As we discussed earlier this week, Pastor Joel Osteen was widely criticized online and around the country for failing to open his church doors to Hurricane Harvey victims. Osteen eventually opened Lakewood Church’s doors… days after Houston had five feet of rain dumped on them in 24 hours. Osteen has spent the last half of this week trying to clean up his PR, giving interviews to the Today Show and Entertainment Tonight. He told Today that he didn’t open Lakewood’s doors earlier because the city didn’t ask him too: “If we needed to be a shelter, we certainly would’ve been a shelter right when they first asked.” Do you know how many churchs and mosques and temples just opened their doors without being asked? A lot.
Osteen also talked to Entertainment Tonight, giving them an exclusive tour of Lakewood Church’s emergency operations and coming close to admitting that yeah, he should have done more in the first days. He said in part:
His reputation: “I really believe that if people were in my shoes, they would have done the same thing. When the building is clear, when it’s safe, we can start taking people. That’s what we have done for 60 years. We love helping people and that’s what our message is all about…I don’t spend any energy on the Twitter universe or social media. And I don’t mean that disrespectfully. I just don’t put any energy into it. I mean, life is too short to put energy into negative emotion and I feel at peace because we did the right thing. Hey, my reputation is in God’s hands and he can take care of that. We’re going to continue to help people.”
The building had flooded before, in 2001: “You know, it depends on what day that is. I think another thing that people don’t understand — it could flood. That street could flood and in 14 hours it can be down. … So, you can’t go by that. I have video of it flooded on either Saturday night or Sunday night, I can’t remember. But, you know, it can go down in 14, 15 hours.”
He should have prepared earlier: “Knowing what I know now, I would have put staff in here before the storm hit, put beds, do everything we could to be prepared. When it catches us by surprise, even when the cities overflow and, you know, nobody dreams that shelters will overflow. … Hindsight, it’s 20/20, but we got to move forward and do what we’ve done for the last 60 years and take care of these people, help them rebuild their lives, bring hope to their spirits and let them know that they can come out of this stronger than before.”
I understand the idea of not-knowing how the flood was going to pan out ahead of time and wanting to wait to see what the immediate damage was. But as everyone pointed out on Twitter – by Sunday, Osteen knew that Lakewood had sustained minimal damage, and it still took him more than 48 hours to open the church’s doors, and he only did so after being Twitter-shamed AND he had to asked by the city to do so. So Christian, y’all.
Meanwhile, Tyler Perry has made a $1 million donation to relief efforts and he’s allocating $250K of that money in particular to Lakewood Church. Perry said: “I know that there’s been some controversy about Joel Osteen and him not opening the doors of the church. Joel and Victoria are amazing people — there’s no way that they would lock people out of the church or not let people seek shelter. There were some safety concerns, and I spoke to them on the phone, and it all made perfect sense to me. So, before you just run and judge someone real quick, you need to know the whole circumstances.” Perry is also allocating another $250K to Beyonce’s pastor, Rudy Rasmus.
Photos courtesy of Getty, Today.
I don’t see how anyone who subscribe to the gospel of wealth (I learned something new here and I’m not impressed) can be a Christian or an “amazing person”. It just doesn’t work. When taking money from people in what I can only describe as an open scam is your life’s major focus, I can’t respect that. It’s gross. I have a difficult time accepting any monotheistic religion as anything other than a cult but I can’t deny that for billions of people, faith is important and it helps them find a path and find focus or comfort in life. It CAN be a positive thing, no doubt. I’m not a fan but have at it. THIS though? GTFO.
I just don’t see the point in even pretending it’s Christianity. Obviously that’s the way you’re sucking people in, but this is such garbage. It’s not far off from the Catholic Church and indulgences 500 years ago.
This, precisely. This isn’t Christianity (or any religion, for that matter); it’s a money-making cult.
Yes, I personally love to hear the mental gymnastics required to square “prosperity gospel” with the actual bible, which is quite clear: “Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.” Luke 18:25
He is no christian. Leave that out of this. He’s a profiteer. A POS. Not a Christian. The word inherently means selflessness and kindness. Both qualities he appears to lack.
