In the first youtube link below, Steve Lawson exposes the wishy-washy, friend-of-the-world, “theology” of Osteen.
But the bottom line is this, which no one seems to be able to articulate when some liberal tries to paint him in the corner by asking him pointed questions about the Christian faith in terms of “other gods” and those who believe in them:
Here is the answer—
LOOK. I didn’t write the Bible. I am not God. I am a created being and it is my job to BELIEVE and OBEY what God has said. I DO NOT “apologize” for what God decreed. He is Sovereign and it is HIS universe. If you believe there is no god and everything just “happened” and “evolved” then you will lose. Evolution is an anti-intellectual position; it is not science: it is the religion of Big-Bango that must be accepted by faith. It is 100% nonempirical* science-fiction pagan religion.
[* Not that Empiricism is the determiner of reality / truth; my statement is to show the hypocrisy of those who bow to the Scientific Method, in that, they base their entire theory on the origin of life (and “morality”), hypocritically, upon NOTHING but conjecture, opinion, fancy, imagination—faith in what they want to believe, with no authority to substantiate it.]
True religion, the Eternal Decrees of the one true God is not warm and fuzzy. It is not supposed to be. Submit to God and confess Christ OR SUFFER. Most “Christians” (who are not actually Christians) don’t even understand the concept of GOD. God means, “Lord, Sovereign, Emperor, Ruler, Boss, Master etc.). The relationship and obligation of man is to submit and obey! Take your chances with your soul and eternity if you are fool. You don’t get any “do overs” or “extra lives” like in a video game; you don’t get a second chance. You can’t file for spiritual bankruptcy when your debts are called due and then walk irresponsibly free. Eternal Judgment is NOT something that you will be able to “bear” (but you will have no choice; anyone with a painful injury or disease can begin to understand—but things will never get better!). The notion that Hell is something that a person will simply “tough it out” during (they don’t understand the concept of Eternity, either) is the profound delusion of someone who does not know how to think or weigh the odds. Imagine being in a car crash, all the gas leaking on you, and the car catching on fire. Do you think that you could “bear” that for eternity? Your refusal to believe Hell exists, and your toddler anti-intellectual arguments against the existence of Hell will be meaningless once you find yourself in it with no exit. Your thinking that your sinful mind can rationalize that a Holy God (whom you don’t know or understand) would be “wrong” if He created such a place would be laughable were it not so tragic—and your ignorant opinion does not change reality.
If you are right and there is no God, or He is just a warm happy hug for everyone, what is the “down side” to believing the true Reformed Christian Faith? However, if it turns out that the true Reformed Christian Faith is reality what is the downside of your being damned for eternity in the burning Lake of Fire known as Hell? Your thinking, like a 5-year old, that it is “not fair” will not change reality. Your thinking that you know* the truth and reality better than the CREATOR of the universe Himself does, would be laughable, were it not so sad and tragic. Likewise, the notion that the God, Who created the universe (macro and micro) by mere thought and word, is supposed to conform Himself to your confused mind, is ludicrous. God is not like a circus contortionist who tries to squeeze himself into a tiny suitcase. Your notion that God should conform to your mind (and what advanced degrees do you have? and even if you have any, did the univeristy “vote” on what the “truth” would be before it attempted to teach it to you and then award you a piece of paper that says you are an “expert” in what the university claims is “truth”...?) is about as rational as thinking that you could fit all the waters of earth’s oceans into a thimble. Go ahead and try. Then contemplate your position again that the God Whom the entire universe cannot even contain is supposed to fit into your tiny, cramped mind and restructure His universe according to your confused notions and the way that you think reality should be.
[* It would similarly be recognized as ludicrous, for a 5-year old, an 18 month year-old infant, a neonate, or a fetus yet in vivo, to believe: 1. that he knows better than his father; 2. that his father’s rules are wrong, meaningless, selfish, unimportant, unfair, untrue, etc.; and 3. that he is independent of his father in his origin, his present state, and his entire future, that he somehow “evolved of his own free will and ability” and is his own moral “free agent” in life, accountable to no one but himself and that he needs no one for anything and that he understands all important matters of life. Thankfully, the curse of sin in regard to pride and ignorance has not yet worked its magic on the fetus, neonate, and 18-month old, to cause him to think such foolishness. However, by the time that an individual begins to be schooled by godless humanists, his mind is fully tainted and his conscience nearly cauterized to the point of useless dead tissue. Man’s mind is so saturated with hauteur that he thinks he understands a universe of information that he cannot understand. Science and history, like politics, is not only susceptible to corruption, in the modern age, it is nearly completely corrupted and manipulated to the point of outright fiction glued together with a few pieces of truth and given a veneer of authenticity, by which the masses are completely fooled, even as most would be deceived by fool’s gold or cubic zirconia. When a person not only embraces his delusion, like a greedy person clutching a fistful of dollars (thinking that it is a veritable “fortune”), how can he then receive the $1,000,000 that a benevolent person desires to bestow upon him (especially if he irrationally thinks that the $1,000,000 must be “counterfeit”)...? When a person embraces his prison bars imagining the bondage to be “freedom”, how can he be set free?]
