Sunday, February 06, 2005

Some More Thinking On Joel Osteen

Joshua over at Razor's Kiss has done his homework on one of the latest faces of popular evalgelicalism and has his thoughts posted here. Great job, Joshua!

Paul warned his readers over and over to test doctrine and not accept it if "even if we or an angel from heaven" should show up and teach something different. Joel Osteen has a huge church, a far-reaching TV ministry, and a best selling book. To far too many Christians, this equates to doctrinal purity.

Here is a snippit of Joshua's conclusion:

THAT is what is dangerous. If he will not stand for doctrinal meat, if he skips over doctrinal “hard topics", and he fails to teach, and only exhorts on a superficial level - he is failing in his calling. To teach the word of God, you need to rightly divide the Word of Truth. Which, incidentally, means dividing all of it. If he skips the meat, and stays with the milk, he will create a generation of spiritual infants, who teach other spiritual infants. Never will they grow up, and be “equipped” to fight the battle against the “principalities, and powers of this world".

This is a problem. Joel, as I read him, definitely preaches the Bible. Unfortunately - he is too centered on himself, on “the power of thinking", and on “faith healing". Too much concentration on “the power of faith".


Happy reading.

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