Out Sick

Sorry about the lack of posting but I have been down with a bug for the last week. I have been reading but just don’t have the energy to post reviews or read much online. I hope to be back soon.

Kevin Holtsberry
I work in communications and public affairs. I try to squeeze in as much reading as I can while still spending time with my wife and two kids (and cheering on the Pittsburgh Steelers and Michigan Wolverines during football season).

3 Comments

  1. I was trying to post this on your other blog which I surfed in on but it wouldn’t let me. This is pertaining to your comments about Olsteen Jr. and your own church experiencde, thank you! Hope you feel better!

    I find your thoughts on this topic insiteful, but let me offer you my view which I hope will be equally beneficial for you. It is really ineffective and unfair to suck people in the way these feel good positivity & prosperity preachers like Olsteen do. You can’t hide the truth nor can you dress it up & disguise it (unless your satan), All Olsteen is doing is feeding people that hunger for the meat of the Gospel, empty calories with his junk food ideology, a lot of which isn’t even biblical! I have spent the last 4 years defending the faith to people of all diffrent beliefs and walks of life and they are not looking for the sweet high calorie mush that the Olsteen’s of the world are dishing out to them, sure if they are hungry & new christians they will take it, but after a while they are going to feel empty & feel like they are defunct of vital nutrients which we all know don’t allows come in good tasting packages, what the people I minister to are looking for is hardcore logical honest answers to lifes lowest of lows all that positivity garbage won’t mean a thing to a person who knows how the world really works! Jesus himself and his apostles were all sentenced to die horrible martyr poverty stricken deaths, is it really loving to set up new christians into thinking that all thier problems will be solved as long as thier faith is strong, and that they will prosper and all of thier dreams can be fulfilled by having faith in God? Jesus himself tells christians that they will be hated and they will have thier own cross to bear, infact Jesus makes no hesitation in telling his followers the truth about the many more hardships they will endure just because they follow him, he even told one would be follower that he would have to sell all his worldy posessions, is it really fair to tell new christians to keep up appearances and always look thier best and dress nice, when the gospel itself indeed Jesus Christ clearly teaches that the christian life is much harsher & more complicated than that? I don’t remember Jesus being crucified in his Sunday’s best suit! I am judging Olsteen on the sermons I have heard him preach. I have never even heard him mention the name Jesus Christ let alone Saved by grace through the blood of Jesus Christ, by going on what I’ve heard him preach alone (and not my Bible knowledge) If I was interested in Christianity I would think it was about rubbing the figurative Genie’s lamp so all my little heart’s desires would be fulfilled by faith in a “god” It couldn’t be the God of the Bible because I’ve rarely if ever seen him quote the Bible. New christians and people being witnessed to need the TRUTH the WHOLE TRUTh & nothing but the truth, because only the holy spirit knows what message will reach the person you are witnessing to, I could be preaching faith & grace to someone who really needs to hear about man’s origins because thier obstacle is not faith & grace, but evolution, It will be a cold day in hell before Olsteen preaches from Genisis. There are 5 billion unique individuals on this earath and it is really ridiculous to assume that one aproach will reach them all. As large as his church is, he probably turns away twice as many would be christians with his obvious junk food preaching! Also there are a lot of wolves in sheeps clothing DECIEVING & USING MANY by telling people what they WANT to hear or what will fatten them up, rather than telling them what they NEED to hear and what will make them healthy. They use these same tactics/sermons to swindel christians out of billions of dollars, which they spend on themselves and thier sins (drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, excessive cars & homes ect..).
    Even an athiest has the wisdom to see that a church in a stadium that is costing 75 million to remodel is a slap in the face to the God of the Bible & his gospel message. His church is in the poor section of town but he lives uptown in a million plus dollar home? He has 15,000 plus members but only six of them can volunteer to help that poor community? The post office is working with the city & other orgs to collect food for the needy but his church is trying to put up memorials & inact legislation to honor his late father, despit the neibhorhoods protest? Do you really think these “prosperity” preachers know the real Jesus? It is a shame when the post office a government entity is noted in a city council meeting for feeding the needy, and a so called church is know in this same council meeting for not helping thier neighbors and trying to get the city to put up shrines to thier late pastor. The problem is people don’t want to read & study the Bible for themselves, they want to be led by a person they can physically meet or relate to, a sinner just like them that they can meet, hear, & see & idolize, (that’s probably why the followers are so quick to forget the blasphemy of these teachers) Even if you study the word every once in a while you want to hear someone else’s take on a verse, and we assume that just because someone’s been on TV or has a book or internet page or has thousands of followers and has been preaching for 50 years, ect.. that they are more qualified than us to tell us what the Bible means, THIS is the worst myth we can reinforce with new christians! ALL OF THESE MEN of RENOWN, Bible Teachers, ect have SINS, They are under attack to stop winning souls and more often than not they fall prey to Satan’s lies and they start teaching them! All of a sudden thier church based on lies & half truths grows to thousands of members and they become household names & international celebrities, thier pockets get deeper, and the true Christ of the Gospel becomes a thing of the past in thier ministries. We need to stop exhaulting the Pastor and the church, and exhault Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone, because he has no blemish and no skeleton in the closet and he speaks the WHOLE truth, and that is what a new christian hungers for not that superficial fluff that the Olsteen’s of the world teach! We would all do better just to read the Bible and share it & defend & debate it in small home based groups, and gather a small group of believers together to worship, the bigger the church the more corrupt & the less the word of God is preached, new christians need one on one attention anyway, which they won’t get if they have to stand in line with 15,000 other christians to get the ear of one pastor.

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