WWUTT 340 Q&A Bethel Church and Jesus Culture?

Bethel Church in Redding, California and their youth outreach, Jesus Culture, are among the most influential ministries in America. They seem genuine, but are filled with false teaching and gimmicks they claim are miraculous signs.

We can recognize the problems when we understand the text.

You are listening to When We Understand The Text, committed to the sound teaching of the Word of God. Find videos and more at our website, www .utt .com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Thank you Becky. Let's pray before we get started here. Father God, I am grateful to you for salvation in Christ and in Christ alone. Hallelujah, what a Savior. As we continue to live as strangers and exiles in this world, I pray that you would give us discerning hearts.

Help us to know the difference between what is right and what is almost right. Lead us to follow the voice of the Good Shepherd so that when that slithering snake, the devil, comes in to whisper, did God really say?

We will recognize his lies. I pray that you'll be with me as I teach today, that this will not be for my benefit, but for the benefit of my hearers. Not for my glory, but for the glory of God. Make my desire that hearts would turn from sin and worship Christ the Lord.

And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Well greetings everybody and welcome to a special edition of the podcast today in which I won't be taking questions, but this is still somewhat in the vein of the last three emails that I responded to last week.

I had three men who wrote in and basically asked this, if I have a brother or sister in Christ who is for the most part orthodox in their belief and practice, but they lack discernment, listening to and promoting false teachers, how do I correct them?

And my answer was the same way that we should respond to anyone, holding out the word of God, patiently enduring evil, always ready to give an answer for the hope that lies within us, but doing this with gentleness and respect.

Think also of what the apostle Paul said in first Corinthians 13, how he talked about love and apply that to how we should admonish one another. What is the first thing that Paul said about love? Love is patient.

We have got to be patient with one another. Not flying off the handle or quarreling at every little disagreement. Love is kind. It goes right along with that. Address the concern. Do not belittle the person that you're concerned about.

Love is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but it rejoices with the truth. Admonishing one another, correcting with goodwill, as the Bible instructs us to do, does not mean saying, I'm right, you're wrong, and let me tell you why.

It is pleasing our neighbor for his good to build him up, Romans 15, 1 and 2. We must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught and be able to rebuke those who contradict it. That's Titus 1 .9. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. Today, I want to address the false teaching at Bethel Church in Redding, California and their connected ministries, including iBethel, Bethel Sozo, the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry and their youth outreach, Jesus Culture.

I'm going to do so by responding to a recent video that was made by a brother in the Lord, Nabeel Qureshi. I've never personally met Nabeel, and he probably has no idea who I am. I believe Nabeel is a born-again believer, but he lacks discernment concerning false teaching with his recent approval of Bethel Church.

A little bit about Nabeel, he's a former Muslim who wrote a best-selling book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, and over the summer, he released another one, I noticed, No God But One, Allah or Jesus. Over the last three years, he's worked with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries as a guest speaker until this past summer, when very sadly, he was diagnosed with stomach cancer.

Nabeel withdrew from most of his speaking engagements while he is undergoing treatment for his illness. A friend of his recommended to Nabeel that he attend Bethel Church in Redding, California, pastored by Bill Johnson, and perhaps he could receive some healing there.

Many spoke up online, urging Nabeel not to go, and warned him that it was a heretical church, but Nabeel did some research and he concluded it wasn't. In fact, he says it's a church full of people who love God.

In a recent vlog where Nabeel details his trip to Bethel, he said that they teach the Bible and the gospel is heard in their preaching. I would like to play those comments for you and respond to them lovingly with the word of God and also playing clips from some of the teaching that comes out of Bethel.

I want to state plainly that I believe Bethel Church and Bill Johnson are heretics who desperately need to repent of false teaching and the manipulative tactics that they use lest they stand before the Lord condemned on the day of judgment.

And let me also state plainly that I have great respect for Nabeel Qureshi and his ministry. I have no quarrel with Nabeel. When I heard that he had cancer, I prayed for him and I shared it on Twitter so that others would pray for him.

Admittedly, I've never read any of his books, but I've watched a few interviews and videos, including the one that was posted by David Wood when he and Nabeel were arrested for preaching the gospel in Michigan a few years back.

Again, Nabeel is my brother in the Lord. I offer this correction in love. Brother, if for whatever reason you come into listening to this, first of all, I'm honored to have earned your ear. I pray for God's healing upon you.

