Your eyes have been opened and you will be lead from the wilderness to the land of milk and money.
If I were dishonest and could look myself in the mirror, as it relates to religion, I too could live in the land of milk and money.
I like Joel osteen he publishes lots of books and helps lots of people he earns that money himself he's not taking that from a collection basket or anything, no offense but bad example, dudes had like 50 ny times best sellers, AND he's got a pretty good message if you've ever heard him, doesn't even really talk about Jesus that much, more of a positive motivational speaker who references GOd alot
Actually I did on an occasion watch Osteen because a local book distributor that we pick up gave us 1k to 2k smalls per day and a couple of those days per week were north of 3k and 4k and all were books or other literature from Joel Osteen. And I'm not in Texas either and most of what we shipped out was regional meaning other parts of the country were fed from elsewhere. I was truly amazed by this so I decided to watch a few times to see what the deal was. No doubt a "makes you feel good" kind of guy. Very positive messages, the constant smile, soft voice with a soft delivery that at times can have a hypnotic cadence to it.
Joel Osteen is freely offering a message, people are freely hearing it and at the same time freely giving Osteen money to a level they see his message and services are worth to them. Osteen is forcing no one to hear him nor to give him money. Where people like Osteen do come into question is when they are seen as "messengers of god or Jesus" (take your pick or pick both) telling people to be christ like and then when one compares these "messengers" to Jesus and his disciples and how they lived and conducted their mission and affairs, a contradiction seems to exist. It just seems to me that Osteen and others idea of being "christ like" has a difference in pay scale. But, in 2k years I guess one could offer the inflation argument.
But in fairness, had Jesus and his disciples been able to do their thing after Constantine and his declaration in the 4th century CE, they too might have lived like kings as well but my money is on the likely outcome that Jesus would have re-enacted 100 times over the temple scene where he turned over the money changer tables who were scamming the people too profit from their sincere desire to worship and praise their god.
Did you ever ponder that most important event and what is implied or suggested? Did you ever consider what that event really began to set in motion and the forces at play and what they represented in being who they were? What would happen to any person who set about to do the same thing in this day? Wonder what conclusion we might reach if we did think it out too much?
More,
I always found Ernest Angley to be an entertaining watch at times. In another life Ernest would have been the manager of a heel tag team in championship wrestling.
