Joel Osteen, quoted here:
“I think in general the scripture talks abut how there’s earthquakes and famines and wars and you know you’re close to the end times. Well, we see a lot of that happening today. Does that mean a hundred years, a thousand years, or ten thousand years? Well, I don’t know. My thing is let’s make the most of this day. God’s given us this day and it’s a gift and we may not have tomorrow, but let’s be our best today and be a blessing to someone else and live it in vain.”
"Live it in vain"? Surely that must be a typo, leaving out the "not" before the "live" (the reporter also left out the "o" in "about").
Ah, but the irony of that omission.
The $56 million preacher who reportedly says Mormons also are Christians can't be accused of looking into things too deeply. The kindest way to say it is he isn't overly familiar with how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, nor with how he flirts with the "wisdom" of a hedonism which was warned against by both Paul and Isaiah:
"Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die"(1 Cor.15:32/Isaiah 22:13).
Well before the career of Christ, who preached the end of the age, the prosaic idea of the priority of now was reported for ubiquitous wisdom among non-Jews.
So Strabo (Geographica, 14.5.9f.):
'Then to Zephyrium, which bears the same name as the place near Calycadnus. Then, a little above the sea, to Anchiale, which, according to Aristobulus, was founded by Sardanapallus. Here, he says, is the tomb of Sardanapallus, and a stone figure which represents the fingers of the right hand as snapping together, and the following inscription in Assyrian letters:
"Sardanapallus, the son of Anacyndaraxes, built Anchiale and Tarsus in one day. Eat, drink, be merry, because all things else are not worth this,"
meaning the snapping of the fingers. Choerilus also mentions this inscription; and indeed the following verses are everywhere known:
"[Well aware that thou art by nature mortal, magnify the desires of they heart, delighting thyself in merriments; there is no enjoyment for thee after death. For I too am dust, though I have reigned over great Ninus.] Mine are all [the food] that I have eaten, [and my loose indulgences,] and the delights of love that I have enjoyed; but those numerous blessings have been left behind. [This to mortal men is wise advice on how to live.]"'
Osteen's megachurch is the largest in the country. 43,500 attend weekly to hear the spermologos.
