Is This REALLY America's Pastor

Yesterday I picked up a magazine named Conde Nast Portfolio, which is a business intelligence magazine that is geared toward those who work in Corporate America, on the cover of their August 2008 issue, there was a headline entitled, God Wants You To Be Rich (Especially Now). This article is about Joel Osteen, the man who pastors a Mega-Church of over 45,000 members in Houston, Texas called the Lakewood Church. The author states that Osteen preaches the virtues of prosperity for himself as well as for his congregation, and that this article is a look at the man who may well be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the slumping economy.

Osteen, who is often called "Reverend Feelgood", is one of the new breed of televangelists like T.D. Jakes, Joyce Meyer and Creflo Dollar, who are considered rising stars, and are preaching a less sanctimonious , more inclusive message. This message has produced full pews and even fuller offerings in an economy where wallets are empty and hope is wandering. Osteen has perfected this feel-good preaching where he "encourages" his members to focus on the positives that it is the will of God for all believers to have a good job, a beautiful home and a prosperous cash flow. He states that it is God's will for them to live in prosperity, it is God's will that you will never be in debt, it is God's will that you will live a healthy life and never be sick, and if you are living in poverty, then you are not walking in the will of God.

What this so-called preacher has shown is that he does not have one iota of an understanding of the hermeneutics of scripture, and what he has done is create 45,000 ignorant people as well as millions more of our members who tune in every day to watch him misquote the Word and cause us to undue what it took us years to teach that he destroyed in one sitting in front of the television. If it's God's will for everybody to be rich, then why did Solomon write in Proverb 29:7 when talking about the rich, those of them who are just have a care for the rights of the poor, and those who are wicked have no such concern. If it's God's will for all believers to be rich, then why did the Lord say that the rich who are righteous must care for those righteous that are poor. Jesus himself said in Luke 4:18, that the Spirit of the Lord is upon because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set a liberty them that are bruised. That sure looks like Jesus said he came for those that were poor and sick. Paul says in II. Timothy 4:3-4, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned into fables.

The author asked Rick Warren, the Pastor of Saddleback Church of Lake Forest, CA, who wrote the Purpose Driven Church, a church that possesses over 20,000 members, about this prosperity thought and his response was that the idea that God wants everybody to be prosperous a bunch of baloney. My wife Penny said, when I discuss this with her tonight, something so major that I had to share it and I almost took credit for it, she said that God allows people like Joel Osteen to stay around so that we will know that the Word of God is true. WOW!

It is up to us to preach and teach our members who watch this crap that everything that happens in our lives is either a part of God's Divine Will or his Permissive Will. Let's stay in the Word of God and raise up a generation of true, intelligent believers who will recognize the difference between the Truth and a Lie. God be praised!!!