Bethel Church of Redding CA Tried to Raise a Little Girl From the Dead. Guess What Didn’t Happen.


Messier 90 appears to be moving away from the Virgo Cluster and is heading to the Milky Way.

“An ‘impersonal God’-well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads-better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap-best of all. But God himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, King, husband-that is quite another matter.” ― C.S. Lewis, Miracles


 

(As of this posting, the autopsy reports have not been made available to the public.)

In a rather bizarre story which attracted the attention of national media during the lead up to the Christmas holidays, Bethel Church of Redding, California, attempted to raise a two year od girl who suddenly and unexpectedly died. According to Newssweek in MEGACHURCH TRYING TO RAISE BABY FROM THE DEAD THROUGH PRAYER AND SONG WHILE RAISING FUNDS FOR HER FAMILY. Bethel is a member of the charismatic Assemblies of God.  Bethel used to be a member of the Assemblies of God. They are now independent. 12/29/19 update.

The mom is a singer in this church.

In an Instagram post on Monday, Kalley wrote, “We’re asking for prayer. We believe in a Jesus who died and conclusively defeated every grave, holding the keys to resurrection power. We need it for our little Olive Alayne, who stopped breathing yesterday and has been pronounced dead by doctors. We are asking for bold, unified prayers from the global church to stand with us in belief that He will raise this little girl back to life.”

The Washington Post reported the story in After a toddler’s death, a church has tried for days to resurrect her — with prayer

Bill Johnson, a senior leader of the church, said in a video that there was a biblical precedent for believing in resurrection. In addition to Jesus raising the dead, Johnson said that Jesus commanded his disciples to do the same.

“The reason Jesus raised the dead is because not everyone dies in God’s timing, and Jesus could tell,” Johnson said. “And he would interrupt that funeral, he would interrupt that process that some would just call the sovereignty of God.”

The Washington Post consulted Richard Flory who is “senior director of research and evaluation at the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture.” He wrote a book about the Assemblies of God titled The Rise of Network Christianity: How Independent Leaders Are Changing the Religious Landscape (Global Pentecost Charismatic Christianity)

Flory said Johnson’s assertion that “not everyone dies in God’s timing” seemed presumptuous and inconsistent with many Pentecostal Christians’ belief that God is always in control.

However, I share Flory’s concern in this statement and provide an example of this later in the post.

Flory said he is more concerned, however, about the potential psychological and emotional effects on the Heiligenthals and other church members when Olive is not resurrected.

Sadly, as expected, little Olive was not raised fro the dead in spite of the round the clock prayer meetings and appeals on social media with #WakeUpOlive, the church decided it was time to plan a memorial service along with the predictable “but she’s alive in heaven* caveat.

A Northern California church that had gathered to pray for the resurrection of one of its parishioners announced Friday (Dec. 20) that it would be moving on with memorial services for the two-year-old child, who died a week ago.

“Here is where we are: Olive hasn’t been raised. The breakthrough we have sought hasn’t come,” Bethel Church said in the statement. “And so, we are moving towards a memorial service and celebration of her life.”

“The joy of our faith is that, though we haven’t seen the miracle of Olive being raised, she is alive in the presence of God,” the statement read.

I think the best write up of this story is found at the website called The Messed Up Church. I had not heard of them until they posted When False Hope Crashes Into Reality-The Tragedy of Bethel, Redding.

Utilizing their knowledge of Bethel, they had this to say about the attempt to raise Olive from the dead.

Bill Johnson, Kris Vallotton and all of the gigantic Bethel staff could not help her, in spite of being a church that proudly claims to experience miracles every single day.

Heidi Baker was the special guest speaker at Bethel the day after the girl died, and she did nothing.

Todd White could not help her, in spite of claiming to do miracles every single day.

Benny Hinn didn’t show up to wave his jacket and raise her from the dead.

David Hogan, the man who claims to have raised over 500 people from the dead, remains silent about his failure to help his close friends at Bethel, Redding.

Their mention of the Dead Raising Team was particularly interesting. Here is a link to the website of Bethel inspired Dead Raising Team. You, too, can be a member of this group.

They claim to have raised 15 people from the dead but have not provided any proof.

The DRT offers a service of support to any family that is grieving the loss of a loved one. In addition to giving the bereaved spiritual and emotional support, our team of trained ministers will offer prayers of resurrection on behalf of the deceased. Handling each situation with the utmost sensitivity, our team travels to the funeral home, morgue, or family’s home where the deceased is being kept. Upon arrival, we spend time in prayer with the family, as well as the deceased. We will stay as long as we are needed.

Since it was started in late 2006, the DRT has comforted families in the midst of grief, as well as having 15 resurrections to date as a result of their prayers.

They will train you to raise people from the dead. Pretty darn cool, right? But, take a look at the map on this page. See where the most DRTs are located. Once again, crappy theology is exported to Africa.

We are always expanding our network of Dead Raising Teams across the world. If you would like to start a Dead Raising Team or are in need of resurrection prayer please visit the contact page or email TheDeadRaisingTeam@gmail.com.

You can even follow their blog.

So, what’s the deal with this group?

  • No proof for any of their claims. They claim to have resurrected people but offer no proof. Remember, Jesus told the healed lepers to go to the Temple in order for the priests to determine if they were healed. This was one of the functions of the priests during that time. Years ago, Benny Hinn was challenged to prove one of his healings. He gave the group investigating before and after Xrays of a serious abdominal tumor. He failed to mention the surgery to remove the tumor between those two X-rays.
  • “Bethel teaches that Christians must take back dominion of this earth from the Devil.”
  • “Bethel teaches that God is sovereign only in small moments of time, but otherwise, we are to reign as kings on the earth.”
  • “Bethel teaches that the leaders who teach this theology are specially appointed Apostles who get downloads of new revelation directly from God.”
  • “Bethel teaches that a two-year-old girl can (and should) be brought back from the dead by declaring it with fervor and intensity because words carry the power of God and defeat the Devil. To do otherwise shows a lack of faith.”

When is it OK to let someone die at Bethel?

I often wonder if people truly understand that all of us are going to die unless Jesus returns. Should we pray to resurrect a 90 year old man whose body is giving out? Should the Dead Raising Team have hurried to the Twin Towers and prayed for the resurrection of the thousands who were dead. Could you imagine the impact that would make?

Can we raise the dead like Jesus?

I found a particularly good post at The Gospel Coalition: Can We Raise the Dead Like Jesus Did? It was written by Stephen Tan who used to be a member of a Bethel inspired church.

Here are some of his thoughts on the matter.

Why do I go so far as to claim this theology is destructive?

Picture a funeral service for a loved one. Friends and family are gathered to grieve the loss of a loved one. Instead of providing words of comfort, though, the minister turns the funeral into a “resurrection service,” commanding the deceased to wake up and walk out of the casket. I know of Bethel-inspired ministers doing this from America all the way to Malaysia. (These are instances in which I either know the minister personally or have received the information from friends and contacts.)

Bethel followers sometimes declare that the healing has already happened, which is both presumptuous and deceptive. And when the dead person isn’t raised as promised, Bethel lacks a biblical theology of suffering to help the grieving family understand why the miracle didn’t occur. At best they’ll say they don’t know; at worst that it’s due to lack of faith, unconfessed sin, or generational sin. (I was part of a Bethel-inspired church for years, so I say this from experience.)

How many people become disillusioned with God when they don’t get their promised miracle?

My own experience with my daughter’s brain tumor

As an an example of a miracle, some might point to my daughter who survived a serious and rare brain tumor when she was 3 years old. We were given a less than 10% chance of her survival. After her second neurosurgery, we refused to let her be radiated. As medical folks, we knew that such radiation would cause her to become seriously intellectually disabled.

My husband and I decided to wait except…we started getting all sorts of calls from the radiation/oncology group and even from our own physicians. I was asked point blank if we were doing this because we were Christians and believed that she would be healed.

No, far from it. We believed it was highly likely she would not survive. Since the tumor was not well known, we wanted the surgeons and neurologists to go slow. In fact, our surgeon and neurologist agreed with our decision. We also feared that the radiation would make her very sick and confused in her last days on earth. We also told them that we would accept radiation if, and when a third surgery was performed and the scans still showed tumor.

We prayed for her healing but prepared ourselves for what we believed was the inevitable. Except…the residual tumor that continued to be seen on the many MRIs just sat there and did nothing. It continues to do nothing since my daughter gets scanned every year.

If we had gone ahead with the recommended radiation, she would have survived and everyone would have assumed it was due to the radiation. Instead, she is now a pediatric critical care nurse with no intellectual disabilities. I received an apology from one doctor a few years later, saying that we were right in our decision.

I learned something from our experience. These groups who claim that one must totally believe with their whole heart that healing will occur or it will surely fail are full of baloney. I did not know what would happen to her. I prayed for her healing and I also prayed that God would walk us through the harder road. God doesn’t need for us to 100% believe. He needs us to know He is with us no matter what.

I actually had a Bethel type person tell me that there must have been someone else who believe 100% for her healing since my own prayers were not enough for God to allow her to live!!

Another family:

Years later, we were friends with another family whose teen daughter was diagnosed with cancer. It was a bad form of the disease and, as time went on, it was evident that she would not survive in spite of the best care possible. Her parents hung up signs around her room, declaring her healing and asking people not to visit unless they could join them in agreement.

I decided to speak with the father and explain my own experience. I wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to try so hard. I told him that God already knew what would happen. He would not listen to me and claimed that her healing would cause the entire staff to come of Jesus. He believed this so strongly that he refused to allow a psychiatrist to visit with his daughter. The staff was terribly worried about her suffering since she needed rto keep a stiff upper lip for the sake of her parents.

She wasn’t healed. She passed away after a long, hard, fight. The family did not want to speak to anyone about their own struggles and they continue to struggle to this day. Their *faith* and *beleif* was not enough.I wonder if they blame themselves for her death…

What do I believe?

The miracles performed by Jesus were not primarily acts of compassion although they were compassionate. He had another purpose. Jesus could have chosen to fully heal everyone in that time and place. Heck, He could have healed the entire population throughout time if He so chose. He didn’t and that should give us all pause. he didn’t act to prevent suffering. He didn’t act to raise Stephen from death. Most of the Apostles died the death of martyrs. Did Jesus need a *Dead Raising Team?*

The reason for many of his miracles were to prove He was who He said He was. See what happened here in Luke 5:17-39 NIV. See the section that I highlighted.

Jesus Forgives and Heals a Paralyzed Man

17 One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick. 18 Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. 19 When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.

20 When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”

21 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, “Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

22 Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, “Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? 23 Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? 24 But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” 25 Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. 26 Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, “We have seen remarkable things today.”

Jesus was here to go to the Cross. He didn’t spend time at healing services. He pick chose those He healed quite carefully. The main thing is that our sins were forgiven, once and for all. The miracle of one man’s cure from cancer was not the point.

For me, the thing that convinced me of God’s power and majesty is the universe. Do you wonder why I post the pictures from NASA? They means something to me. I see a God of infinite power who created things of infinite beauty. For all of us, God’s miracles are right in front of us yet we want so much more.And, if we got it, would that really make our faith so much stronger? Wouldn’t it last until the next need for a miracle?

In the end, would the raising of Olive from the dead have been a true miracle? Not really. Olive would have died one day, even though she was raised from the dead. Her healing from the death would have been temporary until Jesus returns.

Can Jesus heal? Yes. Does He always heal? No.  We are commanded to pray for the sick. Does that mean He will heal them? No. Prayers are needed for strength and peace as we walk though this life, heading to our inevitable deaths.

Death is not the end for the believer. It is merely the beginning.

Here are some quotes from The Last Battle in the Chronicle of Narnia. In the book, the children found out that they died in a train crash and that they are now in Aslan’s world forever.

  • (Aslan speaking to the children): “The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”
  • “And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
  • I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…Come further up, come further in!

Finally, here are some quotes by Lewis from his book Miracles.

  • Death and resurrection are what the story is about and had we but eyes to see it, this has been hinted on every page, met us, in some disguise, at every turn, and even been muttered in conversations between such minor characters (if they are minor characters) as the vegetables.”
  • “It is a profound mistake to imagine that Christianity ever intended to dissipate the bewilderment and even the terror, the sense of our own nothingness, which come upon us when we think about the nature of things. It comes to intensify them. Without such sensations there is no religion. Many a man, brought up in the glib profession of some shallow form of Christianity, who comes through reading Astronomy to realize for the first time how majestically indifferent most reality is to man, and who perhaps abandons his religion on that account, may at that moment be having his first genuinely religious experience. . . . Christianity does not involve the belief that all things were made for man.
  • There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion (‘man’s search for God’!) suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?”
  • All possible knowledge, then, depends on the validity of reasoning…Unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true
  • If the universe is teeming with life other than ours, then this, we are told, makes it quite ridiculous to believe that God should be so concerned with the human race as to ‘come down from Heaven’ and be made man for its redemption. If, on the other hand, our planet is really unique in harbouring organic life, then this is thought to prove that life is only an accidental by-product in the universe and so again to disprove our religion.
  • (For Christians) If God annihilates or deflects or creates a unit of matter, He has created a new situation at that point. Immediately nature domiciles this new situation, makes it at home in her realm, adapts all other events to it. It finds itself conforming to all the laws. If God creates a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any laws. The laws at once take over. Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows, according to all the normal laws, and nine months later a child is born.

I look forward to the debate on this issue. Please understand that I am not charismatic in practice but respect those who are charismatic and have thought through their theology.

If any of you are aware of a well documented case of a person being brought back to life which means that all medical tests, etc. are available, I look forward to being presented with the evidence. However, hearing from someone that it occurred with no evidence will not convince me. I would even be convinced if someone can show me evidence of a regrowth of an amputated limb. Again, evidence is necessary to convince me.

Finally, join me in praying for Olive’s parents. They really believed she would be raised from the dead. She wasn’t. I pray they do not question the strength of their faith. God loves them and love Olive. She now sees Him face to face, In that I have confidence.

