 I don't know why I'm so fortunate and so blessed and I know that my mom always told me that my grandmother was in the church lighting candles and praying for her. I am a result of my grandmother's prayers and my mother prays for me all the time and I pray for my daughter all the time and not just business but also entertainment. She is, without question, one of the more noted, one of the more sought after entertainers on the planet. She also happens to be a professed Christian, but the issue is, is she? Well, clearly watching her, looking at her, listening to her, you wouldn't gather that unless someone told you she is. And why is it important to even address her or to talk about her? Well, for the same reasons, important to cover her friend Oprah. I am a Christian. That is my faith. I'm not asking you to be a Christian. If you want to be one, I can show you how, but it is not required. Both of these women have been covered at Nauseum on YouTube and in various different social media platforms. But I think it's important that we look at how their brand, their type of Christianity is not only infectious, but how absolutely dangerous it is. Oprah Winfrey is a billionaire and Oprah Winfrey also claims to be a Christian. However, Oprah Winfrey is anything but a Christian, the same whole shoe for Beyonce. These are two women who want to claim Christianity, however, do not want to claim Christ. My favorite Bible verse, because I am Christian, is Axe, something. I used to know the number, but this is an ax. Y'all can Google it. But it says, thank you, 1728. In God, I live and move and have my being. Do you have a favorite passage from the Bible? Yes, I do. Okay. Mine is Psalm 374. Delight thyself. I love the word delight, don't you? Delight thyself in the Lord. He will give you the desires of your heart. I searched and searched and searched and just could not find any clips of any time Beyonce even mentioning the name Jesus, especially in a positive sense. And when you hear Oprah bringing up, Jesus is bringing up God. It's always to kind of water down the gospel to say that ask, are there different paths, many different ways to get to God? Are there many paths or different paths to God? Great question. Okay. So here's the big question. Are there many paths to get to the one God? Well, I believe I am a Christian who believes that there are certainly many more paths to God other than Christianity. So I'm a free thinking Christian who believes in my way, but I don't believe that it's the only way. Do you believe that only Christians can be in relationship with God? No, I believe that when Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life and the way I read that, Jesus said, He is the road marker. He's the map. So I think God loves people so much that whether they accept or reject Him, He's still gracious and He's still moving and He's still giving you massive red blinking lights for chances to take a right turn where maybe you would take a left, but I believe God loves people and that's what this whole gospel is based on. It's love. You take the love out of it. We've got a moral book. Both of these women have the same issue at hand. They are wanting some peace. They're wanting to feel good about themselves and not wanting to be judged just in case they're wrong. Many times people don't want to be right. They just want to feel right, even if they are wrong and so they may insulate themselves with people who will not tell them right from wrong, who will not tell them their errors or show them they're wrong. They'll seek out for themselves, people to affirm what they believe, how they feel. That's what you see with Oprah in her interviews and how she's trying to brand her own form of Christianity and the same thing with Beyonce. Beyonce goes about seeking affirmation obviously and it's been reported about her level of control and how she's trying to perfect her branding and her image and things of that nature. Well, as we can all attest to at some point in time, you are going to be faced with a situation where you have no control over, you are going to lose all control. They don't like this. What Beyonce attempts to do is to use her glamour, her sexuality as a means to promote her own lifestyle, to promote her own brand and what she does not want to do is to be judged by anyone. With the release of her song, Church Girl, which obviously we all know the sort of storm that's caused, when you just listen to some of the lyrics and unfortunately I had listened to some of the lyrics just because it was out there, I wanted to hear what the fuss was about, but to listen to it, all she's trying to do is to show how she can be a Christian, a church girl, but also still live like the world and there should not be any shame at that. She would rather promote that as a matter of fact. Again, when do you hear her speak about Jesus? You don't, but she wants to defend herself the way she acts, the way she is, the things that she likes, but she will not defend the gospel, she will not defend the Bible. To the contrary, what she will do is say blasphemous things about the Bible. Fasted for 60 days, wore white, abstained from mirrors, abstained from sex, I levitated to the basement, confessed my sins and was baptized in a river, got on my knees and said amen and said I mean I whipped my own back and asked for dominion at your feet. I crossed myself and thought I saw the devil, I grew thick and skin on my feet, I bathed in bleach and plugged my menses with pages from the holy book, I bathed in bleach and plugged my menses with pages from the holy book, I bathed in bleach and plugged my menses with pages from the holy book. In this video or poem, whatever it is called denial, the things that she said about plugging herself during her cycle with the pages of the scriptures, would she ever say that about the Quran? Well, the obvious answer is no, because one she respects the