And most of all, I pray just as you have, just as I've read that you have prayed that God would be honored in your body, whether by life or by death. Now, I happen to be doing this on the same day that the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, which is just two hours down the road from me, they're hosting their annual one thing conference where one of the guest speakers happens to be Bill Johnson of Bethel Church.

I actually wanted to go just to hear him and Todd White do some interviews and some witnessing while I was there. But we had we had Christmas. I had to replace a water heater. Yeah, in December. So I ran out of money and I couldn't make it to IHOP.

Oh, well, maybe I'll maybe I'll catch the live feed online. I'm going to skip the first five minutes of Nabil's audio here. He basically just talks about his trip to Bethel. And I'm going to skip to the part where he begins to talk about his experience there.

This is Nabil Qureshi from his vlog dated December 22nd of 2016.

Now, many of you have asked me not to go to Bethel because you said it was heretical. And honestly, I knew nothing about Bethel except a month, month and a half ago. I had friends who said to me, Nabil, people are getting healed at Bethel.

You should go. And I thought, great. I need healing.

I'll go.

And it was a simple faith like that. And then when I posted about my desire to go to Bethel, I got a ton of pushback from people saying it's a heretical church, that I shouldn't go, that God was stopping me from going, etc.

And it was tremendously difficult to get there, sheer virtue of the fact that it's in Redding, California. It's a difficult place to get to. But I began to look into it because, hey, if it's a heretical church, I want to know and I don't want to go and lend my support to a heretical church.

But the more I started investigating Bethel, the more I realized I didn't see anything heretical that they were saying. Now, people were saying some stuff that Bethel did, for example, grave sucking, which I never saw Bethel officially teach.

But people said Bethel does that kind of stuff. What it is, is supposedly people coming to graves of Christians and somehow getting their anointing or their mantle or whatever word you want to use, getting their gifts imparted to them, the dead people's gifts imparted to them.

But I never see Bethel teach this. I never saw it taught anywhere and never officially espoused, just reports.

If you went into a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, would you expect that you would always hear in every sermon that Jesus is the first begotten son of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother?

No, I've never heard that preached in a Mormon sermon, but I've read it in their doctrines. I've never had a Mormon tell me that I can become a God until I bring it up. I'll say to them, do you believe that you will become a God?

And they'll reply, well, of course I believe that the Bible says so. And I say, where? And then they can't answer the question. So I'll quote Isaiah 43 10 before me, no God was formed, nor shall there be any after me.

And I'm the one that brings this up in my witnessing to Mormons. Just because it's not regularly taught doesn't mean it's not a teaching that they embrace. So this teaching on mantle grabbing originates from Bethel Church Pastor Bill Johnson and a sermon that he preached years ago on our spiritual inheritance.

I believe that was the name of it. Johnson told the story of Elisha's death in Second Kings 13, where Elisha told Joash, King of Israel, to shoot arrows into the air and however many arrows he shot. That's how many victories against Syria the Lord would give him.

Well, Joash only shot three arrows, so Elisha rebuked him for it. When Elisha died and was buried, a dead man was thrown on top of him. And when the and the moment he touched Elisha's bones, he was revived and stood on his feet.

It's the only verse where this is mentioned, Second Kings 13, 21, and it's on this verse that Johnson has based his teaching on mantle grabbing. Here is Bill Johnson on that passage.

He strikes the ground three times and he says, if you only would have done it five or six, you would have annihilated the enemy. Because you did it three times, you will have three temporary victories and Elisha leaves.

What happens? He takes his mantle to the grave. Then what happens? A soldier died in battle. The army that he fought with didn't have time to bury him. They threw him on the prophet's bones with a mantle of resurrection power still laid and he came to life.

There are mantles that were taken to the grave. I'm not saying we need to visit grave sites. I mean, I don't really care.

You can.

It doesn't matter to me. It's just not the point. The point is, it's time to recover out of honor the mantles that were left for us. Because the things that were revealed to these men and women of God, according to Deuteronomy 29, are our possession forever.

And if those revelations are not experienced and abided in through the experience of faith, they become the habitation of the enemy to mock the church from its previous victory.

So if we don't claim these mantles, the devil will, according to Bill Johnson. Notice that he says you don't have to go to grave sites, but you can if you want to. Don't shrug that off as, well, I just heard him say that you don't have to go to grave.

