For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, (Heb. 6:4-5)
Stephen, ‘Being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, ‘Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!'” Acts 7:55-56
Dr. Eben Alexander1, neurosurgeon, faculty member at Harvard Medical School and a graduate of that University, contracted a vicious E-coli bacteria that plunged him into a seven-day coma. During that time the neocortex of his brain was shut-down. Mentally, he was dead. The medical team had no hope for his recovery. While in that state Dr. Alexander experienced a journey into the afterlife. There, he saw realities he never thought possible. Other doctors have since ridiculed his claim but Dr. Alexander held fast to the truth of his Heavenly encounter. In Newsweek Magazine, he wrote1:
“As a neurosurgeon, I did not believe in the phenomenon of near-death experiences. I grew up in a scientific world, the son of a neurosurgeon. I followed my father’s path and became an academic neurosurgeon, teaching at Harvard Medical School and other universities. I understand what happens to the brain when people are near death, and I had always believed there were good scientific explanations for the heavenly out-of-body journeys described by those who narrowly escaped death.”
“Although I considered myself a faithful Christian, I was so more in name than in actual belief. I didn’t begrudge those who wanted to believe that Jesus was more than simply a good man who had suffered at the hands of the world. I sympathized deeply with those who wanted to believe that there was a God somewhere out there who loved us unconditionally. In fact, I envied such people the security that those beliefs no doubt provided. But as a scientist, I simply knew better than to believe them myself.”
After seven days in a coma and when all brain functions were shut-down, Dr. Alexander testified:
“My brain-free consciousness journeyed to another, larger dimension of the universe: a dimension I’d never dreamed existed and which the old, pre-coma me would have been more than happy to explain was a simple impossibility.”
“But that dimension—in rough outline, the same one described by countless subjects of near-death experiences and other mystical states—is there. It exists, and what I saw and learned there has placed me quite literally in a new world: a world where we are much more than our brains and bodies, and where death is not the end of consciousness but rather a chapter in a vast, and incalculably positive, journey.”
You may read Dr. Alexander’s full account in the October 15, 2012, issue of Newsweek Magazine1. As Christians, we have no difficulty believing Dr. Alexander, nor the Bible’s corresponding message about the life that is to come.
Similar Out-of-Body Experiences Today
Years ago, I met a saintly old man whom I immediately recognized was trustworthy in his love for God and his Christian testimony. We met at a restaurant and as he talked privately, he told me about an illness that not only put him in the hospital but caused his death. Of that event, he half-whispered to me, “I realized I was dead when I discovered that I could swing my legs down through the mattress.” Though the statement was shocking there was nothing unbelievable about him or his description of his death-encounter. He described the next life in terms that were breath-taking and real.
Over the years I have met numerous others, just as believable as he, who had such death-bed or out-of-body experiences. What happened in his case was that death momentarily separated him from his body; while his physical-part lay motionless on the bed, his spiritual-part was totally free and independent of it. There is a “natural body” and there is a “spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15:44). It was the spiritual aspect of his being that was unhindered by the material substance of the bed and enabled him to swing his legs through it.
We have a Biblical parallel of this: The day of the Resurrection when Jesus appeared in the closed room where the disciples were meeting. Without effect on Himself or the wall, He simply passed through the material substance of the building in the same way the old man’s spiritual legs swung through the hospital mattress (John 20:22).
My mother had a death-bed visit into Heaven which she did not tell for many years–she feared no one would believe her. At the time, she was undergoing surgery in a Miami hospital and died on the operating table. Her heart quit and the doctors worked feverishly to resuscitate her. Ten years passed before she told me what happened. “I saw Heaven,” she said, “I was there–it is real! I was not hallucinating–I know what hallucinations are–I was not dreaming–I know what dreams are–I was there–Heaven is real!” She told of seeing her father, grandmother, an aunt, and described much, much more which I cannot take space to tell here. Part of her description coincided with the Apostle John’s testimony in the Book of Revelation.
Apostle Paul’s “Out-of-Body” Experience
The Apostle Paul wrote the Corinthian Church:
“I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago–whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body I do not know, God knows–such a one was caught up to the third heaven. And I know such a man–whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows–how he was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter” (2 Cor. 12:2-4).
