The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 18 - Prosperity Podcast: Your Best Car Ride Now!

Episode Date: August 29, 2017

Smiling preacher Joel Osteen, the senior pastor of America’s largest church, has come under fire for reportedly closing his doors to victims of the Houston floods. Plus, Pardes Seleh and Kelly Campagna join the Panel of Deplorables to discuss Hillary Clinton Live!, North Korea’s latest act of war, and the health benefits of coffee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Smiling preacher Joel Osteen, the senior pastor of America's largest congregation, has come under fire for reportedly closing his doors to victims of the Houston floods. We'll analyze on this prosperity podcast, your best car ride now. Plus, we'll have Partis Sela and Kelly Campania join the panel of deplorables to discuss Hillary Clinton live, God help us, North Korea's latest act of war, and the health benefits of coffee and cofefefe. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. Talk about the power of positive thinking. We're here today in the Ben Shapiro studio. We have taken over.

Maybe this prosperity stuff really works. It is about 155 million degrees outside right now, which is the one day or one of two days of the year in the Valley of Los Angeles that they've decided to fix our air conditioning units. So we're all in this bunker. We're all broadcasting out of Benz today. And we're just going to be sweating bullets for you all. That's the kind of charity that we do here.

So we have to talk about Joel Osteen. Joel Osteen is this preacher. He's that guy who's always smiling. You see him on TV. He's lumped in with the prosperity gospel, big televangelist. He actually has the largest congregation in the country. It's 52,000 weekly attendees. He's gotten very rich doing it.

He has made, I think his net worth is about $40 million. He lives in a $10.5 million house. And so anyway, he was accused of closing off the doors to his Houston church, which houses or could seat 16,000 during this flood. Initially, there was some confusion. The spokesman said that the property was inaccessible, quote, because of surrounding waters. And then he went on and said,

it makes no sense to open church doors when the city and county already have places for the victims to go where there are medical facilities and food and so on. Now, this was contradicted by some people on social media who drove by the church and noticed that there would, it didn't seem to be any floods on the streets or in the parking lots, then some members of the church came in and said, really, there are a lot of floods in certain parts of the area. So it's a little confusing. Osteen has firmly denied that they closed the doors. He said, we have never closed our doors, even though people, it appears, didn't go in there for refuge or for housing. So hard to believe that claim exactly. A quote, we will continue to be a distribution center for those in need. We're prepared to house people once the shelters reach capacity. Lakewood Church will be a value to the community in the aftermath of this storm in helping our fellow citizens get on with their lives. Now, for those who haven't been awake at 3 in the morning and watched Joel Osteen preaching on TV,

here is just a short clip to give you a sense of his preaching. That isn't fair. That is not fair. It was actually not Joel Osteen. That was Cartman. But I just love that clip of preacher Cartman. Not totally fair, but it does give you a little sense of the spectacle that Joel Osteen puts on. And finally, we got our producer Marshall saved.

That's a pretty good benefit. Let's go to a clip of Joel Osteen actually preaching. God bless you. Always a joy to come into your homes. We love you. If you're ever in our area, I hope you'll stop by and be a part of one of our services. I promise you we'll make you feel right at home. But thanks so much for tuning in today.

Thanks again for coming out. I'd like to start each week with something funny. And I heard about this man. He was walking up to a country store. There was a little boy sitting on the front porch with a huge dog sitting next to him. The man said, son, does your dog bite? He said, no, sir, my dog doesn't bite. The man reached down to pet the dog and the dog took about half of his arm off.

He pulled it back and said, son, I thought you said your dog didn't bite. The little boy said, that's not my dog. Now, this clip reminded me of something that my priest that I talk about, often George Rutler, My priest in New York said, which is that those preachers who tell jokes like a ham actor in a dying vaudeville show should limit their repertoire to those jokes that St. John told the Blessed Virgin while her son bled on the cross, which is a different preaching style, you might tell. Joel Osteen, a little bit lighter, a little lighter on theology in particular. And the message he's preaching is all about being positive. Let's go, he really zeroes in on exactly what he's talking about to a clip of what the thesis of Joel Osteen's sermons. is. You may not realize it, but you entered a guilt-free zone. You might as well leave it outside.

This is a righteous place. It's a guilt-free zone. We shouldn't. This is very different than my own liturgical experiences as a Catholic where we strike our breast and say, my fault, my fault, my grievous fault. It's all about, you know, building up self-esteem. He's written a lot of books to this idea, and this may be in part why he attracts 50,000 people a week to his church. Here is is Osteen describing this to Chris Wallace? The voice inside yourself and making sure that your inner conversation is positive. I was really struck by that. Explain what that means.