So he's not responsible for this grave sucking thing. It is this teaching that is practiced at Bethel Church. It's practiced by their students at the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. You can look it up.

There's videos and pictures of it, of students going to grave sites to receive an anointing, a mantle left behind by a dead Christian. That is not what 2 Kings 13 21 is about. It's not what Deuteronomy 29 is about either, for that matter.

Hebrews 1 1 and 2 tells us this long ago at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son. What happened with Elijah and Elisha is exclusive to them.

It is not the way that God is speaking to us now. He speaks to us through Jesus Christ, who has given to all of his followers the Holy Spirit. We don't have to go to anyone's grave to grab their mantle.

Now it's been said, and I believe rightly so, that this is necromancy, an abominable practice condemned in Deuteronomy 18 9 through 12. It's listed among the works of the flesh in Galatians 5, saying that a person who practices such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Necromancy is communication with the dead. That does not strictly mean talking to the dead or praying to the dead as the Roman Catholics do to communicate means to transmit or impart knowledge. This practice of mantle grabbing is a desire to have something imparted from the dead.

Someone at Bethel may want to argue, well, we're not talking to the dead. We're asking God that the anointing the spirit gave that person would be imparted to us. Okay, well, here's my question. Do you worship the God of the living or the God of the dead?

Matthew 22, 32, Jesus said he is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And the Holy Spirit is not limited. He does not apportion himself out in pieces so that when a person dies, you need to go find that portion of the spirit left behind.

And if you don't, the devil is going to claim it. That's taught nowhere in the scriptures. It is darkness have nothing to do with it. Let's go back to to Nabil here.

Also, reports of gold dust being put in the vents and in the air vents like a glory cloud when people are worshiping God and Bethel released this gold dust and says, oh, look, this is the glory of God.

Once again, I didn't see Bethel saying they ever did that. Now, they did say that there was gold dust, but they never said that they put it in the.

Vents.

So this kind of the I guess controversial teachings, I never saw Bethel actually saying that they espoused those or that they tried to trick anyone or anything of that sort.

Does a thief have to admit that he stole something in order for him to be a thief? Does a liar have to admit that he told a lie in order to be a liar? Of course not. But that's the argument that Nabil is essentially making when he says Bethel never said they put gold dust in the ventilation system, therefore they can't be putting gold dust in the ventilation system.

That is very naive. When we did the what video on glory clouds at Bethel Church, we used footage from their own YouTube channel. They outright admit and even boast in these gold dust glory clouds that appear in their worship services.

They've also done feathers and said they're actual angel feathers. Christianity Today did an article about that just earlier this year. People, this stuff is not real. They are manufactured lies. Do not be gullible.

There's absolutely zero instances of this ever occurring in the scriptures. Furthermore, why does it only seem to be happening in charismatic new apostolic reformation churches? See this is divisive to insinuate that the Holy Spirit will pour out gold glitter or angel feathers on our services, but not yours.

That is not the work of the spirit of God. It is the work of the father of lies.

So I wanted to go and see for myself. Part of the reason why is because I get all kinds of accusations myself from Christians who I'm sure are well intentioned, but they see themselves as witch hunters and they're willing to people who are generally not preaching the gospel effectively are willing to come after effective preachers and try to tear down their ministry because they disagree with some minor point.

I've seen that happen to many people around me, and I've seen people try to do that to my preaching as well. And so I'm not going to fall for it quickly when it's happening to somebody else. I want to actually give them the benefit of the doubt.

So I went to Bethel and I never really do this, but because I'm guessing this is going to be a controversial video, I wrote some disclaimers out.

Okay, before, before getting to his disclaimers here, I commend Nabil for that. We should test even the claims that so-and-so is heretical, not just taking such a claim at face value. But what's more important than giving someone the benefit of the doubt is obedience to the word of God.

The Bible says, test everything. First Thessalonians 521 in Act 17, the Bereans tested the apostle Paul against the Old Testament scriptures. Honestly, they were not giving Paul the benefit of the doubt.

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ. But there were liars out there who were also claiming to be apostles. So the Bereans were obedient first and foremost to the word of God. And they were commended for that level of discernment.

I've never been to Bethel church, but I don't have to go. I can test their claims against the word of God and see that they're not abiding in it. Now, let me clarify that these are not minor points, manipulative tricks that Bethel claims are from the Holy Spirit.

