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 .tt

.com Now here is 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 will 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 bestselling 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. By 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 1321. 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.

But 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't even know 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 Bethel at the

Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. You can look it up. There's videos and pictures of it, of students going to gravesides to receive an anointing, a mantle left behind by a dead

Christian. That is not what Second Kings 1321 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.

OK, 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 of in the in the air vents, like a glory cloud and 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 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. OK, 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 Acts 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. OK, 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, etc.

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, just 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, OK, started going to 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 who

I personally have seen healed. I have a friend here who had cataracts two weeks ago and she went and she went to get 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 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. And 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 Nabil here.

So bear with me for just a moment. First of all, Nabil'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 Nabil can answer.

Why hasn't he come to this understanding yet? I am not a seminary graduate.

Nabil 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, T .D. Jakes, most of the preachers that Nabil was listed among at Together 2016 in Washington, D .C.

over the summer. Now, if Nabil 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 -1 says that not every one of you should aspire to be teachers, for they will be judged more strictly.

Nabil 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.

Nabil 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 from 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 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 that 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 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 Nabil 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 423, the true worshipers of God will worship him in spirit and truth.

John 524, 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 his pass from death to life because of the word of Christ.

John 663, the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

John 831, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples.

John 1027, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.

In John 1717, Jesus prayed to the father, sanctify them in your truth.

Your word is truth. Romans 1017, faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

Ephesians 525 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 118 of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth.

First Peter 123, 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 5511 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, 4, 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 to 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 427, 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 learn 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 spilled 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 isogetical quotations, not out of context quotations.

I would say there were a couple interpretations that I didn't entirely agree with, but nothing heretical.

And again, just a tremendous use of scripture and the knowledge of scripture.

People quoting scripture from memory left and right. It was quite inspiring, something that I haven't seen in most churches that I go to.

So lots of scripture. The gospel proclaimed explicitly. Another thing that I heard people say about Bethel was that it's a name it and claim it or a prosperity gospel church.

The sermon that I heard preached by Bill Johnson, he didn't preach in the morning. In the morning, it was Paul Manwaring, and it was a phenomenal sermon.

I had the privilege of meeting and hanging around some of the best preachers in the world.

Dr. Ravi Zacharias for one, Michael Ramson for another. Who comes to mind? John Lennox, some amazing people with RZIM, people outside of RZIM.

I've heard preach amazing sermons. And this guy named Paul Manwaring gets up to the podium.

I've never even heard of him before. And he gives, which was in my mind, one of the best sermons

I've ever heard. They just blew my socks off. I mean, after the sermon, I looked at my wife, Michelle, and I said, what just happened?

This was a fantastic sermon. And like I said,

I heard him preach the gospel. And in the process of his sermon, he well, actually, let me go to Bill Johnson's sermon because I don't have too much time.

Bill Johnson's sermon was Sunday evening. He very explicitly preached in his sermon that God might call you to sacrifice all the favor he's given to you as a

Christian. In other words, you might have to make sacrifices for God. Let me look at the notes I wrote. He was quoting from Esther, and he was talking about Esther being willing to sacrifice her comfort, sacrifice her joy, even any applause she might receive from others, any fanfare she might receive, even being willing to give up her life.

And he was quoting her as a model for us being willing to sacrifice for the sake of God. Now, I don't know if this fits into your prosperity gospel paradigm, but when

I hear prosperity gospel, I'm not thinking of preachers preaching that you might have to lay down your life. That is exactly what

Bill Johnson preached when I was there. Again, I was just there one Sunday, but that's what

I heard, an explicit appeal of the gospel. Explicitly, you might have to sacrifice your life, lay it down for the sake of God and tons of scripture.

I also heard them say that guests were not allowed to give tithes.

They said, if you are a guest here, because they had lots of guests coming from all over the world, they said, if you are a guest here, you have to tithe to your local church.

They said, if you want to give above and beyond, that's fine. But your your job is not to tithe here.

And so they actually told guests not to tithe. That's not something I'd expect from a prosperity gospel church or name it or claim it church either.

Not that I've ever been to one, but that's not one that I would expect there either. All right. Two things here. Number one,

Bethel Church is not a prosperity church in the same vein as Joel Esteen, Creflo Dollar, Joyce Meyer, Kenneth Copeland.

But they teach the same doctrines. They just don't exercise them the same way. They're all derived out of the same charismatic movement, that word, faith, ladder reign thing.

