{"id":1561,"date":"2011-02-11T20:59:52","date_gmt":"2011-02-12T03:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=1561"},"modified":"2011-02-11T20:59:52","modified_gmt":"2011-02-12T03:59:52","slug":"joel-osteen-king-ahab-delusional-celebrations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=1561","title":{"rendered":"Joel Osteen, King Ahab & Delusional Celebrations"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just received an email from the Valley View Casino Center in San Diego inviting me to purchase tickets\u00a0for\u00a0“A Night of Hope”<\/em>\u00a0with Pastors Joel and Victoria Osteen.<\/p>\n

“A Night of Hope”<\/strong>\u00a0with Joel and Victoria Osteen is an outreach of Joel Osteen Ministries and is an exciting time of praise and worship where attendees will hear an inspirational message from Joel and Victoria along with the electrifying music of Dove Award winning Cindy Cruse Ratcliff, Steve Crawford, Da’dra\u00a0Greathouse, and the Lakewood Bandand Ensemble.<\/p>\n

Joel and Victoria Osteen <\/strong>are pastors for a new generation.\u00a0 Referred to by many as a voice of hope, they reach one of the largest audiences in the U.S. and across the globe. . . .”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tempting as it may be, I think I’ll pass driving the 13 hours to San Diego to catch Joel and Victoria share their\u00a0inspirational message of hope.\u00a0 And, hope is what they are selling.\u00a0 Literally.\u00a0 It will cost you $15 to experience all that the Osteens have to offer.\u00a0 While that doesn’t sound like much (the price or the offer), Joel and Victoria have found a way to sell hope to a “new generation.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s easy for these “pastors” to sell hope to a “new generation,” particularly when those who are members of this generation are largely Biblically illiterate.\u00a0 Not that the Osteens\u00a0are Bible scholars by any stretch\u00a0of the imagination (just watch any of the painful interviews that the Osteens have given to Larry King), but they certainly know how to twist Scripture in such a way as give the illusion that the hope that they are selling is the real deal.<\/p>\n

However, what the Osteens are selling is not real hope (Hope is, after all, a person — Jesus Christ).\u00a0 And, the inspirational messages of hope that Joel and Victoria continue to peddle will not change the lives of those whose ears continue to be tickled.\u00a0 The Apostle Paul would not be amused.<\/p>\n

I do have to give\u00a0credit to Mr. Osteen for his remarkable ability to communicate in such a way that most people who listen (in person and on television) \u00a0to him speak do not have any idea of just how horribly he butchers God’s Word.<\/p>\n

I do not make it a habit to watch Joel Osteen, but I do\u00a0occasionally linger on his show when I am channel surfing.\u00a0 Every now and then, I like to watch\u00a0for a\u00a0few minutes — that is all I can really\u00a0stomach — to see and hear how he has managed to rip Scripture out of context.\u00a0 Such was the case earlier this week when I heard Joel so mangle the inerrant, inspired Word of God that he turned King Ahab into a man of faith!<\/p>\n

Anyone with a passing knowledge of the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures (which Joel or someone on his research staff should have) would quickly recognize that King Ahab was Israel’s most evil king:<\/p>\n

“And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the LORD, more than all who were before him. . . . And Ahab made an\u00a0Asherah.\u00a0 Ahab did more to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him.”<\/span>\u00a01 Kings 16:30, 33 (ESV)\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ahab was a faithless king who\u00a0worshipped\u00a0the false god Baal.\u00a0\u00a0With his blessing,\u00a0Ahab’s\u00a0wife, Jezebel, killed the LORD’s prophets.\u00a0 No where in\u00a0Scripture can you find a positive\u00a0word concerning Ahab or Jezebel.\u00a0 Well, that is until now.\u00a0 Leave it to Joel Osteen to find\u00a0an\u00a0inspirational message about Ahab.<\/p>\n

My\u00a0wife and I could not believe what we\u00a0heard come out of Mr. Osteen’s mouth.\u00a0 Now granted, I have heard some pretty amazing (and non-Biblical) things spew forth from this man, but this was truly unbelievable.\u00a0 I recorded the end of\u00a0Joel’s message so that I would not misquote what he said about King Ahab.<\/p>\n

Concluding his feel-good message, Mr. Osteen used the first part of 1 Kings 18:42 (“So Ahab went up to eat and to drink”)\u00a0<\/em><\/span>as his proof-text for arguing that Ahab was a man of faith, celebrating what God was about to do in his life.\u00a0 In Joel’s mind, Ahab went out and “prepared a great feast.”\u00a0 Why did he prepare this great feast?\u00a0 Because he had faith in the word that the prophet Elijah had given to him, namely that it would begin to rain.\u00a0 Given that Israel was in the midst of a\u00a03 1\/2 year drought, this was significant.<\/p>\n

However, the context within which Elijah’s “word” came to Ahab was following the confrontation of Elijah with the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel and\u00a0slaughter of those prophets.\u00a0 Elijah was mocking King Ahab, telling him to go get something to eat and drink before\u00a0it started raining and\u00a0the king got all wet.<\/p>\n

No where in Scripture does it say that Ahab prepared a feast because\u00a0he believed the word of Elijah that is was going to rain.\u00a0 However, Joel Osteen so twists\u00a0the Word of God to suit his\u00a0own shallow purposes that he has turned Ahab into some sort of\u00a0man of deep faith and conviction.\u00a0 I wish I was making this up, but here are Joel’s own words:<\/p>\n

“That took a lot of nerve to prepare a feast in the midst of the drought.\u00a0 Other people complaining, negative, depressed, bitter.\u00a0 Here’s Ahab over here celebrating.\u00a0 This is what faith is all about.\u00a0 You can’t wait to see it, then you’re going to believe.\u00a0 You have to believe and then you’ll see it.\u00a0 I’m asking you to do like Ahab.\u00a0 Get your hopes up.\u00a0 Start celebrating what God is about to do.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I truly have never heard a supposedly Christian pastor exhort someone to “do like Ahab.”\u00a0 What hope did Ahab have?\u00a0 What celebration was there for this evil, wicked king?\u00a0 Ahab and his wife, Jezebel, were opponents of the one true God — Yahweh — and they continued to oppose God’s prophet, Elijah.\u00a0 How any of this was a cause of hope and celebration for Ahab is beyond my comprehension.<\/p>\n

But, apparently not beyond Joel Osteen’s comprehension.\u00a0 That neither Mr. Osteen nor anyone on his staff, including “Pastor” Victoria, could comprehend that using King Ahab as a positive example of faith is not only wrong, but spiritually deluded.\u00a0 The reason for this delusion may just be that the Osteens are already following Joel’s advice to “do like Ahab (and Jezebel).\u00a0 But, I don’t think that’s anything to celebrate!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just received an email from the Valley View Casino Center in San Diego inviting me to purchase tickets\u00a0for\u00a0“A Night of Hope”\u00a0with Pastors Joel and Victoria Osteen. “A Night of Hope”\u00a0with Joel and Victoria Osteen is an outreach of Joel Osteen Ministries and is an exciting time of praise and worship where attendees will hear…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,35],"tags":[51,344,359,485,533,554,558,585,594,618,742,810,1029],"class_list":["post-1561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-religion","tag-a-night-of-hope","tag-elijah","tag-evil","tag-hebrew-scriptures","tag-israel","tag-jezebel","tag-joel-osteen","tag-king-ahab","tag-lakewood-church","tag-lord","tag-old-testament","tag-prophets","tag-victoria-osteen"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-pb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}