You Wouldn't Believe If This Was Not Recorded...

Hi, my name is Joyce Meyer. I'm a really popular teacher, just like my really popular friends whom you know and trust. You might know their names, Joel Osteen.

Joyce Meyer Introduced as a Popular Teacher

We are so excited to have one of our favorite ministers in all the world, Joyce Meyer, here today. We know how much you love her. We love her so much. Give her a great big hand clap as she comes, Joyce Meyer.

God Accepts You Right Where You Are

God accepts and approves you right where you are. Faults and all. Mistakes, shortcomings. Not when you overcome, but right now. He knows you're on a journey. He's changing you little by little. He accepts you.

Now you have to accept yourself. He approves you. You have to approve yourself.

The Prosperity Gospel and Seed-Faith Giving

Stephen Furtick. The greatest Bible teacher alive today came to Elevation Church. Code Orange Revival. New York Times bestselling author. Written over a hundred books. I know this must be revival, because God doesn't send Joyce Meyer just anywhere.

Because God broke the law for love. I said to every sinner, God broke the law for love.

Kenneth Copeland. Danny Hinn. And trust me, I've talked to enough LGBT, they are not all the same.

Oh, for sure. Any more than all Christians. No, no. But how do we, first of all, is your thinking involved in this?

Evolved and evolving. Evolved and evolving. I teach a version of the prosperity gospel, which involves convincing people that they should give money to me to get blessings they want from God. When you give, you make it so God owes you something.

Because you get a receipt, you can cash in with God.

When I talked with Dr. Roberts today and we talked about this seed faith thing, he said something awesome. He said, the Bible says giving and receiving. But he said, God has taught me by studying that word receiving that another way to say that word is receiving.

The word receiving means receiving. And so he said, when you give, you get a receipt in heaven that when you have a need, you can then go with your receipt and say, you see, God, I have got my receipt from my sowing and now I have a need and I'm cashing in my receipt.

Because giving isn't all about sacrifice or worship or furthering the spread of the gospel. No, it's about sowing a seed so you can get something in return. And while we're on the subject of giving, you may as well just give extra, plant some extra seed.

Here's a good example. This is just one of the things that I do just, just because I just, I just want to be that kind of person who just always takes it up to the next level. Let's just say your paycheck is, or say you get an amount of money, $274 .10.

So your title net would be $27 .41. Well, if it were me, I wouldn't write my check off for $27 .41. I'd kick it up to 30 bucks. Well, you know, them preachers, they just take your money and live these fancy lives and you don't know what they do.

That is just an excuse too. That's all it is. It's just somebody who doesn't want to give and they're just trying to find an excuse not to. Yes, there will be people that will misuse your money. Yes, there will be people that will misuse your money.

Yes, there will be people that will misuse your money. Yes, there will be people that will misuse your money. There are bad doctors, but that doesn't keep you from going when you get sick. Amen. You just find somebody that is honest and plant your seed there.

That's not the gospel. And that's not what the Bible teaches. Well, I don't really care about that. All I know is that it works really well to get people to give lots of money to me. But don't you worry at all about people who give you money they can't afford to give because they're desperate?

No, I don't worry at all about that.

Do I believe that God wants to bless us? Yes. But when you go to conferences, you ask people to give money to you. You say, do it cheerfully. Because the Bible says, give and it shall be given unto you.

Giving is a major part of the whole Christian doctrine. Do you believe that if someone gives money to the ministry, that more will come back to them? Yes, absolutely. I think that's what they mean by prosperity.

But you worry at all that sometimes your message will be heard by someone in the most dire circumstances. It's a sort of roulette wheel, a sort of gamble with God. Okay, well, I can't pay the rent, but I'll give it to Joyce and we'll see what happens.

Do you worry at all that that happens? I totally know. I don't worry about that.

Joyce Meyer says, no, I totally don't worry about that. Well, I'm sure she doesn't, but she should.

It's really important for me to have lots of money because I really need to fly in a private jet. It's just too hard for me to fly on commercial airplanes. Why would it be okay.

For a business executive, but not okay for somebody like me? I really could not fly commercial at this stage of my life and do what I'm doing. I could not endure it physically.