This is very, very serious. And we're going to discuss that further as we go on.

First disclaimer, I went for one weekend, so I can't say I've been sampled a ton of weekends. I sampled one weekend and that would be, oh, I should have probably looked up what weekend.

It was.

Let me pull out my calendar. It was not this past weekend when I was in Southern California, it was the weekend before. So that would be the 9th through 12th of December, 2016 is when I was at Bethel.

Okay, next disclaimer. I have no issue with people shaking while praying or otherwise doing things that might be weird to me. I've seen people do all kinds of crazy stuff, Christians, non-Christians, et cetera.

So if you go to a charismatic church in Africa, I've been to a charismatic church in the Caribbean I didn't know it was called charismatic at the time, I just went to a church in the Caribbean and I saw people doing crazy stuff.

It was weird to me. But hey, who am I to judge another man's servant? If God is doing things which causes them to shake, it causes them to shake. I'm not going to judge them. I don't shake while praying, but I'm not about to be scared off by people who are.

Or otherwise, you know, sometimes people will, in the middle of prayer, they will say something like, come on, or that's great, or hey, or go God, or something like that. And that doesn't bother me. I don't do it while praying, but it doesn't bother me when other people do.

I am new to the phenomenon of charismatic churches. This is not something I'm used to. I didn't even know that there was a whole subset of churches called charismatic churches until I was recently introduced to friends who were just really passionate about their faith and they call themselves charismatic.

And I was like, okay. I started going to their churches and realized that they're doing things a bit differently from the evangelical churches that I hang out at, but it was all new to me. Another disclaimer is I have not presupposed a theology wherein the gifts of the Spirit no longer are being given.

In other words, do people have the ability to heal today? Is that healing imparted by God momentarily or is it something that is a part of who they are as a new Christian? I have no idea. I just don't know.

And I'm not about to say yes. I'm not about to say no. I'm going to see what God does. I do believe that God heals. I have no doubt about that. I've got a ton of friends who have undergone healing and I have a ton of friends who I personally have seen healed.

I have a friend here who had cataracts two weeks ago and she went and got some prayer and now she doesn't just through healing. It happens. Now, is there a gift of healing? Is there a role of a healer in the church?

I don't know. I don't know what those terms are supposed to mean in some deep theological sense, but does healing happen?

Yes.

And so I haven't presupposed a theology that precludes gifts of healing or any other gifts of the Spirit, prophecy or anything like that. I haven't presupposed a theology. I'm going to wait and see what the data says.

The Scripture doesn't seem like it says that these gifts were canceled in the New Testament.

Era.

I've seen zero Scripture that says that. Any attempt to put that there, for example, in First Corinthians, I believe 13 is entirely isogenical. There's nothing there in the Scripture that says that.

OK, I need to shift from my criticism of Bethel Church to Nabeel here. So bear with me for just a moment. First of all, Nabeel's opinion about healing is entirely subjective. It's based on experience, not what the Word of God says.

Now, I agree with him that First Corinthians 13, 8 through 10 is not a passage about cessationism. As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease when the perfect comes. The partial will pass away.

Paul could very well have been talking about when the perfect kingdom of God appears, not when apostolic giftings come to an end. But there are plenty of passages that help us develop an understanding that the apostolic ministry of the first century has concluded.

Not that healing has stopped, but it doesn't happen with the regularity or the miraculousness that we see happening in the book of Acts. Narrative is not normative. We should certainly understand that the Holy Spirit is not revealing any new truth apart from Scripture.

This is one of those things that requires developing a proper hermeneutic, not pointing to a particular passage and saying, see, here it is right here. So I have to ask this question, and this is really a question that only Nabeel can answer.

Why hasn't he come to this understanding yet? I am not a seminary graduate. Nabeel is. In fact, he has two religion degrees and is pursuing his doctorate in New Testament studies at Oxford. At least he was.

I don't know if his diagnosis has forced him to put that on hold right now. But why is this not a matter that he has an understanding of or has developed a hermeneutic regarding? Furthermore, why is this new to him?

Charismatic ism is not a small subset of evangelicalism. It's huge. Teachers include Joel Esteen, Joyce Meyer, TD Jakes, most of the preachers that Nabeel was listed among at Together 2016 in Washington, D .C. over the summer.