I liked what Joel Osteen said in the early days, he seemed more genuine. Look at him now- it’s scary- all the obvious plastic surgery. Christianity can be such a comfort in it’s essence, but the money just plants greed. This church’s day has come- the prosperity wealth scam that trump is on- that’s ruining america- truly the cult of his base!
The silver lining to prosperity gospel (we don’t have this peculiar thing in the UK either) was that John Oliver brought us the Church of Perpetual Exemption and Doctors Without Borders got a shedload of cash.
This Osteen guy is the most obvious utter wanker I’ve ever seen in my life.
@sixer
🙌🙌🙌🙌yes to all this!!!
Oh, there’s as bad or worse, Sixer.
I saw a statistic yesterday that surprised me. There were a surprisingly small percentage of churches which opened up to help people. Wish I could find it now. I imagine some were flooded and could not. But Houston is a big place and not all of them would be.
My opinion: The thing about ‘prosperity gospel’ is that it’s basically a bunch of already a$$aholic Southern Baptists who don’t want to feel bad about having money, when a generation ago they were poor farmers etc in the Old South. (This part of our country was, prior to 40 or so years ago, mostly poor and mostly agrarian–the changes since the 60s have given a lot if these people cultural whiplash.) The Osteens, Falwells, Swaggarts etc. of this world have found a lot of financial success in providing these folks with reassurance that they’ll still go to heaven despite the whole rich man, camel, and the eye of the needle thing, which they were all raised on. No where, however, in this ‘prosperity gospel’ do any if these preachers stress good works– that’s a Catholic doctrine. Faith alone is suppose to be enough so to h$ll with everyone else. Delightful people, really.
@ ELX—-Hold on now, I’m confused. Why would you give this idiot money if you already had money?? People that have become successful on their own merit are usually A) semi intelligent B) not easily parted with their hard earned cash. And please, Let’s not get into throwing stones about southern this, white that, etc….generalizations are sometimes true, yes, but there are MANY exceptions. My family is descended from one of the First Families of Virginia and have lived there and in the Carolinas since the early 1600’s, never owned slaves (it has been researched-they only ever employed indentured, poor relations…or one of their 15-20 children by 3 different wives). Needless to say they weren’t plantation owners or very wealthy men by bucking the slave system. Yet they also fought in the confederacy, built churches for neighbors of many denominations, and are still farmers today. They would laugh their butts off at Joel Osteen! And anyone without enough sense to see his scheme. There is truth to the old saying “salt of the earth”. People worth their salt know that being a good, kind person who takes care of their family comes before everything, including their church, heritage, skin color, financial success, etc…
@ELX FYI — Lakewood is not a Southern Baptist Church. The Houston Baptists think this guy is whack.
@bluhare – several conflicting issues in Houston would likely prevent churches from opening during a storm. Officials always instruct us to shelter in place and stay off the roads to allow emergency vehicles and evacuees safe passage. We also usually have mandatory dusk to dawn curfews (although I think right now it is 10 pm to 5 am) where anyone not in a building can be arrested. Plus without power or sewers (both of which went out periodically during Harvey) opening as a shelter is somewhat pointless.
The mosques were in a much better position to open as shelters thanks to Ramadan. Many Muslims were already sheltering in place in them and preparing for iftar feasts to celebrate the end of Ramadan. They had ample supplies of food and beverages as a result.
I swear a very funny meme on Facebook this morning saying the next statue erected in Texas needs to be a random average dude with a bass boat. They are true heroes.
@bluhare
That meme with the statistics about churches was found to be unsubstantiated.
Google Creflo Dollar. Enjoy.
@Bearcat lawyer – i have no idea what you are talking about with regards to the mosques. Ramadan ended 3 months ago, no one is holding iftar meals in mosques at the moment, so I dont know where you got the information that mosques were open for shelter because of Ramadan?!
@Sofia he or she probably means the bayramlar that are currently being celebrated. I know they were celebrating at least last friday and saturday, but don’t ask me what it is in particular that they celebrate. I do know that a lot of food is involved, from the happy stories from my turkish friends.