Comments

Bethel Church of Redding CA Tried to Raise a Little Girl From the Dead. Guess What Didn’t Happen. — 235 Comments

  1. Praise God for a people who have faith to believe it could happen. Somewhere, somehow over the centuries the church lost contact with the power of Christ. To the lame man begging for money, Peter said “I don’t have any silver or gold for you. But I’ll give you what I have. In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, get up and walk!” The 21st century church has plenty of silver and gold, but can’t say get up and walk. What have we put our faith in?

  2. I happen to be charismatic in my theology. In fact, a church I was attending prayed for this little girl on that Sunday. Now, I believe God can raise the dead. However, I consider them “miracles” because they do not ordinarily happen.

    A mentor of mine talked about healing and faith in this way:

    “How much faith did Lazarus have to have to be raised from the dead?”

    Answer: None. Dead people don’t have faith; they are dead. The point is that healing or resurrection is about God. It isn’t dependent upon our faith.

  3. Please correct the article to show that Bethel is not a member church of the assemblies of God. The church left the assemblies of God under the direction of Johnson.

  4. It’s one thing to pray, there is nothing in the Bible that prohibits asking God. But when you are still doing it FIVE days later, maybe that’s God saying NO. (BTW Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, was dead for only four, that should probably be your limit before you get a clue.)

  5. Hi Scott
    Two news sources claim that the church is a member of the AOG. Could you send me a source to verify?

  6. Now you are dealing with a topic and a man that I have dealt with before. I first heard about this man from Redding over 10 years ago. I went to a prophetic group that had some people particularly enamored with this man: Bill Johnson. This eventually caused me to join his Facebook page to see what he had to share. He kept promoting healing in ways that go far beyond what are actually written in the scriptures. This started to trigger my b.s. detector and it was soon far into the red.

    I once sat through a series on healing from the Bible by John Wimber and became familiar with all of the texts. Bill went far beyond that as he was making stuff up and posting it online in order to hype up his followers. Then I thought I would look into the reported stories of “gold dust” falling in his services. I watched a video online where it looked like finely ground glitter was rigged up to to blow out of a container above their stage lights where the heat of the lamps would help scatter it throughout their building. It looked fake as fake could be! I have seen healings and been part of a miracle myself and what I would say is that what God actually does does not look like some cheap magicians trick!

    The more I have heard since, the more I am convinced that the man is nothing more than a conman selling fake miracles and hyped up fake “supernatural” events for his own damned by God narcissistic reasons. If you ever watched the documentary on Marjoe then that, I have personally become convinced, is who the man really is.

    When I was a young man I was personally involved in three instances of absolute miracles after teachings from John Wimber were introduced to an AOG church I was attending at that time. One was close to a resurrection. One was in real time as I was watching. Since then, though I have prayed many times, I have never seen anything like these again. It is only in the last 10 years that I have come to an understanding as to why. These events happened to glorify God and did not glorify the local pastor in any way. This rarely can happen these days. Any true miracle in Redding would glorify Bill and not Jesus. Jesus does not support narcissism and does not promote anyone’s ministry other than His own. I am now convinced that this is why miracles and healings are so rare these days. They have been co-opted by narcissistic false leaders and the Holy Spirit is greatly offended by this.

    This is coupled with horrible theology that places us as the ones giving orders expecting the Holy Spirit to obey like some trained dog going after dog treats. This is arrogant and rude to the extreme. Miracles are not about us. We are not God. When they happen they must give Jesus glory. God is sovereign and Jesus only did what He saw the Father doing. The only way any of us could perform a miracle is by being like Jesus. We have to see what the Father doing it and then participate in that and only that.

    What you are highlighting here is the absolute spiritual blindness that we all have. We lack that relationship that Jesus had. Jesus walked past drove of sick people at the Pool of Siloam and only healed one because that was what the Father wanted done at that time. We cannot heal or raise from the dead anyone that we wish. This is to think and teach that we are God and we most certainly are not. Jesus’ miracles flowed out of his intimate relationship with the Father. We are to be like Jesus. Instead what is happening looks much more like the prophets of Baal before Elijah cutting themselves and working themselves up into a frenzy. Hype and hyper-emotionalism does not create miracles, but a real intimacy with the Father can, if and only if that is what He wants at the moment. Most of the time this is not what He was doing, even with Jesus.

  7. dee: Hi Scott
    Two news sources claim that the church is a member of the AOG. Could you send me a source to verify?

    Bill Johnson inherited the church from his father, and it was a First AOG church under the father. Their wiki page shows that they left the denomination, probably because of all the excesses: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethel_Church_(Redding,_California)

    (This was research you probably should of done before writing the article, by the way…)

  8. dee:
    Hi Scott
    Two news sources claim that the church is a member of the AOG. Could you send me a source to verify?

    Dee, under Bill Johnson the church separated itself from the AOG while back. For reference, it was mentioned in the CT writeup from a few years back.

    “Founded in 1952 by Robert Doherty, Bethel Church was affiliated with the Assemblies of God denomination from 1954 until 2006, when the church voted with near unanimity to become an independent entity. ”

    https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/may/cover-story-inside-popular-controversial-bethel-church.html

  9. To me it isn’t a question if the Lord can raise the dead or if miracles occur. I have been given no reason to believe this cannot occur.

    I also believe in Higher Education and the worth of a Master’s Degree in Theology – that doesn’t mean I have to believe in every unaccredited diploma mill that spams my inbox. Bethel’s teaching on healing and prosperity (and it is very much a prosperity church, as their pastor’s claim about Jesus’s Armani clothes will attest) are more inline with the diploma mills promising easy access to success and few troubles than places of contemplation and work.

    Bethel comes off as more of a well-oiled business than a church at this point — witness the selling of access to sermons, the books, the music, the concerts, the $400 USB with a sermon series, the minister’s prophetic yoga pants…yes really.

    It’s astounding that Bethel’s music has been allowed in so many churches by this point — your local CCM station is likely paying it as well. If they would scratch the surface and see some of the rot underneath I think they might think twice.

  10. The point is that healing or resurrection is about God. It isn’t dependent upon our faith.

    So true. Roman’s 9:14-What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Certainly not! For He says to Moses: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then, it does not depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.

  11. One year our small group took up seven weeks of reading stories about the miracles of Jesus from the book of John. No store purchased study materials. All we did was read a passage and ask the same five questions every week. One standard question was/is, “What does this story show us about people? Their nature, character, purposes, etc?” After seven weeks it was very clear- lots of people rejected Jesus as Lord and master even though they saw miracles.

    People have not changed in 2000 years. If most people saw Jesus do miracles and rejected him then they will do the same now.

    What people need isnt a temporary resurrection. They-WE- need courage and peace in the face of death.

  12. Brian: With all the money Bethel has, the parents of Olive had to put up a Go Fund Me page?

    If they believed Olive was going to be resurrected why did they accept gofundme donations in the first place?

    Why does the death of their child entitle them to tens of thousands of dollars when Christians around the lose children every day and don’t get a penny from anyone?

  13. “The reason Jesus raised the dead is because not everyone dies in God’s timing…”

    This ad hoc theology seems suspect to me, no matter which way you tilt on philosophical matters like providence and omniscience.

  14. Dee, can you correct your report? Bethel is not a member of the Assemblies of God. When Bill Johnson became pastor in the late 1990s, he took Bethel out of the AoG.

    Now here’s the backstory about how I know this (besides it being on the Internet). Trust me, it’s related. I was having coffee with a friend of mine a few years ago, a graduate of an AoG college, and he told me that his aunt lives in Redding and is a member of a “dead raising team.” I was completely boggled. “This is a thing?” “Yes.” And he was boggled. He’d been an AoG minister and he thought it was crazycakes. He told me Bethel had been part of the AoG but had left.

    So can you fix it? I don’t think the Assemblies of God want to be related to Bethel. 🙂

  15. Dee, thank you for pointing out that a dying child is abandoned when survival is the only outcome that a Christian will accept.

    I am deeply concerned about the children of Bethel, who might have been told that they had to pray without a shred of doubt to make Olive’s resurrection happen. Are any children blaming themselves?

    Children have absolutely no perspective about death. It is awful to teach them that they can exert power over it. Terrifying.

    Jesus managed to perform miracles in front of skeptics. Lazarus’s own sister doubted that Jesus could raise Lazarus.

  16. Many of you know that I was raised AOG. But none of them were like Bethel. I lost both of my parents in 2018, 9 weeks apart. While it was hard, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Because as a Christian, I have the hope and belief that I will see them again. When you have this hope, it makes a difference. During 2018 and 2018, my family lost over 10 family members. Some of them were younger people. Most weren’t. But I know that my Redeemer lives. I know this without a shadow of doubt. Do I still miss my parents, yes I do. But I know they are in Heaven, and rejoicing. They aren’t in pain anymore, which means the world to me.

  17. Brian: With all the money Bethel has, the parents of Olive had to put up a Go Fund Me page?

    A couple of points on that. First of all, mom is a singer with Bethel Music. I cannot say if she’s *employed* by them, it might be more complicated than that. She may be some sort of contractor. It’s possible that the family has nonexistent or inadequate insurance. I have pretty good insurance, but a decade ago I was stuck with a bill for $720 for a ambulance ride to the hospital for what turned out to be a bad attack of acid reflux.* I know the child was taken to the hospital and worked over by ER docs, and the parents could have run up a bill of several thousand dollars just for that.

    Second, as so many of us know, unexpected funeral expenses can be ruinous. So, while I was really squirmy during the discussion, as only a 50 year old woman can be when her parents are talking about their funeral arrangements, when my dad died, I was glad he had the foresight to plan this out and pay for it, rather than leaving it to us kids to figure out. But I am sure that this family didn’t have pre-need funeral arrangements, and this costs as well. That said, it still looks like a money grab from Bethel Music.

    * This is why my brother and I have an agreement that we will be each other’s ride to the hospital, because we can’t afford that kind of expense. And I’ve taken him to the hospital on four separate occasions in the last three years. I haven’t had to call on him to drive me. Yet.

  18. ION: Cricket

    England are chasing 376 to beat South Africa. Despite the fact that 376 is not moving, England are clearly not going to catch it.

  19. Here is a story of a doctor who was dead for about an hour and a half, along with the evidence. https://seangeorge.com.au/ He was also interviewed on the Unbelievable radio program along with a skeptic. https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-Did-God-raise-Dr-Sean-George-from-the-dead-Sean-George-Hans-Vodder-and-Bradley-Bowen
    Dr. Craig Keener has written extensively on miracles, and tells the story of a relative of his wife who was dead and then raised. These cases seem a far cry from what Bethel does though.

  20. Mr. Jesperson: (This was research you probably should of done before writing the article, by the way…)

    As I have said to you in the past, since you seem to think what I do here is really, really, easy and you could do it so much better, start your own blog or frequent to a blog which has a team (and makes money by taking ads or go to a blog which only posts once in a blue moon.

    As for the AOG showing them out because of their excess, I suggest you find the evidence of that for me. The AOG has plenty of groups that go off reservation. But, you won’t like that.

  21. I thought folks “coming back to life” was a different “R” word = ROSC. Not resurrection.

    I work in healthcare and have seen folks ‘die’ and minutes later breathe again. I don’t consider this resurrection (and sincerely don’t believe it’s possible). Perhaps after chilling in the morgue for a few days, someone woke, with full cognition, it might get my attention. But in my entire career of critical care, have only seen one person survive after being pronounced dead and leave the hospital. He came-to spontaneously after 3-4 minutes post code. The other hundreds have died.

    Cannot speak to the theological nuances here, but what has been done at Bethel via the DRT and with Olive is sickening to me.

  22. The post has been updated to reflect the fact that Bethel used to be a member of the AOG and are now independent.

  23. Muslin, fka Dee Holmes: ’s possible that the family has nonexistent or inadequate insurance. I have pretty good insurance, but a decade ago I was stuck with a bill for $720 for a ambulance ride to the hospital for what turned out to be a bad attack of acid reflux.* I know the child was taken to the hospital and worked over by ER docs, and the parents could have run up a bill of several thousand dollars just for that.

    I concur with you. My husband left academic medicine soon after Abby was diagnosed with her brain tumor, Of course we had insurance but the deductibles were onerous. We also wondered if we might have to travel to get her specialized care. Instead, we were right where we needed to be and a number of physicians waived their fees which was unexpected. I really feel for people who have insufficient insurance. One of my meds cost $6,000 per month.

  24. AM: healthcare

    One miracle we can see: skilled people devote their careers to developing high-quality medical care—everything from rabies vaccines to reliable cancer treatments. Now we just need the miracle of affordable access.

    When people cannot afford doctor visits or medication (and sometimes when they can), church groups and entrepreneurial Christians stand ready to sell a “cure,” which includes messages against doctors and science. Christian treatments often cost both money and time, and some are toxic.

  25. Friend: One miracle we can see: skilled people devote their careers to developing high-quality medical care—everything from rabies vaccines to reliable cancer treatments. Now we just need the miracle of affordable access.

    Two things here. Firstly, skilled people devoting their careers to medical (and other) research is not a miracle. It doesn’t need any special intervention from God, and people can do this at will. We don’t tell applicants to medical school that they are presumptuously demanding a miracle, that can only learn medicine if it should happen to be God’s ineffable will, and that God only very rarely intervenes in a person’s life so as to cause them to spontaneously devote it to the pursuit of medicine. And secondly, affordable access is not a miracle either. I’m reluctant to discuss why, though, as it’s hard to do so without straying into political debate.

  26. A British hiker whose heart stopped for six hours after getting caught in a snow storm last month has described her recovery as a “miracle.”

    Part of the reason why Schoeman survived was — somewhat counterintuitively — because the severe temperature in the mountains protected Schoeman’s vital organs and prevented their deterioration, her doctor said, according to Reuters.

    I was amazed when I saw this on the news and couldn’t resist posting it here on a somewhat related topic!

