The Truth About GRAVE SUCKING At Bethel Church?!

Bill Johnson and Bethel Church’s Gravesucking Controversy

Hey guys, Colin here, and welcome back to Fight for Truth, the channel where we bring you Christian commentary about the things that matter. In today's video, we're going to be talking about Bill Johnson and Bethel Church.

Now Bethel is a charismatic Pentecostal church located in Reading, California, and they have no shortage of controversy going on there. One such controversy is the potential existence of grave-sucking at Bethel Church.

If you've attended a fairly normal church for most of your life, you may not even know what grave-sucking is. Well, it's a practice also known as grave-soaking. And the only reason the word has become associated with any form of professing Christianity is because sometimes it is done by extreme groups of charismatics.

To be fair and to be accurate, it is important to realize that this is not a practice that most charismatics would affirm or promote. Essentially, it involves a person laying on or touching the grave of someone with a special anointing from God.

It could be an influential evangelist or pastor from hundreds or even thousands of years ago, for instance. And what you do is you lay down on that person's grave or touch it in some way, and in short, you receive a sort of impartation or a special anointing that this person had or a piece of it, something like that.

This to one degree or another can strengthen you spiritually and connect you to the Christians who came before you. This practice is not given to us in Scripture, and it really borders on divination and occultism.

Leviticus 20, verse 6 says,. If a person turns to mediums and necromancers, whoring after them, I will set my face against that person and will cut him off from among his people. And encountering the gravesites of past Christians does not bestow any spiritual increase on you.

At least, that's not in Scripture. 2 Peter 1, 3 says,. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence.

God has given us everything we need for life and godliness to live for Him, through His Son, through His Word, through His Church, etc. Thus, the practice of gravesucking or anything like it is both unbiblical, not commanded for Christians, and entirely unnecessary.

But in any case, some time ago, there was a controversy about this at Bethel Church. Why? Well, because there were several people who were involved with Bethel who admitted to participating in gravesucking directly.

Here on your screen are no less than five photos that allegedly have people involved, to some degree or another, at Bethel Church physically touching, hugging, or laying down upon the grave of a dead, professing believer.

I know what you're going to say. Come on, do you really believe that those people are from Bethel Church and that they're actually doing gravesucking? That could be anyone, and they could be doing any number of things.

Well, first off, Bill Johnson has admitted that Bethel-affiliated students did something akin to gravesucking. And secondly, there's a video which I will link in the description of some confirmed Bethel students at the grave of Smith Wigglesworth, quote, releasing the anointing of this man.

They actually say that that's what they're doing in the video. Watch the whole thing. Again, link in description. And thirdly, this one is a bit of a smoking gun, so be prepared. Here's a picture of Benny Johnson, Bill Johnson's late wife, who unfortunately passed away recently.

In the picture, she is laying on top of the grave of C .S. Lewis. And if that wasn't enough, here's another picture of her hugging the grave of Charles Finney. The picture is captioned, quote, Things I Do.

Now, none of this is exposing a personal or private aspect of these people's lives. Sometimes that's not what we do here on this channel. They are not embarrassed about this at all. They're outright posting these things to their social media accounts and telling you what they're doing.

They are physically making contact with the grave of a person in order to gain something spiritually from it. If that isn't gravesucking or some form of it, I'm not really sure what would be. But more than this, in Bill Johnson's book, Physics of Heaven, he says this, quote,.

There are anointings, mantles, revelations, and mysteries that have laid unclaim literally where they were left because the generation that walked in them never passed them on. I believe it's possible for us to recover the realms of anointing, realms of insight, realms of God that have been untended for decades simply by choosing to reclaim them and perpetuate them for future generations, end quote.

But in response to all of this, Bethel Church has denied any official connection to this practice, and they maintain that position to this day. This has confused many people. So in today's video, we're going to do an analysis and ask the question, does Bethel Church participate in and encourage the practice of gravesucking?