One of my closest friends is an evangelical, and even she’s turned off by the whole “gospel of wealth” stuff. Osteen and Co are using Christianity as an excuse to scam people, and it makes me sad (and frustrates me, enrages me, etc) that so many fall for it. Imagine…if only 20% of those who donated to his church gave that money to truly deserving causes, how much good that could do? Instead they throw it away on a scam artist. Ugh.
IMHO–It’s not a non-profit. Take away their tax exemption. Unless every penny of that money is going specifically to help others and not into this creeps filthy pocket.
This is what I don’t understand. Clearly, that man is doing this to line his own pockets, it’s the basis of his entire “belief”. Profit. HOW does that qualify for tax exemption? It’s the opposite of non-profit.
Yes, yes and yes, LittleMissNaughty et al!
The header picture is terrifying. He looks like the Antichrist.
Like one of those demons from Supernatural! Shit, I just admitted that I watch that show 😂
Lol. That picture gave me goosebumps. Looks like he has no eyes
And the longest neck.
he looks like a bunch of people at the same time, i see a little bit of martin short,josh groban.
There’s nothing wrong with long necks!!
Yes, my neck is long.
With his eyes like that, he looks like he could be LeAnn or Eddies brother.
OMG what awful hair!
@honey
This is one of my favorite comments ever!!!😂😂😄
@bluhare You are welcome to join us giraffes the only requirement is a long neck.
He’s the unholy love child of Martin Short while in Jack Frost costume and Tim Allen on the cokiest bender he’s ever coked.
Can you even IMAGINE the neck on a love child with him and her royal Complicitness!
I’m dying!!!!
Maybe his plastic surgeon should start thinking about HIS reputation…
LMAO. It really is terrifying. Also, all that plastic surgery and he hasn’t decided to fix the situation with his gums? Curious choice….
@kitten lol
His shullet (shag+mullet) requires a curling iron and a ruler to make the perfection that resides on his head reflect his Christian values. #prosperityshullet
LMAO. I didn’t think I could despise anyone as much as Trump and his family but this guy comes close. Not knowing much about him prior to this week, I am blown away by just how horrible he is.
OMG I looked directly at it and now I’m so afraid.
Just don’t chant his name three times while looking in a mirror. No telling what spirit you might summon from the beyond, but they’ll definitely be evil.
Tyler Perry is a very forgiving person. He takes care of his very abusive father who physically beat him and devalued him every day of his life. Tyler is a pretty amazing guy.
Except for the part where he’s constantly shaming women for having sex.
@ Algernon, Yes thank you. You said everything!
Yes. F-ck Tyler Perry. Glad Osteen whom I’ve long despised is being shown up for the conniving, money grubbing, f-ck wad he is.
If Osteen is so wealthy why does he need Perry’s money? A nice number of actual victims could be helped with that kind of cash.
Exactly! Osteen doesn’t need any money. He can use his own to fix the church, if anything needs to be fixed.
Gods hands? JFC! The excuses and things some of these people say
What else can he possible say? He has no valid excuse. Saying his reputation is in God’s hands is his damage control rationale. His church’s membership will suffer because of this. Say goodbye to some of your tithe Joel.
If his reputation is in God’s hands, then He will smack him down. What’s that about false prophets?
Interesting how judging Joel is in God’s hands but judging gay people is in Joel’s hands …
word.
It’s the old Christian/Catholic irreproachable fallback. Personally, as an atheist, I find personal, finite accountability to myself and my own set of morals be much more difficult. I can’t pass the buck…
We are accountable to ourselves as Christians. It’s free will. The faith doesn’t believe in no personal accountability. That’s a twisted belief and interpretation. That’s what helps those who do not practice, but like to claim so believe. Please educate yourself on the differences in modern day Christians. Those who play fairweather believers. And the shades in between before using a broad brush to condemn while praising yourself for not sharing the same.
Again. Free will. God forgives. That doesn’t mean there is no punishment. No lesson to be learned. The stories. Fables. They’ve been so twisted.