    Read how the doctors diagnosed hypothermia caused her organs to go into a death-like condition/appearance.

    https://www.insider.com/spanish-pyrenees-hiking-audrey-schoeman-cardiac-arrest-survived-miracle-2019-12

  27. It’s about time you started posting on Bethel. Please research them. They take classes full of children on “trips to heaven” ( they claim its real) they have “ fire tunnels” which is a gauntlet people run through and you can see videos of older men touching young goes on their backsides, they put glitter in their ventilation systems and convince their members its a real Glory cloud( therefore trying to convince them their anointing is special) grave soaking ( laying on graves of dead people to soak up their annointing) and the list goes on and on. They practice a form of counseling called SOZO. The whackiness is astounding. It’s the prosperity gospel mixed with fake signs and wonders and an apostles club. They make CJ Mahaney look normal. If you start criticizing them their members come out of the woodwork to attack. There is no doubt in my mind they are a cult or at the very least cultish. I have family members who are involved and are acting very cultish.

  28. There’s a really sad take-away here.
    What happens to the folks who buy into such a strictly linearized belief system (various schools of Biblicism) when it collapses?

  29. Bethel Redding is big and a local political power (with eyes on national influence, Brian Johnson, the worship pastor and son of the senior pastor, has been a prominent supporter of the current US president). The senior pastor also runs the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry.

  30. Nick Bulbeck: not a miracle

    Enh, must push back a bit. A miracle is something previously thought impossible. I do view the development of oncology, organ transplant, etc., as miracles: all of those people from different countries and beliefs and viewpoints, mastering the current knowledge, patiently and incrementally moving it forward, sharing, thinking, creating.

    Anecdote: I’ve benefited from an innovative treatment, and am just as grateful and awestruck as if Jesus himself had stretched forth his hand and changed me in an instant. The collaboration that led to my treatment is stunning. Since I believe that God gave us brains to develop, and goodwill to work together, I see God at work in the treatment too.

  31. I don’t really have words for this except that it seems like a prime example of how irrational human beings can be, how they can set their minds on believing something that is obviously false and, against all evidence and experience, doggedly insist on continuing to believe it. God is not raising people from the dead. It’s not happening.

    If your faith in God requires you to suspend connection with reality, doesn’t that make you susceptible to all kinds of deception or illusion or rationalization? I just can’t relate.

  32. I know someone FROM Redding. When I first asked him about Bethel Church, his exact words were “THAT CULT?” They apparently have quite a reputation up there, and it isn’t good. (Max, you might want to reconsider your first comment up top.)

    Before this Raise-the-Dead thing, they were best known for a weird ritual of entering graveyards at night and lying down atop the graves of those they deemed especially Godly or Spiritual to “soak up their Anointing through the ground”.

    My informant characterized Redding as the southern tip of the “Mount Shasta Triangle”, AKA the Weird Religion Capital of Northern California. When they were trying to take over Antelope, Oregon the Rajneeshees did a “bus ministry” recruitment drive among the local homeless, busing them up to Rajneeshpuram (now a historic Oregon ghost town) to stack the voting rolls for their takeover, and during his school days a family of Charles Manson Cultists (“HELTER SKELTER!”) surfaced when a schoolkid viciously assaulted a classmate for swatting a fly and claimed justification by “Charlie says it’s wrong to kill animals… Charlie… You know, God?”

  33. Erp: Bethel Redding is big and a local political power (with eyes on national influence, Brian Johnson, the worship pastor and son of the senior pastor, has been a prominent supporter of the current US president).

    “TOMORROW THE WORLD!!!!!!!”, like Scientology and the Rajneeshees?

  34. Victorious: I was amazed when I saw this on the news and couldn’t resist posting it here on a somewhat related topic!

    Read how the doctors diagnosed hypothermia caused her organs to go into a death-like condition/appearance.

    i.e. The hypothermia put her into suspended animation instead of (as usually happens) killing her.
    I’ve heard of similar things happening in drownings where the drowning triggers a “mammalian diving reflex”, but the odds of both are so low you don’t want to count on it.

  35. Without meaning to be snarky, this kind of story strikes me as a prime (if extreme) example of how Jesus’ promises to the apostles (in this case specifically, the promise that whatever the apostles ask “in Jesus’ name” will be done for them) seem to have not been inherited by later (and up to present-day) church leaders.

    It’s hard to know what to make of this. An hypothesis that I have been harboring for several years is that perhaps we ought to understand Jesus’ mighty works to have been wrought through prayer (compare Jn 9:30-33 with 11:20-22 and 11:41-43; Mk 9:28-29 might be a hint of this in the Synoptics). Jesus is said to have spent a lot of time in prayer, a detail that in my experience of church teaching does not attract much notice. This also helps me to understand Jesus’ incredulity and exasperation with the lack of faith among the people and even his own disciples — His prayers were always granted (Jn 11:41-42 again); what was wrong with these people?

    Max has suggested that the churches have lost their connection to Jesus’ power. Mr. J wonders whether the reasons underlying the requests are not God-glorifying. My tentative theory is that the churches (and I include myself in this) simply aren’t as pleasing to the Father as Jesus and the earliest churches were.

  36. Muslin, fka Dee Holmes: I was having coffee with a friend of mine a few years ago, a graduate of an AoG college, and he told me that his aunt lives in Redding and is a member of a “dead raising team.” I was completely boggled. “This is a thing?” “Yes.”

    “DEAD. RAISING. TEAM.”
    That says it all.

    Does this Dead Raising Team also have the usual foolproof fallback?
    “O Ye Of Little FAITH. Tsk. Tsk.”

  37. Friend: Dee, thank you for pointing out that a dying child is abandoned when survival is the only outcome that a Christian will accept.

    Sounds like “Name It and Claim It!” on steroids.

  38. Friend: Enh, must push back a bit. A miracle is something previously thought impossible. I do view the development of oncology, organ transplant, etc., as miracles…

    Well, we may differ on the definition of the word “miracle”, but oncology and organ transplant (among much else you could mentioned) are certainly wonderful things. As a matter of fact, I’m entirely dependent on innovative treatment as well – my insulin is harvested from genetically modified yeast, I gather, and I measure my blood sugar levels (or, strictly speaking, my interstitial glucose levels) using a flash sensor that gives me real-time data on tap. Without these, and the NHS (and I promise this is not an attempt to be political), I’d have been dead seven years ago. And not in a good way.

    So, you have a fair point, well-made.

  39. They claim to have raised 15 people from the dead but have not provided any proof.

    Make a claim like that, and you’d BETTER be able to produce strong evidence.
    Talk is cheap, and this isn’t the usual tabloid setting backwoods in some faraway Third World country where nobody can trace or confirm the claim. (Though there’s always All Evidence was taken/destroyed by The Vast Conspiracy…)

  40. Their mention of the Dead Raising Team was particularly interesting. Here is a link to the website of Bethel inspired Dead Raising Team. You, too, can be a member of this group.

    I saw a group pic of their DRT down one of the links. Five muscular guys, all with fashionable short haircuts and five-o-clock shadows just grizzled enough, posing with muscles flexed under their black T-shirts with a “DEADRAISER” logo on the chest. All look like a cross between pro wrestlers and Tullian’s Tchiv-whatever’s Facebook photo.

    They will train you to raise people from the dead. Pretty darn cool, right? But, take a look at the map on this page. See where the most DRTs are located. Once again, crappy theology is exported to Africa.

    As I said above, backwoods in some faraway Third World country where you can’t check on the claim – all you have is the DRT’s word for it. (And “Darkest Africa” used to be THE Prestige Posting for missionaries abroad…)

  41. From the post, from Dee, this is it, IMHO:

    “Can Jesus heal? Yes. Does He always heal? No. We are commanded to pray for the sick. Does that mean He will heal them? No. Prayers are needed for strength and peace as we walk though this life, heading to our inevitable deaths.

    “Death is not the end for the believer. It is merely the beginning.”

    Yes. Yes. Yes. God is able. We can ask. Then, it is up to God. Jesus prayed, “Father, take this cup from me; not my will, but Yours be done.”

  42. Dee, great post and inspiring story about your daughter. I do not think it can be proven that the sign gifts have ceased. What I have tried to pay attention to in the gospels are the miracles that Jesus did, and then the things that the apostles did. Since I do not believe that I am Jesus, nor do I believe there are apostles today, it seems reasonable to me that certain acts were only divinely accomplished by the Father through Jesus and the apostles. Paul told the Corinthian church that he wished they all spoke in tongues, but never told them to raise the dead. To make things simple for me, I have always viewed Romans through Jude differently than the Gospels and Acts from a personal application standpoint. But of course I accept all 66 books as being God’s Word.

  43. here’s part of my thoughtstream on the subject:

    jesus was concentrated kingdom of heaven walking around on earth. this was brand new to planet earth. a cosmic WOW!

    this was a turbo charge for living matter he came into contact with. it responded in a flash. healing sped up to a flash. malfunctioning matter resorted in seconds. dead matter reversed.

    jesus departed, but then holy spirit came at pentecost — again, a turbo burst of kingdom of heaven on earth. a turbo burst of God Godself. like never before on earth and for living matter.

    of course things were going to respond.

    both the ‘ministers’ (those in whom God/Holy Spirit was operating as they healed the sick, etc.) and the ‘minister-ees’ (those being healed, etc.)

    all these people at the time had the quite the advantage, being in the presence of something this concentrated.

    perhaps i can liken it to a toddler tasting lemon for the first time — they put the lemon from mom’s iced tea in their mouth, & WOW! (shades of this)

    as the toddler grows up, he/she becomes desensitized to things like the standard encounter with lemon and tabasco. not much of a reaction any more.

    (i have other thoughts, too- but they’re too different from this thought, so i’ll try later)

  44. While John MacArthur is not popular here, there is some good stuff about Bethel, if I recall correctly, on his strange fire video. Worth the look see.

  45. I think Dee’s testimony and analysis illustrate beautifully the difference between faith and belief, and why it is important to not let the latter get in the way. And so eloquently said.

  46. If you are interested in learning more about Bethel and other deceivers in the New Apostolic Reformation, Costi Hinn’s books “Defining Deception” and “God, Greed, and the Prosperity Gospel” are excellent books to read. He’s the nephew of Benny Hinn. Other interesting and excellent things to watch — Justin Peter’s series “Clouds without Water” which I believe is on YouTube and the documentary “American Gospel”. I had no idea about Bethel and others teaching a false gospel and deceiving so many. So sad! These people are holding huge conferences all over and sucking in the gullible.

  47. A couple years ago I financially helped a college student who was going to attend Bethel’s School of Ministry. Wanting to encourage future missionaries, I donated. Then I read an article about Bethel in CT Today and had an internal “yipes” moment. I didn’t sign up for a second round of fundraising. My theology tends towards miracles being signs of Jesus’ Messiahship, and that they aren’t the norm for today. Not that God doesn’t heal people all the time (such as your daughter, such as I walk and my parents were told when I was 18 months old I never would), but I don’t think it’s because Bro or Sis So and So claim to have a special in with God and that they can demand it. That’s what bothers me about Bethel. They presume to know God’s will and then demand for Him to do it. I find that presumptuous. I also can’t handle their deceit: the glitter out the HVAC system, for example. It’s lying, and cheesy to boot. The God I know is much bigger than that. I ascribe the fact that I can walk to Him. Experimental surgeries worked, I had a wonderful surgeon for 35 years who was willing to try some novel things on my non-existent hip socket,and he told me I could do anything I really wanted to do. Now that I’m older (and 9 surgeries over my lifetime later), I get around with a rolling walker, but I still work full time and serve several hours a week at church. To me, the miracle is that God used so many different things to allow me to flourish and grow in my faith and dependence on Him.

  48. Headless Unicorn Guy: “TOMORROW THE WORLD!!!!!!!”, like Scientology and the Rajneeshees?

    I’ve been keeping an eye on Redding for precisely this reason. As a former resident of a state with a religious monoculture (that’d be Utah) and someone who has picketed Scientology in Clearwater, FL, it concerns me when one religion dominates the politics in a town so thoroughly. Especially one as “out there” as Bethel.

  49. One of the issues with Bethel and similar is that allegedly when what is being prayed for fails, the person being prayed for is often blamed for blocking the miracle. As one of the commenters on a blog post on Bethel points out:

    “Another thing I don’t see those leaders or members mention much unless you’re actually inside the building or know someone who goes there – if you’re not healed after being prayed over, it’s your fault. They said this in not so many words. Something is “blocking” them from being healed.”
    https://brucegerencser.net/2016/02/bethel-redding-dangerous-evangelical-cult/

    Olive’s parents are likely blaming themselves right now for not having enough faith to get the miracle they so desperately wanted.

  50. Samuel Conner,

    You make an astute observation. There is very little prayer in any church I’ve been to in the past twenty years. Other than the weekly list of praying for everyone who has cancer. And even that seems perfunctory.

    I have seen however the real power of God in a particular small country of SE Asia where persecution is high and no one but committed followers of Jesus call themselves Christians. Among that group of disciples I have heard first hand testimonies from two separate illiterate villagers who were granted the immediate ability to read the Bible in answer to prayer. I’ve met people who were miraculously healed. I know two disciples who were delivered from demonic possession in answer to Christians fasting and praying. One disciple told me he prayed for a girl pronounced dead at a village clinic but we were never sure if she had been in a coma or really dead. I think no one knew. In any case, every miracle I know of occurred in answer to concerted prayer by ordinary villagers (ie no stage, no “man of God” big shot involved). No one took credit for any of it. No one made money off it nor wrote books about it, nor promoted “their ministry” from it.

  51. Friend: I am deeply concerned about the children of Bethel, who might have been told that they had to pray without a shred of doubt to make Olive’s resurrection happen. Are any children blaming themselves?

    Children have absolutely no perspective about death. It is awful to teach them that they can exert power over it. Terrifying.

    I’m with you on this. This type of black-and-white thinking completely ignores biblical context and is in a disturbingly large number of Christian children’s materials.

