Joel Osteen, the televangelist who owns one of the biggest houses in Texas and whose church is held inside a literal sports arena, wants you to know he's not THAT rich, guys!
Osteen dug into his supposed finances during an interview with MAGA podcaster Logan Paul on his Impaulsive podcast.
In it, he claimed that the allegations about his "lavish lifestyle" are "made up" and that he's never even sat in a Ferrari!
Why? Because he says he's never even drawn a salary from his Lakewood megachurch in Houston, Texas.
The podcast was filmed in Osteen's Lakewood megachurch, a former sports arena that used to be known as The Summit and Compaq Center, where the Houston Rockets used to play and everyone from Madonna to Led Zeppelin have held concerts.
Doing his level best to help Osteen perform his ruse of normalcy, Impaulsive co-host Mike Maljak asked him:
“Where are the Bentleys, the yachts and the jets? Because this is a big place. I don’t know if there is a garage somewhere or a parking spot for the boats."
Right on cue, Osteen responded:
“People like to make up stuff, but I don’t think I ever sat in a Ferrari, and they show me pictures of me driving Ferraris and fleets of cars. I never respond to it. I never owned a jet, I never owned a yacht or a fleet of cars.”
Asked by Maljak where his riches come from, Osteen responded:
"I don't take a salary from the church. I've been blessed from book sales and media and other things, I don't have to take a salary."
"So I can work here for basically no salary, and I haven't for most of the... 26 years here."
"People like to think it's all about money and things like that—the ones who want to discredit you."
Meanwhile, Osteen's net worth is estimated to be $100 million and he lives in a 17,000 square foot compound.
As you might guess, Osteen's words haven't sat well with people on the internet, many of whom posted photos of Osteen's astonishingly opulent mansion in response.
Many of the photos are actually of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian's residence in California as the two are frequently mistaken for each other—because they are of similar size and design.
Most people found Osteen's claims about money to be patently absurd—and telling.
Osteen is perhaps most famous worldwide for the time he refused to allow victims of Hurricane Harvey's catastrophic floods to take shelter in his church, just as Jesus would have done.