[Editor’s Note: It is vital to understand that this passage of Scripture cannot be cited, as are some Neo-Charismatic heretics in this hour, as proof for purported out-of-body experiences at will or on-demand. There are a number of New Age Neo-Charismatic heretics who are making completely unscriptural, unsubstantiated, false, wild, and totally outlandish claims to be able to travel back and forth between Heaven and earth “whenever they want.” Moreover, some of them are propagating such nonsense under the guise of a catch-phrase that has long been part of heretical New Age theosophies and now has been adopted and popularized among Neo-Charismatics by a host of false prophets such as Bob Jones, and many of his protégées, such as Todd Bentley, Patricia King, and Mike Bickle, the founder/leader of IHOP and the Kansas City Fellowship, and a number his protégées, the so-called “Kansas City Prophets,” such as John Paul Jackson, and others, what they refer to as—”Open Heaven”—which they teach is available to all believers, and that it means that any believer can simply “travel” back and forth between Heaven and earth, at will, that is, if you’re “super-spiritual” enough, like them. But the person who has lent the most credibility to the mystical milieu surrounding this false phenomenon is New Age Neo-Charismatic pied-pier, Bill Johnson, senior leader of the Redding, California megachurch, Bethel Church, who you can read about in another article posted on Spirit Life Magazine in which we warned the Body of Christ about the subtle heretical deceptions being legitimized and promulgated by this man and the significant number of counterfeit apostles and prophets with whom he is associated, many of whom have been knighted as super-apostles under the aegis of the premier super-apostle organization, the International Coalition of Apostles, founded and formerly headed by self-proclaimed NAR leader, C. Peter Wagner.
Such preposterous and inane claims are dangerous and demonic delusion of the highest order, what the Word of God calls “strong delusion” or “deluding influence,” that is “in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness” that is prophesied to occur in the last days just prior to the “the Day of the Lord,” the rapture or “catching up” of the Body of Christ, and the revelation of the antichrist that will cause “those who perish” (though they are deceived into thinking they are bona fide believers) to be deluded by these demonic false signs and wonders and thereby follow after the deceiving false prophets who are perpetrating and promulgating these false signs and wonders into the spiritually deadly deception they are purveying (2 Thes. 2:8-12). This patently demonic New Age deception has a name in New Age lore—astral projection or astral travel.
READ/HEAR THIS WORD OF WARNING VERY CAREFULLY! It is irrefutable, from a Scriptural standpoint, that no one can simply decide or choose to somehow cause their human spirit to depart from their body and subsequently travel or “go” ANYWHERE, for as James tells us clearly and unambiguously, when the spirit departs from the human body, the result is DEATH: “For just as the body without the spirit is DEAD“ (Jas. 2:26a). Moreover, the Apostle Paul indicated that “home” for the human spirit, or the “tent” in which it dwells, is the human body, and to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, and vice-versa, i.e., to be absent from the Lord is to be at home in the human body (2 Cor. 5:1-8)—again meaning, that when a person’s spirit leaves his/her body, that person is DEAD! To say it another way, there is no way for the human spirit to depart from the human body except via DEATH! The human spirit is what gives humans life—for it is the “breath” (Gr., pneuma) of God Himself that God first breathed into Adam in the Garden of Eden—and when the human spirit departs the human body, at that moment the person is clinically or medically, by definition, DEAD. And, Scripture expressly and unequivocally states, “It is appointed unto men ONCE to die and after that the judgment” (Heb. 9:7). Once any person enters into actual death, as defined by the departure of the human spirit from the human body, after that they MUST stand before God for judgment according to their own deeds, whether good or bad, against the standard of the Word of God—the unbelieving and apostate before “The Great White Throne” of God, and genuine Born Again, Spirit-infused believers before the “Judgment Seat of Christ (Bema)”:
Then I saw a GREAT WHITE THRONE and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw THE DEAD, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and THE DEAD were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up THE DEAD which were in it, and death and Hades gave up THE DEAD which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. (Rev. 20:11-13)
For we [genuine regenerate believers] MUST all appear before the judgment seat [Bema] of Christ, so that EACH ONE may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. (2 Cor. 5:10; brackets added)
The Scripture that is cited above by the author of this article as evidence of Paul’s so-called “out-of-body experience,” is regarded by theologians as referring to what occurred when the Apostle Paul was stoned in Lystra by unconverted Jews for what they believed to be blasphemy, and left for dead, or in other words, he was presumed by the crowds in attendance of the event to be dead. The long-held common belief is that Paul was indeed dead for a time, and the “out-of-body experience” he described in the above Scripture occurred at that time—his spirit did indeed leave his body. (Whether that is exactly or precisely what occurred, we cannot know with certainty; even Paul said whether it was in or out of his body that the was “caught up into Paradise,” he himself did not know and could not say with certainty.) But, God, apparently was not finished with Paul on earth, and if his spirit departed temporarily from his body, God sent him (his spirit) back to re-enter his human body, because and at some point, after some time had passed with Paul laying there without animation in his body, the next verse says, “But while the disciples stood around him, HE GOT UP and entered the city” (Acts 14:19-20). For all intents and purposes, Paul was dead, because, presumably, his spirit departed from his body for a comparatively brief time, but then it/he came back into his body, and therefore he was alive again. Again, even Paul, the master-theologian, who scribed two-thirds of the theology comprising the New Testament books, did not know and could not say whether it was “in the body” or “out of the body” that he experienced being “caught up into the third Heaven”—”caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.”