Now, if Nabeel was a member of my congregation, my concerns would not be as grave. But he's not a lay person. He is a teacher, a well-known and best selling teacher. James 3 one says that not every one of you should aspire to be teachers, for they will be judged more strictly.

Nabeel is influencing people to accept heretical teachings from a group like Bethel, and he's doing so in ignorance, even admitting that he's ignorant of these things. That's seriously concerning, and he should be taking this more seriously than he is.

Nabeel has has another disclaimer to make here, and then we'll come back again to Bethel's teaching.

And finally, I am for unity among believers. And here's why I came from Islam. OK, I know what a false religion looks like. I know when people say that Jesus is not Lord or they say he's not died on the cross for our sins or that he's not risen from the dead.

That's heresy. If you have someone who says, I'm going to shake a little bit while praying, that's not heresy. OK, so I'm not about to point at people and kick them out of the kingdom because they do things differently for me.

I know what it means to be from a false religion. And Christians who do things differently from us are not, you know, heretics just because they do things differently. If they deny the deity of Christ, if they deny the resurrection, if they deny his blood spilt for our sins, if they deny the Trinity, then you might have a case for for heresy.

But I don't think people just doing things differently from us are heretics.

Nor do I. But we're not talking about people who are shaking while praying. This is that's not the argument regarding new apostolic reformation associated churches like Bethel, the call, the International House of Prayer.

Do you know what else is heresy? Denying the authority and the sufficiency of the scriptures, which Bethel Church does. They believe that God will reveal new truths that can't be tested with the scriptures.

And Bill Johnson has taught that the early church fathers and the reformers would have branded him a heretic just on that doctrine alone. But let's let's just focus on this, this glory cloud thing, OK, this manifesting glitter clouds in their worship services and saying that it's the Holy Spirit.

If you claimed that Jesus Christ was only a man and not God, wouldn't that be heresy? Yes, it would be. If you made a statue of Jesus and prayed to it, isn't that heresy? Of course. And you should recognize that's also breaking the second commandment.

So apply that to the Holy Spirit, who is God. If you define the Holy Spirit as something contrary to the scriptures, how would that not be heresy? If you manufactured a man-made glitter cloud and claimed that it came from the Holy Spirit when you knew that you made it, how would that not be heresy?

How is that not different from bowing down to a statue? The Holy Spirit is to Bethel Church what Jesus Christ is to Mormonism and to the Jehovah's Witnesses. He's a God of their own description and making, not the God of the Bible.

We're no more at liberty to claim that the Holy Spirit is in a glitter cloud than we are to say that Jesus showed up on a piece of toast. Seriously, this this is like the Roman Catholic mystical belief that Jesus and Mary occasionally show up on pumpernickel just to say hi and give you a blessing.

It's the exact same practice. It's the same heresy. There's also a little false equivalence in Nabeel's argument here. Just because a person was once part of a false religion does not mean that they somehow understand what false religion looks like.

They might know what that false religion was like. They certainly have more experience than someone who was never part of that same religion, but they're not somehow able to hone in on every other false religion.

I've witnessed to a man in my community who's an elder at his church, a church that claims that Jesus is God the Father and denies the Trinity. Prior to becoming an elder there, he was a Jehovah's Witness.

Before that, he was a Mormon, and he, like Nabeel, will tell me that he knows what false teaching looks like, which is one of the reasons why he knows he's not under false teaching now. Now, I want to clarify again, I don't believe that that's Nabeel.

I don't think that he's a heretic, but he lacks discernment. And it's disappointing that these are subjective arguments that he's making, not appealing to the scriptures. He's talking about what he's experienced regarding healing, what he's experienced regarding false religion, what he's experienced regarding Bethel Church.

And he's also going to share what he's experienced related to doctrinal churches.

Here's what I saw when I went to Bethel. OK, here's what I saw. Just to give you an idea. The first thing I saw when I met people at Bethel and then when I went into the church was Christians who are passionate about God with tremendous expectation for Him to work.

Today.

What do I mean by that? Well, when I go to a lot of churches now, a lot of evangelical churches that I visit, people are great people, and they know their scripture, they know their doctrine, and they are very hospitable and loving people.

But I don't generally see an expectation of God to work. I see them expecting the natural to happen. When they share the gospel, I expect people to think, well, this may or may not convince someone or their heart may or may not be inclined towards it.