Bottom line. Be a good person. Stand on your own 2 feet. Don’t hide behind a deity. And don’t condemn a whole faith because you don’t like it.
Horrible man!
Joel Osteen and Tyler Perry is something else and I am going to leave it at that.
What a grifter.
Charlatan. I simply cannot waste anymore time or energy on this false prophet who has some mighty odd interpretations of Christianity.
***Side note because the article does not really explain this: many years ago the drainage around Lakewood “Church” was NOT good and yes, much of the area around it flooded during Tropical Storm Allison in 2001. At the time I worked in an office building only blocks away, and high water was common even during normal rainstorms. So Joel is probably telling the truth about that. BUT since that time the city has completed countless drainage projects, and now the Greenway Plaza area (where Lakewood is located) drains very well. Several friends in the neighbourhoods near to it said they NEVER had any flooding or high water problems during Harvey.
Thanks for the inside scoop…this guy is an absolute fraud and it looks like he’s had work done on his face too, most certainly with all the tithes and offerings being sent his way.
As a Christian, he should have opened the doors of his church without being asked. Period. Shame on him. He’s right. God will judge him. God is going to judge a whole bunch of these evangelicals.
Yeah, I was raised in a (poor) evangelical church and I think if your first instinct (as a human being, much less a professed Christian) isn’t to help as many suffering people as you can, you’re a bad person. All the additional layers of hypocrisy just make it worse.
Exactly, he shouldn’t have to wait for the city to ask him for help. It should have been instinctive for him.
Perhaps he doesn’t remember Jesus overturning the tables…..
👍🏻🙌🏻👏🏻
And I’m not even Xtian.
For someone who puts no energy into social media, you should check out the Joel Osteen Ministries and Lakewood Church pages… they’re posting every 10 minutes, sharing all the ways they’re helping right now.
I wonder if the money he’s now spending on PR to help him out of this (as well as his obvious cosmetic procedures) is being paid for by his parishoners’ offerings to his scam church. I think I know the answer. How Christian of him! I wonder what Jesus would think of this fraudster.
And he was wasting all his energy on Monday blocking people who criticised him.
@ bluhare, Yes I saw that. For someone who doesn’t put “energy” into social media, he was blocking people left & right. Hmmm…what a hypocrite!
Really? Ugh. Ha love how people are really watching him now. I am sure he will spin this to say how it transformed and humbled him, blah, blah, blah…
Welp God has taken the time to put a dent in his ‘reputation’, so now what’s he gonna do? Seems to me that what he needs to do is apologize for the mistep and get to helping people
I grew up in church all my life so I know exactly what went on here. If Lakewood hadn’t been shamed into it, they would never have opened their doors. A church that large not only has paid staff but large numbers of volunteers that would have been ready to go at some point. I haven’t heard about any of that. They weren’t prepared to help in any capacity. You can’t have a building that large and not know that something will be expected of you in times of need…remember to whom much is given much is required. This isn’t the time to hide out at home Joel.
The most expensive things in these churches is the sound board and the tv equipment/lights/musical instruments etc. All of that can be easily removed and locked up to make room for people. I know, I’ve done it. Even if they said look we aren’t prepared, all we can do is offer shelter, that would be acceptable. But no…they lied and thought people wouldn’t call them out. SMH
And as for Tyler Perry, he needs to be quiet-we know what happened here and taking up for this charlatan of a pastor is not doing his ‘reputation’ any good.
@HK9: all excellent points, I’m glad you chimed in!
Now what’s the deal with Tyler Perry? Is he simply delusional or is there something else going on here? ‘Cause I wouldn’t give Osteen a flat dime.
Yes, very good points HK9!
Tyler Perry is going to give these guys $250,000 instead of victims of Harvey?! They have millions & he personally has a $5 mill house. That money could go to such better use. Ugh.
Much better would be to give it to the Red Cross than to this huckster.
This is some Twilight Zone stuff. I COULD NOT believe when I read that. Money must really warp the brain for one rich dude to give 250K to another rich grifter dude.
Tyler Perry, have a seat. You’re done in my eyes.