Indeed this is another critical point inherent in this unusual incident, Paul stated categorically that he heard words that were “inexpressible” and “NOT LAWFUL” to express, relate, utter, or tell. So, anyone who is claiming to have gone to Heaven and subsequently came back freely and openly, and in the case of many of these “tiched” heretics, loquaciously describing what they saw and heard during their supposed “translation” into Heaven, is a mystic, occultist, and heretic, operating in divination, because such mystical on-demand “spirit travel” is not in any way validated or authorized by the Word of God.
I say all this to make it clear that references in this article to “out-of-body” experiences or such supernatural phenomenon as being “slain in the spirit” should not be construed as being in any way associated with New Age astral travel or the “spirit travel” being falsely and perilously promulgated by Neo-Charismatic false prophets and doctrinal heretics. [Please view the video posted below after the conclusion of this article, in which Patricia King, Bob Jones, and Todd Bentley discuss their supposed experiences with “spirit travel.”]
Let me state categorically that these comments here, particularly those about the persons named, are mine and mine alone, and are in no way linked to the author of this article, Charles Carrin, who actually maintains a relationship with some of the people named and other ministers they are affiliated/associated with, ministers at their churches and conferences, and in personal correspondence with me has stated he stands by these individuals and his relationship with them, and by association their teachings, beliefs, and practices. Despite that, my belief, at this time, as a result of my personal conversations and fellowship with Charles Carrin, is that he would and does not endorse or agree with the “Open Heaven” teachings, or “astral/spirit travel” referenced and as they are explained here. Further, my belief, at this time, is that, unfortunately, Charles Carrin does not, either, understand or fully appreciate, the nature and dangers of the teachings alluded to here, and apparently is not open to understanding them more at this present time. Nevertheless, we publish many of his teaching articles because they are Scripturally and doctrinally sound, congruous with our convictions, are encouraging and educational to those who want to better understand matters of the Spirit, and are congruous with our theme: Extolling, Elucidating, and Experiencing Life in the Spirit. My comments here are not intended in any way to be connected to or cast aspersions of any sort upon Charles Carrin and/or his ministry. He, to my knowledge, is a man of impeccable integrity and character, who loves the Lord with all his heart, and above all else, earnestly desires to live a life that is pleasing to the Lord in all things (Eph. 5:10). {Added: 12-10-12 08:53 AM}]
Out-of-Body-Like Experiences During the “Great Awakening”
Jonathan Edwards–whose preaching fired Colonial America’s “Great Awakening”– believed that many Christians were missing a great spiritual opportunity by not experiencing the spiritual realities God offered. Many in his own congregation were entering into that holy experience. It was common for scores of people to “swoon” (today we call that “slain”) as the Holy Spirit came upon the congregation. Jonathan’s own wife lay “under the power” of the Holy Spirit for seventeen days. His ministry was filled with manifestations of the Holy Spirit so amazing that modern churches would forbid him in their pulpits. Similarly, he would be appalled at the spiritual deadness in most of us today.
A pastor who visited Edwards’ church described what he saw: “There were some instances of persons lying in a sort of trance, remaining for perhaps a whole twenty-four hours motionless, and with their senses locked up but in the meantime under strong imaginations, as though they went to heaven, and had there a vision of glorious and delightful objects.” It is interesting that the writer mentions “strong imaginations” as being involved with these trance-states. In his day the word “imagination” was used favorably and did not convey the negative connotation it has today. The word scares the modern church because we wrongly associate it with non-sense and futility. That is incorrect. What God has purposely built into us is intended for proper use. Imagination and creativity exist concurrently in our mind. An inventor, scientist, or artist is “creative” in his work because imagination is birthing creativity in his mental capacity. Edwards used the word in that way.
