Joel Osteen
Posted On Wednesday, 28 November 2007 at at 10:26:00 am by LisaAnyone who has speant any length of time with me in the last few months knows of my personal despisement of the preaching of Joel Osteen . However in the conversations I have had with many people lately I have been shocked by the number of Christians who don't know who he is but also bt the number of non christians who do.
Which leads me to the fact that as a Christian you really have to know what this guy is preaching. Please watch this clip. It is most enlightening.
If you do not have broadband please see the article over at Internet Monk.
Osteen is in a whole category of his own and you have to see it to believe it
So for the record, that "verse" he "quoted" was allegedly Ephesians 1:4, and went like this:
Long before God laid down earth's foundation He had us on his mind. Because of the sacrifice Christ made we are free people and not just barely free but abundantly free.
This appears to be bits of Ephesians 1 selected from The Message. This bit is from somewhere in verses 3--6:
Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind
and this bit is from the beginning of the block that's marked as verses 7--10:
Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we're a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free!
Note the explanatory bit that says "free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds". It doesn't say "free from mediocrity" or anything like it.
No-one who lives their life for God is a mediocre person, but they may have mediocre finances while they're on this planet. The lives we see people living now are just the start of the immortal existence that God wants them to enjoy.
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