Bethel’s Official Denial Versus the Evidence

In a recent podcast from a series called Rediscovering Bethel, Bill Johnson, again, the head pastor, is joined by Dan Farley, the dean of the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. Let's see what they have to say about all of this.

Watch this clip.

Hey, Bill. Hey. We are back again, and we've got some fun topics to discuss. We're going to talk about gravesucking today, a term that I don't think we coined. One of our critics or a concerned citizen coined it, but it stuck, and it was quite amusing when we first heard it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So let's recap for a moment. We have a pastor and a dean of the Christian school associated with this pastor's church, and there are literally pictures and videos of students from their school participating in gravesucking.

There are at least two pictures of the pastor's own wife doing something that looks almost identical to gravesucking, and the response of these two men is that, frankly, they find the whole thing silly, amusing, and absurd.

It's absurd that they would be involved with gravesucking. It's laughably ridiculous to them. But again, there are several pictures and videos of people at their church laying on the graves of dead Christians.

It's unclear how any of that would be laughably absurd. And it's equally unclear why these men think gravesucking has nothing to do with Bethel Church when the people who did it attend Bethel Church. And again, this potentially includes one of their very own pastors.

But let's keep watching and see what happens next. Watch this.

But it does, it does, I don't know, gently, it's not holy, but it irks me. Like, how would you think this and perpetuate this myth when it's something. I'm in the environment regularly teaching and living with these people, and this is not a practice that we are participating in and that we teach, or, and certainly not within the connections that people have made.

So every once in a while, I just be like, I'm not going to talk about that thing because it's so dumb.

Like, you know, it's almost like. So again, we really have more of the same thing. The idea is this. How could anyone think that we, Bethel, participate in gravesucking? This isn't something we teach or practice.

In fact, if you suggest that we're involved with this, you're perpetuating an obvious myth, a total lie. But let's stop there for a second. How is it a myth or a lie to say that people at Bethel have participated in gravesucking when that is an objective fact on video?

Again, there are pictures and videos of this happening, and it includes a photo of Benny Johnson herself laying on top of the grave of C .S. Lewis. It's one thing to disagree with these people's claims or disagree with the implication behind them, but to say that they're an obvious myth with no real truth to them, no facts supporting them, that's simply untrue.

The Upper Room as a “Contact Point for Faith”

But let's go on. Here's a video of Bill Johnson talking about his visit to what is thought to be the site of the upper room in which Jesus addressed His disciples before His death. Watch this. But you've been there.

I haven't.

Yeah. And you would say it's a touchstone. It is. And that you've experienced the Lord's presence in there. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, we've had mighty things happen in that environment. And it may just be because people have been going there for so many years praying that, you know, there's just this thing that happens there. It doesn't matter to me how or what it is.

It's just, they stir up all kinds of memories, emotions, scripture. You see what happened in the original upper room and how significant that was, that it's just a place to really, well, it's a contact point for faith, the way you put it.

I think it's beautiful.

So Bill Johnson says that the physical place that is considered to be the upper room, a place where our Christian forefathers once were before they died, is a, quote, contact point for faith. In other words, it's a place of contact where you can somehow, in some way, improve, strengthen, or otherwise come into contact with faith, because it's a significant place with regard to Christians who are now deceased.

Interesting. Now let's watch another clip that happens shortly after. Watch this.

Seeking God at Gravesites and the Risk of Strange Experiences

Uh, you know, kind of walk these journeys of risk. So in the school ministry, we had, one of our leaders had a profound encounter with the Lord, uh, at the grave of a former church leader. So he comes back and gives a testimony about this.

And because our students are so hungry, I mean, it's like meat to a wolf at some level, like, you're kidding? The Lord will meet you at a grave? So it, I remember in that as the Dean watching it, like, whoa, what, what?

But, but I've had to learn over time, like, if I try to kill something too early, we, we totally miss the, potentially the good things. And again, the weird things that come, but when I kill everything too early, our people, our students stop, stop taking risks.