Unfortunately, the “Great Awakening” was stopped in New England by Charles Chauncy, Pastor at Boston’s First Church, who denounced the miraculous events as being mere emotionalism and excitement. As a result, genuine spirituality quickly died in that area and opened the way for Unitarianism and Christian Science to fill the void.
Liberal Theology Denies the Supernatural Today
Whether our evangelical churches will admit it or not, liberalism has similarly invaded these denominations to the degree that most discredit genuine manifestations of the Holy Spirit, reject authentic spiritual gifts, and deny–rather than pursue–any experience that challenges human rationale and logical explanation. For many, doctrines of unbelief have replaced reliance on Scripture and faith in God’s word. These focus so intently on religious appearance that they do not throw themselves into the search for Him who told Nathaniel, “You shall see Heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man” (John 1:51).
I love the accuracy of the old King James Version which gives the most precise Greek-translation of Galatians 3:5. In that passage Paul said, “He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” Paul knew that the Holy Spirit had endowed someone in the Galatian Church with the ministry of miracles and spiritual-impartation. Paul does not give the brother’s name but only refers to him as “he”. Modern theologians are fearful of this text. The New King James Version capitalizes the “he” so that it is not a believer who ministers in power but the Spirit Himself. Of course the Holy Spirit is the source of power; that is undisputed fact! But, Jesus said, “These signs will follow those who believe …” (Mark 16:17). The one in Galatia to whom Paul referred was such a believer. The change in translation is a subtle denial of believers today being able to minister in miraculous power. The loss is regrettable. Thankfully, the original King James Version translators rendered the Greek-intent accurately. Read it again.
That Same Supernatural Power That Raised Christ From the Dead Is Still Operable Today
Since my baptism-in-the-Spirit in 1977, I have seen literally thousands of people experience the power of the Holy Spirit and drop to the floor in the same fashion as happened in Jonathan Edward’s day. This occurs most frequently during the “laying-on-of-hands.” The Holy Spirit’s impact sometimes comes like an electric-shock and is usually irresistible. A Lutheran Pastor once came to a meeting where I spoke only to prove to his congregation that the whole experience was phony. When I gave the opportunity for people to receive “hands-on” ministry he leaped to his feet and hurried down the aisle. As I reached out, the man was slammed to the floor as if he had been hit by a prize-fighter. When he went down all the Lutherans came up! Many of them never returned to their old church. When people say to me “God doesn’t do things like that!,” my answer is “Don’t dare Him!”
In the same way an electric current passes through a metal wire, the Holy Spirit’s power sometimes passes through a living-body, bringing healing, mind-renewal, or meeting other needs. In many ways, the comparisons are identical.
A police Sergeant once attended a service where I spoke. The man was a believer but had not been in church in ten years–and had never been in a meeting where the Holy Spirit moved visibly. He was the Department’s thirteen-year S.W.A.T. Director, a martial arts expert, rappel master, undercover agent, bodybuilder and former Marine. This man had been dropped headfirst from high-rise buildings, repelled in elevator shafts, and faced violent killers.
He and I met before the service began. Then, midway through my sermon, I felt a distinct urging of the Holy Spirit to call him forward. He explained later that when I laid hands on him, an electric-like shock went through his body. That was followed by an intense pounding of his heart. He was alarmed and thought he was having a heart attack. Suddenly, he felt his body being pulled downward to the floor. “No!” he said to himself. “You are strong; you are not going to fall—not in front of all these people!”
As the congregation watched, the Holy Spirit overrode his human strength and reduced him to a powerless, humble man. He was on the floor for more than twenty minutes–a submission in which he physically acknowledged the Lordship of Jesus Christ. While in that state and stripped of all human resistance–like Saul of Tarsus–he was filled with the Holy Spirit. His life radically changed.
You and I cannot control that power. The choice is wholly with God. In Latin America, Africa, Turkey, the Far East, Europe, where language differences separated me from the congregation, the Holy Spirit still swept unhindered through the people. Many times hundreds dropped as they were filled with His glory. In one case, an atheist PhD. college professor was slammed to the carpet and came up sobbing, saved, and saying, “I found God! I found God!”
