Copeland is a blight on the church, and who better to be blight-buddies with than Bill Johnson, senior pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, California, who had him speak at their January 8 evening service?
Copeland was the guest speaker of honor, with Bethel leaders heaping praise on him,
Kris Vallotton: “I think it’s prophetic that Kenneth Copeland is here. Not just because of who he is, but because of the season he’s come in. I’ve been thinking about for the last month and a half that the righteous will live by faith. And here’s one of the fathers of the faith movement”
And
Bill Johnson “I mentioned this morning, in 2012, a prophet friend of mine sent me a word. And he said, in this word, the Lord was going to open up a connection, a thread of connection to Kenneth Copeland. And I was to pull the thread and something would open up for us as a family.
A few years ago, I had the privilege of joining our brother in his office, going through his ministry, spending time with him. He prayed for me and basically tackled me to the ground almost. And as the power and the love of God just overflowed my life, I’ve just been so marked by their whole team.
And then I had the great privilege of speaking at their Believer’s Convention here a couple of years ago, such a wonderful time. And I tell you what, I have just fallen in love with this man. I’m so thankful that we have the opportunity to receive a real believer, a believing believer, a man of genuine faith.
And I believe that God is going to release over us. In fact, that was the word I got in 2012, that there would be a specific release over this house. And I just feel like the luckiest guy on the planet to be able to say, here’s my friend, Kenneth Copeland to come to minister to us tonight. I’d like for you to welcome him.
What does it look like when arch-heretic Kenneth Copeland swings by to preach at Bill Johnson's Bethel church? This.
Four months ago Bethel Church broke ground on their new $96,000,000 Campus and Apostolic Training Center, with lead pastor Bill Johnson explaining “We are partnering with other catalysts from around the world to propel this mission forward, and are believing for an entirely new, state-of-the-art campus where we can continue to pursue God’s decree over our movement.”
Now, following the playbook of master manipulators, Bill Johnson has sent out a plea asking undiscerning Christians to donate to his devilish cause, pressing the need for urgency and revealing that his friend Michael Maiden prophesied last year that:“(If Bethel) does not build now, we would not be ready for what is to come.” Maiden is about as crazy as a rat in a coffee can, and no one ought to pay him any heed, as a retarded monkey with a pen taped to its hand could write a more lucid and spirit-filled prophecy than him.
Naturally, we have many questions, such as if ‘the Lord is erasing the line between spiritual and natural’ -whatever that means- then why the importance of having a physical place? Second of all, it’s worth noting that Bill has some skill here when it comes to these huckstering practices. A beginner manipulator would say that he had a word from the Lord that people need to give to him, whereas one more skilled like Johnson only quotes what someone else has to say about it, giving him plausible deniability.
In terms of pitches, it’s not as crass as when Oral Roberts told his viewers that God was going to strike him dead if he didn’t raise 8 million dollars in 3 months. Luckily for Roberts and unluckily for the church, he received 9 million and lived to see another day. Still. It’s so, so greasy.
We suspect that whether or not Bethel raises their tenth of a billion dollars, whatever is ‘to come’ won’t depend on some factory of false prophecies to stave off its terror.
With the news that Bethel Church has broken ground on a nearly $100 million dollar Apostolic Training Center, we wanted to throw some numbers and statistics at our followers, to show just how big and expansive the organization really is. We get some stats from their Arise and Build campaign which purports to be from their 2020 annual report.
The 15,000 ‘prophetic words given’ and ‘305’ dream interpretation sessions are probably the scariest numbers of them all, demonstrating how frequently they engage in acts of biblical butchery and showing that for this crowd, the scriptures are not enough to satisfy them.
Bethel’s influence is on the rise. This juggernaut is only growing and expanding in influence, and in the last few months, we’ve been brought stories on how:
As Bill Johnson and the apologists of Bethel Chruch continue to directly confront controversies in YouTube Web series titled “Rediscover Bethel,” courtesy of in-depth Q&A that addresses some of their beliefs and distinctive, they come to the question of “grave soaking” and whether or not this is a normative practice for the bombastic Bethelites.