I rarely see people think that the power of God is going to hit somebody while they're sharing the gospel with them. I just don't see that. Similarly, when they're praying for people, I rarely see people expecting God to do something miraculous or powerful right there and then, but rather the natural to happen.

Same with at church. I see people go to church and expect to have good teaching and good teaching in the natural. In other words, eliciting from scripture deep truths, sure, but that can be naturally understood and that can naturally transform one's heart and mind.

I rarely see Christians truly expect, they might say so in word, but to actually truly expect God to work supernaturally through, uh, through anything, through any medium.

That's really ironic coming from a guy who just a moment ago said he was going to wait to see what the data says before making a determination about the supernatural workings of God. I'm going to propose to you that Nabeel actually has this backwards.

The charismatic churches are the ones that put faith in the natural while the church is studying sound doctrine and teaching it from their pulpits are the ones that believe in the supernatural. Charismaticism is based almost entirely on subjective experiences and personal feelings.

Those things are natural, whereas a belief and a deep study of the word of God is a belief in the supernatural. Mark 1331, Jesus said, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

Heaven and earth in this context are the natural and they will pass away. The word of Christ, which is supernatural, will never pass away. John 4 23, the true worshipers of God will worship him in spirit and truth.

John 5 24 truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life because of the word of Christ.

John 6 63, the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. John 8 31, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples. John 10 27, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.

In John 17 17, Jesus prayed to the father, sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth. Romans 10 17, faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. Ephesians 5 25 through 26, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her that he might sanctify her.

How having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word James 1 18 of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth. First Peter 1 23, you have been born again, not of perishable seed, which is the natural, but of imperishable seed, which is the supernatural through the living and abiding word of God.

The only way a person comes to faith in Jesus Christ and is sanctified in the faith is because they heard the word of Christ proclaimed and they believed it. That is the only way anyone comes to the faith.

That is the supernatural work of God alone. Every time I share the word of God with an unbeliever, I know and there is no doubt in my heart that God is going to do something with that word when it is spoken.

Isaiah 55 11 says, my word shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. So when I share the word of God, either the holy spirit will open a person's heart to receive it, or the holy spirit will harden a person's heart even more than it was already hardened.

Those are the only two possible outcomes and both are the work of God so that his glory will be seen both in those who will be saved and those who will be judged. And who knows how long that work is going to take.

It could take a few days, a few years. That's God's work. My responsibility is obedience to his word. Bill Johnson doesn't believe that. Here's what Johnson teaches about doctrine. This is from his book.

When heaven invades earth, a practical guide to a life of miracles, he says, those who feel safe because of their intellectual grasp of scriptures, enjoy a false sense of security. None of us has a full grasp of scripture, but we all have the holy spirit.

He is our common denominator who will always lead us into the truth, but to follow him, we must be willing to follow off the map to go beyond what we know. False sense of security. What? Psalm 119, 165.

Great peace have those who love your law. Nothing can make them stumble. Romans 15, four, what was written in former days was written for our instruction that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.

There is no other security we can have except what is written for us in the word of God. The holy spirit helps us to understand that word. That's first Corinthians two. The natural person can't discern spiritual things for they are spiritually discerned.

We're talking about the word of God there. The Bible has something to say about going off the map. As Bill Johnson proposed, Proverbs four 27, do not swerve to the right or to the left. Turn your foot away from evil.

From Psalm 119. Again, your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. That's a verse we learned in Sunday school. Johnson is encouraging people to trust their gut. That's a natural impulse.

That's not supernatural. I believe it was a W Tozer who said that one of the devil's schemes is to get us as far from the word of God as possible. Bethel church does not bring you to a clear understanding of the word.

Far from it. Now we still have a lot to get to, but are you learning something? I hope so. Lest my preaching is in vain. Let's continue on.

When I was at Bethel, I went to two different Sunday sermons. They did different morning sermons versus an evening sermon, and in both sermons the gospel was proclaimed explicitly Christ's death on the cross, his blood spilt for our sins by which we can attain heaven.

No work of our own can achieve that for us, but the blood of Christ has done that because he is God incarnate raised from the dead. I saw this preached multiple times in multiple services. Another thing that I saw which certain critics of Bethel were saying that Bethel doesn't do is quotation from tons and tons of scripture, and not eisegetical quotations, not out of context quotations.