You gave $250,000 to a scheming, lying snake oil salesman vs. a TRUE CHARITY???
What? Did Joel need another pool house built at his 10 MILLION DOLLAR estate in Houston???
This is making my teeth itch…
There’s a good chance Tyler supports this sort of prosperity gospel – after all, he has to justify his massive wealth and success.
He is repulsive & I hate his face.
Yes, Pastor Osteen, let me step into your expensive snake-skin shoes, wade in the waters of your swimming pool located on your lavish Houston dry-as-the-desert estate, you fast-talking con artist – I’m pretty sure I’ll come to the same conclusion.
May the people of Houston never forget that this lizard had to be shamed into opening his church for shelter during a time of desperate need.
Well, he and Lakewood were largely MIA during Katrina, Rita, and Ike so those of us with brains in Houston already know not to rely on them.
By the way, Celebitches, please sign the petition to the City of Houston asking for August 26th to be declared Mattress Mac Day every year!
https://www.change.org/p/houston-mattress-mack-day-aug-26
Just tried, Change.org is having server issues. Will try again later.
SIGNED!!! ❤️
Mattress Mac does way more for the people of Houston than that smarmy charlatan Osteen ever has & ever will.
A preacher who has The Today Show and Entertainment Tonight on speed dial?
bwaaaa haaaaaa haaaaa! He and his wife are super pros at PR. It’s their stock and trade. They’ll be charming everyone through their bonded, bleached teeth.
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves (Gospel of Matthew 7:15, King James Version).
^^^THIS^^^
This!
Who goes on the national news to shore up their own image instead of helping people?!
If Joel had simply said we made a mistake and should have responded sooner that would have been better but that defensiveness and outright lying and” haters gone hate ” comment from his father in law was just not a good look coming from people who were supposed to be men of God . They came off as people who like to perform thier charity from a distance I.e will gladly send care packages to Katrina but would rather not have the unwashed in their multi -million dollar ” sanctuary. ” which is a firm of idol worshipping
As for Perry some black people have this pathological need to be the first to ” cape ” for white folks, it’s almost a sickness or some desperate need to be seen as not like the others or to be accepted , the only good thing here us that he is donating a mil in total and only 250 k goes to Joel
Maybe I’m just a dumb Yankee, but I do not understand these mega churches. We only have a “non denomination” Christian church in my town that is pretty big and is used to have funerals that are going to be very big (police, young kid, teenager, public official, popular teacher etc). The pastors and preachers (Idk I’m Catholic) at that church don’t live in mansions and have book deals. They still know the community members. I’m in a pretty big Italian American, Catholic area as well as a lot of people who are Jewish, so most of our churches are Catholic and there are synagogues, but I’ve been to that church before and still felt welcome.
How do you form a community in a remolded basketball stadium??? The man has botox and veneers. He just seems like such a charlatan. I thought Jim Baker exposed these people for what they were. I’m glad he’s getting push back.
When a pastor builds a ten million dollar home…you would think that would be a huge red flag.
Hey, God wants him to be rich, y’know?
My guess is, the pastor’s lavish lifestyle is meant to be an example of what the rank-and-file can hope for if they pray hard enough and keep giving to the “church”.
Now there’s a backpfeifengesicht (‘face begging for a punch’) if ever I saw one
The Germans have a word for everything!!
Douchebag. It would be nice if his congregants woke up to what a heartless tool he is, but they won’t. (Note I avoided using “salty language”-I had so much more to say!)
He just stated the very thing he should be worried about.
Well. Did Tyler Perry really need to give us more reasons to cancel him?
People in Houston know what Osteen is all about. He and his family are money-grubbing frauds and the sad part is you will still have many people defending him.
He mentions they are accepting donations. While he has no obligation to share, curious if he will be opening his wallet to help, and how much of an “administrative fee” are they taking from monetary donations?
Poor old god. Or gods. Who knows?
Anyway, assuming there is a god for the purposes of this comment, I think we can guess what his opinion is. And he’s letting Poor Joel’s current reputation do some pretty loud talking.