In the linked clip the Dean of the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, Dann Farrelly, explains that he’s been with Bethel and Johnson for 25 years, and that “we never taught uh this experience that I see described on the web that’s grave sucking. Never taught it, never done it.”
When pressed about the association that JOhnson himself has with grave sucking, he explains:
“I’ve gone to graves. I’ve prayed. But we don’t talk to the dead, we don’t try to get something from the dead…but I’ll kneel, I’ll humble myself before the Lord. I pray that Charles Finney…God we need that kind of an awakening in our nation again. And I will go there and…I suppose some of the rumor comes out of that.”
Farrelly suggests that the fodder for the criticism comes from one of Johnson’s book quotes, where he teaches:
“There are anointings mantles revelations and mysteries that have lain unclaimed literally where they were left because the generation that walked in them never passed them on. I believe it’s..possible for us to recover realms of anointing, realms of insight, realms of God that have been untended for decades simply by choosing to reclaim them and perpetuate them for future generations.”
Johnson plays it down, explaining the aforementioned sentence and why the church has a museum of artifacts from long-dead charismatic saints: “I believe if we honored the saints of the past, not worshiped, not talked to for sure, but if we honored them, the Lord would give us access to their the grace that they lived in.”
Talk about spin and playing down what was actually said.
At this point the conversation shifts, because there really are videos out there of people from Bethel Church folk laying on graves and talking about receiving the impartation. They explain how they came to be associated with it.
“Sometimes.. the Lord “hits somebody” …but it’s 10% God and 90% the person. But that’s 10% percent more of God than they ever had before. So you’re on this journey of I’ve gotta, with the community, with our feedback with each other, kind of walk these journeys of risk.
So in the School of Ministry, one of our leaders had a profound encounter with the Lord at the grave of a former church leader. So he comes back and gives a testimony about this and because our students are so hungry, I mean it’s like meat to a wolf at some level, like ‘you’re kidding the Lord will meet you at a grave?’
So I remember in that as the Dean watching like ‘whoa what what?’ But I’ve had to learn over time if I try to kill something too early we totally miss the potentially the good things and again, the weird things that come, but when I kill everything too early, our people, our students stop taking risks.”
As a result, many of the students went out and did that very thing- taking theological ‘risks’ that are nowhere mentioned in the bible. They went and laid on graves to soak up the ‘mantle of anointing’. Even Johnson’s own wife on several occasions has been seen lying on graves or hugging them.
Farrelly goes on to explain that “grave sucking is an unfortunate result of a beautiful hunger” and then Johnson steps in and tries to say that even if one of the team members called it ‘grave sucking’, it would have been in jest. Farrelly is adamant that something real did happen to the one student who kicked it all off, explaining that he thought the term ‘grave sucking’ delightful and amusing initially, but then with more scrutiny and criticism, it lost its charm.
“This one team member had real experiences, had a real incredible experience that kind of helped light a fire. But again, once it got once it kind of got traction…the term grave sucking, because I’m a bit snark,y I was actually thought it was delightful early on. I went ‘oh gosh if you’re going to purposely misunderstand that much then ‘well-done sir’ but over time, in the age of the internet and as our footprint got bigger- you know when we’re smaller it’s not as painful you know?- like but but as our footprint gets bigger and then people are like ‘hey…’ and then they perpetuate lies, you’re like ‘oh that that does hurt.’
Said another way, Bethel absolutely practices grave sucking, so long as they can call it “recovering the mantle of anointing, revelations, mysteries and blessings by honoring the dead, through the process of touching their graves or coming into contact with their artifacts.”
Not quite as catchy, but also no less true.
Editor’s Note. This article was written by Pastor Ed Litton and published at Protestia.com