Yeah, I think it's a problem that a lot of people have and it keeps them back. It holds them back in life. And it's a, I believe in our subconscious or in our thinking that we have a conversation going with ourselves. Or I call it a recording playing. And a lot of people, the recording is negative. You know, I have friends. They'll preach a great sermon and they'll drive home. thinking, well, I didn't do good today, and if I'd just done it a little bit better.

But I try to teach people that I believe God wants us to be positive toward ourselves, meaning that, you know, I like the way I look, I like the way I sound, I'm happy with what I'm doing in my career, and not always be beating ourselves down. I think that's just, you know, I see people, they won't be negative toward other people, but inside they're negative toward themselves, and I think that holds us back. Now, it's really hard not to like this guy. Some people describe him as Tony Robbins, who occasionally talks about God. He is just this very positive, nice, obviously very talented speaker, articulate.

And so this is what he's preaching, his positivity. Whether or not it was a fair attack, it's unclear. Some tweets said that he did close the doors to his neighbors. Some tweets said that he did not close the doors to his neighbors. I'm really not sure, nor does it really matter. They're doing a great job at the recovery efforts in Houston anyway. The more interesting thing is this theologian. is this movement that is so in many ways American, this prosperity theology.

And for a reference of this, Joel Osteen sent out one tweet that's gotten quite popular, which said, quote, don't waste time with people who don't appreciate what you have to offer. The people around you should celebrate who you are. And this presents an obvious problem because the center of the religion that Joel Osteen is ostensibly preaching was a guy who spent a lot of time with people who didn't appreciate him. They so didn't appreciate him that they nailed him to a cross and killed him, and then three days later he came back from the dead. So there is a little bit of a problem in this theology.

And some people are angrier at him than others. A lot of people call him a heretic and a false prophet, and you see these sort of things. I'm not sure that that's quite fair, because I don't know that he's ever called himself a true prophet. it. The question is, what does prosperity mean? This prosperity theology that he preaches has roots back in the 19th century. It goes back to a guy named Oral Roberts, who is a minister, Joel Osteen, attended Oral Roberts University. And he basically said, expect material, expect a material prosperity.

Trusting God and good things are going to happen to you. It comes from a mixture of Pentecostalism, the New Thought, which was a movement also in the 19th century, comes from the unpublished writings of Phineas Quimby, and it's basically the power of positive thinking, and the Gospel of Wealth, which is Andrew Carnegie's theory of philanthropy, that when wealth disparity became immense in the United States during that time, it was incumbent upon the rich to help the poor in a way that would actually benefit them and not encourage the promulgation of vice or something to that effect. Now, there is some biblical to this point of view that if you trust in God and you have faith and you know you do your best and God will do the rest that you'll have a good material life we see this especially in Deuteronomy if you follow God's commands you will prosper if you don't then you won't we see it in psalms is constantly talking about following God's will and it will bring you good good returns and Christ says this too in the New Testament we have seek ye the kingdom first the kingdom of God the rest will be given unto you

the birds of the air and the flowers of the field are dressed very well and they don't do anything. How much more will our Lord take care of you? How much more will your father in heaven take care of you? And so there is a scriptural basis for a lot of what he's saying. And it seems unfair to criticize him as being totally outside of scripture. The trouble is there are a lot of scriptures that also don't talk about this. And it's hard to talk to someone in the third world or someone who's suffering from a terminal illness and say, well, just have better faith and more good things will happen.

to you, that seems shallow and unlikely because the scripture also includes Job. Job is a good guy. He does everything God asks him to do. And because God makes a bet with the devil, just the worst imaginable things befallen. He loses his family. He loses his wealth. He loses his health. Everything is taken away from him. You know, it's not so much that what Joel Osteen says is wrong. It's that he leaves out a lot of things that are right. So you'll notice on his altar, on his stage, there's no cross. And one reason given for that is that he doesn't want to alienate people who would find the cross offensive or off-putting. And there's no serious accounting for suffering.

Suffering is always a test, you know, in his account of things. And that doesn't seem to be the case throughout our experience of humanity and in Orthodox Christianity. So, you know, the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. Aquinas has asked this, why do wicked men prosper? and, you know, what do we really mean by prosperity? If you read Joel Osteen and think of prosperity as spiritual prosperity and the joy that comes from faith, then he's absolutely right. Then what he's saying is absolutely true.