Do you know how hard it is to fly commercial? Another aspect of the prosperity gospel that I teach is that it's always God's will to be healthy. Now I know that's definitely in the Bible.

Third. John two says, beloved, I pray that you might prosper in every way and that your body might keep well, even as I know your soul prospers and keeps well. So we see right there that God wants us to be healthy.

Can everybody say God wants me to be.

Healthy? This is not a theological statement. This is not a doctrinal statement. It's not a statement of teaching. It's not a didactic, not a teaching statement. It's simply a common greeting to a letter, nothing more and nothing less.

And the faith preachers know it, but they don't want you to know it because it just happens to fit their theology. And of course, one way to be.

Healthy is again, to give money, to plant that seed. But do you believe that if someone gives.

Money to the ministry, that more will come back to them? Yes, absolutely. I'm proud of teaching.

These kinds of things. It's a privilege for me to be part of the word of faith movement.

You know, I, I had the privilege of being part of what is known as the word and faith movement. And I'd been a Christian for a long time, but there was a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the church and lot of, just a lot of teaching about faith and a lot of teaching about healing.

And you know, it was wonderful. It was a wonderful time, even like the teaching that God wanted to bless us. And he does. And God wants us to have our needs met. And he wants us to have an abundance of things.

Why would he want all the sinners in the world to have all the good stuff while we sit around and just have nothing all the time. God wants to bless us, but he doesn't want, nor will he bless us beyond our level of spiritual maturity.

But everybody suffers. Life is suffering. That's just a product of the fall. We suffer and we die. The word of faith movement teaches the unbiblical nonsense that we should call out things that are not a reality as if they already existed.

In other words,.

Just name it and claim it. God taught me by the Holy Spirit, how to start confessing the word of God out loud and calling things that were not yet a reality in my life as if they already existed. Now, just in case you're going to say, Oh, don't tell me this is a name it, claim it message.

The whole point is, is in Romans 4 17, the Bible says that we serve a God who calls things that do not exist as if they already existed. And he speaks life to dead things and they come back to life. So that's how powerful your words are.

You can speak life into dead circumstances in your life, and you can see the resurrection of power of God in your life.

I teach that as Christians, we have a lot of power. We even have the power to find sickness and disease and to release the blessings of God here.

Where you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Well, I tell you what, we better thank God that there's a cap that's put on that authority when we're babies in Christ.

Hello? Because we don't have enough good sense to not just try to use the power of God for our own benefit all the time. That's why I say that we've got to grow up. That power and authority is available to us.

It's been purchased by the blood of Christ. It's just like it's in the bank for us. And I mean, the Holy Ghost is just waiting for us to grow up just a little tiny bit. And every little bit we grow up, he'll give us a little more power.

You grow up a little more, it gives you a little more power. You grow up a little more, it gives you a little more power. You grow up a little more, it gives you a little more power. But we've got to grow up and quit living to serve ourselves.

And the more we do that, the more God's going to release into your hands the ability to be able to help other people. Now we know that sickness and disease is bound in heaven so we can bind sickness and disease here.

We know the blessings of God are loosed in heaven and so we can loose the blessings of God here. Number one, truly,.

I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. There's one we rip kicking and screaming out of context all the live long day.

You ever been in a church where they bind the devil? Satan, we bind you. I just want to go up to him after and say, hey, I just want to ask you something. Do the rest of the churches right here know that y 'all got him this week?

Because I mean, that's, you know, if you bound him then, you know, here's the other thing I want to know. Do you let him go every week? Because I mean, if you can bind him, I'm just going to go on and recommend you keep him that way.

Women Teaching Men and Biblical Qualifications

Speaking of ignoring what the Bible teaches, I just started teaching both women and men without knowing what the Bible actually teaches.

About women teaching men. When you began ministry 1976 in the years that followed, what was expected of women then was very different than what God was calling you to do.

How'd you deal with that? Well, I totally, when I started it, I wasn't even cognizant of the fact that women didn't normally do that. I mean, I was just so caught up in what I felt like God was telling me to do.

And it was being successful. And, you know, I always teasing, I say, I didn't know women couldn't teach till people started telling me that they couldn't. Right. I just.

