I am glad to see others talking about the heresy that Oprah is teaching. That hyperlink will take you to a YouTube video. Take note of what Oprah says at about 3:15 minutes in to it. Her spiel about “the absolute indescribable hugeness of that which we call God“. That statement parallels the Emergent church’s statement about the Gospel, that it “is the irreducible good news of God, ultimately delivered in the person of Jesus Christ“.
I hate to sound like a conspiracy nut, but the Gospel is being attacked in bold ways and with big money. Joel Osteen attacks it on TV screens across America every week from a crossless pulpit. Doyle Davidson, a drunken lecher, attacks it from his pulpit nightly. Osteen has a huge following. Davidson has a small cult. Osteen and Davidson have similar ministries.
Osteen leads people away from the cross by avoiding all discussion of sin. He focuses on prosperity, wealth, and opportunity. His weapons are a pleasing words, a nice smile, and lots of cash. Osteen has people close to him that prop him up and make apologies for his crossless brand of Churchianity.
Davidson leads people away from the cross by bringing every issue down to a matter of demon possession. He focuses on his own lusts, disappointments, and his own self-righteousness. His weapons are bottle of whiskey, endless prayers of repetition, and his own Jezebel-doctrine. Davidson has people to prop him up too, and they make apologies for his sickening presence and preaching.
One brand of churchianity is no better than the other.
Back to Oprah. At about 4:40 minutes into the video, she talks about a “search for something more than doctrine started to stir within” her. She relates this to a time in her late twenties. She was sitting in church and the pastor said, “And the LORD thy God is a jealous god”. Her response was, “God is jealous of me?” She says that she rejected that teaching because her inner spirit didn’t agree with it.
That makes sense, right? What does Exodus 20:5, Exodus 34:14, Deuteronomy 4:24, Deuteronomy 5:9, Deuteronomy 6:15,and Joshua 24:19 have to do with the truth about God? No, Oprah says that God is love and God is in all things.
Back to the video again. She turns to Eckhart Tolle (about 4:50 minutes) for a critique of Christian faith…”Man made god in his own image. The eternal, infinite, and unnamable was reduced to a mental idol that you had to believe in and worship as my-god our our-god“. They go on to talk about Christ-consciousness, making false Christs out of everyone who will embrace their doctrine. The say that Christ is all about a feeling and not about a belief. How does Oprah’s New Age teaching parallel the teaching of Emergent leaders?
PS: Please note that Tolle is a pseudo Red Letter christian.
HT: Slice of Laodicea
UPDATE 04/09/2008: The video referred to above promotes a book and an author that I don’t wish to promote. That author is apparently a shameless plagiarist, and she does more harm than good to the name of Christendom with her unsavory methods. Nevertheless, the video does a great job of presenting the spiritual poison that Oprah is peddling.
Posted by reburris
Posted by reburris
Posted by reburris