That's the number one thing. That's huge.

So again, let's recap. A leader at Bethel church had a profound encounter with God at a grave site of a former church leader. He then went and told the students of Bethel this fact, and they are so hungry for spiritual experiences, their words, not mine, that they all wanted to go and have this happen to them too.

And of course, some things were good while some things got out of hand. But ultimately, according to the Dean of Bethel's school, Dan Farley, that's just part of the natural risk of seeking God. This is a risk they're willing to take.

And if you shut things down too early, you're going to miss out on the goodness. He even said that he himself saw some things that concerned him and seemed strange, but he didn't want to be too quick to correct these people because that might make them miss out on what God is doing.

We've heard this from Bethel church many, many times, but here's another clip of him talking about the same situation, just so we get all the context.

Watch this. You know, I know where you're going with this, but he had this one team member had real experiences, had a really incredible experience that kind of helped light a fire. But again, once it got, once it kind of got traction.

So this Bethel team member had an incredible spiritual experience specifically at the grave of a former church member. That's still what we're talking about. And this experience was absolutely real. According to Bethel church leadership, they said it in the video.

Keep in mind, this is their defense against the idea that they practice gravesucking. All of these clips, all of these videos, all of these photos really paint the picture for us. So let's go ahead and answer the question we asked originally.

Why the Denial Still Leaves Bethel Responsible

Does Bethel church actively participate in and encourage the practice of gravesucking? Well, according to their official doctrinal position, the answer is no. But if you look into what they've specifically said and done with regard to the practice, you can see that Bethel church absolutely laid the foundation for such a practice to be done by their church members.

There's no doubt about that. In many ways, this defense is just a distinction without difference. Bill Johnson wrote a book in which he says that there are unclaimed, quote, anointings, mantles, revelations, and mysteries, end quote, waiting to be reclaimed by this generation.

He has also said on video that there are certain physical places on earth connected to past Christians who are now deceased that are quote, contact points for faith. Benny Johnson is pictured laying on and hugging the graves of dead Christian leaders at least two times.

And a certain leader at Bethel had a powerful experience at the grave of a former church member, an experience which has been affirmed by Bill Johnson and the Dean of his school, Dan Farley. So do they outright affirm and promote gravesucking by name at Bethel church?

No, they don't do that. However, on the other hand, if you were to lay on the grave of a dead Christian expecting a powerful quote, real experience with God while using it as a quote, contact point for faith in an attempt to reclaim a quote, anointing mantle revelation or mystery, well, it seems that this would be totally fine.

As long as you don't call it gravesucking by name, you're probably in the clear. Let's put it another way. If Bethel church didn't build the house of gravesucking, they did at the very least lay the foundation, put up the walls and install the roof.

And then some of their more zealous students finished out the interior and put down the welcome mat. This apparently makes all of the claims of them building the house ridiculous and laughable because after all, they didn't finish building it.

This all demonstrates even further the serious doctrinal problems at Bethel church. And the fact still remains that besides any gravesite activity, there are still dozens, if not hundreds of other teachings and practices that should make discerning Christians flee from the influence of Bethel church.

Closing Appeal and Channel Sign-Off

I pray that this has been a blessing to you. And please know that this video isn't meant as a sinful attack, but rather as a biblical critique. And let's pray for Bethel, that they would stop their unbiblical practices and teachings by God's grace and turn to the truth of God's Word.

Thank you so much for watching that video. Please give us a like and subscribe so that you don't miss any content. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our Rumble channel as well, just in case YouTube ever takes us down.

The link is in the description. And before you go, take a look at this list here. These are the people who make all of the free content you see on this channel possible with their monthly support. Today's highlighted channel supporter is Raphael G.

If you also want to help and become part of the solution today, hit the link in the description. Your support keeps us independent and helps us immensely here on the channel. So I hope you'll consider joining the Truth Army today.

And until next time, fight for truth, never surrender, and keep your eyes open. Thank you, and God bless.