Another time I baptized a young man in the ocean whose body was suddenly electrified, vibrating uncontrollably and became semiconscious. In that state, he sank to the bottom and rose again numerous times, praying ecstatically in tongues.
“Signs and wonders”, as Jesus promised? Yes! Can I explain them? No! Are they real? Absolutely! Whether in the Churches of Galatia or the Church today, “signs and wonders” occur during the laying-on-of-hands because our bodies are Temples of the Holy Spirit. The hand is an extension of that Temple and the Holy Spirit becomes the instrument releasing the power.
I happily tell the experiences of Dr. Alexander1, my mother, the police officer, the old brother I met in the restaurant, others, because without an understanding of our dual spiritual/physical nature we will never grasp the reality of true faith. And, apart from faith we will remain blind to the Scripture’s promise about our future life. Why is faith involved? Paul explained in Galatians 3:5, that the brother who “worked miracles” did it by the “hearing of faith.” True, spiritual faith is essential.
“By Faith We Understand”
By FAITH we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. (Heb. 11:3)
This spiritual realm that Dr. Alexander experienced1 and in which I try to minister, can be understood only by miraculous faith. Ordinary religious teaching cannot explain it. Every attempt to comprehend the divine mysteries of God through human explanation is abortive and harmful. That was Dr. Alexander’s mistake when he formerly believed that “Jesus was a good man who had suffered at the hands of the world”–and nothing more. Like other modern Christians, the doctor tried to understand the message of Jesus academically, without spiritual faith, and devoid of divine manifestations. This type of thinking was what the Apostle Paul desperately avoided when he preached to the church at Corinth. He said:
“And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” (1 Cor. 2:1-5).
Paul wanted the Corinthians to see “demonstrations of the Spirit and power of God” in order that their faith would not depend on the “wisdom of men but in the power of God.” In another way, that happened to Dr. Alexander, and the experience was life-changing. Hearing the testimony of others did not convince or convert him. Being “out of the body” and seeing Heaven for himself brought about a life-changing transformation.
You do not have to go through a near-death event to experience what happened to him. It occurs to many by their living-encounter with the Holy Spirit. Tell God you want it! Pursue it! Earnestly desire it! Don’t quit until you get it. Your life will be changed in a way you never imagined. When you have received it, live in the glory!
Why Does The Holy Spirit Challenge Us?
Concept: “No matter where we are in our present walk with God, if our concept of the Holy Spirit is not being stretched, and if we are able to remain comfortable with our current theology about the Holy Spirit, then we have not fully encountered Him–either in Scripture or in Person. It is impossible for you and me as finite beings to be brought into contact with the infinite Holy Spirit, and find that we already have a full, comprehensive, satisfactory, understanding of Him and His work.”
The person who tells me—and some have—that all his theological issues about the Holy Spirit were settled years ago, and he has no further need of doctrinal enlargement, is merely revealing the emptiness of his religious well–plus the deception of his conceit. Eternity itself will not provide us with sufficient time to master the incomprehensible subject of the Holy Spirit. If that were possible, it would be equally possible for a mosquito to collide in flight with a 747-Jet, stop it, tell how he did it, and then explain all the inner-workings of the plane.
