Joel Osteen
Houston mega-church pastor Joel Osteen says he would have been happy to open his 18,000-seat church to victims of Hurricane Harvey but city officials never said they needed his space and God didn’t speak to him about it.“When God told me to pray for the souls of people who seed my church with money, of course I obeyed His Word and did so,” says Osteen, who has been criticized for not inviting flood-stranded people into his arena-sized church. “So I was expecting God to share His Word about providing comfort to the people of Houston, many of whom have been living in wet clothes for three days.”
Processing people now
Osteen says he “thought regularly” about the human tragedy he saw unfolding around him as flood waters reached five feet in some areas and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced. “Their plight touched my heart,” he said. “It didn’t matter what I was doing— putting gel in my hair or deep-cleaning my face. I hurt for the people of this city. I knew there was despair in our midst.”He added that his wife, Victoria, also kept the people of Houston in her thoughts and prayers. “If you follow us on Twitter you would know we tweeted about it on Monday,” he said.
City officials did reach out to Osteen yesterday, and he said he responded quickly by opening his church doors. “As I speak, we are processing people to get them in as soon as possible,” he said. “It hasn’t been as fast as I’d like, because wi-fi has been spotty. But I assure you we will get people in more efficiently once we have a reliable Internet connection.”
Church officials say the delay in letting people in has worked to their benefit because they needed time to protect the church’s broadcasting system and other audio-video equipment, which one official said cost more than $30 million. And it took a day to cover the flooring, which uses a natural stone tile from Italy. “You don’t want wet or muddy boots on those babies!” one official said.
This is a work of satire. It is a fictional news article not meant to be taken seriously. Photos: cc. Creative Commons and public domain. Not necessarily an endorsed use of images.More stories:
Melania ‘First Responder’ Stiletto Boots Flying Off Shelves, Retailers Say
Retailers across the United States and even in Europe and Asia say they can’t keep their new line of Melania “First Responder” Stiletto Boots in stock as women strive to be the first among their friends and coworkers to sport the rugged-yet-sexy boots from hot designer Peter Cremlin. “Right now we’re just trying to fill orders on an emergency basis as fast as we can and we just ask our customers to be patient as we ride out this storm of demand,” says Stephen Caine, Saks Fifth Avenue’s general manager for merchandise. “We are in contact with our suppliers around the world to get these orders filled as quickly and as efficiently as possible.” The boots, which retail for between $999 and $1,499 in stores throughout the United States, have generated some controversy as critics say they exploit the devastation in the Texas Gulf Coast due to Hurricane Harvey. More.
Houston mega church pastor Joel Osteen, after taking criticism for his slow response to displaced Hurricane Harvey victims, announced he’s opening up his 18,000-seat church to all who need it if they leave their wet boots outside and try to find something dry to wear. “God asked us to put more than $20 million in TV broadcasting equipment in His church and we really can’t get that wet,” said Osteen, who has made millions proselytizing what’s known as the prosperity gospel—the belief that God will reward you with monetary success if you seed His churches with donations. The more you seed the church, the richer you stand to become. Osteen said that criticism leveled at him for not opening the doors of his church right away are unfair because he needed the extra time to put mats down to protect the floor, which cost $3 million. More.
HOUSTON, Sept. 30, 2017—Mayor Sylvester Turner says officials have done everything they can to prevent the president of the United States and his wife from arriving in this flood-ravaged city but in the end they were not successful. “Let me just say that this catastrophe is not a reflection on the hard work and dedication of the people of this city,” said Turner, a former state legislator who took office in January. “We made phone calls to the White House pleading for the president not to come. We said we had no place for him and his wife to stay. The roads are not passable. Food is scarce. People are traumatzed. Nothing we said made a difference.” Turner said it’s too soon to know how many people remain trapped in homes and cars, but he fears the number is in the thousands, which makes it imperative that the president not stay long. “We can’t be diverting resoures so the president can wave a Texas flag,” he said. “We need to get him back on his plane and back to Washington as soon as possible.” More.
