Thursday
Oct112007
One More Reminder, Mike Horton to Appear on CBS's "60 Minutes"
Thursday, October 11, 2007 at 02:06PM 
Mike Horton is scheduled to appear on CBS's 60 Minutes this coming Sunday, October 14. 60 Minutes is doing an investigation of Joel Osteen and wanted Michael's take. For more info, Click here: News and Events.
Mike taped for nearly four hours. He was pleased with how it went. Now, we'll see of how much of this actually gets on the air.
Update on Thursday, October 11, 2007 at 02:02PM by
Kim Riddlebarger
Kim Riddlebarger
CBS has just posted a two minute preview of the program dealing with Osteen. Mike is not in the interview, but you can see Joel cry because God is using him in special ways. Gag . . . Click here: Joel Osteen Answers His Critics, Tells Byron Pitts "We're Not Perfect" - CBS News
Reader Comments (66)
As a newly reformed Xtian, coming from an evangelical background, I don't have a fully orbed understanding of the connection between the Lord's day as a day of Christian worship, the Jewish sabbath, and God's sabbath rest. However, I am somewhat complacent with the idea that endlessly striving towards Xtian righteousness combined with with active participation in the preached word and sacraments will slowly help me to be more and more aware of my total depravity, and through God's sanctifying power, I hope that I will resist my sinfulness sufficiently to publicly protect God's holy reputation as member of his visible Church.
However, none of these things would be possible if instead of God's "Amazing News", with its regenerating faith-creating power, I had heard another helping of the Osteen's satanic heresies. Osteen is the face of American Christianity, in effect God's holy reputation. It is wonderful that God has given one of the doctrinally faithful a chance to defend God's public reputation.
I admire you for taking God's commands seriously, and if you see someone in the church embroiled in gossip, exploitation of the poor, or sexual immorality, it is your duty to speak to them privately, and if necessary involve church leadership to end or remove the behavior and protect God's reputation.
However, anything that is not specifically prohibited in scripture (aka watching 60 minutes) falls in the area of individual conscience and private decision. The Bible goes so far as to condemn those that try to add to the law and restrict Xtian liberty.
My pastor even declared that abstaining from such activities allowed under Xtian liberty for the wrong reasons (such as moral snootiness) comes dangerously close to a rejection of your own sinful nature and the gospel of Christ that saves.
If as a matter of private conscience, you feel that it is evil to watch 60 minutes on the Lord's day, please don't do it. But if you feel that your Xtian brother is sinning by doing it, then encourage him to pray and read the Word, and actively participate in the sacraments and the rightly preached Word of God, but don't look down on him, and don't tell repent of sinfully watching 60 minutes on Sunday unless you can show him a scriptural prohibition.
Tory
Are people still trying to fulfill the law?
Even Paul says the Sabbath is a shadow, the substance belongs to Christ.
And we are under grace, not the Law.
Therefore, when I set aside a Sabbath day then it is out of gratitude and and a love for God because He first loved me. Not because I think I am doing something that is pleasing to God or even required of me to do.
Please correct me if I am misunderstanding.
But DZLR, you are forgetting this, it seems to me. I think you should step down from your judgment seat.
Zrim
The sabbath began at sundown and ended at sundown.
Whatever your views on how to honor it and what it represents are, it starts Sat PM by 7 PM and ends Sunday by 7 PM this time of year, if you want to be biblical.
I for one find that starting the day of rest after dinner Sat makes Sun AM so much nicer...you don't go to bed late and frazzled and tired and wake up in rush.
Regarding the TV program, I am dubious that it will do anything positive at all for the gospel. I would expect them to take a few sentences half out of context and do anything possible to make born again Christians look as stupid or narrowminded as possible. Not getting my hopes up here, despite my high regard for Horton.
The Romans 14:4-6 passage and the parallel passage in Colossians 2:16-17, Paul is not referring to the Sabbath, but to the Jewish festivals. There was a division in the church between Jewish and Gentile believers, both of whom which kept the Sabbath on Sunday. But the Jewish believers added the extra Jewish celebrations and festivals and were calling on the Gentiles to keep those days as a Sabbath as well. So those passages are not giving license to treat the Sabbath as just another day.