other she doesn't. What both of these women have in common is that they either have not been shared the true authentic gospel or they've decided to fashion a gospel of their own. Oprah would have you believe that she is a Christian, however she is not going to force her Christianity on you. As a matter of fact, if you're a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, what have you, your faith is also just as acceptable because there are many pasts and that's what she wants to get across that however you're living, as long as you're doing good, you're okay. Why? Because to her, just like Beyonce, as long as I'm doing good, good in their eyes, then I'm okay. And if I know that you think that I'm okay, I'll make myself feel like I'm okay, and I'm going to make it be true. And we're living in a country now where so many people have been raised or were raised under doctrine and dogma and they feel so beaten down by the guilt and the punishing wrathful God that when they hear religious speak or the word spirituality, there's an immediate connection to all of that for which for them has been negative. The most important thing to them is to have their image at a high level. Why? Because of how it makes them feel when it comes to the world. Why it's dangerous to embrace what they're doing is because you're going to want to be like them. And James has a warning for us all if you are trying to live like Beyonce or Oprah, not saying that you'll attain the level of success in terms of the entertainment industry or business. No, but just in the way we live, is there anything about them that we are emulating? Is this desire to be something, to be somebody to gain some things that's a problem? James puts it this way. He says, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? This desire to be special, this desire to be great, that ends up becoming a problem. James also goes on to say this, you desire and do not have. So you murder, you covet and you cannot obtain. So you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. His point is the things that you search for, the things that you want, you don't get it until you try all sorts of drastic means. You may degrade yourself in a way if you know that it's going to result or end up in you possibly getting closer to your goal. And if the ends justify the means, and once I get to that end, then I'll turn around and say the means got me there. That was no big deal. My own path is my truth and it's just as valid as what the Bible says. James goes on to call them an adulterous generation. Anyone like them, they are adulterous in the way that they will claim to be a believer, claim to be a Christian, but secretly or even in this case publicly date and have relationships with the world. And he says, do you not know that being friends with the world is enmity with God? Well, no one wants to be an enemy with God, which is why they'll go out of their way to make sure that they have friends of the world. Also, people who will tell you that what they're doing isn't wrong, that there are different ways to be holy, godly. And oh, by the way, no one can judge me. What is important is that you cannot serve to masters. You cannot live for the world and live for God. Jesus says that you'll hate one or despise if there's no way that you could serve the world or money and God. It cannot be done. And so they'll do things that will make them appear to seem like they're godly. But Paul tells us about these people who are swirling with conceit lovers of money. He says they have a form of godliness, but deny the power. They want you to seem as though they are godly. They'll tell you that. They'll tell you how much of a Christian they are, how much they love God. They're putting on this appearance of godliness and to those who aren't into the book, to them that might be a lurid. Here's a person who looks like a Christian, who says they're a Christian, their view of a Christian, but really are not. And what gets their attention is how they look, because it's appealing to them. The glamour, the money, the fame, the attention, the branding and who doesn't want to be loved. God is real and God lives inside of me and inside of all of us. Like right now, I'm hot. You know, it's a tingling. It's like it's love. So the danger in their Christianity is they seek to be loved by the world rather than to be loved by God and then in turn also to love God. Be careful that you don't fall into the trap of emulating them. If anything about you looks like them, if anything that comes out of your mouth sounds familiar, sounds like something that Oprah has said or that Beyonce has said. That form of Christianity, guys, is not Christianity at all. Unfortunately, that type of Christianity, again, not Christianity, but that brand of thinking is growing. It's becoming more and more popular in the world. No matter how many times we expose it, no matter how many times we say it, you just be careful. Be diligent to make sure that you don't find yourself being trapped in that, that you don't find yourself in agreement with what they're saying, that you don't find yourself affirming their beliefs. After all, these are people who affirm the world. I'm hopeful that his struggle served to open pathways for other young people to live more freely. LGBTQI rights are human rights. So if the things that bother God don't bother you and the things that please God don't please you, well then there's a key indication that you are not a believer. Unlike Beyonce, unlike Oprah, no matter how many times they tell us, no matter how much, how many albums they make, how many shows they produce, they are not Christians. Why? Because, well, one, again, when do they promote the gospel, when is Jesus spoken of favorably, if it all coming out of their mouth? Make sure that you walk certain, Specters Paul says, redeem the time. Make sure that your focus is on Christ and not the world.