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| Pentecostal Pastor - Bill Johnson |
There are those so-called Christian teachers out there who do not abide by the word of God and the world should be warned of the danger they represent, not only to Christian believers, but also to those who are not yet saved. Now that leaves us with quite a dilemma, how do we stop men such as these without actually breaking the law? One article, such as this, on the Internet is not going to cut the ice and thousands and thousands of innocent victims are still going to fall prey to this man. From a personal perspective, and before his name was mentioned elsewhere on the internet, I had never heard of Bill Johnson.
Nevertheless, if there are those out there who feel as strongly as what they seem to over this man the answer to be rid of him is quite is quite simple. A few good Bible believing Christians need to get together and form a group to earnestly seek the Lord over this matter, and ask that he be removed from his so-called teaching ministry forever. When praying say what you mean and mean what you say, and then watch the Lord go to work and he will be gone before he even knows what has happened. There is no room at all in the Christian church for the New Age movement and any mention of it should immediately raise alarm bells?
All that I am saying is that the old paths are the only way. Furthermore, there is no way that I would respect the ministries of others in the same boat as Johnson's, the likes of Derek Prince or Keith Green, and the numerous others who fit into the same category. Where this Pentecostal Charismatic nonsense end, only God knows.
Three scriptures will suffice to describe the False Prophets that we are seeing come to the fore in the latter days: 'The prophets prophesy falsely,and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so.' Jeremiah 5.31.'Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils.' 1 Timothy 4.1. 'Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. 2 Timothy 3.5. It is my firm belief that Dispensationalism and the free grace off shoot it represents are very much to blame for what we are seeing going on within many of the modern day churches, the Pentecostal movement in particular.
Who is Bill Johnson ?
Bill Johnson Elijah List Member (born 1951) and his wife Brenda (Beni) Johnson are the Senior Pastors of Bethel Church in Redding, California. Johnson is a fifth generation pastor.
Johnson was born in Minnesota in 1951 and became a Christian as a young child. Soon after, Johnson read seven books on prayer, which significantly affected his perspective and subsequent ministry.
Johnson's father, Melvin Earl Johnson (1929-2004) was the senior pastor at Bethel Church in Redding from 1968-1982 and subsequently became Executive Officer of the Northern California/Nevada District Council of the Assemblies of God. Earl Johnson had four children, all of whom are in full-time ministry, including his eldest son, Bill..
Bill Johnson and his wife began as singles pastors under his father at Bethel. In 1979, they became senior pastors of Mountain Chapel in Weaverville, California. After 17 years, they returned to Bethel Church as senior pastors in February 1996.
Johnson and his wife have three children, Brian, Eric and Leah (married to Gabe Valenzuela). They have eight grandchildren.
According to a recent book authored by Johnson, "Face to Face with God", Bethel is "a church where supernatural encounters with God happen regularly, miracles are common, and the congregation has an infectious passion for spiritual growth."
The church has approximately 1,500 members.
In 1999, Johnson reported that he had observed hundreds of miracles that year, including the healing of cancer, paralysis and broken bones.
Bethel Church and Johnson have been featured in video segments by the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) concerning the Church's unique, spontaneous approach to outreach.
One CBN segment featured a reportedly verified spontaneous healing of a newborn's heart defect while a physician was monitoring.
Their popular 'Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry' has 1100 students enrolled from ages 15 to 85.
Johnson leads a network of churches dedicated to global, multi-generational revival, Global Legacy.
Johnson has authored several Christian books and travels extensively as a featured revival conference speaker.
Johnson is also involved with the Northern California Revival Fellowship, a group of north Californian pastors committed to revival.
Here is a close look into Bill Johnson and his ministry.
Acording to a former student of Bill Johnson, John Wolf exposed him in this newspaper clip stating that Johnson hold to the word of faith gospel, and as such would make Johnson a false teacher. what would put Bill Johnson into question is his love for Benny Hinns gnostic theology [3]. Here is also a audio file testimony of an experience that someone had with one of Johnson's students.
Bill Johnsons teaching on Spiritual DNA
WHAT IS "SPIRITUAL DNA"?