UNDERSTAND. TRUE RELIGION... THEOLOGY... (which is the “study” of GOD and what God decreed—according to HIS OWN SELF-DECLARATIONS IN HIS WORD, NOT the esoteric, mystical “ideas”, “notions”, “feelings” or alleged “visions” that any human may think he has, or any declaration of a church denominational congress or secular legislature or Fortune 500 corporation)... THEOLOGY is NOT ABOUT MAN any more than ZOOLOGY is about ROCKS. THEOLOGY IS ABOUT GOD. Theology is God’s self-revelations and His Will / Determination for man to which man’s only valid reaction is to submit.
The purpose of true religion is NOT to make man “feel good”; though indeed, if man is truly converted by repenting of his sins (which first entails knowing what God declared sin to be—which never changes—and truly STOPPING doing what God forbade and beginning doing what He commanded, without which there is no “repentance”*) then indeed, man certainly WILL feel good by being forgiven and blessed and not bearing the weight of Eternal Judgment. However, that “feel goodism” is a by-product, a “fringe benefit” of true religion—not the purpose.
[* Understand: Works (obedience to God’s Law) play NO role in salvation itself. Works (obedience to God’s Law) do NOT contribute at all to salvation. They are the BY-PRODUCT of salvation. If you are born and lay there on the table and never move... you are dead. If you began to move, that would not have contributed to your birth—and it certainly would not have contributed to your conception. So it is spiritually. We are dead in sin. God by His Spirit brings us to new life (regeneration) and the NATURAL result of that is our crying out in repentance, asking forgiveness and TURNING from sin, obeying God, walking in the morality that He established, walking in His Footsteps, carrying on the Father’s Trade, being about the Father’s Business, honoring the Father, loving what the Father loves and hating what the Father hates. That is true life. That is true family. You obeying your earthly father does not make you his son, it did not cause you to be born or conceived. However, your obeying your earthly father establishes you as an honorable son who will inherit of your father. So it is spiritually. Also, spiritual is NOT merely some “figurative” or “symbolic” notion or “nice idea” or “inspirational” way of looking at something. That which is true spiritual is as REAL as the physical is. The Spiritual, actually, is the REAL life and the physical is a mere temporal distraction and “test” until true life begins in the next life. Another word for spiritual might be metaphysical, but that too is a tainted word due to what it means in many different areas, to different people (encompassing the “paranormal”, occult, etc., which is not the spiritual to which I refer; these other things are actually counterfeit, dark / evil spiritual phenomena or illusion of such). Regardless, God commanded, “walk in the [Holy] Spirit [that is, going in the direction that He is going, at His Pace, walking WITH Him] and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh [the violation of all God commanded]” (Galatians 5:16). “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works [obedience to all that He commanded], which God hath before ordained [predestined, determined by God] that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10) For more-detailed information, see my books: Ten Commandments For Youth —For Everyone! For Youth and Young-minded Adults - An Explanation of the Ten Commandments and A Memory System using Bible Numerics; c.440pp., 6.25 x 9.25, pb., 25.00 + P&H; What’s Keeping God from Delivering America, Britain and Europe from Destruction...?, 112pp., pb., 10.50 + P&H and So, You Call Yourself A Christian..., 76pp., 5 50 + P&H.]
The purpose of true religion is for man to submit to and glorify God—through obedience. There is no “love” or “worship” without obedience; without obedience such are a fraud—an insult.
SINFUL, CORRUPT, FALLEN, DELUDED, PERVERSE man thinks religion is about man and that God is supposed to conform to man’s notions—that God is supposed to become a HUMANIST! GOD DOES NOT WORSHIP MAN.
