Joy Nestor S.

Caybot
Satya Deva Chindada

JOEL OSTEEN
Joel Osteen is the pastor of the largest church in the United States, Lakewood Church in
Houston, Texas. His wife, Victoria, is co-pastor. The Osteen’s teach a message of “hope,
healing, and forgiveness” (from the official Lakewood Church website). Osteen’s television
program is viewed by 20 million people each month in almost 100 countries around the world. In
2004, Joel published the best-selling book Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full
Potential. Joel Osteen’s parents, John and Dodie Osteen, founded Lakewood Church in 1959
and promoted the ministry through a television broadcast. Joel got involved in media production,
overseeing the church’s broadcasts starting in 1982, but, when John died in 1999, Joel
accepted the position of senior pastor of Lakewood.
Joel Osteen denies that Jesus is the only way to heaven. In many of Joel Osteen’s
interview, Osteen seems to please every religion by communicating relativism. His stand on the
doctrine of salvation just don’t reconcile with the scripture, John 14:6 says, Jesus is the only
Way, He is the only Truth, and He is the Life, no one comes to the Father except through Him.
Since this guy wants to please everybody, this guy doesn’t talk about Sin. When you
don’t talk about sin—and Osteen purposefully does not—you’re not preaching the whole gospel.
When you barely, if ever, call sin what it is, you’re not helping anyone, least of all the sinner who
is enslaved to sin. Joel Osteen’s teaching would lead us to believe that we are being saved from
unhappiness and failure in life, not from sin and God’s wrath. Osteen does not teach that we
need a divine rescue from judgment, but rather simply a self-improvement plan. James 5:19
says, “My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him
back”.

Joel Osteen Believes in the Law of attraction “Anyone can create by faith in words, the
dreams he desires. Health, wealth, happiness, success, etc.”. Another problem in Osteen’s
message is his promotion of name-it-claim-it or word-faith theology: “We have to conceive it on
the inside before we’re ever going to receive it on the outside,” Osteen writes. “If you don’t think
you can have something good, then you never will. The barrier is in your mind. . .. Your own
wrong thinking can keep you from God’s best. . .. To experience [God’s] immeasurable favor,
you must rid yourself of that small-minded thinking and start expecting God’s blessings, start
anticipating promotion and supernatural increase. You must conceive it in your heart before you
can receive it. In other words, you must make increase in your own thinking, then God will bring
those things to pass” (from Your Best Life Now, chapter 1). There is nothing biblical about such
teaching. There is no power inherent in positive thinking, and we do not create our own realities.
God is not our servant, standing by and waiting for us to fire up our imaginations so He can
lavish us with material goods. Jesus told His followers to “give up everything you have” (Luke
14:33), not to seek to get more.
Joel Osteen Preaches Prosperity Gospel; “Included in your salvation “package” is full of
health and wealth based on Jesus’ death on the cross”. I don’t wonder why Joel Osteen’s

Sources:
1. gotquestions.org
2. The Beat by Allen Parr
3. Bible Gateway
church are averaging 45,000 attendees per week for this guy is just preaching what the people
wants to hear. If those people who are attending His church hear this every Sunday, that they’ll
be wealthy and healthy, for sure they’ll keep coming back. The scripture says; 19 “Do not lay up
for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust[a] destroy and where thieves break in
and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys
and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will
be also. – Matthew 6:19-21.

JOEL OSTEEN VS THE SCRIPTURE

JOEL OSTEEN SCRIPTURE
6
1. Denies that Jesus is the only way to 1. Jesus said to him, “I am the way,
heaven. and the truth, and the life. No one
comes to the Father except through
me. (John 14:6)
19
2. Don’t preach about sin. 2. My brothers, if anyone among you
wanders from the truth and
someone brings him back, (James
5:19)
17
3. Practice the law of attraction. 3. Therefore do not be foolish, but
understand what the will of the Lord
is. (Ephesians 5:17)
19
4. Preaches Prosperity Gospel. 4. “Do not lay up for yourselves
treasures on earth, where moth and
rust destroy and where thieves break
[a]

in and steal, 20 but lay up for

yourselves treasures in heaven,
where neither moth nor rust destroys
and where thieves do not break in and
steal. 21 For where your treasure is,
there your heart will be also. (Matthew
6:19-21)

In the second Letter of Peter in the Scripture, it says, 20 knowing this first of all, that no
prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. 21 For no prophecy was ever
produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy
Spirit. The authority should be the scripture not on someone’s opinion. Joel Osteen masters the
art of talking, that what he is talking will really appear like its really from the scripture but its not.
This guy talks very less of the scripture, almost everything of what he says is just from his
opinion.

Sources:
1. gotquestions.org
2. The Beat by Allen Parr
3. Bible Gateway