Everyone has heard by now that Joel Osteen, that poster
child for fluffy bunny Christianity, has proclaimed Mitt Romney and all Mormons to be “brothers in Christ.” He also says
that we should take the President at his word when he proclaims to be a
Christian, so obviously his standard for “Christian” is already pretty low. But I digress.
This really should come as no surprise to anyone. Not only has Osteen repeatedly shown that he
lacks serious biblical knowledge in favor of his feel-good “inclusivism,” but
there are more similarities between Mormon belief and Osteen’s Word Faith
friends than most would at first recognize.
Chief among them would be the Mormon idea of man becoming
gods. It’s a foundation of Mormon belief
that “God” was once like us, but achieved “godhood” and was given this planet
to populate with his “spirit children.” Then,
if we’re really good, we can also become gods and be given our own planet to
populate. Some have tried to distance
themselves from this obviously heretical teaching, but the truth is that
Mormonism was built on the idea that “as man is, God once was; as God is, man
can become.”
This isn’t that much different from the Word Faith idea of “little
gods.” Numerous Word Faith teachers have
promoted this idea that we are indeed, little gods ourselves. They argue that Adam was created to be divine,
to be the “god of this world.” His rebellion
led to Satan taking that title, but since we are Adam’s descendents we have
this “spark” of divinity within us, the potential to be little gods. Mormonism/Word Faith/New Age stuff at it’s
best.
So what we end up with when Osteen promotes Mormons as his “brothers”
is not a confirmation of Mormons as Christians, but further evidence that what
Osteen teaches is not orthodox Christianity at all. In fact, I would agree with him. I think the two groups are very much in the
same family: that of heretic.
I’m not trying to be overly cruel here. I believe we ought to reach out in love to
all those who deny the truth of the gospel, sharing the true faith of Christ in
hopes that God will do a work in their hearts and bring them to true
repentance. But we are also to be
discerning, to watch out for those “wolves in sheep’s clothing;” and it seems
Mr. Osteen is among the worst of these.
Not only does he regularly throw aside true biblical
doctrine, not only does he promote nothing more than New Age believe-in
yourself self-help philosophy, but now he goes so far as to embrace other
heretical groups. No wonder the liberal
media loves this guy so much.
If you really want to know more about the deception of
Mormonism, I would suggest reading Mormonism Unmasked by R. Phillip Roberts. You can also listen to this interview with Dr.Roberts. (Hank Hanegraaff also has a
book called Memorable Keys to the M-O-R-M-O-NMirage, though I haven’t read it).
For more about the deception of the Word Faith movement and
their “little gods” heresy, check our John MacArthur’s classic Charismatic Chaos, or just search around on The Christian Research Institute’s site.
More than all of this, though, read your Bible! Test what guys say against Scripture and it
will become apparent very quickly how far from the truth they are.
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