Believe Third World religions if you want—and STAY IN THE THIRD WORLD OR MOVE BACK. Other religions ARE NOT COMPATIBLE with true religion and if any “Christian” thinks that we should tolerate, give equality to, or get alone with other religions HE IS NOT A CHRISTIAN. Such a person is A HUMANIST who entertains the man-pleasing delusion that reality is what each person wants it to be—and that results in what Indians call HINDUISM... there being a BILLION or TEN BILLION different gods based upon how each person “imagines” “their” (personal, tailor-imagined) god to be. Man does not create God. If he think that he does, it certainly is not the true God, but a delusion, a psychosis. GOD is not a genie that is conjured up by humans, and forced to submit to man.
Stand on the train tracks, if you wish, and believe that the billion ton freight train barreling toward you is simply a bag of warm, fluffy cotton candy. Jump off a 40-story building, if you wish, and entertain the idea that as you fall gravity will become inversely proportional by the time that you reach ground zero and that instead of impacting at terminal velocity, it will be merely like stepping out of the express elevator. I won’t even wish you “Good Luck”, because 1. that would be a violation of II John 1:10,11; 2. “luck” (a.k.a. “fortune”) is a Chinese god (a little less rational than the Hindu dharma or the notion of fate) and which is “uncertain”, “open ended” and subject and relative to change; and 3. it would be senseless and I will not enter your delusion with you even in an impotent well wish. Reality is not determined by what deluded minds want reality to be—not in this life, or the next.
Osteen may “seem” like he is attempting to hold to a Biblical foundation by not being definitive in saying that a person needs to believe in Christ Jesus and confess his sins and ask for salvation or he will not go to Heaven
[the “d”-word, DAMNED seems to be a word he simply cannot articulate and spit out, and like all prosperity “preachers” (con men, motivational speakers, snake-oil peddlers, sheisters, etc.)—nothing “negative” can ever be expressed; it can only be alluded to by couching the negativity in inverse positivism. Thus, it is not a matter of being damned and going to Hell; such words are never to be spoken or written. It is merely an issue of “not getting to Heaven”. The difference is not an issue of being exiled to Siberia, but merely “missing the bus” for a nice vacation in Paradise.]
...but he is not being firm in holding to the true faith... he is being firm to the viewers of his audience / “congregation” who donate to his “church” and flock after him and make him feel important and influential, as well as enable him to be fabulously wealthy. He does not want to offend the (wallets of) outright humanists and pagans in his audience, and he does not want to offend (the wallets of) the nominal “Christians” in his audience who would object to his articulation that there might be some other way to Heaven other than through Christ Jesus alone. However, they are either not true Christians or they are not committed Christians, otherwise, they would not be in his church... they may think that they believe in Christ, but the majority of their “religion” is “feel good” anti-intellectual emotionalism, humanism, panentheism, paganism—again, which is why they are in Osteen’s “church”. Those “Christians” who are “nondoctrinal” are not Christians—for Christianity is doctrine. One cannot believe in Jesus if he believes in things that Jesus did not teach and if he does not believe in things that Jesus did teach; or if he believes in a distorted, perverted, modernist interpretation of bits and pieces of what Jesus taught, restructured (like a ransom / kidnap letter, with letters cut out of various newspapers and magazines and pasted to read what the criminal wants). Jesus did not contradict a single thing that God declared in the Old Testament. Truth never changes. Morality never changes. Those who believe in a “good feeling” and indefinable “love” and “tolerance” are not of God, are not Christians, are friends of the world, and actually enemies of God. Even as a rose called by any other name still smells as sweet, so also, a counterfeit called by the authentic name does not legitimize it or change its nature.
Osteen would make a “good” (that is, successful, corrupt) politician: a con-man “diplomat” whose first goal seems to be self-enrichment, and whose second goal seems to be to please all the people all the time (for the purpose of achieving the first goal), which requires saying very little to which he can ever be tied down that might offend someone. And thus, he goes to great lengths to avoid saying anything definitive, and uses many words (though as few as possible, when being cornered) to say relatively nothing (just like Hillary). However, when trying to write a sermon or write a book hoping to sell millions of copies, he will use just enough impotent, generalized, over-hashed “one liners” (even if dressed a little differently) to give his ignorant, ignorant, emotional listeners / readers the delusion of a feel-good experience in which they actually believe that he said something worth applauding.
—and people donate to him millions and millions of dollars for him to lead them to safety and to spiritual truth... when all he can say (like Hillary), when asked questions, about what, as a “professional” he is supposed to know, is...
“I don’t know... I just don’t know...”
Sign me up for that...! Put me down for $10,000...!
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Steve Lawson, short youtube
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rfZ2CaOiZfY
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Dr. John MacArthur exposes a little more of the humanism / panentheism of Osteenheimer, short youtube