Joshua One Ministries

The letters sent to at least five televangelists by U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa-R), ranking member and former chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, were pretty strong medicine from, as his website claims, a Republican farmer and “Baptist Church” member (the exact denominational affiliation is not stated). Sen. Grassley, though he claims to [...]

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I just established a new category on Joshua One called “Christian Celebrity Gurus.” In the process I have apparently coined a new phrase. I just Googled it, and of more than 25 billion(!) pages indexed by that search engine, I received back exactly ZERO hits. Amazing! I do several Google searches [...]

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Michael Spencer at Internetmonk has written another piece on Joel Osteen. See “Osteen Redux.” Spencer concludes his piece by summarizing his criticisms of Osteen:
“1) As presented in his books and messages, Joel Osteen isn’t an evangelical. He’s a motivational speaker.
“2) No matter what his personal or occasional doctrinal statements, Osteen’s books and sermons are [...]

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Outreach Magazine lists the 100 fastest growing U.S. churches.
* First on the list: Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston.
* Other well-known churches on the list: Willow Creek Community (Bill Hybels, S. Barrington, IL), Mars Hill (Mark Driscoll, Seattle, WA), New Life (Ted Haggard, Colorado Springs, CO), Potter’s House (T.D. Jakes, Dallas), Saddleback [...]

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Here’s another good article on Joel Osteen: “What’s Wrong with Prospering? The Gospel According to Joel Osteen.” This piece is by Dr. Ben Witherington, professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary. Witherington writes a good blog, and although he is an academic, he writes to the average reader.
Make sure to read the [...]

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As I’m sure you know, Joel Osteen is the pastor of America’s largest church, Lakewood Church in Houston, and author of the huge bestseller, Your Best Life Now. If you’re tuned in to the larger conversation, you also know that Osteen has drawn plenty of detractors from within the body.
Osteen’s sermons and book have been [...]

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In my previous post (“Two Months and 1,543 Readers Later”), I mentioned that one of several reasons we have had so much traffic during the second month of this blog’s existence is the articles we wrote about a recent church split in Dallas. From the moment we published those articles, we have been very aware [...]

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A Christian author says the catalyst behind the recent split of a Dallas mega-church was implementation of Rick Warren’s “40 Days of Purpose.” Cornerstone Christian Church of Dallas was started last year by a couple of hundred former members of Valley View Christian Church. James Sundquist, author of Who’s Driving the Purpose-Driven Church?, [...]

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Pat Robertson has apologized to the son of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for saying Sharon’s massive stroke was God’s judgment on him. (See earlier post: “Robertson: Leave God’s Judgment in God’s Hands”). In a letter dated Wednesday and addressed to the prime minister’s son, Omri Sharon of Jerusalem, Robertson wrote:
“I ask your forgiveness [...]

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Guess Pat Robertson is finding out that attacking a world leader can be bad for business. Last week Robertson declared that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had a stroke because God is angry with him (see earlier post: “Robertson: Leave God’s Judgment in God’s Hands”). Now the Israeli government is pulling out of a deal [...]

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