Does Dr. Strange work for Bethel?!

Does Doctor Strange work for Bethel?

So right now, if you're listening to the sound of my voice, we're going to open a portal.

Blowing my mind.

Excuse me, but does your friend often do that?

In episode 466 of The Holy Nope, Richard Gordon, who is the spiritual director of Bethel College, Miss

Applies, 2 Corinthians 12, promotes the Passion Translation, creates a portal, dabbles in New Thought,

twists Luke 5, and then he says something kind of weird.

Let's break it down.

So Richard Gordon seems to have grown in popularity after the writing of his book, which I cannot

find.

I don't know what it's called.

I don't know where one could purchase it.

I'm no super sleuth, but I couldn't find it.

Even AI couldn't find it, so I don't know what's going on with that.

But the popular model for charismatics to launch their careers seems to be, have a dream,

write a book.

Have a divine encounter, write a book.

Use the dream or the divine encounter to authorize what I say in my book.

We've dealt with the same thing on this channel with Alexander Pagani's book, The Secrets to Deliverance, in which he claims that the book

was given to him in a dream.

I was 23 when I woke up from this dream where I had this radical encounter with God.

I remember the hand of the angel of the Lord seeing it in my dream.

And then there was a scroll in his hand.

And as he opened it up, it read AODV.

And God said, this is a telecommunications algorithm for your master's thesis.

I woke up in a cold sweat, and I went to research it out, and it turned out to be ad hoc, on -demand distance

vectors, which was the shortest path telecoms algorithm in the cryptography space.

It became the cornerstone of the dissertation, the book that I wrote, and it got published in six countries, and I got to fly around the

world, speaking at academic conferences and military conventions on the tech that God gave me through a dream.

When I would stop and I would mathematically model that

solution, so I took the algorithm and I mathematically modeled it through simulations, and whenever I get

stuck, I would fall asleep.

I'll tell you exactly how it happened.

I'd fall asleep, and angel of the Lord would come to me, hand me a scroll, but this time I would eat it,

and I'd wake up, and I'd have the solution for the mathematical problem.

It happened multiple, multiple, multiple times.

I thought I was crazy.

Give me a break!

But there was so much glory on that, because sometimes when you start to play in a realm that's beyond your skill

and ability, you start to see results that are beyond your skill and ability.

And the favor was so much, I should never have been in front of dignitaries and academic

spaces.

I should never have been on boards of universities.

Like, I just, but I had a dream.

Dreams are fun because they are unverifiable claims that you can't argue with.

We just got to take Richard's word for it, which we may be less inclined to do when we see how he handles the word of God.

The Bible says that in our weakness, his power is made perfect.

Yes, it's true.

In 2 Corinthians 12, 9, and 10, Paul recounts what the Lord said to him in response to his prayers that his

thorn in the flesh be removed.

Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given

me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from exalting myself.

Concerning this, I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me, and he has said to me, my grace is sufficient for

you, for power is perfected in weakness.

So in my very amateur sleuthing, I found that Richard knows Brian Simmons personally, the author of the Passion

Translation.

Here he is featured on the Holy Note.

It's the Lord's Day.

I got my Bible.

I'm ready to hear the word.

I want to challenge you not to let this year pass that you don't go in divine

visitation.

I had a chariot come and pick me up one night, and a prophet that if I told you his name, you'd

all know him.

And he and I went in this chariot.

We went all over the six states of New England, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,

Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.

We slipped into upstate New York just a little bit, and throughout the whole night, we visited those

states in the chariot of God, and we saw the places where revival was about to break loose.

And that chariot came right back over my house, hovered over my house, and there the two of us

were.

We watched the sun rise together in the spirit, and then I was back in my body.

A better title may be Brian's Passionate Paraphrase.

In what do you know, Brian followed the charismatic model and claims that God gave him the Passion Translation through a divine

encounter.

Beautiful day, got my Bible, I'm ready to go.

Jesus Christ came into my room.

He breathed on me, and he commissioned me.

When he breathed on you, I have to ask you this, what did it feel like?

It felt like a kiss from heaven.

It felt like heaven's wind, the rock, the breath, the wind of God that came upon me.

And he spoke to me and said, I'm commissioning you to translate the

Bible into the translation project that I'm giving you to do.

And he promised that he would help me, and he promised me he would give me secrets of the Hebrew language.

Do you believe when he blew on you there was an importation for revelation?

I do.

I believe the spirit of revelation was given.

And I felt downloads coming instantly.

I received downloads.

It was like I got a chip put inside of me.

I got a connection inside of me to hear him better, to understand the scriptures better,

and hopefully to translate.

Mike Winger has compiled a list of other stuff Brian Simmons has claimed.

Buckle your seatbelts.

He writes, this is stuff Brian Simmons, author of the Passion Translation of the Bible, has claimed.

I have video footage of all these claims.

He's gone to heaven, grabbed two books from the library of heaven, and brought them back to earth.

Billy Graham visited him in a dream.

His wife has levitated off the ground twice and has seven dreams from God every night.

The Great Last Day's Harvest will begin in 2013, when every stadium in New York will be filled with evangelistic

activities, and continue through 2020, when it will really ramp up.

Imagine someone prophesying that 2020 will be a great year for public outreach events.

He says 30 million Americans will get saved during this time.

He went on a long ride on a fiery chariot through the northeast area of the U .S. and watched the sunrise with a

prophet whose name you would know.

Hey, that's the clip you saw.

God touched his head and supernaturally expanded the capacity of his brain.

Brian says he confirmed this with a top brain -mapping scientist.

One day in the future, God will give him a book that has all the unwritten works of Jesus.

This will spark a massive new revival around the world.

Brian will one day have so much glory on him that people within a 50 -mile radius will feel it.