But I'm not going to spend too much time on that. Number two, Bethel Church teaches lots of Bible. Sure.

It's just really bad teaching. Now, Nabil said that he heard tons of scripture in context and the gospel clearly preached.

I don't think Nabil heard what he thinks he heard. Now, how can I possibly know what it is that he heard?

I wasn't there. Well, I listened to the sermon that Nabil listened to. Not Bill Johnson's sermon. It wasn't online.

They probably don't put the evening services on their website, but they did have the sermon up from Paul Manwaring that Nabil mentioned.

He preached a 15 point sermon entitled, Did You Get What You Came For? Manwaring's 12th point was about the gospel.

And this is the closest that he ever came in his message to preaching it. I remember a season when

Bill was only teaching out of the gospels. I don't think he was reading much else. He was reading four gospels and the

Acts. And if we haven't worked out that that's what it's all about. That I sat in Reinhard Bonnke's school of evangelism on a

Tuesday morning and listened to him preach the gospel. The woman caught in adultery. Only two people can preach that message.

Reinhard Bonnke, Bill Johnson. The rest are having a good go, but those two. When Bill says it's a father -daughter moment.

Reinhard preached it and I began to weep and I cried until everyone in the room knew I was crying as I fell in love with the gospel.

What felt like for the first time. Have you fallen in love with the gospel?

With the good news? This outrageous, tremendous, extravagant good news? Or is it still just a nice thing that's on a

Christmas card? Can it be left there? That I want to live my life being able to say, declare and demonstrate.

I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ for it's the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes.

Did you get the gospel inside of you? The gospel promises you freedom from the past, a promise of a better today and a promise of a better future.

It's the gospel. It's not stationary. It's not one decision moment. I sat in Stockholm.

I looked at the hundreds and I've done it before, but this time I looked at the hundreds rushing, rushing for an audit call and I looked and I didn't just think a hundred salvations.

I thought in the most, you know, revelation is like when you've got it, you think it was so obvious that everyone must've got it.

But it was a moment when I thought that's not just hundreds of souls saved. That's thousands of lives transformed.

That's what the gospel does. Now, if you heard the gospel message in that two minute clip, let me tell you why.

Perhaps you have an orthodox understanding of the gospel as Nabeel does and as he explained.

And every time man wearing says gospel in your mind, you're filling in the gaps that he leaves with what you know the gospel is.

So in your mind, what man wearing preached was solid. But if you think about it critically, you'll realize there was actually no gospel presentation there at all.

I've referred to this as gap fill theology, and that's my term. If there's another name for it,

I haven't I haven't heard it. So I apologize for that. Cognitively, you are filling in all the gaps that man wearing leaves blank.

So what you hear is a solid presentation of the gospel. Did you catch his explanation of what the gospel is?

It's freedom from the past, a promise of a better today and a promise of a better future.

So if you believe, as the Bible says, that by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross and his resurrection from the grave, you've been delivered from the wrath of God and your sins have been forgiven.

You are a new man in Christ and are being sanctified by his spirit. And you have been given entrance into his eternal kingdom on the day of judgment.

That definition of the gospel fits perfectly freedom from the past, a promise of a better today and a better future.

Sure. But let's say a person believes that the gospel is God is going to give me relief from the bad memories and the broken hearts of yesterday.

He's going to give me healing today and better opportunities and relationships, and therefore tomorrow is already looking brighter.

That understanding of the gospel would also fit into man wearing his definition, but it's not the gospel that won't save anyone.

There's no mention of sin or what sin is, and therefore no forgiveness, no call to repent and follow

Jesus in holy living and no concept or understanding of judgment. Man wearing did not preach the gospel.

So when Bethel does actually get around to defining their terms, their theology is pretty wonky.

This is Chris Volaten. He's the co -founder of Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. Here's his definition of sin.

What do you know that you can't sin by mistake? There's a difference between a mistake and a sin.

The only way you can sin is to know that what you're doing is wrong and do it anyway.

I had a young man stand up and challenge me at YWAM. He said, can I ask you a question? He was kind of passionate.

I said, yeah, he's getting really frustrated with me. I said, yeah. He said, can you go a whole day without sinning?

I said, uh -huh. He goes, he sits down. I'm like, wow, that was simple.

I thought he was going to like take her on to the... I said, I've gone a whole week without sinning.