Simply put, the definition of Christian literally means to be Christlike. Jesus, as many of you probably already know was poor. He didn’t create a MOVMENT (not religion) for money or fame. He did it to bring people together through kindness, compassion, and most importantly love. The Bible also has many verses that explicity tell Christians to be charitable and especially that of pastors. I’m quite sure he cherry picks the verses that appease him and dare not even bother with the parts that tell him to be charitable. He’s a shit human and makes even the best Christians look bad. People like him have successfully destroyed the Christian faith and turned it into a corporation.
There are all kinds of ways for a big church like that to be prepared to kick in and start helping, even if it wasn’t at first an overnight shelter. There was no preparedness, period, for anything, food, water, diapers, volunteers to bring people in who are stuck somewhere, zero. They only kicked into gear after all the calling out on twitter and the media And then you look at small companies, small churches, small organizations who are out there in the communities helping right from the beginning.
That’s what I don’t understand; why didn’t they have anything in place beforehand? Especially since they knew the hurricane was coming. Very poor planning on their part, and incredibly tone deaf.
They didn’t have anything beforehand because they never intended to help. Which is crazy because I believe the authorities told people not to evacuate so they knew there would be people in need.
I don’t think he’s really a Christian at all. In fact, I think he worships Satan.
I think he is Satan.👿
So says the person who was actively blocking people off their Twitter account when they confronted him about his excuses.
He’s full of it and I’m sorry Tyler Perry sucker donated money to this tax shelter. Learn from Mattress Mack, Joel. I’m pretty sure you guys won’t end up in the same place in the end and you will be sweating in your million dollar underwear.
There’s a special place in hell for him. Perhaps the “flood room” where he has to spend the rest of eternity in a deluge. Or if there’s Karma (and I truly believe there is) he’ll come back as a regular Joe who loses everything in a monster storm.
Everyone on the planet knew that this was going to be a very very intense hurricane before it hit. People did everything they could to stock up on supplies and try to protect themselves the best they could. His excuse of not knowing the extent is bullshit.
“Hey, my reputation is in God’s hands and he can take care of that.”
Oh, I agree Mr Osteen – the Lord is taking extremely good care of your reputation. It’s being demolished in suitable fashion.
I worked for the Southern Baptists for 12 years — not in church work, but as a market researcher tracking the growth and lifestyles of Southern Baptists and other denominations. For what it’s worth, evangelicals and Southern Baptist members are declining rapidly. SB churches are leaving the denomination so they don’t have to adhere to rigid practices and doctrine. There are 6 or 7 Southern Baptist seminaries that are barely hanging on — most of their enrollment is from students from Africa and South Korea (SK has a strangely evangelical population), The yahoos of the Nashville proclamation (yesterday’s post) is, of course, ridiculous. But they do this almost every year.
I’m neither evangelical nor Southern Baptist. It was a great job and I met amazing people but finally had to leave because I couldn’t stand the doctrine. I’m a Christian and very liberal Presbyterian. My church has a number of ministries to help our community — large Southern city with lots of diversity. Our congregation has many LGBT members and we’ve had lots of festive gay weddings. I long for the day when people are neither gay nor straight, but just people. I also long for the day when Christians are not lumped into the same category,
He acts like he doesn’t really believe in god.
I am from the Houston area. There has been almost 24/7 coverage of the floods, evacuation, etc. Yesterday Houston Mayor,Sylvester Turner, was giving a news conference. In the conference he basically said the city would not/did not ask for shelters to open. My thought he was throwing shade at the people saying “We were waiting for the city to ask us to open”. Mayor Turner & his team have been amazing though this disaster. There is not enough to say about Jim McIngvale “Mattress Mac” of Gallery Furniture opening his stores as a shelter. That is a true charitable Christian man.
Joel Osteen could learn something from Matress Mac. Also, look up Victoria Olsteen causing a problem on a flight that had her removed from the flight. She was in 1st class throwing a hissy fit
Joel Osteen just needs to stop talking. No one cares what he has to say. He missed his chance to do the right thing at the right time. Hope it keeps him up at night for months. Hope he gets the worst eyebags ever.
