Teach and urge these things. If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. - 1Timothy 6: 2-7 (ESV)

The truth is always more interesting than fiction. Christianity is nearly overrun in these last days with false teachers and prophets. People who claim the mantle of Christ but do not preach His true Gospel. The most dangerous are people like Joseph Prince, whose preaching sounds so right but has a thread of leaven running through it that will consign people to eternal hell. The one who has done the most damage to Christianity is Rick Warren. Not because of his clear ecumenicalism but rather because of his work with pastors; teaching them to build purpose driven, seeker friendly, pastor as a CEO model churches. The result is the unsaved become the churched but are still unsaved. They exchange the darkness they were walking in for faux light but are assured they are in the family of God until the fateful day they stand before Christ to discover He never knew them. Then we have the poster child for word-faith prosperity doctrine, Joel Osteen. Yet according to Pastor Joel...he is not a prosperity preacher. Yes indeed, the truth is always more interesting than fiction.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/02/joel-osteen-prosperity-gospel_n_5433266.html

The above link is to a recent interview conducted by Huffington Post Live with Osteen as he is promoting his Nights of Hope across America. In it Osteen answers the question of whether he is a prosperity preacher by saying no. The defense he offers is that he does not preach about money all the time. The reality is that under that strict parsing of terms, he is not strictly a prosperity preacher; I agree. He is not let's say like Mike Murdoch who unashamedly and consistently tries to get you to send him money. Osteen is also not of the ilk that clubs people over the head with tithing, let's say like Robert Morris. I have always stated that one of the positives about Osteen is he does not make a public push for donations on television and does not take a salary from his church. Also to his credit there has never been a whiff of financial impropriety. These are all positive things that Joel Osteen should get credit for. To claim however that he does not preach financial blessings seems to indicate that he has not read his own books:

"It's God's will for you to live in prosperity instead of poverty. It's God's will for you to pay your bills and not be in debt. It's God's will for you to live in health and not in sickness all the days of your life." - Excerpt from "Live Your Best Life Now"

In fact if you tend to watch Joel Osteen it is clear that he deals in prosperity. But his heresy is multifaceted, so I understand where some can be easily confused. Besides preaching a typical prosperity - God - quid pro quo gospel, he is also deeply into the word faith teachings. Osteen routinely preaches about the power our words have to create reality. On TBN he was quoted as follows:

"you should declare good things. Just look in the mirror and say 'I am strong, I am healthy, I'm rising to new levels, I'm excited about my future.' When you say that, it may not be true. You may not be very healthy today, or maybe you don't have a lot of things to look forward to, but the Scripture tells us in Romans we have to call the things that are not as if they already were."

Hmm...let's take a look at the actual Scripture shall we?

That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring--not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, "I have made you the father of many nations"--in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. - Romans 4: 16-17 (ESV)

Who has the power to call into existence things that do not exist? God does! Not us. This slipshod handling of the Bible is a hallmark of Osteen theology. He is quoted as saying that he routinely does not introduce Scripture into his "sermons" until the end and he won't apologize for it. Despite the fact that disqualifies him as a preacher of God's Word, it might be best because he consistently shows he does not understand God's Word. I heard him once preach on our need to expand our imaginations and he quoted a verse from the story of the Tower of Babel! As if it was a positive thing that God had to scatter everyone and confound their languages! You see this a lot with seeker friendly, purpose driven churches. They are not in the business of preaching the Gospel. Instead, they want to put together a feel good message and they strip mine the Bible to find a verse that vaguely supports what their pre conceived message is.

Besides word faith, prosperity and Biblical illiteracy; Osteen preaches a false gospel. When interviewed by Oprah, the queen of new age mysticism, Pastor Joel said that the do's and don't of doctrine were not his "gifting." Think about the absurdity of that statement for a moment. Doctrine, which is one of the two things Paul warned Timothy to guard closely as a pastor because the very salvation of his listeners depended upon it, is not the gifting of someone who fancies himself a Christian preacher. That is like a firefighter saying that putting out fires is not really his thing. Joel Osteen's false gospel is devoid of sin and repentance - the very elements needed to be understood for salvation. Here is another Osteen quote:

"Listen; don't dangle people over the fires of hell. Lisa and I always kid about you know we're going to dangle them over the fires of hell. Listen, that doesn't draw people to God. They know what kind of life they live. They know how bad they've lived. What you've got to do is talk about the goodness of God. Listen, it's the goodness of God that brings people to repentance. It's the goodness of God. One thing I always appreciated about my dad is that he instilled into us a good vision of who God was. We learned about a good God." [Sermon: What the Resurrection Means to Us As Believers]

Dangle people? Osteen never mentions hell. He barely mentions Christ. The foundations for his sermons are always personal anecdotes. I watched a television sermon once where he never mentioned Jesus at all and then at the end had the typical "invitation" to accept the person he never preached about into your heart. It doesn't work like that.