    The most egregious was a preschool homeschool curriculum. The first month’s theme was “truth,” and the very first lesson was Ananias and Sapphira. You thinking about lying, child? Here’s what God does to liars…

    Or the children’s Bible my oldest’s preschool gave her. “God told Abraham and his wife, Sarah, to move to another country. God promised to do good things for them. Abraham obeyed God. He knew God would help him, and he was not afraid.” Ignoring that little incident with Sarah and Pharaoh. Or that other pesky incident with Hagar. Instead of teaching that God is with us and helps us even when we are afraid, it creates an unrealistic and unattainable standard of what obeying and trusting God looks like. And how is that helpful to anyone, let alone children?

  52. Erp: Olive’s parents are likely blaming themselves right now for not having enough faith to get the miracle they so desperately wanted.

    Nobody had to have faith for Jesus to raise Lazarus. They didn’t even know or expect he was going to. If it’s our faith that causes a miracle to happen then we are in control of God. Dream on, I say.

  53. Headless Unicorn Guy: As I said above, backwoods in some faraway Third World country where you can’t check on the claim – all you have is the DRT’s word for it.

    I always wonder if they tell the people in the remote parts of the world that God is raising the dead way off in America.

  54. Friend: Enh, must push back a bit. A miracle is something previously thought impossible.

    I understandwwhat you’re saying but I feel like it’s important to make a distinction. A miracle is something that is impossible, that goes against the laws of nature. Medical advances are wonderful and amazing but they are not miracles. I think, if medical researchers believed in miracles, we would not have any medical advances. I think we all get so used to using superlatives that we lose track of the strict meaning of words a little bit.

    Some people heal and survive diseases and trauma while others do not. This occurs naturally in the world. It happens among believers, non-believers and people of every religion and no religion. It happens among people who pray and people who don’t pray. We give God the credit when we heal and are thankful, but it’s not miraculous, it’s the way he designed our bodies to work, ideally.

    We don’t have any proven example of a person being raised from the dead since the time of the apostles. So, either everyone has been doing it wrong or no one has had enough faith in all these centuries or it’s just not God’s will. If he changes his mind, I guarantee we’ll all know about it.

  55. Samuel Conner: Max has suggested that the churches have lost their connection to Jesus’ power. Mr. J wonders whether the reasons underlying the requests are not God-glorifying. My tentative theory is that the churches (and I include myself in this) simply aren’t as pleasing to the Father as Jesus and the earliest churches were.

    Also:

    Fisher [in response to Samuel]: You make an astute observation. There is very little prayer in any church I’ve been to in the past twenty years. Other than the weekly list of praying for everyone who has cancer. And even that seems perfunctory.

    There’s surprisingly little in the new testament that specifically addresses “We prayed for x to be healed and (s)he wasn’t – why not?”. Even less, in fact, than there is about the circumstances in history at which it ceases to be God’s will to heal (other than through the steady accumulation of medical knowledge). But there is one piece, certainly, in Matthew 17. The disciples (albeit without Peter, James and John) had been unable to cast a demon out, and let’s at least give them credit for asking Jesus why they couldn’t. He told them: because of your weak faith.

    What’s thought-provoking about this, to me, is whom Jesus was talking to – namely, the apostles, or nine of them at any rate (eight if you subtract Judas Iscariot). It wasn’t the afflicted child’s weak faith, or the family’s weak faith, but it was the apostles’ weak faith. Likewise in Nazareth (as described in Matthew 13 and Mark 6) it was the community’s collective hostile unbelief.

    I think there’s something inescapable in here. The church, collectively, does not see (and/or cannot perform) signs similar to those that Jesus performed and that the early church continued to see. Because this isn’t a new thing in history, I want to face the possibility that we don’t need new reasons to explain it. Likewise, the challenge of not everyone getting a miracle isn’t new either: there were many lepers in Israel, for instance, in the time of Elisha; but only Naaman the Syrian was healed. And there’s no evidence that Jesus wiped out all human disease in Judea during his three public years (quite the contrary). So it must be possible to have a theology that enables us BOTH to stand with the afflicted, including the ones we can’t heal, AND to pray effectively such that there are some that we can heal.

  56. Samuel Conner: the churches have lost their connection to Jesus’ power … simply aren’t as pleasing to the Father as Jesus and the earliest churches were

    No prayer … no power. One doesn’t have to look very far on the American landscape to observe the prayerless and unrepentant condition of the saints; and, thus, powerless. Consequences of our unfaithfulness are evident in every fabric of our society. Hell has launched a tremendous assault on America, and the church ain’t doing much about it. Church altars are empty and dry while precious eternal promises go uncollected. We have all the resources we need to turn this nation back to God, but they aren’t appropriated because we don’t pray as we ought. Yep, we have drifted far from the early church model – not much pleasing to the Lord about what we have put together … we have substituted religion for relationship … so why would He visit it?

  57. dee: The AOG has plenty of groups that go off reservation. But, you won’t like that.

    Yep. My wife’s church had a missionary claiming resurrections occurred at his crusade in India & at some clown show down in Florida in the late 2000’s. ABC News did an expose on the Florida event.

    I do not believe these events occur, have occurred or are occurring.

    I feel awful for the parents but I’ve seen enough suffering in the world to understand that faith doesn’t work like that.

  58. A few unsolicited observations:
    A. All the “leaders” of the bethel church &school have been and are today, affected by all the diseases and maladies common to us all (except financial trouble);

    B. Sr pastor Bill Johnson wears glasses
    C. His wife recently underwent cancer treatment
    D. Their son, Brian Johnson, acting as a pastor, has complete hearing loss
    E. During last years Carr fires, the town bethel resides in was nearly destroyed. None of bethels declarations or praying or anything else exerted any influence over that fire.
    F. Now, a world famous singer, part of bethel music, is enduring the sudden, unimaginable death of their infant daughter.

    Bethel and their followers haven’t discovered an inside track with God. They, like us all, must grapple with reality in a broken, fallen world before the Redeemer completes our redemption.

  59. SiteSeer,

    I follow them on Instagram. Their faith is strong. They still love Jesus. I wish people would just leave this alone. If that were my child I would have asked. The whole church was asking, and praising God throughout. They understood what they were asking. Even tho God said no I believe He was honored by their faith. Many have said that by pressing in and praying that their own faith was awakened to be bold to believe God.

    That precious little girl is safe with the Lord, and that congregation loved those parents and stood with them as they asked God for a miracle. May we all be loved like that.

  60. SiteSeer: A miracle is something that is impossible, that goes against the laws of nature. Medical advances are wonderful and amazing but they are not miracles. I think, if medical researchers believed in miracles, we would not have any medical advances. I think we all get so used to using superlatives that we lose track of the strict meaning of words a little bit.

    If you check a few dictionaries, you’ll find both definitions. People say “miracle of engineering” and “miracle drug” without reference to Jesus. I’ve even heard people talk about the miracle of compound interest.

    I see divine influence in human efforts to solve heartbreaking problems. If we were merely sin nature and our deeds filthy rags, no one of any religion would bother to take the first tiny steps toward treating a fatal illness. Plenty of folks would disagree about God’s role in human progress, and that’s fine too.

  61. Erp: Olive’s parents are likely blaming themselves right now for not having enough faith to get the miracle they so desperately wanted.

    It seemed to me, from watching the Twitter and Instagram feeds, that they thought that if they stormed heaven with just enough prayers and praises, God would have to relent and answer the parents’ prayers. And when it didn’t work as they expected, the parents might be left with the idea that their faith wasn’t strong enough, they didn’t say enough prayers, they didn’t do enough praise sessions, etc., etc.

    What I don’t understand is, if you believe that for a Christian, being absent in the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Cor 5:8) and that Jesus has the little children come to him, then your child would be with Jesus and why would you want to pull them back here? YES, OH YES I realize that losing a child is DEVASTATING. I understand why parents would do this, just as I came to a sharp realization of why veneration of ancestors is a thing after beloved older relatives of mine died.

    But this whole situation struck me as just being demanding and commanding of God. I don’t recall anyone stepping up to Jesus and saying, “You will heal me/my child/my servant/my sibling right now! I demand it!” There were thousands of people commanding #WakeUpOlive! I believe there has to be some humility involved as well as willingness to accept that things may not work out the way you want them to.

    This is Just My Personal Opinion and Your Mileage May Vary.

  62. Bunny: I wish people would just leave this alone. If that were my child I would have asked. The whole church was asking

    You are kind and right to encourage us to focus on those closest to this little girl. But please also note the compassion in the public reaction to this crisis.

    I would be horrified if my church formed a Dead Raising Team and sought publicity via social media, promising resurrection if enough people pray in the right way.

    Regardless of intentions, this effort sent a message that doubt kills children, or prevents them from coming back to life.

    Jesus told us to pray in private and not on street corners. We usually think about hypocrites making a show of their prayers; but private prayer also shields us and lets us cry out for whatever we want.

  63. Friend: Regardless of intentions, this effort sent a message that doubt kills children, or prevents them from coming back to life.

    i.e. “Ye of Little FAITH(TM) (unlike MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!)”

  64. Fisher,

    “the real power of God in a particular small country of SE Asia where persecution is high”
    +++++++++++++++

    i, too, have observed that more demonstrative spiritual things happen in places where luxuries (material, technological, social) are scant.

  65. Max,

    Max, that sounds like boilerplate Christianese which could just as easily have come from the Bethel of Redding Cult. I know you spent over 60 years in the SBC and “you can take the boy out of the Baptists but you can’t take the Baptist completely out of the boy”, but your Insider perspective is acting against what you’re trying to say now that you’re on the Outside. And it’s been driving me up the walls for years.

    You grew up on the Inside, speaking and thinking in fluent Christianese. I grew up just the opposite, not only on the Outside but an Outsider as far back as I can remember, emotionally isolated from others – the actual term is “Growing Up Martian”, where you’re always on the outside looking in like some alien observer.

    (A lighter take on this comes from that old Jim Henson TV show Fraggle Rock. There was a recurring segment where one of the Fraggles reads out letters he’s received from his “Uncle Travelling Matt”, a Fraggle explorer “on walkabout” in the world outside of Fraggle Rock. Letters that are excerpts from his journals observing “the Silly Creatures” (humans) and their silly behavior Outside.)

    Max, you see everything from a default Insider’s View, where all the Christianese makes perfect sense. I default to the Outsider’s View and then some, where what you say which makes perfect sense to you makes NO sense whatsoever, and your plain Christianese becomes obscure jargon.

  66. Nick Bulbeck: There’s surprisingly little in the new testament that specifically addresses “We prayed for x to be healed and (s)he wasn’t – why not?”.

    Remember that tower collapse in Siloam?
    Even that Rabbi from Nazareth said “and sometimes, sh*t happens.”

  67. Fisher: There is very little prayer in any church I’ve been to in the past twenty years. Other than the weekly list of praying for everyone who has cancer. And even that seems perfunctory.

    How is the liturgy designed? Is it a series of prayers, or something else?

  68. SiteSeer: Headless Unicorn Guy: As I said above, backwoods in some faraway Third World country where you can’t check on the claim – all you have is the DRT’s word for it.

    I always wonder if they tell the people in the remote parts of the world that God is raising the dead way off in America.

    Wouldn’t surprise me.
    This sort of thing has the distinct aroma of Urban Legend, happening to a FOAF (Friend of a Friend of a Friend) “a long time ago in a Galaxy far far away” where any trail of such a happening has long gone cold.

  69. dee:
    Hi Scott
    Two news sources claim that the church is a member of the AOG. Could you send me a source to verify?

    They once were, but when Bill Johnson took over he led them out of AOG.

  70. SiteSeer: Nobody had to have faith for Jesus to raise Lazarus. They didn’t even know or expect he was going to. If it’s our faith that causes a miracle to happen then we are in control of God.

    Which is the definition of Magick as opposed to religion.

    Because in Magick, the mortal Sorcerer is the one in control of the Spiritual Powers and Forces and Beings, which/who are forced by the Sorcerer to do his Will.

  71. Muslin, fka Dee Holmes: I’ve been keeping an eye on Redding for precisely this reason. As a former resident of a state with a religious monoculture (that’d be Utah) and someone who has picketed Scientology in Clearwater, FL, it concerns me when one religion dominates the politics in a town so thoroughly. Especially one as “out there” as Bethel.

    With me, one of my writing partners (the burned-out country preacher) wrote me recently about some news articles he came across. About how both the Cold Equations of the Calvinistas and “the Occult Woo-Woo” of the NAR are both going political after power and influence in DC, Seven Mountains Mandate/Christian Nation takeover stuff. Why “dominate the politics of one town” when you can dominate the politics of a World SUPERPOWER! “DEUS VULT! AVE, IMPERIUM! AVE, CAESAR!”

    (Calvinistas and NAR getting together in Common Cause for POWER – like (Biblical example) Pontius Pilate & Herod Antipas becoming BFF’s against that pesky Rabbi from Nazareth, or (local example) Big Tobacco bankrolling anti-smoking activists to shut down Vape shops.)

  72. elastigirl: i, too, have observed that more demonstrative spiritual things happen in places where luxuries (material, technological, social) are scant.

      (Quote selected text)  (Reply)

    The cynic in me states that these are places where little if any verification is possible.

    If the master of the universe just games the system in arbitrary places when he feels like it then we’re pretty much ants in a farm.

    In the nineties, one of my high school class mates went into a mental hospital after serving as a peacekeeper in the former Yugoslavia.

    I don’t understand the nature of suffering and I get that for Christians death isn’t the end but arbitrary healings and resurrections are too much to buy into.

    This thread really has hit my trigger spot far more than anything else covered.

    Time to hit the escape pod.

  73. elastigirl: jesus was concentrated kingdom of heaven walking around on earth. this was brand new to planet earth. a cosmic WOW!

    I agree. See my comment on the previous Why a virgin birth? thread, it’s toward the end of comments.

  74. elastigirl: “the real power of God in a particular small country of SE Asia where persecution is high”
    +++++++++++++++

    i, too, have observed that more demonstrative spiritual things happen in places where luxuries (material, technological, social) are scant.