President Donald Trump in a series of early-morning tweets blamed lax immigration laws for opening the door to Hurricane Harvey, possibly the most destructive natural disaster to hit the United States in a generation. “A country that can’t secure its borders invites menaces like Harvey,” the president said in his first tweet, sent at 4:59 a.m., Monday. “We need walls, high walls, not just on Mexican border but around ALL country’s vulnerable borders.” Trump also took a stab at Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, one of his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination last year, saying Cruz’s Cuban background means he “cares more about protecting Castro’s island than his own state. #KennedyAssassination!” Experts appeared on news shows to dispute the president’s assertions. “Walls don’t keep out hurricanes and neither do immigration laws, no matter how strong,” Peter Austin, an immigration law specialist at Harvard University, said on ABC News. More.
In a man-bites-dog announcement, President Donald Trump heaped praise on news outlets for sending camera crews and reporters to cover his photo op in Corpus Christi even as devastating floods in Houston continued to tax their resources. “Here’s one for the fake news media,” said Trump in his first remarks since he returned to Washington. “They’re still terrible people, dishonest and disgusting. But I appreciate the effort they made to record my photo op in Texas. I waved the Texas flag and they got that. That was good. Strong ratings. Super ratings. The best, actually. I heard that.” Trump said he was told by aides that many news organizations, including NBC and ABC, were stretched thin, since they had camera crews on the ground in Houston and other parts of the Gulf Coast. But they managed to have crews available when Trump and the First Lady landed to show their support for federal officials and others who were coordinating disaster response efforts. More.
Franklin Graham III, son of the late televangelist Billy Graham, says he’s concerned for the country’s moral well-being because today almost a quarter of Americans identify as atheists or otherwise claim no religious affiliation, a sharp increase from a generation ago, when few people claimed no religious affiliation. “The United States is a country founded by Christians on the basis of Christian values, so it is very disturbing from a moral and spiritual standpoint that one out of every four Americans is not going to get into heaven,” said Graham, president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Graham was speaking at a rally in Charleston, S.C., for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Other religious leaders, including Jerry Falwell, Jr., and James Robison, were at the event. More.
Religious people the world over are sick and tired of people who don’t believe in God picking on the all-knowing, all-powerful Creator of the Universe. “What did He ever do to you?” says Sandra Borden, 54, an administrative assistant at Safe-T One Auto Insurance in Lexington, Ky. “Can’t you pick on someone else? Leave God alone!” Like many other religious people, Borden says that God, as the Creator of the World, can smite anyone He wants to and cause all kinds of duress for people, like he did to Job in the Bible. For that reason, atheists and other non-believers should just watch it. “He can rain down on you all the pestilence He wants,” she says. More.
Study: Religion Costs U.S. $465 Billion in Lost GDP
If all the resources that go into supporting religion in the United States were channeled into productive enterprises, the domestic economy would expand by an estimated $465 billion a year, a study by the Federal Reserve finds. “Religion is a big part of the identity of many Americans, and certainly is embedded in our heritage as a country, but from a purely economic standpoint, it’s a disaster,” says Alfred Smith, a senior Fed economist. The study by Smith and a team of researchers is the most detailed yet of the economic toll religion takes on the U.S economy. It has sought to factor in virtually every way religion intersects with the economy, from lost tax revenue to states and localities, lost investment into goods and services that grow the economy, lost productivity by having people employed in religious institutions instead of companies and organizations that produce goods and services, and the cost of violence perpetrated in the name of religious belief. More.
Church-vs.-State Battle Brews as GOP Nominates God for President
The Republican party has set up a clash of biblical proportions by nominating God to be its presidential candidate in the 2016 U.S. elections. The nomination, which comes unusually early in the election cycle, puts religion at the front of debate by opening up a host of Constitutional questions should God become president. “Does God’s law supersede Constitutional law? Does His commandments automatically trump Supreme Court rulings? Would the bible replace the Constitution? There are just a lot of unanswered questions this unprecedented moves raises, so we’re really going into unchartered territory,” says Gary Turner, a Constitutional scholar at the University of Chicago. More.