Adam teleported around the Garden of Eden.

Fire once shot out of his head and caught the church on fire.

They had to call the fire department and replace the sound system.

He once went to the store to get milk, and the glory of God was so powerfully on him that everyone he passed by just fell over.

He first thought it was people having heart attacks, and then he realized that it was the glory.

He doesn't understand why more people won't call the Holy Spirit, Her.

So, Brian's passionate paraphrase does say, in verse 10, for my weakness becomes a portal to God's power.

Now, there isn't anything in the Greek text to support the use of the word portal here.

The word isn't there.

The concept of a portal is absent from the text.

It's just Brian's imagination, which he claims is the spirit of revelation.

Watch what's happening.

Richard Gordon is basing his prayer, or whatever in the Marvel universe he's doing here,

on Brian Simmons' own imagination rather than on what the Bible actually says,

which is, when weak, then I am strong, powerful.

The weakness he refers to here is the same he mentions in verse 9.

Now, notice the list in which weaknesses finds itself.

He says, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, and these he endures

for the sake of Christ.

Like what John Gill says when he comments, the meaning is that the strength of Christ is made to appear, is

illustrated, and shines forth in its perfection and glory, in supplying, supporting, and strengthening its people

under all their weaknesses, and if they were not left to some weaknesses in themselves, his strength would not be so

manifest.

Now, pay attention to that last part.

If they were not left to some weaknesses within themselves, God's strength would not be so manifest.

Gill gets at the meaning right here, and we can demonstrate this with a closer look at the immediate context.

Notice how verse 10 begins.

Therefore, I am well content with weaknesses.

Paul isn't trying to rid himself of weakness through a portal.

Recognize the danger with which false teachers threaten the body of Christ.

Listen to where Richard takes his recalling of what Brian Simmons made up in his passionate paraphrase.

So right now, if you're listening to the sound of my voice, we're going to open a portal for God's power.

I want you to think of your weakness.

I want you to think of that which disqualifies you and your insecurity, and we're going to open this portal, and

we're going to welcome God's power into it.

And bodies will be healed, and souls will be healed, because Jesus did not die for the healthy.

He came for the sick.

So Richard's making a portal, communicating that 2 Corinthians 12 is teaching that we

can somehow kind of exchange our weakness for God's power.

It is fundamental to Bethel's theology that you are meant to get rid of your weaknesses.

And you can see that he associates weakness with insecurities and physical ailments, not with

insults, distresses, persecutions, and difficulties, which Paul endures in service to Christ.

Bethel is all about getting rid of weakness so that God's power might flow through you.

I mean, Bill Johnson has said, I refuse to create a theology that allows for sickness.

Actually, let's play that clip.

I refuse to create a theology that allows for sickness.

Bazinga.

They know nothing of being well -content with weaknesses, as Richard uses the term in this clip.

Here is Bill Johnson wearing glasses, whose wife sadly died of cancer, holding up a book by Chad Gonzalez

called Never Be Sick Again.

Another red flag to point out here is Richard's emphasis on the believer's thinking during this portal event.

So right now, if you're listening to the sound of my voice, we're going to open a portal for God's power.

I want you to think of your weakness.

I want you to think of that which disqualifies you and your insecurity, and we're going to open this portal and

we're going to welcome God's power into it.

This exchange of weakness for power seems to be supposedly accomplished by just thinking about it.

Melissa Dougherty has a book coming out on January 28th entitled Happy Lies.

How a movement you probably never heard of shaped our self -obsessed world.

Her book deals with the New Thought movement that originated in the 19th century.

The basic tenets of New Thought emphasize the power of the mind and influencing reality and the promotion of positive

thinking that leads to health, prosperity, and overall well -being.

We can hear New Thought's influence when Bethelites say things like this.

I want you to think of your weakness.

I want you to think of that which disqualifies you and your insecurity, and we're going to open this portal and

we're going to welcome God's power into it.

I'm going to be reading Melissa's book and Lord willing, she'll be coming on the show in a few weeks to discuss New Thought history, the

difference between New Thought and New Age, and how we can be vigilant to recognize its influence and refute it with the

truth of God's word.

I'll put the link to pre -order in the description of this video, and I imagine that it will open up our eyes to the

pervasiveness with which our society, even our professing Christian societies, are affected by New

Thought.

All right, now Richard is going to make a promise as he references another passage of Scripture.

And bodies will be healed and souls will be healed, because Jesus did not die for the healthy,

he came for the sick.

This passage is found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

We'll look at Luke 5 .31.

Richard applies this passage to modern Christians in a way that does not compute with the original context.

It is the scribes of the Pharisees who question why Jesus would eat and drink with tax collectors and

sinners.

Jesus responds directly to them and says, it is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick.

Richard uses those terms, healthy and sick.

But Jesus immediately clarifies what he means by healthy and sick.

He says, I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Jesus is getting at the most basic purpose of his incarnation, the fundamental purpose, what he came

here to do, and that isn't physical healing, that isn't making bodies

well.

He isn't talking about bodies being made well in this passage.

Though he does make bodies well during his earthly ministry as a sign of the inbreaking of the kingdom of God, but he is

saying that he hasn't come to call those who are righteous in their own esteem.

He hasn't come to call those who need no savior.

Who the Pharisees would classify as sinners are typically those who know something of their own sinfulness and need.

And it's got nothing to do with portals.

Now, finally, we're going to wrap this up.

The clip ends with this.

He came for the sick.

And that means he did not come for just all your greatness and your strength.

He came to be born in your manger.

I don't have a manger, my God.

Where is he now?

Where?

We don't know.

He just opened a portal and walked through.

I feel like I'm losing my mind.

Is everybody in the world blind?

Please, Lord, give me a sign.

A sign.