The left has to find somebody to blame for Hurricane Harvey. Joel Osteen gets himself in trouble in Houston.

Plus, we'll talk about the latest from Berkeley, and yes, there are developments.

I'm Ben Shapiro. This is the Ben Shapiro show.

So you may not know the difference at all, but it is 1,000 degrees in this studio. Our air conditioning is broken today. So if you see me and it looks like I'm sweating copiously, or if it doesn't look like I'm sweating at all because I'm made of ice and steel, it's all the same. It's very warm in the studio. Nonetheless, we will soldier through because that's the kind of people we are. It's just like Normandy, because on the left, everything is like Normandy. So in any case, we'll talk about everything having to do with Joel Osteen,

whether or not he actually barred people from his giant Lakewood Church in Houston. There's been

a lot of talk online about that. We'll also talk about the left, obvious and deep desire

to peg Hurricane Harvey on someone and something beyond weather. We'll talk about all that stuff, but first I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Bowlin Branch. So when it comes to sleep, as I have said many times on the program, I stink at it. I'm good at a great many things, not including dancing. But another thing I'm bad at is sleep. Sleep is not my thing, but thanks to Boland Branch, my sleep quality has gotten significantly better. Bullen Branch makes the best sheets. There are. There are five stages of sleep, and all of them can be better with these sheets. The fact is they are 100% organic cotton. They breathe better. Don't worry about the thread counts on your sheets. This is what I've learned from Bowlen Branch. You go to the grocery store and outside in the parking lot. There's some skeezy guy who's selling sheets. You're like, oh, it's a thousand thread count. I'm sure it's great. No, it turns out it's made of plastic and it's a tarp. What you need is the organic cotton sheets over at bowl and branch.com. They don't make you pay the expensive retail price. So you're paying about half the price you would for twice the quality of these kinds of sheets. You can try them for 30 nights if you don't like them.

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Okay, so the big controversy that has lit the internet aflame is happening over Joel Osteen's church, Lakewood Church.

So for those who don't know Joel Osteen, Joel Osteen is a preacher of what they call prosperity gospel. Prosperity gospel is basically the notion that if you follow God's rules and give lots of charity, that God will be nice to you and make you rich. This is the God is Gumball Machine View of Life. I am not a fan. There are people in the Jewish community who do something similar. They do this routine where it's like, well, if you give a lot of charity, then you will surely prosper and you will do better in life, and there will be material benefits. There are certain behavior, I think, that you follow secular or religious, and you're more likely to prosper. Like, don't have kids until you're married, finish high school, make good decisions with your money, money, blow it all on booze and strippers. These are obvious things that if you follow God's

plan or basic human morality, you're more likely to be prosperous, but that's not really the

baseline of prosperity gospel. Prosperity gospel says God wants you to be wealthy, God wants you to be rich,

and therefore, if you pray hard enough and give enough charity and you act in a gospel forward matter, then you will inevitably become wealthy or rich because God wants you to be rich.

Joel Osteen has made a fortune off of this. He lives in a $10.5 million home in Texas.

He also has a show, a televangelism show that's watched by some 42 million people a week, I guess.

That's just enormous. Lakewood Church was in old Houston Rockets Arena, I believe. It made over for his church.

It holds 17,000 people, and it is packed every Sunday. So with all of this going on with Joel O'Sene with his belief system,

there's no question that a lot of people are looking for a reason to jump on him. So the reason came yesterday when it came out online that Joel Osteen had said, we are shutting down services for Saturday and Sunday over at the church and we're basically closing the premises. And a lot of people said, well, hold on, why aren't you using this as a shelter? Why aren't using this as a place where people can go and sleep?

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