Please hear this carefully: It is absolutely impossible for any of us–now, later, ever—to fully explore the Being and ministry of the Holy Spirit. He is God. He cannot be restricted to the interpretation of our denominational boxes. All of us on earth are learners, and will still be that 100,000,000 years into eternity. The Holy Spirit is illimitable, inexhaustible, inexplicable, unreachable, unfathomable, impenetrable, inconceivable–and much, much more. Our attitude before the Holy Spirit must remain one of unrelenting reverence, complete awe, and utter submission.###
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Endnote:
1. On Christmas Day 2012, sent the following message in an email, retracting his endorsement of the above-related article and its author:
MY RETRACTION AND APOLOGY
In my November Newsletter I quoted Dr. Eben Alexander’s account of his death experience. This was an error on my part. While Dr. Alexander talked freely about Jesus in the interview, his book gives an entirely different account. Under no circumstances do I recommend his book and its New Age agenda. Please forgive my blunder and advise others of this retraction. Charles Carrin
___________________
CHARLES CARRIN’S ministry spans the final half of the twentieth century. He was ordained in 1949 and in his youth traveled with men who preached in the 1800′s. For the first twenty-seven years of his ministry, Charles was a hyper-Calvinist Baptist pastor and Presbyterian seminarian who denied the miraculous works of the Holy Spirit. Mid-way in his ministry that abruptly changed. Personal crisis forced him to acknowledge Scriptures he had previously ignored. It was a time of intense pain and testing. The truths he saw were frightening; they had power to destroy his denominational ministry and at that point he had no hope that another, more wonderful ministry awaited him. As a result of his submitting to God in that crisis, Charles emerged with an amazing anointing of the Holy Spirit. Today, his ministry centers upon the visible demonstration of the Spirit and imparting of His gifts. This new ministry has taken him to London’s Westminster Chapel, the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship, and other significant places. He, R.T. Kendall, the former, 25 year pastor at Westminster Chapel, and Jack Taylor, former Vice President of the Southern Baptist Convention, travel together holding “Word, Spirit, Power, Conferences.” As an evangelist/writer, Charles’ articles have appeared in major Christian magazines in the United States and abroad. He travels extensively, teaching believers how to operate in the power of the Holy Spirit. Visit: Charles Carrin Ministries
Books by Charles Carrin — via AMAZON.COM
Video of New Age, self-proclaimed “prophetess,” Patricia King (an alias), interviewing Todd Bentley and his chief mentor, Bob Jones, another heretical mystic with an admitted history of mental health problems, on the subject of “portals,” “open-heavens,” and on-demand, at-will “translations in the Spirit” into Heaven:
Below is a video in which Bill Johnson is defending Todd Bentley, shortly after Bentley’s very public exposure as a complete fraud, liar, and New Age deceiver, in which Johnson, who freely and often admits to having no Bible training, completely misapplies and corrupts King David’s tribute ode to King Saul after God killed him because he sought a medium. In his message, Johnson likens Todd Bentley to King Saul, referring to Bentley as “The Mighty,” and states that the message to the Body of Christ in David’s ode in which he says, “tell it not in Gath and Ashkelon”—despite the fact that both of those cities were part of the Philistine kingdom, the mortal and eternal enemies of Israel, and as such symbolized the kingdom of Satan, not the Body of Christ or the Church—is that they should not talk about the Todd Bentley matter or man at all. Johnson essentially counsels Bethel Church, his adherents worldwide, and the extended Body of Christ that believers should keep silent and all engage in a massive cover up. Obviously, such counsel is in direct contradiction of Scripture commanding believers not only not to participate in but instead EXPOSE the deeds of darkness (Eph. 5:11), which not only renders Johnson’s counsel false, but also means Johnson himself is participating in and commending others to participate in the “deeds of darkness.” In our view, this is just another clear example of the unsound teachings of Johnson and many other purporting “ministers” he associates with and promotes, and who regard him as a model leader they want to emulate. We would strongly disagree with that sentiment.
APPARENTLY SOMEONE FROM THE BILL JOHNSON CAMP READ THIS POST AND REALIZED THAT WHAT IS SAID ABOVE IS TRUE, AND HAVE THEREFORE HAD THE VIDEO TAKEN DOWN! WE REGARD THAT AS A GOOD THING, BECAUSE WHAT JOHNSON SAID ABOUT THIS SCRIPTURE AND HIS APPLICATION OF IT TO TODD BENTLEY IS COMPLETELY UNBIBLICAL AND AN EMBARRASSMENT TO THE ENTIRE BODY OF CHRIST AND ALL LEGITIMATE PREACHERS OF THE TRUTH! WE ARE PLEASED THAT THIS POST HAS SERVED ITS PURPOSE IN THIS RESPECT!
OUR HOPE IS THAT ALL OF BENTLEY’S DEFENDERS AND WOULD-BE REHABILITATORS, WOULD COME TO THEIR SENSES AND FORTHWITH CEASE FROM THOSE VAIN ACTIVITIES, AND STOP TRYING, OSTENSIBLY FOR THE SAKE OF MONEY, TO RETURN HIM TO THE NATIONAL OR INTERNATIONAL STAGE. TODD BENTLEY, IN OUR OPINION, HAS PERMANENTLY DISQUALIFIED HIMSELF FROM ANY FORM OF PUBLIC MINISTRY AND HAS BROUGHT DISGRACE UPON CHRIST HIMSELF, HIS CHURCH, AND THE ENTIRE FIVEFOLD MINISTRY!
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