No Gays in Iran, U.N. Report Concludes
After seven years of investigation, a United Nations team of researchers has concluded that Iran does not have homosexuals, as former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asserted at Columbia University in 2007. In his statement seven years ago, while he was speaking in New York City, Ahmadinejad told his audience of mostly students and faculty that “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We do not have this phenomenon. I do not know who has told you we have it.” At the time, the comment elicited laughter and some boos among the 700 people in the audience. But according to the U.N. team that has just delivered its comprehensive report to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Iran in fact has no homosexuals. More.
Desert Goat Herders say They Have the One, True GodA 
tribe of nomadic goat herders from a remote desert region say their jealous, spiteful, and misogynist God is the one true God for all the universe and for all time even though He might seem an odd fit for today’s world. “I know it is hard for you in the technologically advanced West to believe that you should be ruled by our God, who had nothing to say to anyone in the world until He chose to speak to our ancestors 2,000 years ago. But that is the fact of the matter,” says Lazarus Ben-ammi, leader of a tribe of desert goat herders who claim a direct line with God. The tribe is in New York City on the first stop of a world tour in which they explain why theirs is the one true God of all the universe. More.
A man preaching God’s Word last night on a street corner in Los Angeles isn’t a true preacher, a group of religious leaders has charged, because the preacher has not been certified. “Only preachers who’ve been certified, for obvious reasons, have the right to preach God’s Word,” says a statement by the International Association of Religious Preachers, based in Houston. “Absent certification, anyone can pose as a preacher and claim to represent the Word of God. For that reason, it’s important that persons impersonating professional, certified preachers be enjoined from engaging in acts of uncertified religious preaching.” The accused preacher, Lemont Davis, was apprehended by Los Angeles police at 5:30 p.m. on the corner of Wilshire Blvd. and Beverly Blvd. According to the charge filed with the Los Angeles Municipal Court, Davis was claiming to “spread God’s Mercy,” with the aim of spurring a miracle on behalf of a homeless woman, Roberta Jackson, whose health is in decline. More.
Special to The Guardian. In a find that stunned the world of religion, archaeologists digging in a remote region of the Sinai desert discovered what is believed to be the original Holy Bible from more than 2,000 years ago with its International Standard Book Publishing (ISBN) code still intact. “This is an almost unbelievable discovery,” says Alfred Pottersmith, lead curator of Middle East artifacts at the British Museum in London. “To think we could be holding in our hands the original bible from God’s disciples is humbling beyond words.” What gives archaeologists confidence the bible is the original Word of God, first edition, is the presence of the internationally recognized 9-digit numeric commercial book identifier code known as the ISBN code. More.
God®
Jews, Muslims, and peoples of other faiths in the United States will have to scramble to find
ways to talk about the omnipotent, omnipresent deity referred to as God®, because American Christians have successfully trademarked the term “God®” along with “Savior®” and “Holy Father®.” “It’s a great day for American Christians of all types,” says Edward Reynolds, head pastor of the Ecumenical Christian Church, U.S.A., based in Foxborough, Mass. “For more than 200 years, peoples of Abrahamic faiths in the United States have peacefully shared among themselves the use of the term “God®” and other important religious words, but today the terms have been provided a permanent home with American Christians, which, as we’ve been arguing for years, is the rightful place for them.” More.
Among the earth-shattering revelations coming out of the recently discovered “Addendum of the Pentateuch,” also known as the “Moses Addendum” or “New Book of Moses,” is the discovery of rocky relations between Adam and Eve. Eve, the mysterious book makes clear, “had it up to here” with Adam’s constant whining about sex and his insistence on being “experimental” rather than just plain-vanilla when it comes to their connubial relations. “You are worse than the serpent who had me, by false testimony, eat of the tree to the anger of the Lord,” Eve is quoted as saying in the book. “The Lord has given me the headache, but you are giving me the pain.” “We’re all familiar with this story, eh?” said Boris Neuberger, a theologian with the Oxford Seminary in London, where the book, discovered buried in an ancient ravine on Mount Sinai in Egypt, is being analyzed. More.