I want to knock his chicklet teeth right out. If you watch his show–provided you can stomach it–you’ll notice that his message is watered down, secular, cotton candy b.s. He never talks about God. He’s a prosperity minister, in it for all the money he can milk out of these poor people who get roped in by his image.
I know you frown upon curse words here but can this be an exception? Can I call this asshole a total and complete jackass? Inhumane and cruel. Shame on him.
I don’t know anything about Osteen’s “prosperity doctrine” but it reminds me of Max Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”. In that work, which I read 30 years ago and have not quite forgotten, he links the spirit of fervent Protestantism, especially Calvinism, to the growth of capitalism — both politically and socially. The Puritans came to North America to found their city upon a hill and to run it on these philosophies. Osteen is just a smarmier version of a Hawthorne character.
I wish those who donate to Osteen would first read C.S. Lewis. Especially “Mere Christianity” and “The Screwtape Letters”.
Just another version of Miscaviage.
People have had years to recognize this Osteentatious buffoon for what he is, and many have. So, if you want to say that in this disaster, where so many, many people showed true humanity for one another, some with nothing to give but a helping hand, then yes, this guy’s blatant godlessness is revealed. Anyone who needed this epic fail to see it, still won’t. He should have been standing at the door of that arena he calls a church for tax purposes, holding his hand out, guiding people in, making them comfortable. But, he was probably worried about soiling his Italian hand-made loafers. RE: Tyler Perry: don’t you just love it when rich people swap money around and call it “charity”. Get your loafers dirty.
AAAAND the mosques opened, provided shelter.
Osteen is the dick from the new testament who locked the doors on pregnant Mary, the Mother of Jesus.
If you are just an atheist, a complete Con artist and Fraud.
His reputation is in God’s hands? He should fire the dude then ’cause he ain’t doing a very good job with his PR…
ps. I grew up in the faith movement (what I guess media is calling prosoperity gospel now) and this guy’s dad I believe was one of the greats of that movement. As soon as I grew a brain of my own around high school I left. It was people like this, and believe me there are a lot of them in that movement, who made me so sick to my stomach I turned my back on Christianity as a whole. Yuck.
I suspect the Botox leaked in to his brain. Either way , he is off my Sirius XM and I deleted his app. The app required a User Name and Password. I get enough emails
He’s disgusting. As a man of faith, he should have take in all peoples, just as the Muslim mosques did. He waited until he was shamed. And he should be shamed. I’m a faithful parishioner as it a time that gives me peace and meditation. I can’t deal with it when I’m instructed to hate or not accept. Praise God I have a very accepting church that tries to help and not recruit.
I was raised by a single mom in KY. My dad worked on a factory assembly line and left the family when I was five. We were broke all the time. I have a poverty mindset. I know what Joel is talking about in his ministry. I listen all the time on satellite radio. It really helps me in a way middle or upper class people can’t ever understand. His desire is to change how poverty warps your mind. He never asks for a cent. I have never given them money. I agree he should have opened the church sooner. No excuses. But don’t throw his entire ministry under the bus.
Agree.
Osteen’s not worried about his reputation….However he jumped at every TV Program to try and polish up his “reputation ” (some programs more than once) !! I read a story several years back about a young man that saw Osteen leaving after appearing on a tv show…this guy had just read one of Osreen’s books & wanted his autograph. Osteen had seven bodyguards surrounding him, as the young man yelled Osteen’s name and ran over several of the bodyguards grabbed him. This guy was shocked that Osteen wouldn’t at least stop since there were others waiting for autographs! He wasn’t assaulted but was handily roughly. Osteen is a fraud…a very wealthy fraud, lives the prosperity gospel 10.6 Million home, private jet etc…..
If there was safety concerns then why didnt he just out right say that at the beginning? instead they made a statement that they would open the doors when all the other shelters were full.
Matthew 7:15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”
I cannot and will not go back to my church after my pastor openly defended him on Facebook and said “he didn’t have to open the doors up” as well as “he’s not obligated to do anything.” Excuse me? He’s a so called “man of God.” As a so called follower of Christ, he absolutely is obligated. Disgusting.