    We had some friends who started a medical clinic in a very remote area of Africa as a mission. They were utterly deluged by people with heartbreakingly extreme medical needs. Tumors that were immense due to years of non-treatment, diseases, parasites, injuries that had never healed properly. The need was so great, they worked long hours. No one was being spontaneously healed.

    I have noticed over the years that whenever discussion of miracles takes place, the subject tends to shift to what I would call grace; the unexpected mercies we encounter during times of need. We talk about medical interventions that have enabled healing that had been unavailable in previous times, we talk about times peoples’ immune systems have managed to fight off cancer or infection successfully, we talk about how the sun rises every morning and babies are born every day… But, we don’t talk about veterans having missing limbs spontaneously generated, we don’t talk about burn victims suddenly having fresh new skin generated, we don’t talk about blind people suddenly having sight – without medical intervention – we don’t talk about the dead being raised. We don’t talk about those things because they are not happening. You do not know anyone that this has happened to.

    In the Bible, Jesus imparted sight to people who had never seen. He restored limbs that were withered. He restored life to people who were definitely dead, not just having a near death experience. There was no ambiguity. There were no other explanations. Things like this have not happened since. I guess my question is, why is this so hard to accept? Do we think there can be no God unless miracles are happening? Does oour faith depend on believing that someone, somewhere, in some remote unknown corner of the world, someone we will never see or know, who will never be examined by a doctor, is said to have received a miracle?

    Terrible things happen to people who don’t deserve them every day. For every person who crows about receiving a miracle, there are multitudes mourning and grieving. Mourning is made more painful by the idea that God passed one over in favor of someone else for a miracle. Disappointmentiis made harder by wrong expectations. Honesty is always best. Compassion is best shown by walking with those who are in sorrow, not by encouraging unrealistic expectations.

  75. Re Bethel Church/Cult and its Dead Raising Teams:

    This reminds me of cult leader Cyrus “Koresh” Teed (1839-1908) and his cult of “Koreshianity” circa 1880-1920, which I first heard of in Donna Kossy’s book Kooks. (Hollow Earth Cult whose unique twist was “We Live on the Inside” through the principles of “Electro-Alchemy” and “Cellular Cosmogony”. Not surprisingly, it originated in upstate New York, America’s “Weird Religion Capital” of the time.)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_Teed

    The intersection with this post is after Koresh’s death in 1908 (around this time of year), his cult held vigil over his body, expecting him to resurrect himself. (Does not mention if prayers were involved). The county health officer stepped in and ordered a burial as Koresh’s body was getting over-ripe.

    When Koresh’s grave was washed out in a 1921 hurricane (coffin and remains never recovered) his remaining faithful claimed he had his (belated) Electro-Alchemical Resurrection.

  76. Headless Unicorn Guy,

    Sorry HUG. I’ve been a Christian for nearly 3/4 of a century – guess somewhere along the line, I started talking like one. I suppose there are some Wartburgers who follow what I’m saying when I go off on the condition of the church – those who can interpret my Christianese.

  77. Headless Unicorn Guy: This reminds me of cult leader Cyrus “Koresh” Teed (1839-1908) and his cult of “Koreshianity” circa 1880-1920, which I first heard of in Donna Kossy’s book Kooks.

    I’ll admit when I first saw this, I initially thought “David Koresh,” thought the dates were wrong but kept reading. I learned something new today! I didn’t know there was more than one guy running around claiming to be a Koresh. I read Teed’s Wikipedia and found out his son Douglas Teed was a not-insignificant American Impressionist painter. Thanks for sharing this!

  78. SiteSeer,

    “For every person who crows about receiving a miracle, there are multitudes mourning and grieving. Mourning is made more painful by the idea that God passed one over in favor of someone else for a miracle. Disappointmentiis made harder by wrong expectations.”
    ++++++++++++++++++

    so much food for thought. more than i can consciously respond to.

    yes, it is true what you say above in this excerpt.

    healing miracles happen, that defy explanation. but that is not the norm.

    i tend to see it all the way i do seeds.

    there are a few things in my backyard that amazingly shot up, seemingly out of nowhere.

    one day i noticed a sprout. a few days later it was suddenly a small sapling. i was curious. i kept watching to see what shape the leaves were, to see what kind of thing it was.

    before long i noticed oak-shaped leaves. (i was pretty pleased)

    it shot up to immense size in a very short period of time. it was so unusual. the same happened with a redbud tree.

    (unfortunately neither tree is in a convenient place, and will have to be removed)

    but it is intriguing to me how some seeds just shoot up — with power of some kind — in ways that are far beyond the norm for that species.

    it wasn’t a special seed. it wasn’t special soil. certainly wasn’t a special gardener (me). the conditions were simply right, at the right moment, for a POW.

    i see supernatural activity (in my view, it all stems from God, except for the clear presence of evil) as largely happening in similar ways: impersonally. it just happens. like what happened to the seeds in my backyard.

    it’s not because the seed or the person was more capable, more worthy, more important, more favored…. it just happened.

    another thought, in a sort of different vein:

    i think miraculous healing is like a butterfly – the more you chase it, the more it will elude you. if it’s going to happen at all, if you turn your attention to other things it may come and sit softly on your shoulder. (i sort of reworded that well-known quote)

    it’s a blessing, like a sunset is a blessing. it’s no respecter of persons. it just is. and is wonderful and praiseworthy.
    ———

    there’s so much to say… but all these thoughts/ideas seem to be completely disconnected from each other. or seem completely contradictory.

    like, a person with a gift of healing doesn’t fit in the paradigm above.

    all in all, i don’t think it’s possible to come up with a thesis on healing & miracles.

  79. Jack,

    “If the master of the universe just games the system in arbitrary places when he feels like it then we’re pretty much ants in a farm.”
    +++++++++++++++++++

    i see healing as a force like the weather. it just happens. we can’t do anything to make it happen.

    it stems from God, as of necessity. but i see it as impersonal. it just happens.

  80. SiteSeer,

    Site, I’m not making a joke. The thought came to me reading your response to Friend. Could some of times where someone was thought to be resurrected, in the African continent, were actually put into a coma like state through the use of natural opioids used in voodoo rituals?

  81. I think a big reason some Christians are fixated on raising the dead is that there is not enough attention paid to Jesus’ own Resurrection. Yes, he died to deal with sin, but that was something that happened *within* his resurrection as well as his death. Do read N.T. Wright’s “The Resurrection of the Son of God”, and the Greek Fathers who address this subject (carried on in the Eastern Orthodox understanding of the meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection).

    Because of Jesus’ Incarnation (the meaning of which also gets short shrift in western theology), all of humanity will be resurrected with a body (the Jews expected no other kind of resurrection), and the judgment will occur (God setting everything right). The resurrection of every person is assured. It’s no kind of failure if prayers for resurrection don’t “work”, or if a child or anyone else dies. It’s all there in 1Cor 15 and Rom 8.

    Dana

  82. Friend: Righteous bus driver saves barefoot toddler wandering in the street:

    If the bus driver doesn’t know Jesus, it’s just her own righteousness and it’s just filthy rags in the sight of the Lord.

  83. Samuel Conner: Mr. J wonders whether the reasons underlying the requests are not God-glorifying. My tentative theory is that the churches (and I include myself in this) simply aren’t as pleasing to the Father as Jesus and the earliest churches were.

    Let me say a hearty amen to that! The early churches were a mess from reading through Galatians, Corinthians (both letters) and the others. Yet, I have become personally convinced that if Paul, Peter, John and James were still writing letters today, they would be much more severe with us, especially as we have so many tools at our disposal, but we do not like to practice much of anything that has already been written. We need repentance! And it is not just the others guys, like Bethel here, but for each of us to actually look in the mirror and see what is there and do something with it beyond just going online and complaining about what other people are doing. While the finger-pointing is sometimes justified, if that is all we do than we are no better than anyone else, including the unbelievers…

  84. Fisher: In any case, every miracle I know of occurred in answer to concerted prayer by ordinary villagers (ie no stage, no “man of God” big shot involved). No one took credit for any of it. No one made money off it nor wrote books about it, nor promoted “their ministry” from it.

    Amen to that. That is the crux of it the reason why the prayers stopped working some 35 years ago for me. Now they have to be anonymous and that has become pretty much impossible in our culture. This culture we have of shameless self-promotion leveraging the name of Jesus, the Word of God and any kind of flashy miracle that might happen for fame and fortune is deeply, deeply offensive to the Holy Spirit. We have no fear of God and that is a very dangerous place to be.

  85. Max: No prayer … no power. One doesn’t have to look very far on the American landscape to observe the prayerless and unrepentant condition of the saints; and, thus, powerless. Consequences of our unfaithfulness are evident in every fabric of our society. Hell has launched a tremendous assault on America, and the church ain’t doing much about it.

    Amen to this too. Jesus only did what the Father was doing. Jesus could not have known what the Father was doing without the prayer time having a real relationship with the Father. We want all the benefits without investing the time in personal prayer. If we prayed, we might hear His voice and we might actually have our thinking transformed to be more like Jesus Christ. Then all this religious non-sense looks ridiculous. I am saying this out of my own personal experience. My values and ways of thinking have changed remarkably from when I was young. And I am not done for I want them to change more. That does not happen apart from knowing the Father personally. What is left but empty religious traditions and theologies that have no power?

  86. Muslin, fka Dee Holmes: But this whole situation struck me as just being demanding and commanding of God. I don’t recall anyone stepping up to Jesus and saying, “You will heal me/my child/my servant/my sibling right now! I demand it!”

    Agreed on this point. I think the biggest problem with the “prophetic” groups like Bethel and IHOP is the unbridled lust for spiritual power that is encouraged from the pulpit and pushed like heroin from the stages and conferences. The kids want to go lie on top graves of dead famous “saints” so they can soak up anointing and become great and powerful and the center of attention with their great spiritual power! They are like Simon the sorcerer whom was greatly and severely rebuked by the Apostle. To quote a Spiderman comic, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Men like Moses did have power but they had even greater humility. Christians should be seeking humility instead of power. Power corrupts but God is close to those who humble themselves.

  87. Aunt Polly: If the bus driver doesn’t know Jesus, it’s just her own righteousness and it’s just filthy rags in the sight of the Lord.

    Maybe you should re-read the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25.

  88. elastigirl: it’s not because the seed or the person was more capable, more worthy, more important, more favored…. it just happened.

    A likely reason for this is genetic. I read an interesting article recently about a woman who does not feel pain and who heals abnormally quickly because of a gene mutation. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/health/woman-pain-anxiety.html

    We tend to think we are all human beings, we are all alike, but we actually are also very different. Some bodies are more susceptible, some are stronger. Some plants are more vigorous than others.

    another thought, in a sort of different vein:

    i think miraculous healing is like a butterfly – the more you chase it, the more it will elude you. if it’s going to happen at all, if you turn your attention to other things it may come and sit softly on your shoulder. (i sort of reworded that well-known quote)

    I guess I think that we still need to define the word miraculous. The natural world is extremely amazing and awe inspiring. But there are things that cannot happen in it. The world cannot reverse its revolution and rotate backwards, for instance. If that happened, it would be a miracle. If water fell upwards, it would be a miracle. If a missing limb regenerated, it would be a miracle, because human limbs do not regrow. But a body healing itself is not a miracle, it is just the ideal result of the immune system and cell regeneration in action. Unfortunately, in this fallen world where there are many stresses to health, bodies do not always heal. But they are meant to heal, they are designed to heal, as long as you are alive, your body is doing its best to heal every minute. That is amazing and wonderful and very cool, but it is also natural, not miraculous.

    Or if we are going to use the word ‘miraculous’ to describe things that are wonderful and amazing and very cool, then we need another word to describe things that can’t happen/can only happen by the special intervention of the Almighty God, himself, suspending the natural laws of the universe.

  89. Brian: Site, I’m not making a joke. The thought came to me reading your response to Friend. Could some of times where someone was thought to be resurrected, in the African continent, were actually put into a coma like state through the use of natural opioids used in voodoo rituals?

    Well, who knows, I would think it could be possible. But I also think that when people want to see something happen badly enough, they can be very persuasive to convince themselves that they have seen it.

  90. Aunt Polly: If the bus driver doesn’t know Jesus, it’s just her own righteousness and it’s just filthy rags in the sight of the Lord.

    I guess she might as well have just run the child over, then, since it would all be the same to God?

  91. The elephant in the room of all this raising-the-dead insanity is the false hope lying (an apposite double meaning if ever there was one) at the very heart of most of the many christian faiths. Namely: that one day we can rise from the dead and live forever in a blissful state.

    The bible on which this particular false hope is based was written centuries upon centuries before any mechanical recording technology that could have verified its wild claims of dead people being raised, blind eyes seeing and limbs regrowing. As a number of commenters on this thread have observed, this is very convenient, and indeed “god” only ever does things thousands of miles away or thousands of years ago. Or, I suppose, things that were always as likely not to happen and are perfectly explicable as the result of chance.

    Tragically, there have been millions of precious children around the world who – just like the wretched children of Bethel church – were fed the false hope of a “god” who loves them, but who grew up and failed to discover or experience this “love”. Thankfully, many of them – unlike the lost children of Bethel – recovered from this disillusionment. Likewise, their discovery that there is no Santa Claus didn’t destroy them either despite what may have been a painful moment of cognitive dissonance.

    They went on to discover other sources of wonder and of love, more real to them than Santa Claus or god. They found that they don’t need to project a “god” onto chance outcomes that are pleasant, simply in order to feel thankful. And likewise they don’t have to cling to a belief in something that by definition can never be verified, simply in order to cope with chance outcomes that are not pleasant.

    That, surely, is the ultimate good news of jesus. We’re only “sinners” if we believe we are. But just as we’re free to imagine a world in which we’re miserable refuse in a universe that hates us, we’re also free to recognise that the universe is neither for nor against us – it doesn’t mind us. And if we want to, we can even imagine that the universe loves us. And nobody can tell us that the love we have imagined is any less real than the ground we stand on. It truly is indestructible, because that which never had concrete existence can never experience physical destruction. This is true eternal life.