I think the reformed writers of the past can give us great wisdom on this.
Question 60 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism
Q. 60. How is the Sabbath to be sanctified?
A. The Sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days;(Ex 20:10, Neh 13:15-2, Isa 58:13-14) and spending the whole time in the public and private exercises of God’s worship,(Ex 20:8, Lev 23:3, Luke 4:16, Acts 20:7) except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy.(Mat 12:1-13)
Also Chapter 21 section 8 of the Westminster Confession states
VIII. This Sabbath is to be kept holy unto the Lord when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe an holy rest all the day from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations, (EXOD. 20:8, EXOD. 16:23,25-26,29-30; EXOD. 31:15-17; ISA 63:13; NEH. 13:15-19,21-22.) but also are taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of His worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.( ISA 63:13; MATT. 12:1-13.)
Also isn’t it interesting that the 4th command starts with the word “Remember”. Remember what, something that has been previously revealed. So this was not a new commandment for the Moses and the people of God at that time.
As someone very wise once said, “For the Christian the Law is a teacher of sin and the rule of gratitude.” I would love to know who this quote is from.
So I think we should take the first commandment as serious as the 4th, and as the 7th, and as all the rest.
The big hold up is we really don’t like changing our lifestyle all that much, especially in our private lives. At least I don’t. But we have to labor in our personal life striving for Godly living and pursuing holiness. All out of gratitude for the grace and mercy we received on account of the person and work of Christ.
Reformed people talk a lot about resting in Christ, but there is an active response to the grace we have received by faith in Christ as well.
A great resource on this subject is Dr. Pipa's (former WSC professor now president of Greenville seminary) book "The Lords Day".
but the next segment about Dubai was truly fascinating :)
We know it isn't about real news or a reliable investigation. They can't do that. At least 20,000 Osteen devotee's would boycott CBS, Etc.
As for Osteen's crying about his touching people's lives: B.L.E.A.H!
Even without the mascara, Joel gets the "Jan Crouch Pukeworthy Sentiment Award."
It was just fun to see a brutha get some props. It was better than claiming a West Michigan son (Prince) who seems to have some 'splaining to do over Blackwater (!).
Done. Everyone go back to work now.
Zrim
Zrim
This is pretty simple. When someone thinks they are a pretty good person AND also believes that he can help others be a pretty good person, you get this kind of preaching. When someone is broken and contrite, you get a different kind of preaching.
During the show, the interviewer was simply not qualified to ask hard questions of either Mike Horton OR Joel Osteen. Mike was probably interviewed AFTER Osteen was interviewed, at least it seems that way. Note that the interviewer didn't bring up Mike's charge of Heresy to Joel at all!
In a pluralistic society, there's no room for heresy or even the charge of heresy because there's lots of room for any given belief, no matter how crazy. Joel's religion is a different religion altogether. Christians, at least, need to be told this emphatically. This is a different religion. It will fail you because it's leading you past all the pretty wonders of the world, right and straight to hell. Osteen has his people on a stairway, where they can work their way up and up, but at the top is a precipice over the fires.
We get on Joel's case for softpedalling the message. When are we going to stop softpedalling the message ourselves?
And how exciting it was to see Mike on the tube again. Last time I saw him, he was pitching his first book "Mission Accomplished" on TBN! That's about 20 years ago, now.
"And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds"
If I were the Devil and wanted to deceive people and keep them from the kingdom Joel Osteen would be one of the personae I would assume.
I too agree that the interviewer didn't seem qualified to ask the hard questions, but he did ask Osteen (astutely enough) why there was no mention of God or Jesus in his most recent book....
Oh well. It walk, quacks and sounds like a duck....
aL
You mean like Sinclair Ferguson's "Six Steps to Discovering God's Will"? I agree. At root of both is the idea that creaturely comfort and the trinity of happy, healthy and whole is the main idea. It's just that Joel violates the obnoxious code and makes headlines while Ferguson's is likely little known. That Ferguson sneaks it in under the Reformed radar is more cause for my own anxiety than a rodeo clown like Osteen. Again, what's good for the Evangelical goose is good for the Reformed gander. Oh, the siren sound of relevancy.
Zrim