When you combine his poor handling of God's Word with his false gospel devoid of sin and repentance, you just need to mix in the purpose driven church model to reveal the true damage of a Joel Osteen. There are 45,000 people attending his church weekly and hundreds of thousands more that follow him through media. It was just announced that he now has his own radio station on Sirius XM Radio. What do these people hear? They hear a very positive message. A motivational speech. But they do not hear much about Jesus. They do not hear much Scripture, as Osteen proudly admits. Then at the end they hear this arrogant display of ignorance:

"We never want to close our broadcast without giving you an opportunity to make Jesus the Lord of your life. Would you pray with me? Lord Jesus I repent of my sins. Come into my heart. I make you my Lord and Savior. Amen. If you prayed that simple prayer we believe you got born again.

I guess I can see how someone like Joel Osteen would be so confused because he believes our words hold all the power. But to spend a half hour never discussing Jesus. Never discussing sin. Never discussing repentance. Never discussing why we need a Savior. Never discussing the Lordship of Christ. And then to finish with a ridiculous three sentence prayer to proclaim someone born again - another concept never preached about - is the height of arrogance and stupidity.

The end result of this is stadiums filled with people who are clearly unsaved being told they are. People who will go through life believing they are right with God when they most certainly are not. People who will go every Sunday because Osteen makes them feel better about themselves when he is supposed to make them feel better about God. That is because the other false gospel Osteen preaches is a self help and self centered gospel. Just look at all of his book titles with his smiling face on the cover:

Every Day a Friday

Your Best Life Now (Seven Steps to Living at Your Full Potential)

It's Your Time

I Declare

Becoming a Better You

Break Out!

These books are not about God. They are about you. Christianity however is not about you. It is about Christ. The truth is that we cannot help ourselves; which is why we need a Savior. From a Daystar television sermon:

"Start calling in victory. Start calling in divine health. Start calling in abundance. You can prophesize your future." "If you wanna know where you'll be five years from now listen to what you are saying." "Our words will become a self-fulfilling prophecy." "With our words we can predict our future. We can prophesize our future"

Wow, you almost have all of his heresies on display in one snippet! The notion of calling things in is word faith. He speaks about abundance - a typical prosperity gospel promise. He clearly does not understand the Scriptures because we cannot prophesy our future. And it is all about you.

So yes Pastor Joel. It is unfair to brand you solely as a prosperity preacher. You are so much more than that. You are a word faith heretic who admits to not needing Scripture or Christ when you preach. You preach a false gospel that is sugar coated to the point of being diabetic. It is a motivational, self help Gospel that is seeker friendly to its core and purpose driven in its foundation. The very things you claim to not be your giftings are the very things people need to hear in order to be saved. You use the Bible for your own ends, to accomplish the selling of many books. You insult God by then pretending your speeches had something to do with Him and inviting people to invite Jesus into their hearts when you never even introduced Him to them to begin with.

My plea to Joel Osteen is to stop. You are Tony Robbins with a Bible and I am asking you to put down the Bible. You don't really use it anyway. You are a gifted motivational speaker - stick to that. But stop lying to people. Stop telling them that they only need to say a three sentence prayer that they cannot possibly understand from your preaching, and then declaring them born again. Because Joel, I believe that you do believe in God. One day you will stand before Him and answer for all of the people you are now leading astray. It will not matter at that point how good you made them feel. It will not matter how motivated you made them. It will not matter how much more satisfied a life they led because of you. It will not matter how many of them you got to repeat your little three sentence prayer. It will not matter if they took your seven steps. It will not matter what they declared over their lives. It will not matter if they became a better person, experienced your break out and believe that today is Friday. The only thing that matters Joel is if they are found in Christ and what you did with the Gospel entrusted to you. You will answer for every last one of them. All the goats you gave false hope to and all the sheep you led astray. Stop parsing reality Joel. Put down the Bible. Or pick it up and actually read it! Either way, stop carrying it around like a prop.

The key verses today explain matters for us clearly. These things we are to teach and urge among those who believe themselves to be Christian. That if anyone, no matter how likable and sincere they may appear, teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of Jesus Christ - he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. It is clear that Joel Osteen has an unhealthy craving for teaching that godliness is a means for gain. But beloved, we brought nothing into this world and we take nothing when we leave. Prosperity preacher? No, Joel Osteen is far more dangerous than that.

Reverend Anthony Wade - June 3, 2014