By -Mark Dinsmore
FROM SERMONS AND BEST-SELLING BOOKS to television talk shows, a growing number of people are conversing about "spiritual DNA." But what is it? Almost unheard of five or ten years ago, a Google search for this phrase now turns up 22,400 pages, with authors ranging from mainstream evangelicals to practitioners of eastern mysticism and the occult. Is the term simply a profound metaphor, or does it convey a literal meaning? Does it refer to a tangibly deeper (or higher) truth-or is it purely metaphysical nonsense? Let's examine a few of the ways in which this phrase is "catching on" and test its legitimacy according to God's Word.
First of all, it has become a popular contemporary metaphor by many who profess Christ. In her article "Discovering Our Spiritual DNA" posted on the North American Mission Board website, Meredith Day writes,
Metaphorically speaking, when we are reborn in Christ, He instills in us a sort of new spiritual DNA that makes us hungry to tell others about Him....
This explanation of spiritual DNA seems fairly innocuous-if there is such a thing. But is there-and if so, what is it? Is it biblical to refer to the drawing and conviction of the Holy Spirit as "a sort of new spiritual DNA?" The question, "What is spiritual DNA?" was posed to Liberty University's website. Their response:
The phrase "spiritual DNA" talks about the new nature that you [receive] from God when you are born again....Paul says we have an old nature...called the old man (Eph. 4:22). And then we put on a new man, i.e., a new nature (Eph. 4:24).
This answer seems straightforward, and it assumes the phrase has its primary use as a Christian metaphor. But other professing Christians have stated (on www.schizophrenia-info.info):
When God adopts us into His family....He now lives in our DNA, in our blood, in our spirit. His blood in us is what operates to do His work in our flesh, NOW. We can do His miracles, signs, and wonders....As in human conception, when sperm unites with egg, His Spirit unites with our spirit to become one spirit.
The exact way in which the Holy Spirit resides in the believer is truly a mystery; but ascribing this miraculous new creation to a change in our physical/spiritual DNA is dangerous mysticism. Furthermore, although believers do become "one in spirit," we do not become "one with God" in the sense of the union of Jesus Christ as fully God and fully human. Scripture is clear: our present bodies are "earthen vessels," temporary "tabernacles," and not in any sense "supernaturalized" by a change in "spiritual DNA." They await the blessed hope of our glorified bodies yet to come.
The popular prophet Bill Yount (famous for his ministry of shofar-blowing, which allegedly has mystical powers to "open the heavens" by communicating on God's "frequencies") recently decreed over the babies of Britney Spears and other Hollywood stars,
While some stars argued over who was the father of their children, I heard one Father cry out, "They are all Mine, every last one of them! They have My DNA and they look like Me!"
This error is even more blatantly a contradiction of Scripture. Humans only become "children of God" when they become spiritually adopted "joint heirs" with Jesus Christ by repentance and grace by faith, thereby inheriting the free gift of eternal life. Babies and young children (to an age of individual accountability that only God knows) are not condemned to eternal damnation if they perish prior to receiving Christ; however, they are not automatically (or even metaphorically) God's spiritual "offspring" from birth, nor do they bear his non-existent "spiritual DNA." This is mystical nonsense-similar to "spirit child" teachings propagated by Mormonism and other religions. One website titled "spiritualDNA.net" talks about the "transformation of the DNA of Creation" as "another way of looking at evolution":
The impulse creating life is governing our creation and imprinted in our gene-structure: the DNA....Our imprint is an individual one and the result of soul-radiation into earth matter...based upon the total end result of our karma....We shall be able to bring about The New Age ruled by a New Covenant through a...different kind of praying in Wholeness for everything that lives and grows, visible and invisible.
Most believers immediately recognize and dismiss this false utopian hope as diabolical deception. But what of the following quote from a professing Christian "minister" whose alleged visitation from Christ in 1986-and subsequent "flight" to heaven in 1993-spawned his "Eagle Vision Ministry":
DNA is like a computer program that is placed into our cells...Every one of our [cells contains] a program that is not written in electromagnetic form, [but is] written in chemical form....Eight souls came out of [Noah's Ark]....So whether you like it or not that person sitting next to you is related to you.