Now he looks like he's in shock. And so, and so we started, I started to say, well, wait, wait a second.

Let's define what sin is. Sin means that you knew something was wrong and you did it anyway.

Now, I don't know where he gets that definition from, but it's not the Bible. Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

That's Romans 14, 23. Sin is lawlessness. 1 John 3, 4. Do you need to know what the law is in order to break it?

If you run a red light and a cop catches you, you're going to get a ticket, whether you knew that was the law or not.

Romans 3, 23 says, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Not people who knew the law, not people over a certain age, everyone.

And if Volatin studied right doctrine, he would understand that sin is both qualitative and quantitative.

In other words, we sin because we're sinners. Jesus said, for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.

Martin Luther put it that we are sinful to the root. Charles Spurgeon, he talked about this in his sermon on indwelling sin.

He preached when a man is saved by divine grace, he is not wholly cleansed from the corruption of his heart.

When we believe in Jesus Christ, all our sins are pardoned. Yet the power of sin, albeit that it is weakened and kept under by the dominion of the newborn nature, which

God doth infuse in our souls, doth not cease, but still tarrieth in us and will do so until our dying day.

The moment that we come to Christ, we are completely justified, but we're not yet fully sanctified.

We are to no longer live in sin, but that doesn't mean that we won't sin. And man, I'd really love to dive into this more, but I'm going to go over an hour as it is.

There are so many problems at Bethel that every issue we touch on opens up a whole other can of worms.

These things are not minor, though. These are serious issues. We read in 1

John 1, 8 and 9 that if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If a person is being taught that they can operate sinlessly, that's works righteousness, which is heresy.

Now, still on the subject of sin, this next clip is from Bill Johnson. I listened to a sermon of his on sexual immorality, and I figured if I was ever going to find

Johnson giving a definition of sin, it's going to be there. This is him preaching out of First Corinthians chapter five.

He goes on to say that when you join, for example, he says, if a person has intercourse with a prostitute, then those two people become one.

A person who joins with another person immorally is giving a part of their heart, their soul away to another person.

Repeat that over and over again, and you have a person that is losing identity, losing sense of self and purpose, losing a sense of design.

All these things get broken and you end up with a person who is extremely fragmented because they've given themselves to numerous individuals, even if it's only one.

The fact that it's supposed to be with a husband or with a wife and now it's with one other person, it is a sin against their body.

It is a sin against the body of Christ. It is a sin against the cultural reformation that is takes take place through a people that becomes salt, light and leaven in a system to bring about a shift in perspective on what's important and what's valuable.

That cultural transformation does not take place because you preach to your neighbor about their sin.

It happens because you model what love is like between a husband or wife. Yeah, so we're not even supposed to tell our neighbors that they're sinners.

We're just supposed to model good behavior for them. What you might recognize is how evangelism is never done in the

Bible. Romans 3 20 through the law comes knowledge of sin. The Heidelberg Catechism whence knowest thou thy misery out of the law of God.

If a person doesn't know they're a sinner, according to what God says in his word, they will not know

Christ as savior. For what has he saved them from? The point that I more want to emphasize here, though, is where Johnson says that sexual sin is a sin against our own bodies.

It is a sin against the church, and it's a sin against the reformation of the culture. Never does he mention it as being an offense against a holy

God for which we deserve to be destroyed. Psalm 51 for David prayed against you.

You only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. And what was

David talking about? His affair with Bathsheba. That's what he's asking forgiveness for there in Psalm 51.

But Johnson says, never tell your neighbor that. Now, before the clip, he did say that sexual sin undermines

God's design, but he never said it's an offense against God. It's an offense against the body, but not against God.

My friends, that's naturalism. That's works righteousness.

This is not teaching from the spirit of God. It's teaching of the flesh, and it's deadly.

As Todd Freel said in a recent video, bad doctrine damns. It leads people to hell.

The only way you can be sure that your doctrine is lining up with the word of God and you're not teaching something heretical, damnable that would lead a person astray is to be grounded in historically biblical orthodoxy.

Study the creeds and the confessions and the early church fathers, the reformers, the Puritans, and they weren't right about everything.

Sometimes we study church history so we don't repeat their mistakes. All right, let's I don't want to go too far on time here.