If you read it and it means you make $40 million and you have a very nice house in Houston, I don't know that that's exactly theologically sound. You know, Osteen also talks about charity a lot and he's dinged for this. Here's him on Larry King talking about his works. story about charity. We've had ministers on who said your record don't count. You either believe in Christ so you don't. If you believe in Christ, you are, you are going to heaven. And if you don't, no matter what you've done in your life, you ain't. Yeah, it's, I don't know. There's probably a balance between, I believe you have to know Christ. But I think that

if you know Christ, if you're a believer in God, you're going to have some good works. And I think it's a cop out to say, well, I'm a Christian, but I don't ever do anything to help you. Well, if you're Jewish or Muslim and you don't accept Christ? at all? You know, I just, I'm very careful about saying who would and wouldn't go to heaven. I don't know. I think only God. Because you believe you have to believe in Christ. I believe. They're wrong. Well, I don't know if I believe they're wrong. I believe here's what the Bible teaches and from the Christian faith, this is what I believe. But I just think that only God can judge a person's heart. And Olstein here, you have to give it to

him is quite honest. He, this is theologically sound. James says faith without works is dead. Christ says whoever does the will of my father is my brother and my sister and my mother. And now one issue here is Osteen says, well, only God can judge. Nobody has the keys to the kingdom of heaven. But we know that isn't true. We know that Christ tells Peter. Peter, you're now, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. Here are the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. And there's a real honesty in Osteen saying, that guy isn't me. I do not have the keys to the kingdom of heaven. I'm not going to condemn people, and I'm not going to tell you who is going to heaven. And his reluctance to talk about that is seen as cowardice, I think, in a lot of quarters in Christianity and on the right,

but at least he's honest. He's not overstepping his bounds. One issue is he always talks about how good we are, build up self-esteem. But let's not forget, Jesus says in the scripture, why callest thou me good? There is none good, but one, that is God. but if that will to enter into life, keep the commandments.

So now we're talking about Joel Osteen's charity and we're brought up against this one big act, his moment to shine, this once in a lifetime natural disaster hits his hometown, and it appears that he did not handle this very well. Whether he really locked the doors or not, clearly he was not opening this monster church to invite the people of his neighborhood in. This is going to fuel his critics.

This is going to fuel people who say he's only in it for the money. I'm not accusing him of that. I'm not certain of it. He's always seemed a lot better than some of the other prosperity preachers and televangelists to me, but it's a real mark against him and he's going to have to answer for that. You know, he is primarily a televangelist and an author. All of his books have basically the same title. Become a better you, your best life now. It's your time. Think better, live better. And he's really, he's honest about what he does and what he doesn't do. Here's him also on Fox News Sunday. You know, as a pastor, I'm not trying to get everybody to, that's not my main calling like Billy Graham's. He was an evangelist. He went out trying to win everybody to Christ, and I am ultimately trying to do that.

But I'm trying to teach people how to live their everyday lives. And so I do focus on it, probably not as much as some people would like. He admits he's not an evangelist in the traditional sense. He's very straightforward about that. I took a look at his Twitter feed. Joel Osteen has tweeted 16. thousand, one hundred times. He's used to the words Jesus or Christ one hundred and twelve times, which is a fairly small percentage of all of his tweets. Now the guy is honest about what he is.

We're seeing his true colors probably in this storm and that would be just fine except that he is the senior pastor of the largest church in America. So now we need to bring on our all-female panel of deplorables and we have two new guests today. We have Kelly Campagna and Partisela, who is written for the Daily Wire before and now is writing for lots of other people. Kelly, you are no stranger to that old-time religion. Is there any room in this world for the prosperity gospel? Well, my, I'm going to step back for a minute and put the question to aside. I think that the problem with Joel Steen not opening his church is more so a liability question because my my dad was actually a pastor for 10 years and we had a school

actually come to and they had some problems with their boiler, it blew up or something, and they wanted to use our building, which was right across the street and they said, can we do that? And my dad said, okay. But then he actually had to increase the insurance just on the building just so that they could use the church or the church building for three weeks or whatever it was for the Christian school across the street. So, shockingly enough, I'm defending Joel Olstein on this issue. There may be other liability reasons why he can't open the doors that are not being talked about because churches have to bend over backwards just to keep their own property.

I went to a church in the San Francisco Bay Area that they were requiring all kinds of expensive changes just so that they could keep the building and then they were told afterwards, oh yeah, you're going to have to fix, revert the building back to its original status when you leave. So that's kind of beside the whole prosperity gospel thing. No, but I felt that too. I agreed that, you know, I often judge a man by his critics, and the people who were pouncing on Osteen didn't seem to me people who thought he wasn't Christian enough. It was people who were pouncing on him because he purports to be a Christian.