    Undoubtedly.

    And yet…

  92. SiteSeer: I guess she might as well have just run the child over, then, since it would all be the same to God?

    In their twisted Mobius strip religion (Aunt Polly’s), I’m sure they could find some rationale to justify even the running down of a little girl “if god wills it”.

  93. As a 12 year old kid I experienced one of those lack of faith for healing shaming by my father. My dad would not let my mother take my 3 year old brother to the doctor for an ear infection. We were all standing around praying for him to be healed instead. After my brother’s ear drum ruptured, dad blamed one or more of the rest of us for it. This kind of thing just breeds more judgement as I certainly had enough faith and believed with all my heart, so it must have been the rest of the family’s fault.
    There is zero formula for healing. If you compare all the healing stories in the Bible, the “formulas” cancel the others out. I believe God intended it that way. And I know that is really what a lot of you are already saying here.

  94. Mr. Jesperson,
    Again, remember the classic distinction between Religion and Magick:

    In Magick (Crowley spelling deliberate), the mortal Sorcerer is in control, FORCING the Spiritual Powers/Forces/Beings to do the Sorcerer’s bidding — “MY Will Be Done!”

  95. Brian: The thought came to me reading your response to Friend. Could some of times where someone was thought to be resurrected, in the African continent, were actually put into a coma like state through the use of natural opioids used in voodoo rituals?

    Technically, “voodoo” refers to Voudun, the African-based syncretic religious and magical beliefs of Haiti. “Zombie” in its original meaning was also Haiti-specific; Zommbification has been explained as drugging into a coma-like “death” and “raising” them as a zombie by administering an antidote for the original coma drug, keeping the new zombie under control by keeping them drugged with a strong hypnotic.

    (Makes you wonder about the Koine Greek word translated as “Witchcraft” — Pharmakos — also the source of “pharmacy” and “pharmaceutical” like “Witchcraft” of the time involved use of psychoactive drugs. Shamans in various tribal cultures WERE known to use hallucinogens to enter the spirit world, and the various “Werewolf Ointment” and “Witch flying potion” recipes of medieval witchcraft turned out to be potent skin-absorption hallucinogens.)

    Since Voudun (and similar magic/religions) had a strong African component, it seems plausible. However, I haven’t heard of such rituals in actual West African cultures. Can anybody elaborate as to whether such things are actually found in West African folk magic beliefs?

  96. Brian: John 14:6;11:25

    While we’re at it, let’s just wonder why Jesus mentioned the Good Samaritan. Maybe some Bibles don’t come equipped with Luke 10.

  97. Muslin, fka Dee Holmes: I didn’t know there was more than one guy running around claiming to be a Koresh.

    Well, “Koresh” was the original-language form of the name “Cyrus”, so it’s not as unique as you think. Teed just backed out his name into the original spelling.

  98. Mr. Jesperson,

    I got caught up in the “renewal” of the 90s. The danger in all you said is that the experiences are very very real, physically real. All that pride and power you mentioned was a sign that helped pull me out of the counterfeit experiences. Once I realized I was not dealing with God, but the devil and/or hypnotism, it was easier to let go of it. You mentioned heroin. The devil can counterfeit the feeling of any drug. Ask almost anyone who got totally caught up in all the physical manifestations what they used in their past or what occult they were involved in, and everyone I have known personally had a past. The people who wanted the experiences and it didn’t happen to them, had clean pasts as far as those things. I have a giant box of what I studied about that whole phenomenon. Generations of churched people are naive to the counterfeit.

  99. Has anyone else noticed that the group photo of Bethel’s “Dead Raising Team” are all-male Manly Men (scraggly Manly not-quite-beards and all) showing off their Manly Muscles through too-tight black “DeadRaier” T-shirts?

    THEY’RE A CARTOON OF THEMSELVES!

  100. Patti,

    I do however want to be clear that I am not saying that everything at Bethel or any other very spiritually open revival movements are all counterfeit. Just because weird stuff is not happening in other congregations of Christians is no proof of all things being God either. I have also been a witness to some things that just cannot be explained any other way than miracles.

  101. Patti: Generations of churched people are naive to the counterfeit.

    Much of organized religion is a counterfeit bill. The only way to spot it is to know what the genuine looks like. The average church member would rather accept what they are served up, rather than spending time in personal Bible study and prayer to sharpen their ability to discern the genuine vs. the counterfeit.

  102. SiteSeer,

    “Or if we are going to use the word ‘miraculous’ to describe things that are wonderful and amazing and very cool, then we need another word to describe things that can’t happen/can only happen by the special intervention of the Almighty God, himself, suspending the natural laws of the universe”
    ++++++++++++++++++++

    here’s the strongest data i have on miraculous healing:

    an object showed up on a ct scan i had. that the object would develop was highly possible.
    so it was not a surprise when it showed up. the pain was unbearable.

    shortly thereafter, i had am MRI. the object was gone. “it’s serendipity….”, said the dr., with a very bemused look.

    the pain progressivly grew less, i returned to physical normal over the next few months. (the emotional road took many years)

    medical professionals called it a miracle. they did.

    at the time, that i should have to provide proof of this to anyone was the last thing on my mind or my parents’ minds — i was barely surviving. they were barely surviving.

    now, at the present time, that i should have to provide proof of this to anyone seems ridiculous to me. (not that anyone is asking this of me.)

    it happened. i am grateful. end of story.
    —————

    my aunt and uncle often lay hands on people and pray for them. my uncle has felt bones in a person’s back move, rearrange, re-sort in a jolting instant.
    —————

    there are many, many stories like these.

    the people to whom they happen are worn out, tired. they don’t have the energy to go through the hassle, time, & expense to get proof to satisfy others. they have no interest in satisfying skeptics. that they should be expected to do so is totally unreasonable, bratty, & a bit obnoxious.

    it happened, they are grateful to simply get on with their life.

    (i don’t mean to say that you are expecting or demanding this of anyone)
    ————-

    perhaps this is a summary, here:

    *i see miraculous healing as the body’s ability to heal itself radically sped up. in a way that leaves drs speechless.

    *i don’t know if there are scientific explanations for tumors, aneurysms, etc. disappearing, but perhaps that, too, is the body’s ability to heal itself (in ways yet to be understood).

    but who am I (or anyone) to limit miracles to things in the realm of possibility (just sped up)? who are we to say resurrection is not possible and has never happened (apart from Jesus’ activities during his life on earth)?

    *it is deplorable to observe miraculous healing tied to money-making.

    *it is deplorable to observe human suffering exploited for profit and to build careers, enterprises, platforms, agendas.

    (just as deplorable as ratcheting up the cost of life-saving treatments for profit, and holding desperate people hostage to them.)

    (or snuffing out the pursuit of cures for diseases because the disease itself is more profitable)

    *it is deplorable for people to demand proof of someone else’s miraculous healing, and to say or imply that it did not happen unless they’ve been adequately satisified with enough proof.

    *it is heart-breaking to observe people with dashed hopes when healing didn’t happen.

    *suffering people are vulnerable… vulnerable to others who use such circumstances for their own self-involved purposes.
    .
    .
    miraculous healing happens, which leave drs speechless. miraculous healing doesn’t happen. it’s all complex, & emotionally complicated.

  103. With respect to original post.
    I wish I had a dollar for every time someone said “it was a miracle” that so and so was healed of some medical condition, and medical now say they are healed, especially when it comes to cancer.

    First off, what immediately comes to mind in these situations is that my faith does not increase or decrease based on these “testimonies”… And, why is “so and so” special, when there has been so many martyrs of Christianity over the centuries?….. let alone “Godly saints” that have suffered heavily in this world. Is this person saying that their situation is more “holy” than all these others? This is especially true for the extremes, such as Dee’s example above.. But, I keep my mouth shut because some people will sayI am just lack faith, am cynical , extra..

    Second, medical science is imperfect, and the human body can heal itself without modern science intervention in many cases ( it is rare, but it happens). Even the nastiest cancer have a few patients that bet the odds…. the very fact that medical science use statistics ( probability) to predict outcomes of diseases demonstrates this..

    Third, Jesus told us to pray that the FATHER’S will be done…… while I am not saying we should not pray for what we want, but it seems pretty clear that Christ is saying we should want what the “FATHER’s Will” is….. I have heard plenty of prayers that are pretty much focused on what the person praying “wants”…

  104. PS,,
    I like history, and have read/studied enough about the US Civil War to be downright “shocked” by the number of wounded soldiers that survived their battle wounds. At best, medical care during that time was barbaric by our standards… heck, they did not even know that bacteria caused infections, and the practiced NO sterile technique when they chopped off limbs left and right due to the nasty damaged the big bullets they used. ANYONE that survived that was a miracle in my book…. And there are thousands of examples… i have seen estimates that over 40,000 survived amputations!!

  105. Patti: The devil can counterfeit the feeling of any drug. Ask almost anyone who got totally caught up in all the physical manifestations what they used in their past or what occult they were involved in, and everyone I have known personally had a past. The people who wanted the experiences and it didn’t happen to them, had clean pasts

    I won’t question your experience, but mine differs.

    I was the unwilling witness of a scenario in which a 19-year-old Baptist performed an “exorcism” on a 20-year-old Presbyterian. The “exorcist” had convinced the “possessed” guy that his commonplace youthful experimentation had opened doors and allowed demons into his soul. This is the same message now preached by Robert Morris to the Gateway mega throngs, except now the doors open when people do not tithe enough.

    It’s a fear tactic.

    God is far more powerful than the other guy.

    Souls do not have doors.

    Demons cannot infest souls.

    The “possessed” guy was a born-again churchgoing baptized KJV-only Christian choir member long before this “exorcism.” The “exorcism” did not change him. He continued to lack social skills: it was his abruptness and awkwardness that attracted the “exorcist” in the first place. This whole experience just scared the heck out of everybody who knew about it. By design.

  106. Patti: Ask almost anyone who got totally caught up in all the physical manifestations what they used in their past or what occult they were involved in, and everyone I have known personally had a past. The people who wanted the experiences and it didn’t happen to them, had clean pasts as far as those things.

    That’s interesting. The para-church business we were part of in the 1990’s, that was heavily into The Toronto Thing when it happened, wasn’t like that, I have to say; that is, there was no apparent link between people falling over and barking like fish, and any occult or otherwise unclean background. I didn’t experience any manifestations, despite (in those days) desperately wanting to; but I don’t think that was because I was meritorious. I’ve concluded instead, over the years, that although most of it isn’t God, it’s not statin either. It’s just auto-suggestion. (I recall a comment by HUG’s writing partner on Todd Bentley: “I didn’t see the Holy Spirit; I didn’t see any demonic spirit. What I saw was a con man working an audience.”)

    A few years ago, I heard an American laddie give a talk on the history of the various Awakenings, and other revival movements, in America. He observed something that fascinated me at the time – I’d never heard it before – and it still does. He described large scenes of open-air preaching and the like, in which many people were shaking, crying out, barking like fish etc etc. Where Torontoness is concerned, that’s the sign of God moving on a person, of course. But then he said, drawing from contemporary sources as best he could, that these people who were manifesting were not the holiest and most spiritual ones. On the contrary, they were the ones who were resisting God.

    There are one or two very clear conclusions that I’m strongly tempted to draw from that. I’m wary of doing so, because the contexts are very different (I’m not a contemporary eyewitness to the The Great Awakening stuff, for one thing). But I’m autistic, and I suspect that although in certain respects I’m very gullible and easily fooled, it also means that I’m not very readily suggestible. So, I’m quite comfortable being the last man standing in a charismatic setting.

  107. Friend: The “possessed” guy was a born-again churchgoing baptized KJV-only Christian choir member long before this “exorcism.” The “exorcism” did not change him. He continued to lack social skills: it was his abruptness and awkwardness that attracted the “exorcist” in the first place.

    Whether he, too, was autistic or not is impossible to tell just from that. But I, and people like me, attract a lot of sheight from christians like your exorcist laddie.

  108. Nick Bulbeck,

    He entered a profession that attracts a lot of folks on the spectrum.

    Hmm, this could further explain the divide between STEM folk and the religious.

    I’m sorry that happened to you.

  109. I read that preliminary autopsy reports (48 hours) are public record in the state of California, unless there is reason(s) not to release coroner’s report.

    The reporting on this story is curiously silent to date.
    A lot of “miracle talk” but not a lot of objective, investigative reporting.

    I wonder what this might have looked like if there was no connection to popular church culture —
    Or no watchdog group constantly taking vital signs related to such public displays.

    For example, what if a not so pretty, not so religiously connected woman called all news broadcasts and publications begging that the world pray for her child, who died without a known cause, to be resurrected from the dead.

    Do you think the creditable rags would air her plea?
    Do you think the same cool faithful musician scene would “follow” her prayer requests and comments on Instagram?

    You see, I don’t think there’d be a mountain of “believers” hash tagging for such an unknown, not so famous, not so pretty desperate mother, do you? think the news-people would have made a few calls — done more investigative reporting… and it’s highly probable that such a mother would be considered either the ultimate gas lighter or… suspect.

    I am reminded: “God hates favoritism”
    So, this story has revealed a lot, hasn’t it?
    If you were a shy two year old would you feel safe popping back to life in the midst of such a loud, public crowd?

    I am reminded: “Let the little children come to me….”
    I think if I was a shy one, I might leave the crowd to find the lonely place where Jesus goes away from the crowd.
    I’d want to disappear too — If I was two-too…

  110. elastigirl: *i see miraculous healing as the body’s ability to heal itself radically sped up. in a way that leaves drs speechless.

    This makes sense, and it may very well have been the way the human genome conducted ‘repair’ procedures before the double helix got effed-up by Adam.

  111. Patti: The devil can counterfeit the feeling of any drug.

    So can Social Media(TM).
    Or anything that causes the adrenal glands to release regular large hits of Dopamine into the brain chemistry.
    DOPAMINE. The Pleasure chemical responsible for Addiction.