Felt God calling me to teach. And I just felt I was gifted to do that. So I just started doing that.

And so in this church that we were going to, they felt like that I wasn't supposed to be teaching, that Dave should be teaching. I remember going out of the church one Sunday and the pastor looking at Dave and he said, brother, you should be teaching that Bible study, not your wife.

And what did you think when he said that? I mean, how did you feel?

At the same time him saying it, I'm thinking, you know, that, you know, why did God not give.

Me the gift? Why did he give it to her? The other thing is, well, what if a person feels like they have gifts to do that? No one gets to do everything they feel like they're gifted at. No one does. What if a man who has several wives feels like he's gifted to be a pastor?

The Bible says he must be the husband of one wife. Right? So just because you feel like you're gifted to do something that doesn't give you the right to overthrow biblical qualifications. These people told me what the Bible teaches that women shouldn't be teachers over men.

And I didn't know that. And apparently I still don't know that. And I'll continue not knowing that because I've become really successful doing something I really shouldn't be doing. I once kind of not really apologized for teaching the prosperity gospel.

Regrets Over Prosperity Teaching and the Problem of Suffering

I'm glad for what I learned about prosperity,.

But it got out of balance. I'm glad for what I learned about faith, but it got out of balance.

The really deceptive manipulative things that I taught about prosperity were just a little out of balance. They weren't completely wrong.

So every time somebody had a problem in their life, it was because they didn't have enough faith. If you got sick, you didn't have enough faith. If your child died, you didn't have enough faith. Well, that's not right.

You can't, there's nowhere in the Bible where we're promised that we'll never have any trouble. I don't care how much faith you've got. You're not going to ever having trouble in your life. Jesus said in the world, there will be tribulation.

Cheer up. I have overcome the world. Yes. I used to teach that when things go wrong in your life, it's because you didn't have enough faith. And this is my little apology for doing that. I'm not going to stop selling my books that teach this prosperity gospel lie or anything crazy like that, though, of course, because I make a lot of money from those books.

And I'm not going to apologize to all those people whom I've deceived into giving me money because I still don't really think that that was a problem at all. But even if I did get a pass for my terrible teachings about the prosperity gospel, there's a lot more heresy that I believe and teach.

Also, I teach that I'm not a sinner anymore and that Christians in general aren't sinners anymore.

I am not poor. I am not miserable. And I am not a sinner that is alive from the pit of hell. That is what I were. And if I still was, then Jesus died in vain. I'm going to tell you something, folks. I didn't stop sinning until I finally got it through my thick head.

I wasn't a sinner anymore. And the religious world thinks that's heresy and they want to hang you for it. But the Bible says that I'm righteous and I can't be righteous and be a sinner at the same time.

Jesus Became Born Again, Was No Longer the Son of God, and Was Tortured in Hell

I teach that Jesus became born again, even though the Bible describes being born again as being.

Saved. Do you know something? The minute that blood sacrifice was accepted, Jesus was the first human being that was ever born again.

I teach that on the cross, Jesus was no longer the son of God because he was a sin.

He could have helped himself up until the point where he said, I commend my spirit into your hand. At that point, he couldn't do nothing for himself anymore. He had become sin.

He was no longer the son of God. He was sin. I teach that we're all little gods and not really.

Just humans. And, you know, I was listening to a set of tapes by one man and he explained it like this. And I think this kind of gets the point across. He said, you know, why do people have such a fit about God calling his creation, his creation, his man, not his whole creation, but his man, little gods.

If he's God, what's he going to call him? But the God kind. I mean, if you as a human being have a baby, you call it a human kind. If cattle has another cattle, they call it cattle kind. So, I mean, what's God supposed to call us?

Doesn't the Bible say.

We're created in his image? And I teach that Jesus was tortured in hell by demons.

Oh, they were having the biggest party that's ever been had. They had my Jesus in the floor and they were standing on his back, jumping up and down, laughing. And he had become sin. All the hosts of hell were up on him, up on him, up on him.

All the host of hell was upon him, up on him. They got on him. They got him down in the floor and got on him. And they were laughing and mocking. Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha. You trusted God and look where you ended up.

You thought he'd save you and get you off that cross. He didn't. Ha, ha, ha.