And there is this obvious liability issue. There are, what seemed to be, plenty of housing facilities for these victims already in Houston. So if they don't need to open up the space, which doesn't have adequate doctors and perhaps food and so on and so forth, then why do it? I felt it was a little bit of a disingenuous attack on him, though there are plenty other reasons to discuss the issues with what he does. Just on the point of the prosperity gospel, I noticed with Joel Olstein that there's never any biblical references. There's never any citations of verses. And that's kind of for me, I can't take somebody seriously if they don't actually know the Bible. And they're trying to tell me how to live my life and what I shouldn't be doing.

I've grown up with these types of people all my life. And I'm repulsed by a lot of what they do. It's, I mean, you know, you got to think better about yourself. This is a guilt three zone. Romans 323 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Do we forget about that verse there? I mean, Jesus died to make you wealthy. Yeah, he was thinking that when he had nails in his hands and feet.

That's exactly what he was thinking about right there. Man, that was quite a defense of Joel Osteen. That really took a turn. Well, on that point, dear viewers, we have to say about to Facebook and YouTube. Thank you to all the current subscribers who can go over right now to Dailywire.com. We really appreciate it because normally we're able to take those subscriptions and have studios with air conditioning, except for today, today we're in this bunker,

and that's totally fine. If you go over there right now, it is $10 a month, $100 a year. You get me, you get the Andrew Claven show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, but forget all that. You get the leftist tears tumbler. On a day like this, 105 degrees outside,

I cannot wait for that camera to go off. I'm going to fill this up with some nice, icy, cold, always salty and delicious leftist tears and sit out by the pool. It is going to be absolutely, fantastic. And if you can stick around and watch the rest of the panel of deplorables, we will teach you the seven tricks to have a better life today, to be the best you. So go over there right now. DailyWire.com. We'll be right back. Hillary Clinton is hitting the road.

This is the worst story. This is worse than the North Korean nukes. Hillary Clinton is going on the road. It's going to be a 15-city Hillary Clinton live tour. You can attend for a mere $1,200 per ticket. That's all. That's all. That for a little. one low price of $1,200 a ticket to see a woman who just keeps losing the presidency. Partis, I hesitate to even ask. This tour is going through some states that she lost last time around. Is she seriously considering running a third time? Well, she's done it before. I wouldn't be surprised if she did it again. God help us. When you know that you have, you know, you've already lost and continuing to run. I don't see any reason why she would stop. She didn't have a better chance

before. I guess that's true. What is she going to do now? Kelly, when will it end? When will Hillary Clinton finally, after, I think, 3,000 years of haunting this earth, when will she finally fade away? Well, I thought that the name of her tour, Hillary Clinton Live, was rather an oxymoron since we were all making fun of her for looking like the war on the campaign. Hillary Clinton, undead. That's going to be the new name of the tour. It's The Walking Dead, Season 5, starring Hillary Clinton, who, by the way, is Michael Knowles' distant relative. which is just very disturbing to me. I was hoping nobody would bring that up. I didn't want to have to relive that trauma,

but Hillary Clinton is, I believe, my second cousin once removed. What a damn shame. But I think that Hillary just doesn't understand that it's time to quit. I mean, obviously, I think she should have quit after the 2008 run, or certainly after the incredible Smackdown in 2012,

you should think, okay, I'm really unful. popular. I should just fade away, be a grandma. It's time to be done. But when you have somebody who has spent her entire life and devoted her entire life to one thing and that's running for president, it's probably just impossible for her to let that go. She doesn't know how to do anything else other than request money and run for office. And what else is she going to do? I have this image of her at her kitchen sink with a brillo pad, like out damn spot, you know, and she's just rubbing it for years and years. She says, okay, I got to do something else. I got to go on the road or something.

Partist, Hillary Clinton in this tour, I have to quote this, she promises to let loose and tell her audience a personal, raw, detailed, and surprisingly funny story of her election loss. Nobody buys her books. Her own party hates her. Who is going to show up for this thing? I mean, anyone who showed up for her. Okay, on to someone who won the presidency. President Trump has warned that all options are on the table with regard to North Korea after they launched a missile that fired over Japan on Tuesday. Now, this is the fourth missile that North Korea has fired in four days.

Kelly, I thought we took care of this. What is the end game here for North Korea? That's an excellent question. And I'm not really sure what, I mean, I think that North Korea is, basically trying to, you know, show that it has muscle or whatever. But I think, you know, my first instinct with North Korea has always been to bomb them and, you know, pick up pieces later. But that's why I'm not president.