This mixture of simile and fact sounds plausible. But the writer continues, making a transition from the physical to metaphysical:
Now in the spirit world there is spiritual DNA....The thought realm, which we [have already] considered and defined to be spiritual DNA, has a structure. The structure is always in a certain pattern. According to that pattern and structure it will produce after its kind. [Spiritual] DNA will reproduce itself. [Emphasis added]
In what appears to be a sincere effort to expound on the Scriptures, which declare "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (2 Cor 5:17), the writer introduces an authoritative, scientific-sounding concept that has no tangible or biblical basis. This error is serious! Just as do mind-science "experts" (such as those in The Secret), he attempts to take what is useful and understood as physical and apply it "scientifically" to the spiritual realm; but "spiritual DNA," like "thought waves," are only imagined. Would that all Christians test the spirits that bring such "new revelations" as this!
An article titled "DNA and God" by Bill Donahue reflects on a 2004 Time magazine in which the cover story, "The God Gene," recounts a search by laboratories to find "spiritual receptors" in physical DNA. Intrigued by "the fact that change can be made to DNA through electricity," and since "God is not a man" (Num 23:19), and "God is light" (1 Jn 1:5), Donahue (a researcher of "hidden ancient wisdom") reasons that...we are created in the image and likeness of God suggesting that we too are light....DNA has two aspects to it. One is the physical DNA which the body we use is equipped with through the heredity of our parents. The other is what the Buddhists suggest is a spiritual DNA....That is why I have such strong feelings against executing people. Their spiritual DNA will go into a new body...and do the same evil again.
Notice that both professing Christians and metaphysical spiritualists attempt to explain invisible, intangible spiritual processes with scientific research, supposedly backed up by Scripture. Today, this error is being perpetuated at an increasing rate by two "evangelical" movements, the neo-prophetic "New Apostolic Reformation" (NAR) and the Emerging Church. An NAR prophet, Bob Jones, (no relation to the University of that name) and Paul Keith Davis, who annually issue a "prophetic" proclamation called "The Shepherd's Rod," wrote in 2006:
Many people living in this generation have a unique and holy attribute woven into their spiritual DNA. A predetermined virtue provokes us to move beyond the outer court and into a place of Kingdom expression. [This predetermined virtue] is called "divine destiny."
This alleged "divine destiny" relates more to the Hindu concept of Karma (or even Calvinism) than any Scriptural truth; it suggests fatalism. The idea of a spiritual "New Breed" originates from the Latter-Rain movement (deemed heretical by the Assemblies of God and most evangelicals) and dovetails nicely with the New Age concept of a "paradigm shift" or "quantum leap" in spirituality and the evolution of a "christ consciousness" that is expected to unify mankind and bring restoration of "the kingdom of heaven" on earth.
Bill Johnson, another NAR "apostle" and pastor of Bethel church in Redding, California, says in his book When Heaven Invades Earth, "It has been written into our spiritual DNA to hunger for the impossibilities around us to bow at the name of Jesus." This mystical statement sounds lofty, but what does it mean? Could the NAR's Kingdom-Now theology be synonymous with this "new" view below, taken from a book (coincidently titled Creating Heaven on Earth) by Asa Wulfe?
We have been used to thinking of ascension in terms of leaving the Earth to enter a higher plane of being or to reach "heaven." But many now feel...that ascension in our time is really about creating Heaven on Earth, right here and now....This process can be started by activating additional strands of DNA-the spiritual DNA.
Exactly how does one "activate" one's spiritual DNA? By an "inner awakening" experience of some kind-such as yoga, centering prayer, reiki, drum circles, trance dancing, eastern meditation, etc. Even professing Christians are being guided by dozens of "prophetic evangelists" who promise (and deliver) techniques for creating "third heaven visions" and "angelic encounters." Grievously, these spirits are too often untested. In fact, the pursuit of a tangible manifestation of "God" on earth has become a pre-eminent focus for multitudes of spiritually "hungry" believers who have grown impatient waiting for "the blessed hope." Today, increasing numbers are forsaking our Savior's promise to "catch us up" to be with Him, and are instead determined to forge a "golden calf" religion that promises a false rapture of ecstatic encounters "here and now."
