I was listening to an apologist talking about Joyce Meyer recently, and he said a couple of things that didn’t sound right. The first one is that she teaches that in order to be saved you have to believe that Jesus went to hell. (Hear the clip below.)
I’ve never heard her or anybody else teach that, so I snooped around on the internet and found the following, which is where I think the apologist got this information. (I’ve done a screen capture because I know from experience that when you start exposing people and their lies they quickly scramble to edit things.)
Now I’m not a big fan of Joyce Meyer, but I am a big fan of the truth. Something about this quote didn’t sound right so I investigated. They are claiming that she said that you have to believe that Jesus went to hell in order to be saved, but if you’ll notice there are three dots in the middle of the quote. That means that they left part of it out, so I got a copy of her book and turned to the page that they generously provided for me in their parenthetical reference. Here’s what she actually said.
“Jesus was taking your sins and those of everyone else upon Him as He felt this absence of His Father’s presence. He said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (See Matt. 27:46, author’s paraphrase). Jesus knew it would happen, but the horror of separation from the bright presence of the Father was worse than He could have imagined, and it caused Him to cry out. He committed His Spirit to the Father and died. So they put Him—that is, His body—in a grave, and His spirit went to hell because that is where we deserved to go.
Remember in the very beginning of this book, I said that when you die, only your body dies. The rest of you, your soul and spirit, goes either to heaven or hell.
There is no hope of anyone going to heaven unless they believe this truth. You cannot go to heaven unless you believe with all your heart that Jesus took your place. He became your substitute and took all the punishment you deserve. He bore all your sins. He paid the debt you owe.
He did it for you because He loves you. John 3:16 says: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
So you can see that the truth she was referring to was that Jesus took your place, not that He went to hell. Faith in the substitutionary work of Christ as a means of attaining salvation is orthodox Christian theology, and these guys know that. In fact, they even stated on their website that their position on the atonement is
“the one known as “vicarious atonement.” The word “vicarious” means substitute. Therefore, Christ was a substitute for others in that he took their place and suffered their punishment.”
As the title of her book indicates, it was written to explain to seekers how to be born again. In fact Chapter 2 is entitled “Are You Born Again” and Chapter 5 is entitled “Now That I’m Born Again, What Should I Do?” This was not a theological dissertation or a book on Word of Faith theology. It was her basic presentation of how to get saved. You might not agree with everything that she says in this book or other books (neither do I, for that matter), but you should at least accurately communicate to others what it was that she was saying.
Another false claim (from the same guy) about Joyce Meyer is that she owns a $23,000 jewel (gem, gold, marble … etc.) encrusted toilet.
There are variations in the description but the price is constant and it’s always referred to as a toilet. This story first came about because of an itemized list of her purchases provided to the Grassley senate investigation committee which showed a $23,000 marble-topped antique commode. In fact she owns (or possibly owned, as she has been scaling down her lifestyle in recent years) a marble-topped chest of drawers, or “commode”. The confusion came about because somebody took the reference to a commode to mean a toilet. Joyce Meyer’s ministry provided a response in 2007 which said:
Regarding the Purchase of a $23,000 Commode — While many have mistakenly associated this piece of furniture with a common household toilet, this particular term actually refers to the classic definition of commode identified by Webster’s Dictionary as, “a tall elegant chest of drawers.”
This was confirmed by internationally recognized author, lecturer, and film producer Phil Cooke on his blog. http://www.philcooke.com/joyce_meyer_toilet/
The facts were reported on several websites but some people have continued to spread this misinformation, including at least one anti-WoF apologist. As for the $23,000 price, Meyer’s statement said that there was a mixup in the price reported to the committee. When her ministry moved into their new facilities years ago they spent $261,498 for 68 pieces of furniture, according to their statement.
I did the math and it turns out that $261,498 divided by 68 comes to about $3838 per piece of furniture, so I’m guessing that the real price of that commode was supposed to be $2300 instead of $23,000. But let’s face it, a televangelist spending $2300 for a chest of drawers just isn’t as good of a story as spending $23,000 for a toilet. So why worry about the facts, right?