So I think that- Yeah, the people of Seoul are very happy. You're not in the Oval Office. I think so, yeah. But I think Trump needs to respond with a very measured response. You know, in the past, and this is why I've actually supported President Trump's foreign policy largely. In the past, we've had President Obama come up with a red line and then Russia or Syria or whatever. We'll cross the red line.

Okay, we're drawing a new red line now. You know, part is... I'm sorry, go ahead. It seems like they've already been doing that. It just hasn't been reported yet. And even, I think it was earlier today on Fox and Friends, Gorka, who had just resigned, he had kind of hinted that that's what the Trump administration was already doing, that the U.S. has already been interfering in North Korea's missile test.

But, I mean, this was something that was confidential, and it hasn't been reported in the media for obvious reasons. And they, I mean, it might be at this point. See, it's not confidential anymore. I don't think Fox and Friends is the, it is the, it is. is a morning briefing for the president, but I don't know if it's the classified one. Yeah. Now on a much more important story, a much more relevant story to all of our lives, coffee is apparently good for your health.

The European Society of Cardiology is reporting that participants who consumed at least four cups of coffee per day in a fairly broad study had a 64% lower risk of all-cause mortality than those who almost never consumed coffee. Now, Partis, we already know that coffefe is good for your health. Is coffee also healthy? And is this just evidence that scientists have no idea what they're talking about because one day they tell us one thing and the next day they tell us completely the opposite? It's just evidence that I know what I'm talking about because I've been drinking coffee for a long time now.

And so I secretly knew that coffee is just... I have too. I started drinking coffee when I was six years old. And I think I'd probably be like six foot four if I hadn't, you know? but I don't regret it one bit. I have no regrets. Every one of those delicious double lattes I cherish in my memory. Kelly, is there a strain of anti-science on the right?

You know, we joke about these guys don't know what they're talking about, and it'll be the opposite tomorrow. But is there something about the right that does question these scientists? And if so, is it justified? I think it's definitely justified because one minute it's butter that's bad. No, now it's margarine. No, no, it's butter again. That's why eat them all.

I try to keep a balanced diet of butter, margarine, and sometimes I'll just spray Pam directly into my mouth. Oh, gosh, that sounds disgusting. But it's, you know, it's cholesterol. It's gluten now. And what's it going to be in 10 years? I do think that there is a tendency because the right has been tricked or misled so many times that even when the left is correct on some sort of scientific study, the right is just automatically going to question it because so many times you've had. As I said, you know, it's butter, it's margarine.

I can't believe it's not butter. I mean, all the rest of it, you know, it's almost like a bait and switch. And because science gets politicized. I mean, the real point is I can't believe it's not science. When we talk about global warming, when we talk about different areas of health science, very often it's politicians who are pushing this. Let's not forget it wasn't a scientist who made the movie an inconvenient truth. It was a failed presidential candidate.

So, I mean, is that the issue? Is there any way to depolitize scientific research, or are they always going to have policy recommendations, and that's always going to be political? That's actually something I haven't really thought about. Once you politicize something, I can't think of a single example of depoliticizing it. It would be nice if we could take the, I think it comes down to a money issue. If you take away the federal grants and require that they all be private, you're still going to have whatever agenda is behind the private. private money, but at least it's not tied to the government in any way that you don't have politicians necessarily pushing it unless they're part of the private organization.

So the only thing I can suggest off the top of my head is privatization. But yeah, it's very hard to deep let us. That's your answer for everything, Kelly. Privatize, privatized, but that's my answer too. Okay, we are running late and I'm melting, so I got to get out of this studio. Panel, thank you so much for being here, part of Ceylen, Kelly Campania. Now it is time for me to put on my smart glasses and mop, sweat off my brow and read the final thought. If prosperity preachers like Joel Osteen

encourage you to do better for yourself, there doesn't seem to me anything particularly wrong with that. Within that narrow scope that Osteen sets for himself, perhaps his message can encourage people. If so, go with God. The worry is that people might take him for something that he himself admits that he's not. In the weight of glory, C.S. Lewis describes heresy, not as the promotion of vice over virtue, but rather is the promotion of some particular virtue over all the others. Charity to the exclusion of prudence, justice to the exclusion of charity. The power of positive thinking is neither a theological nor a cardinal virtue, and it shouldn't be confused for one, lest another Lewis admonition creep up on you. He warns, if you look for truth,

you may find comfort in the end. If you look for comfort, you will not get either comfort or truth, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair. On that despairing note, I am Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Nulls show. Come back tomorrow and we'll give you hope.