Bethel Church’s Heretical “Offering Prayers” EXPOSED!

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Hey guys, Colin here, and welcome back to the channel where the Bible and critical thinking meet to give you real

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Christian commentary about the things that matter. Thanks so much for watching, let's get into the video. So Bethel Church is a church in Redding, California led by Pastor Bill Johnson, and their theology happens to be absolutely horrendous.

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They are a hyper -charismatic church who are deeply involved in the prosperity gospel movement, which is a movement which says that God will give every

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Christian health and wealth as long as they have enough faith. And as a result of their terrible theology though, they have developed also what you might call a strange liturgy.

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Now for those of you who don't know, a liturgy is a particular set of practices used in a public worship setting.

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For example, if your church sings hymns on Sunday and then your pastor gives a sermon, these things are part of your church's organized liturgy.

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But pay attention here guys, because my point is that what you believe about the Bible, what you believe about God, will always inform your style of worship, your liturgy.

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And that is what most certainly is the case for Bethel Church. You can tell a lot about a church by their liturgy.

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For example, a church that plays secular music as people walk out into the sanctuary to find their seats is a church that does not prioritize the use of exclusively biblical songs throughout the entirety of their service.

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In other words, this is a church that most likely does not think that we ought to pay attention to the details.

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This church is cutting corners. Another example would be a church that designs their services with 15 -minute sermons and 60 minutes to 90 minutes of emotion -filled worship.

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That kind of church probably does not care about the teaching of the Word of God as much as they ought to.

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In the case of Bethel specifically though, they have a particular aspect of their liturgy which is very concerning.

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Before they give their offerings, they say a little prayer or dedication, you might call it, over those offerings.

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I'll show you screenshots of this along the way. This is from Bethel's own website, guys. They say this, quote, "...we

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love to declare promises and truth as we give our tithes and offerings below our declarations that we make during the offering time of our weekend services."

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There is a very important word to remember here. They said that they love to declare God's promises.

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So what you're about to hear are statements that Bethel Church believes are promises given by God to all

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Church members. They then give their official statement, saying, quote, "...as we receive today's offering, we are believing the

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Lord for jobs and better jobs, raises and bonuses, benefits, sales and commissions, favorable settlements, estates and inheritances, interests and income, rebates and returns, checks in the mail, gifts and surprises, finding money, debts paid off, expenses decreased, blessing and increase."

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Thank you, Lord, end quote. Now none of these things are actually bad to ask God for, except I might argue that it's a little weird to pray for your inheritance because that would mean that you're sort of inadvertently praying for one of your family members to die.

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Bethel's statement here says they are, quote, "...believing the Lord for estates and inheritances."

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Let's just say if I was an older person in the congregation of Bethel Church and my time was sort of coming to an end, if you get my drift,

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I'd probably feel a little weird about that section of the prayer. In any case, none of the rest of those things are unbiblical to ask for, in my estimation, so long as they are asked for in a biblical way.

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After all, James 4, 2 says you do not have because you do not ask. The Lord wants to know the desires of your heart.

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But this prayer at Bethel Church is not being offered in a biblical way because it is lying fundamentally about God's promises and connecting our offerings to those promises as if there is some sort of transaction taking place.

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In other words, they're sort of saying, if I give God this, then He will give me that in return.

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Let me give you two points here that I believe will demonstrate how truly unbiblical this practice is.

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Number one, offerings are not supposed to be given in exchange for a financial blessing from God.

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Luke 6, 35 says, quote, "...lend expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great."

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Now you may be wondering then, why does the passage say, "...and your reward will be great"?

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Wouldn't that mean that we're expecting a reward in return or in exchange for our cheerful giving?

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Not exactly, because the passage is talking about a heavenly reward, which is absolutely a promise given by God for good deeds.

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But in this case, there is no earthly reward being promised by God in exchange for our offering.

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We know the blessing is a heavenly one because we are supposed to lend expecting nothing in return.

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That's what the verse says. So, in other words, there's no return of money or goods to be expected.

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Yet, the passage still says that we ought to expect a reward. Therefore, in order to be consistent with the rest of the text, this reward must be heavenly rather than earthly.

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And this is something that is very typical of Bethel Church and the prosperity gospel movement at large. They often see passages in Scripture promising a reward for a good deed like Luke 6, 35 here, and they take heavenly promises and reinterpret them, ignoring the context and ignoring the rest of Scripture, in order to make it an earthly promise.

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Number two, if you say that the Lord promises a person will be blessed on earth as long as that person submits to the

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Father and has faith, then you are actually suggesting that Jesus himself did not submit to the

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Father. Here's why. Because if submitting to the Father means that you get an earthly blessing of money or property, and Jesus did not receive those earthly blessings they're talking about, then clearly they are denying that Jesus actually submitted to the

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Father. The problem is that Bethel Church does, in fact, claim to believe that Jesus lived a perfect life and did submit to the

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Father. And this is how you know that Bethel Church's beliefs are deeply illogical, inconsistent, and unbiblical.

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In Matthew 8, 20, Jesus says this, "...Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the

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Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." You see, Jesus was homeless, and He was poor.

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He was impoverished, according to the passage. Jesus also did not receive any earthly inheritance that we know of, and He did not own any property that we know of.

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But if that's the case, then why is Bethel Church suggesting that faithfulness to God will make you receive these things?

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Was Jesus not faithful, in the estimation of Bethel Church? Who knows? The point is that Bethel's theology is extremely flawed because it invalidates the very work and ministry and perfection of the

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Jesus they claim to believe in. Their entire view of financial blessing is wrong and actually dangerous.

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Now let me make something abundantly clear. Jesus was definitely blessed for His work and ministry.

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How was He blessed? That's the question. Well, Jesus had a triumphant resurrection and a glorious ascension, as described in Luke 24.

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We also know that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father in glory now, which comes up in Hebrews 1 .3.

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Jesus was blessed, and He will be blessed forever and praised by the Church forever because that's what

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Jesus deserves. But His blessing was not a frivolous amount of money given during His 33 years on earth.

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Rather, His blessing is an eternal blessing. And that, my friends, is the clear and well -defined pattern of Scripture.

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Because not only does this apply to Jesus, but it actually applies to the apostles and early Christians as well.

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Virtually all of the apostles and many early Christians, they died in painful and torturous ways.

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Romans 8 .36 testifies to this fact when it says, quote, "...for your sake we are being killed all the day long.

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We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." Many early Christians were living in abject poverty, yet those believers had stronger faith than 99 % of American Christians today.

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Declaring that wealth comes as a guarantee when a person has true faith, that's a really disgusting and dangerous thing to say, especially in light of the sacrifice made by our early

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Christian brothers and sisters. So when Bethel Church gives their offering prayer, which I just read for you, they're actually contradicting

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Scripture, and they are dishonoring millions of poor and persecuted brothers and sisters who have paved the way for us modern

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Christians. So pray for Bethel and pray for Bill Johnson that they would stop this unbiblical madness and turn to Jesus Christ.