I'd like to keep it under an hour if I can get there. Let's get back to Nabil to summarize then Bethel from what

I saw in my one experience, phenomenal music, phenomenal sermons, no heresy whatsoever, explicit preaching of the gospel, welcoming guests by asking them not to tithe, telling people to be willing to lay down their lives for the sake of God, and yet also giving very encouraging messages, tons of baptism, tons of scripture being quoted.

I mean, it was a fantastic experience at church for me, but probably by far and away the thing that that took my heart was seeing a body of believers passionately excited about what

God is going to do. They didn't even know what God was going to do, but they were excited about what God might want to do.

So to me, just an awesome, awesome time at church. Like I said, it was one weekend, but it was one of the most powerful weekends

I've ever been at any church. So that was my summary there.

I would also say that I saw about a dozen, if not more, testimonies of healing people who had come in just like I had for healing one woman who came in who wasn't able to move her neck.

And by the end of the morning, she was able to move her neck. Another person who came in unable to bend his leg.

By the end of the morning, he was running up and down the hallways. Now, if you're like, well, if you're like me, you might think that these were staged.

And I would tend to think that, too, except I met these people and they were people who were very, very genuine, very, very honest, loving people, loving

God. And so, man, I have a hard time saying that they staged that many healings.

Am I willing to distrust that many Christians? I don't think so. So very encouraging time.

Saw some amazing things. I was prayed over. Did I feel any healing?

No, I didn't. Did I feel like anything happened? I was tremendously encouraged.

I walked out of there very passionate about what God is doing, what he can do. But did I feel any supernatural healing?

No. Does that mean God didn't heal me? No. Maybe God did heal me there. I don't know. I'm praying that he did.

I'm praying that he would heal me every single day. But but that was my experience at Bethel.

People will claim to get sick and be healed just because they want the attention and have the church cheer for them and feel like they got the spiritual experience that they're supposed to have.

People fake speaking in tongues. It's the same manipulative spirit behind piping in gold dust through the vents and calling it the

Holy Spirit. Everyone gets sucked into the lie and they just play along. Not Nabil, because, again,

I don't think that he's being manipulated by that spirit. I just think he lacks discernment. He knows he wasn't cured of stomach cancer while he was there, but he's giving the people at Bethel way too much credit.

In fact, Mike Bickel, who is the founder of the International House of Prayer, part of the same circle that Bethel Church and Jesus Culture are a part of, he said that 80 percent of the stuff that goes on in these charismatic churches is completely fake.

Listen to the clip. I said in the last 20 years, I have concluded in manifestation meetings all over the world.

Again, I've been to several thousand of them, a couple thousand at least. That 80 percent of them are not real, but 20 percent of them are.

Some people go, what? 80 percent? That's horrifying. If you say that, people will be afraid of opening themselves to the

Holy Spirit. I go, no. What happens when people hear that? I've said that in different countries around the world.

I've got applauses for it because people go, wow, if somebody's got enough discernment to see what's really happening, maybe there's hope to keep pressing in.

But if I have to believe all this, I can't believe any of it. Michael, you don't have to believe it all.

You can enjoy it without believing all of it because you see some of it. And I know the

Holy Spirit, not that well, but well enough to know this. He's really good at touching people.

People said, no, if you say that 80 percent, people will be afraid. I go, oh, he's really good at touching afraid people.

That's one of his expertise. My thanks to Phil Johnson of Grace to you for passing that video along to me. That basically blows up all of charismaticism.

Mike Bickel, who is one of the most influential names in modern charismatic churches, openly admits that 80 percent is totally fake.

And then he tries to redeem it by saying that the Holy Spirit uses the fake to woo the people to the genuine.

That's probably the same mentality Bethel Church is using when they make their glitter clouds. Well, if it brings a person to the

Lord, then it's OK. No, it's not. If you win them with lies, you win them to lies.

It's like saying to God, you know, your way just isn't good enough. This faith comes by hearing the word of Christ thing.

I don't like that. So I'm going to help you out a little bit. I'm going to make a glitter cloud and claim it's you.

I'm going to stage a healing and claim you did it. I'm going to speak gibberish and make people think

I'm speaking some heavenly language. Revelation 21, 8, as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur.

The Bible instructs us to speak the truth in love. Colossians three, nine through 10. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

We know that most of charismaticism is fake because the word of the Lord given by the

Holy Spirit. First John five, six is so poorly and even heretically taught.

If the word of God is not convincing enough for you, first of all, you should be very concerned about that because Jesus said the reason you don't understand is because you can't bear to hear his word.