While "spiritual DNA" can be an interesting metaphor, its imagined existence breaks down quickly under rational and biblical inquiry. In reality, it appears that the Enemy is using this quasi-scientific explanation to justify a New Breed of spiritual "super-sapiens," brought about by the alleged next stage of human evolution: a global awakening to "christ consciousness"-a harbinger for the "strong delusion" of Antichrist.
ANGEL FEATHERS FALL ON BETHEL (Charisma Magazine -- August 1999)
"...At Bill Johnson's church in Redding, California, small little feathers fall from the ceiling and have been doing that for some time. Bethel has been the sight of some awesome miracles recently. The feathers started dropping after a Morning Star Prophet (the ministry of Rick Joyner) visited the church for a series of meetings. Mr. Kelly, a member of Bethel AOG of Redding describes the appearance of feathers: 'The feathers thing has been truly amazing. I believe it started when we had the Prophet Bobby Conners come to our church for a series of meetings. During ministry time people would see feathers fall from the ceiling and Bobby explained it as a sign of angelic activity... I'm not sure if he was saying they were angel feathers or not. But ever since he came, we have seen feathers falling from the ceiling ... they are very small and delicate, and not many fall, but you can see them from a good distance. God is always surprising us with new things.'"
Ooooooooh! Isn't that spooky! Angel Feathers!!! How FLAKEY can it possibly get? Now we have angel feathers falling in a California Church. Let's all book our airline tickets and rush on out to the "Angel Feathers Church" and see the latest "MANIFESTATION"! No, on second thought, maybe we should just send a Western Union Telegram to the pastor: "Check rafters for pigeons..." And if the dear pastor finds no pigeons in the rafters, then maybe the "Bird" to be removed from the church is "Prophet Bobby Conners"!?
GOOD NEWS! GOOD NEWS!
If you live in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex you don't have to run off to Toronto, Pensacola, or California to see the latest in FLAKEY MANIFESTATIONS. We have it ALL right here in the BIBLE BELT! I am now quoting from the DALLAS MORNING NEWS dated Saturday, October 9,1999. The headlines in the RELIGION section of the paper read with Big Bold Letters: "GOLD RUSH." Glitter-Like Dust is latest proof of God's Presence," Pentecostals say.
Refs
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Johnson_(pastor)
[2] http://www.cerm.info/false_teachers.htm
[3] http://www.letusreason.org/Latrain19.htm
[4] https://www.thebereancall.org/node/5577
[5] http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:tvDW11
Jln_QJ:www.bereanpublishers.com/Deception_in_the_C
hurch/wilkerson_blasts_faith_pre.htm+bill+johnson+%2B+red
ding+%2B+false+teaching&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us
WHY I AM NOT A DISPENSATIONALIST John Nelson Darby is recognized as the father of dispensationalism later made popular in the United States by Cyrus Scofield's Scofield Reference Bible. Charles Henry Mackintosh, 1820–1896, with his popular style spread Darby's teachings to humbler elements in society and may be regarded as the journalist of the Brethren Movement. CHM popularised Darby more than any other Brethren author. As there was no Christian teaching of a “rapture” before Darby began preaching about it in the 1830s, he is sometimes credited with originating the "secret rapture" theory wherein Christ will suddenly remove His bride, the Church, from this world before the judgments of the tribulation. Dispensationalist beliefs about the fate of the Jews and the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Israel put dispensationalists at the forefront of Christian Zionism, because "God is able to graft them in again," and they believe that in His grace he will do so according to their understanding of Old Testament prophecy. They believe that, while the methodologies of God may change, His purposes to bless Israel will never be forgotten, just as He has shown unmerited favour to the Church, He will do so to a remnant of Israel to fulfill all the promises made to the genetic seed of Abraham. I am not a dispensationalist; it is unbiblical.