    You can even pay $1200 a seat for Silicon Valley seminars given by biochemists and psychologists on how to make your new smartphone App as ADDICTIVE as possible, i.e. “the dopamine hit on every tap and swipe”. There’s even a Social Media App development firm in my area called “Dopamine Labs”.

  112. Friend,

    Divide between STEM folk and the religious? My Mom has a friend who is a Methodist and a computer engineer. Worked in R&D for Ball Aerospace. My Aunt had a married couple for friends, the husband was a climatologist for the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The split between science and religion is a straw man argument.

  113. Brian,

    Thanks. I should have been much more clear, and I also know quite a few science folks who are religious.

    It does seem that folks with Asperger’s and autism are a bit more drawn to STEM fields than to other lines of work. So imagine a STEM workplace where some of these very same people have also been harassed by self-proclaimed exorcists. That workplace might have a lower enthusiasm for religion.

  114. I will offer a couple of anecdotes I have firsthand knowledge of, for whatever they might be worth.

    First… my best friend, whom I have known for more than 30 years, had classic, unmistakable, and medically diagnosed bipolar disorder. I can attest to firsthand observation of countless manic-depressive mood cycles, from extreme grandiose delusions with the accompanying destructive behaviors to multiple suicide attempts and everything in between. And I can attest with equal certainty that she has been completely free of those things since God healed her. (It’s been about 6 years, as best I can remember.) Even her psychiatrist at the VA, while not willing to accept that she was miraculously healed, has amended her medical record to read “bipolar disorder, in remission.” As far as I know, there is no such medical thing, but the doctor cannot explain how it could be that she has not had a single bipolar episode in the intervening years.

    Crucial to this story is what she heard God saying (not audibly) while the pastor was praying over her. (Which is another story in itself. She did not go to ask for healing prayer that day.) As she tells it, it went something like this: “Look at me. Look ONLY at me. Do NOT pull a Peter and look at the waves. Look at ME! You can have this!” In obedience she focused on God alone, and He healed her. It was God’s will alone; not the pastor, not the patient. God decided.

    Those reading this who have experience in the medical field can just imagine what happened when she told the doctor she was going off her meds because God had healed her. That, of course, is a classic bipolar delusion, and she told the doctor she knew exactly what her declaration sounded like. Kind man that he is, the doctor said, “Well, I’m rooting for ya, but just remember I’m here when you need me.” He was of course fully convinced that she would be back quite soon needing to go back on meds. As the months and years went by and he saw the consistent lack of bipolar symptoms, he had to admit SOMETHING had happened, although AFAIK he is still unwilling to acknowledge an actual miracle.

    Second thing. Another friend of mine, lifelong believer, worship team musician and small group leader, a couple of years ago left the church we had both been attending. During the time I’ve known her, she had spoken favorably about Bethel and had visited Redding. She seemed to be convinced on the matter of the alleged falling gold dust (which sounded hinky to me) but otherwise I never saw anything disturbing in her theology. And I was in a small group with her for several years, as well as being on the same prayer team. (In fact shortly before she left our church, she prayed over me and the chronic whiplash I had endured after stupidly riding a roller coaster went away from one minute to the next.)

    So about a year ago, for reasons not pertinent to this discussion, I met up with her one Sunday morning and attended the service at her (very small) current church. I found out later that it’s a Bethel offshoot, but until this most recent dumpster fire on steroids I didn’t realize just how far off the rails Bethel has gone (assuming it was ever ON the rails). At that service, I didn’t hear anything particularly hinky coming out of the pastor’s mouth, but the “prophetic painting” and “prophetic dancing” completely mystified me. A woman in the front row waved a couple of scarves in the air during the worship music set, and all it “prophesied” to me was the recognition that she must have had good strong arm muscles, as she kept the show up for the entire set. Hey, if somebody wants to add some innocuous physical thing like scarf-waving to their worship participation, be my guest, but don’t try to tell me it is somehow “prophetic,” especially when no “prophecy” is forthcoming! Meanwhile, the pastor’s wife spent the entire service seated at the front, with her back to the congregation so the canvas on her easel could be seen, and over the course of the service she painted a starfish. At the end, she got up and announced, “I painted a starfish.” Well, okay, but what was its significance, prophetic or otherwise? Was I supposed to know what it meant without being told? Gee, I guess maybe the spirit wasn’t with me that day. /sarcasm

  115. Friend: Hmm, this [autism] could further explain the divide between STEM folk and the religious.

    Do you know, this had never occurred to me; but it might.

    Oddly enough, autistic/STEM folks are extremely religious (IMHO), but their religion is characterised by devotion to abstract principles like which programming language is best, or who would win in a fight between Palpatine and Gandalf (no kidding – this debate really happened, and it got very nasty indeed).

  116. Headless Unicorn Guy: You can even pay $1200 a seat for Silicon Valley seminars given by biochemists and psychologists on how to make your new smartphone App as ADDICTIVE as possible, i.e. “the dopamine hit on every tap and swipe”.

    Or you can go climbing, for much less than a kilodollar. Had a serious crack at a 6c+ problem this evening; while I didn’t manage the monster dyno, nor even the lesser dyno above it, I did at least get off the ground for the first time. Indeed, I did over half the route. Went to the climbing wall feeling listless, unmotivated and down; came back ready and raring to go.

  117. Patti: I do however want to be clear that I am not saying that everything at Bethel or any other very spiritually open revival movements are all counterfeit. Just because weird stuff is not happening in other congregations of Christians is no proof of all things being God either. I have also been a witness to some things that just cannot be explained any other way than miracles.

    Amen to that. The Devil loves to sow confusion by making sure the real is so mixed with the fake that the real is almost completely drowned out by the fake. Then you have people like Dee and others here who question everyone and everything that claims to be a miracle with show me proof and even then I am going to doubt it. They forgot that Jesus did not praise doubting Thomas. If you have experienced the real, as I have had, then the fake becomes really obvious like a bad magicians trick.

    My miracle is my two feet. I can take pictures of them, but if you are already totally cynical you will claim that either, those are not my feet in the pictures, or that I am lying about their former condition. I have no before and after pictures, but if I did, the skeptic would simply say I am lying and those are not pictures of the same feet. So faith is still required to please God. Miracles are real, but they are far rarer then charlatans like Bill Johnson claim.

  118. StillWiggling,

    “At that service, I didn’t hear anything particularly hinky coming out of the pastor’s mouth, but the “prophetic painting” and “prophetic dancing” completely mystified me. A woman in the front row waved a couple of scarves in the air during the worship music set, and all it “prophesied” to me was the recognition that she must have had good strong arm muscles,”
    ++++++++++++++++

    as i see it, God just needs a willing, yielded vessel. whether a dancer, painter, singer, bank teller, grocery checker, teacher, engineer, scientist, mother, father, son, daughter, grandchild…

    God can move through anything, speak through anyone.

    just as God parted the Red Sea by way of the physical action of Moses striking it with his staff, God can move through other physical actions. they don’t need to be big.

    i think we underestimate what it means to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

    i’m a musician. you better believe i count on God inhabiting the music i make. To move, to do. if i painted, i would count on the same.

    when i make dinner, i count on it. if nothing else, i believe food prepared with love is somehow more nourishing for the eater than food prepared with anger, frustration, & agitation.

    (doesn’t mean it’s a sin we have those feelings, when cooking or otherwise)

  119. Muff Potter,

    it’s interesting to me how babies generally seem to have healing power in them, to some degree. if they get a cut or wound of some kind, they heal extremely & remarkably quick.

    not sure how this factors in… the propensity to decay hasn’t set in yet, perhaps. who knows.

  120. elastigirl: God just needs a willing, yielded vessel. whether a dancer, painter, singer, bank teller, grocery checker, teacher, engineer, scientist . . .

    I get what you’re saying. All I meant was that whatever might have been happening in the spirit realm with the scarf-waver and the starfish painter, there did not appear to be any edification for the rest of the body. (Which brings to my mind the scripture that says if there is no interpreter, the speaker [of tongues] should keep silent.) Now, if the painter had offered even a tiny little something to explain the significance of the starfish with perhaps a parable, an analogy, or even a memory, as long as it gave glory to God, I could “get” that. But her “I painted a starfish” seemed to have about as much significance as “I got a haircut” or “I had toast for breakfast.”

    I too am a musician, and one of the few times I played with the worship team most recently, I actually asked if I could stand at the back of the stage with my back to the audience in an effort to slap down my ever-present performer’s ego and keep it from rearing its ugly head and making it about me and my talent, rather than about being a vessel for God. Needless to say, the worship leader said no. 🙂 And I think he had a point… if he had accommodated my odd request, people likely would have spent their mental energy wondering just what in the heck I was up to, rather than being led into the presence of God. I wonder what his answer would have been if I had asked to play from backstage (i.e. completely invisible)…. No, I’m not the least bit shy about performing in public, but worship isn’t about performance.

    And because I come from a church background where no one was physically demonstrative in worship, anything beyond hand-raising (which I’ve gotten used to) I simply don’t “get,” I guess. Especially when it seems to be more of a spectacle than anything that offers edification.

  121. elastigirl: the people to whom they happen are worn out, tired. they don’t have the energy to go through the hassle, time, & expense to get proof to satisfy others. they have no interest in satisfying skeptics. that they should be expected to do so is totally unreasonable, bratty, & a bit obnoxious!

    I sympathize with this position. The root of the problem with cynicism is that for Christians who claim that there are no miracles at all going on anywhere in the world today, they have to believe that absolutely 100% of everyone who claims to have seen one or experienced one themselves are lying. That is a rather extreme position. So while it is obvious that most claims are false and there is much lying out there, to claim EVERYONE is lying is to have an extremely low opinion of others. And yet they claim to believe that there once were many with Jesus and his disciples. Is Jesus alive or has He died again for good?

  122. StillWiggling,

    Yes, I have many experiences to tell about, including what I believe is my own healing from bipolar (manic depressive back then). It was before the Toronto thing though and I won’t get into what I believe about it being demons with me or not or whether I was a real Christian yet or not. But two of my stories back up the dual nature I was talking about at Toronto. I went there not really knowing what to expect. The preaching at the beginning of the first night I was there was very sound, just your basic good old fashioned Gospel message. Weird stuff happened around me and to me later though. I did have a real healing from a thyroid disorder. But I had a false healing of my back. False healings can happen with all the dopamine or other chemicals like someone was saying earlier. But when that high wears off, later after the revivals, no one hears about how that healing really never happened. There is a book called War on the Saints written by Jesse Penn Lewis a hundred years ago. I lived that book during my Toronto days. It explains it all. The most important take away from that book if anyone cares to research it, it is free to read online, is her list of the subtle differences of the workings of the Holy Spirit from the flesh or evil spirits. But the first thing I see not allowed in revivals that go amok like Bethel, is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit as in the gift of discernment. And that was what I recognized at Toronto and others like it. They do not like “wet blankets.”

  123. Nick Bulbeck,

    Testimonies of first hand experiences are quite diversified. The perspective of the speaker you heard would really be affected by either his own experience or no experience. I’ve actually only heard of a few rare people who experienced what I did and came out on the other side to declare that it was not God when at the time I thought it had to be because I really did think the devil could do that. But just watch some clips of what missionaries have taken of idol worshippers or watch Hindu meetings and then watch Toronto style meetings. Same. And same. Most people who experience what I did still cling to that it was God. We don’t like to think about that we let ourselves be deceived. For years it bothered me that I was in a very lonely place because on the one hand I was rejected by the ones who said I was grieving the spirit by saying it wasn’t God. And in the other hand I was snubbed by people who claimed they would never have let it happen to them in the first place. Actually I think those were the people your speaker was referring to as resisting God. They were labeled the not so spiritual people. Anyway, I could write a whole book on my one week in Toronto in 1995

  124. Patti,

    Interesting points… My fundy/evangelical background does not include “speaking in tongues” but we sure had allot emphasis on emotional “ revivals” and shaming if we doubted any of the “claims”…. and there definitely was not any subsequent “accountability”… which contributes to my cynicism.. and feeling/thinking I was manipulated..

  125. Dee,

    I want to say first that this is an outstanding article. I think you are exactly right about the primary purpose of Jesus’ healings being to identify who He is. And the point about raising a 90 year old man is exactly what I have thought about.

    It’s interesting to me that we don’t really see any commands in the NT to pray for the dead to be resurrected before the last day. We see commands and exhortations to pray for the sick, but nothing about raising the dead that I can think of.

  126. Patti: watch some clips of what missionaries have taken of idol worshippers

    As a lifelong Christian, I would wonder about the motivations and biases of such clips. Who is seriously calling any living person an idol worshiper? I assume this is not about idols such as pop stars or money.

  127. Robert,

    Agreed! Having gone thru my own experience of preparing for the possible death of my daughter caused me to seriously consider this topic. My daughter survived. I’ve been asked if I think it’s a miracle. I don’t know. I am grateful to God for showing me mercy and am also grateful that my husband and I had a medical background that helped isn’t make some difficult decisions. One of those was finding a pediatric neurosurgeon and neurologist who understood the need to go slow in her situation. I look forward to figuring out the intricacies in heaven.

  128. Robert: It’s interesting to me that we don’t really see any commands in the NT to pray for the dead to be resurrected before the last day. We see commands and exhortations to pray for the sick, but nothing about raising the dead that I can think of.

    There is Matthew 10:8 –

    Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.

    Now, obviously, this was given (among numerous other instructions at the time) specifically to the apostles, and on one occasion, so you’re quite right in saying that we’re not meant to do any of these things.

  129. Nick Bulbeck,

    Slight tangent here, but I was pondering the onerous obligation to love christians. Christians in the UK are unbelievably patronising and it would take a miracle for me not to hate them. But then I noted: the commandment to “love one another” was also given only to the Twelve, was superseded by the scriptures, and is therefore not for today. (How can we need love when we have scripture, which is greater than love? The very idea is absurd.)