That's John eight, 43. But lest you still want to insist that I have to experience it before I make such a criticism.

Let me tell you that I have. This is not coming from someone looking from the outside in and thinking all the stuff that they're doing is weird.

From my teens up to about my mid 20s, these were the kinds of churches that I went to because they were the popular churches among my age group.

I've seen and experienced this firsthand. Now, I never spoke in tongues or I never danced around the sanctuary.

I was like Nabil. I saw people doing it. I wasn't feeling it. But who was I to judge? I've led worship services in those churches, though, and I was being influenced by those teachers.

Praise the Lord for sound men of God who came alongside me and showed me my errors.

And by his grace, I'm not being influenced by that false teaching anymore. It's feelings based emotionalism, not a true and genuine move of the

Holy Spirit of God. John four, 24, says the true worshipers of God will worship him in spirit and in truth.

John 14, 15 and 16, the Holy Spirit is described in all three chapters as the spirit of truth.

We read in first John four, six, whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God does not listen to us.

By this, we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Now, I'm I'm crossing that one hour threshold here, which

I didn't want to do, but I still have one more segment. And then we'll finish up. I do want to say some things, though, that I would.

Well, one thing, actually, and that was that at Bethel, there was a lot of prophecy that was given.

I was prophesied over, I'd say by, well, at least seventeen hundred people.

And prophecy is dangerous because these are these people prophets.

I don't know what success rate do they have and do they make mistakes? I'm sure everyone there would say that they make mistakes.

And so when you receive prophecy, it's dangerous. But once again, I just think back to the parallel of these hills in California on the

Central Coast. When you get close to God, there's risk involved. And when you're when you're excited about what

God is doing and you're willing to take some risks, there will be some failure. So we need to keep that in mind.

If you receive some prophecy from some Christians, you're like, I'm just not sure that this is accurate prophecy.

We'll just take that in mind. If you're willing to run with it, run with it. But understand there's a risk involved. So that would be my one disclaimer from having gone to Bethel was the willingness to prophecy could be very dangerous, but could also be very fruitful as well.

And the prophecies they were giving were generally very encouraging prophecies. And I actually heard Chris, I think he is he takes the role.

I'm not sure if he self calls himself a prophet, but people there call him a prophet. He I heard him encourage people to only give encouraging prophecies because discouraging the time of discouragement and judgment is what he relegates to the

Old Testament. Am I sure about that kind of teaching? I have no idea. But I'm glad for the ultimate product, which is people encouraging one another to live well for the kingdom and to see the best in one another.

And not just by the power of positive thinking, speak well into others lives, but by encouraging them to be what they can be in God's eyes, just like Jesus called out

Peter, who would deny Jesus. And yet he called him the rock. You know, he called out in Peter something that Peter wasn't actually able to do yet, which is stand firm in the face of death.

He did that later. To be able to encourage people with that kind of prophecy, if you want to call it that,

I think is fantastic. I commend Nabil for recognizing that prophecy is very dangerous, but unfortunately, he doesn't understand how dangerous

Deuteronomy 18, 20 through 22. The prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak shall die.

He has spoken presumptuously. It did not come from the Lord. If it didn't come from God, it came from where it comes from.

The devil, Nabil referenced Peter. Peter was trying to protect Jesus from going to the cross, and his intentions, at least in his mind, were totally encouraging.

But what did Jesus say to him? Get behind me, Satan, for you are not thinking with the mind of God, but with the mind of man,

Jesus said in Matthew 7, 21 through 23. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven.

On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?

And I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.

I'm sure that the people of Bethel Church and Jesus Culture and The Call and the International House of Prayer are nice people.

You know who else I've met who are really nice? Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses. Nicety is simply not evidence of genuine faith.

By the way, Mormonism came out of the same restorationist movement that churches like Bethel came out of. Look it up.

Once again, it's important to know your history. The Bible says all people are liars. Their throat is an open grave and they use their tongues to deceive.

It is in our nature to be that way. Christ turns us from participating in the lies of Satan to rejoicing in the truth of God.

Let me conclude with the closing words of Jude. You must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our

Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, in the last time there will be scoffers following their own ungodly passions.

It is these who cause divisions. Worldly people devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the

Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our

Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. Have mercy on those who doubt.

Save others by snatching them out of the fire. To others, show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of His glory with great joy.

To the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority before all time and now and forever.

Amen. Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

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