband when she divorced him. And he was also rich! So, after she asked me to contribute to her bringing them Health and Wealth gospel to this foreign country, she died, about 4 or 5 months later. She kept telling me God had healed her, and she was going because God said she was! Am I bitter? No, it was a big lesson on how these evil doctrine enslaved her and killed her.
So the health side of the Health and Wealth gospel kills people, the Wealth side steals their money, leaving them lost and broken!
What did someone say that was good about any of these preachers? Oh, right, it makes people happy! Sigh!
PS, God has blessed my husband totally in our retirement years, and we have not received an inheritance or anything. One day, we were poor, we kept following God with all our hearts, and I went to seminary, which cost a lot of monehy, no lie! My husband went to retire from his job, and there was all this money. Never, did we ask for money, we just kept being faithful, giving to our local church, and to the poor locally and world wide, and suddenly, we were comfortable. What more could anyone ask?
Post on Osteen, or maybe the whole Prosperity part of this evil fake "gospel" that enslaves people and drives them away from God? Hmm, I will consider that!
But right now, again, I do have a life, and just wasted another hour when I could have been doing things in my life, all to rehash the same garbage, which the same individuals keep posting! And yes, Ariel, I am a teacher, and God has called me to refute these lies which amount to little more than propaganda for a heresy!
