Creflo Dollar is compromising, confusing or outright contradicting essential Christian doctrine. Joel Osteen does exactly the same thing. Now, not necessarily the exact same doctrines, but he is compromising, confusing or contradicting essential Christian doctrine. Their view of faith is a force, words are the containers of the force, and through the force of faith, one can create his or her own reality. That's not biblical faith. That's a false faith, or faith that doesn't satisfy and ultimately will lead people into harm's way.
Hank HanegraaffCharles Haddon Spurgeon said that the old covenant was a convenant of prosperity, and the new convenient is a covenant of adversity, whereby we're being weaned from the present world and made meek for the world to come.
Hank HanegraaffI write about this in The Last Temple, the early church knew that Christ has risen from the dead, and so they didn't live their lives with earthly vanities, but they lived their lives for eternal verities. And I think that if we might catch that enthusiasm and the reality of resurrection, we would live by a completely different standard as well.
Hank HanegraaffI think that we're guided by the motto in "essentials unity, non essentials liberty and in all things charity." So if pastors compromise essential Christian doctrine, I think that there is a biblical warrant for naming them.
Hank HanegraaffI think that these are the kinds of things that we can debate vigorously. We don't have to ultimately divide over them and I think when we debate, we should do so in a collegial fashion, with a great deal of gentleness and humbleness, recognizing that we can learn from one another. Again, even with people who have moved over from the Kingdom of Christ to the kingdom of the cults, we need to treat them with love and with gentleness and with a heart to restore them to proper life and doctrine.
Hank HanegraaffChristians should ultimately do everything that we do with excellence. There's a story about repairs in the Sistine Chapel ... when some repair work was being done the craftsmen saw that the work on the other side of the plaster, the part not visible to the human eye was done with the same kind of craftsmanship that was done on what was visible and observable. And the explanation for that is that the work that Christians do is not just for human consumption, but it is also for the eyes of God.
Hank Hanegraaff