    Obviously, there are those who will question my approach. But clearly, there are many context-specific commands in scripture that we are not meant to obey. Nobody would suggest, for instance, that we’re all meant to go and wash in the Pool of Siloam. The key to responsible biblical christianity is exactly what it has always been: namely, to select the correct set of commands that do apply to us, and the corresponding correct set of commands that don’t.

  130. Several years ago, I had a serious back injury. My doctor warned about the risks of surgery, which could potentially cripple me for life. A specialist said I would always deal with chronic pain, with or without surgery, and that I should treat myself as a “back patient” for the rest of my life. While I considered my options, my wife handed me the following verse copied from her Bible:

    “I will restore you to health and heal your wounds, declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 30:17).

    I taped that verse to the base of my computer screen, where I saw and read it every day. Years later, it is still there.

    That passage – a text lifted out of its context – “spoke” to me in a way that I can’t explain. Soon, the pain subsided and I began to be restored to health. I now walk and live normally, with no chronic pain. Miracle healing? My personal experience is not open to the argument of others.

  131. Patti,

    “But just watch some clips of what missionaries have taken of idol worshippers or watch Hindu meetings and then watch Toronto style meetings. Same. And same”
    ++++++++++++++++

    although, i think christians associate the stiffly buttoned-up, privacy-favoring western culture — with its puritan heritage — with God.

    in my observation, spirituality (of a God/Holy Spirit kind) reflects the culture and any adopted culture of a place.

    as i see it, God is inherently the most multi-faceted thing in the universe. God is no more American or Baptist or Pentecostal than God is Samoan or Nigerian or Indian…. or Martian.

    i’m pretty sure God-activity in the ANE in OT and NT times looked nothing like what is on display at First Baptist Church of Anytown, USA.

    (…and now i sound like i’m lecturing — i don’t mean to. just thinking out loud, here)

    Jesus was not American. He wasn’t western. when Jesus went into the wildnerness to pray, i imagine if we jumped into a time machine and jumped out in said wilderness we American christians would think, “what kind of weird religious thing is happening over there? must be some kind of a shaman or mystical priest…”

    we’ve been influenced by western-imagined portrayals of Jesus. portraying in our own image. (which isn’t a criticism — artistic imagination has to start somewhere. it starts and ends with what we’ve been exposed to)

    as i see it, God responds to whatever openness God is afforded, in whatever style or approach.

    kind of like people do.

    inward people become more outward the more they are with outward people. outward people retreat to some degree the more they are with inward people. private people become more open the more they are with gregarious and open people.

    very occasionally, God by-passes all that and responds unpredictably and unusually. which can be shocking.

    these are simply my observations and how i understand them.

  132. Max: That passage – a text lifted out of its context – “spoke” to me in a way that I can’t explain. Soon, the pain subsided and I began to be restored to health. I now walk and live normally, with no chronic pain. Miracle healing? My personal experience is not open to the argument of others.

    I believe you Max.

    “Yet I argue not
    Against Heav’n’s hand or will, nor bate a jot
    Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
    Right onward.”

    — John Milton —

  133. Nick Bulbeck: The key to responsible biblical christianity is exactly what it has always been: namely, to select the correct set of commands that do apply to us, and the corresponding correct set of commands that don’t.

    As you well know, no two sets of ixtians can agree upon just what set of commands are binding and which are not. I can only conclude therefore:
    ~ biblical christianity is a sheep of height ~

  134. Muff Potter,

    There is, of course, a very specific context to the phrase “Biblical christianity is a sheep of height”. With that proviso, I couldn’t agree more!

  135. elastigirl: as i see it, God responds to whatever openness God is afforded, in whatever style or approach

    I agree. That is why I believe the Holy Spirit does not leave a place or people just because the devil shows up there also. Which means I believe the evil spirits also work when given place to. I do believe there are distinctions to observe of what is and is not God. Jesus said even the very elect can be fooled. I still believe that I experienced some counterfeit, and so does one of the people I was at Toronto with. There was a staff member who was praying for my friend after she had manifested something like falling down. Later when we were all questioning our experiences, my friend had said to the rest of us, “oh, I thought it was strange that the Holy Spirit worked like the evil spirits from the new age guru I used to follow.” We said “what?!” She continued, “ya, she (the staff prayer) tapped off my Polaris.” We gave a louder “What!?!” She said that the prayer kept a pinch at the tip of her index finger and that that was what her guru used to do to “hold the spirit inside of her.” I’ve got many more stories, a couple of my own first hand too. So, I hear what you are saying about culture and I am totally open for different expressions. But some stuff is just really “off.”

  136. Max:
    Several years ago, I had a serious back injury.My doctor warned about the risks of surgery, which could potentially cripple me for life.A specialist said I would always deal with chronic pain, with or without surgery, and that I should treat myself as a “back patient” for the rest of my life.While I considered my options, my wife handed me the following verse copied from her Bible:

    “I will restore you to health and heal your wounds, declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 30:17).

    I taped that verse to the base of my computer screen, where I saw and read it every day.Years later, it is still there.

    That passage – a text lifted out of its context – “spoke” to me in a way that I can’t explain.Soon, the pain subsided and I began to be restored to health.I now walk and live normally, with no chronic pain.Miracle healing?My personal experience is not open to the argument of others.

    That is so awesome!

  137. Max,

    Amen Max! It is exciting our Lord healed you from a life of nagging chronic pain which means His Word is still alive and working amongst us. One cannot argue with the truth of one’s experiences with regards to our faith in our Blessed Hope!

    What a great testimony! A blessed new year to you Max!

  138. Patti,

    “she (the staff prayer) tapped off my Polaris.” We gave a louder “What!?!” She said that the prayer kept a pinch at the tip of her index finger”
    ++++++++++++

    well, now i’m curious.

    ‘kept a pinch at the tip of her index finger’ — i don’t quite understand. i can’t picture this. what exactly did the pray-er do with her index finger?

  139. As a kid I attended bethel youth group at times for youth activities. I they didn’t seem nutty twenty four years ago. Nothing is shocking me anymore.

  140. Shauna: As a kid I attended bethel youth group at times for youth activities. I they didn’t seem nutty twenty four years ago. Nothing is shocking me anymore.

    Different leadership now. After a while, any institution will take on the personality of its leader.

  141. Patti: Jesus said even the very elect can be fooled.

    I agree with most of what you have written. Jesus did indeed say this with regard to signs and omens (Matt. 24:24 and environs). This could refer to con artists. The overall message is to remain steady in the faith and not chase rumors during bad times.

    That is not the same as demons showing up at a Christian worship service and doing Christ-like things.

    I grew up in a youth group that paid more attention to demons than to God at some sessions. This teaching harmed me for years. Scripture has admonitions against that too.

    I believe in miraculous (medically inexplicable) healing, as well as medical cures and the body’s ability to recover. The first-hand experiences here are awe inspiring.

  142. Brian,

    There certainly is; the third vowel in Larry Norman’s name occurs three times in “Toronto”, since the “y” in “Larry” is a vowel. Not only that; the Toronto meetings use amplified music, and Larry Norman was a well-known proponent of amplified music. Thus he was a major influence over the Toronto movement.

  143. Patti: Jesus said even the very elect can be fooled.

    I think about that verse every time I look at the political climate.

  144. Re: In a time of great grief and confusion, after “believing” for the miracle of resurrection with a call to world-wide prayer, the physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausted mother of little Olive writes:

    “ Olive, we miss you, love you so much and we’ll see you soon. We know now more than ever that King Jesus is good and His every word is worth believing and following at any cost. That’s the song we’ll sing until we’re with you again and we finally sing it together. We cannot wait,”

    I say, without skin in the game — without a dog in the fight — Come, let us reason together for the sake of what appears to be, in the least, a child’s reasoning, and could be symptoms of a greater sorrow….

    As a creative, I’ve written in various voice and tense. This process has helped me better know One Teacher over all teachers, The Creator over all creators, The Creation over all creations…. Sometimes I have written in public internet comments (Like here and now), other times, not. Just as I talk to myself, I write to myself, so I can be easily misunderstood. There was a time when that was frustrating to me, now, not so much.

    Friend.

    So, with that said, I now listen to the voice and tense of Olive’s mother’s communication. I look for first person, present tense pronouns. I look for [I] and [me]. I wonder, if Olive is in a place where she believes they can’t sing the same song, who’s she talking to? I look and listen for what I know as “Christ in me is to live…”. And “ I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

    I don’t see it —
    I will look and listen again:

    “Olive, we miss you, love you so much and we’ll see you soon. We know now more than ever that King Jesus is good and His every word is worth believing and following at any cost. That’s the song we’ll sing until we’re with you again and we finally sing it together. We cannot wait,”

    For many, the “we…” in this declaration is more than acceptable. It is common in some religious circles for “leaders” to present an illusion of invisibility using “we” when speaking from the platform. Is Olive’s mother speaking from a platform? “We…” subliminally suggests an equal plain — a “we’re all in this together” assumption.

    Now, please allow me grace as I advocate for The Child. Firstly, “We…” was not the mother of the two year old. Precious Olive was the daughter of one mother.

    I noticed that one of the campaigns at Bethel Church is “On earth as it is in heaven….”.
    Unseen is real, but it can’t be made or built into something MORE real when it is seen by the “we” who can not comprehend, nor understand the essence of time and space, here and now, seen and unseen.

    “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

    Olive’s mother states: “We know now more than ever that King Jesus is good and His every word is worth believing and following at any cost.”

    It appears that, in the name of “we” (Bethel Church and ministry) was not and is not “convinced” of the Love of Christ. The communication seems to imply that now, because of Olive’s death, and what followed, they now know “more than ever”. Curious, and a bit confusing, it appears Olive’s mother is speaking directly to Olive while at the same time declaring a distance so great they’d not be singing the same song…. Additonally, the reader, as part of “we” is subtlety lured into planting this thought — sharing the mother’s voice.

    The is very concerning.

    I am reminded of the simple, and maybe wise lyric from a Bon Jovi song, “Living on a Prayer”. I have compared and contrasted the message with some of Bethel’s lyrics and notice that a lot of the praise songs have an “at any cost” kind of we-warriors theme…. “We Won’t be Shaken”, etc. Jon Bon Jovi seems to respond with: “You live for the fight when that’s all that you got.”

    I see and hear, “At any cost….” and “We’re not finished yet…” like warrior cries while the death of a child lay at their feet.

    At the core of this, I hear something else…. ”At Any Cost” is part of the We pronoun
    Confronting ”Grace is Sufficient” as part of the Me pronoun.

    The confrontation implies Grace is not sufficient, and the “kingdom work” is not finished…
    until Jesus comes back. It seems to reveal a vailed gospel — thus evidence of what is perishing. I have compassion for those losing their breath in the name of a Jesus. . .

    I am reminded: “ …What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Certainly not! For He says to Moses: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then, it does not depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.…”

    The battle has been won.
    There is no reason to fight, The One who won.
    There is no more cost to be paid….

    So, I wonder, did Jon Bon Jovi write something true or not?
    Is he speaking of himself or “we” or… me when declaring, “[You] live for the fight when that’s all that you’ve got”?

    I will answer for myself.

    At the end of the day, I will fight for the protection and advocate of The Child. (On earth as it is in heaven). I am sick and tired of the abuse “in Jesus’ name” (and in the name of “we”)

    Every child has one mother.
    She is not a “we…”
    She is not afraid to speak in the first person, present tense, past tense and future tense.

    “I love…”

    No child should carry the load of a public figure “in the name of Jesus” seen or unseen. ( I do believe, dear friends that is a “biblical precedence” for this!). There is no greater love.

    Thank-you for helping advocate for the Innocent One, Warburg….
    I am dead serious too, too….

    (Look, I used the pronoun, me).

    It appears in this one

  145. One part of responsible Christianity is to be very aware of what may be happening.

    It isn’t rocket science to get a basic grasp of mind science. Some schools are teaching the hows and tips and techniques to grade school kids as part of arming them against the sales techniques of the unscrupulous. Your grandkid or child may recognize “oh now the music is supposed to make me feel relieved and happy” or “those colors and that music together are supposed to make me angry and make me want to join their cause and fight on their side by using their telephone service”. They get the appeal to emotion much better than we sophisticated adults, and are better equipped than we are to call bs when need be.

    Here is a suggestion: most churches either live stream, offer videos of the services, or at least won’t through you out too roughly if they catch you using your smart phone to record at least the audio of the service. If you are finding yourself all caught up in emotion, or fantastic happenings, or really good music, or whatever, try listening to the sermons without the glitz and glitter and band. Listen to it relaxed, but alert, stone cold sober and privately with pause button and Bible in hand. Would you buy the message if it were not part of the whole package? If not, keep searching. You deserve better than Elmer Gantry.

    Ironically when we moved here we tried a church “online” first and found the sermons very astute and very good. But when we tried the church the manipulation level was very high, and very obvious. Our spirits would shut down and we would think “horrible sermon.” Listening to it later at home we would find the same sermon actually quite good. We decided the Holy Spirit was letting us know high alert would be needed, because if the preacher put up with the other stuff we could assume he approved and was in on it.

    We found better.

  146. Friend–just a quick reflection re calling any living human an idol worshipper. When we lived in one part of the desert southwest those clips would have shown by people coming out of that particular native culture into Christianity. Having lived it, they “got” the fact it was idolatry much better than we Anglos that did not really believe in evil spirits, or who were raised not to be judgmental of other cultures.

    Sometimes the bad stuff is really idol worship. Sometimes it is really Satanic. And sometimes it is just fakery.

    I currently live in a highly Pentecostal and highly charismatic area. There are some good guys and some awesome goings on. But the manipulation and fakery and plain evil is very high also.

    Buyer beware.

  147. Let’s consider the example of the conflict of interest in Redding CA.
    What if there was reasonable cause for the prosecuting attorney to file formal charges?

    If the PA department and the civic government are benefiting from Bethel “ministries” and “partnerships” how do you think justice can prevail?

    Some might suggest a change of venue —

    In a loud, crowded, “global church” mosh pit, where might there be a “change of venue”?!!
    Can there ever, EVER be an attitude of “no matter the cost” if the truth is the cost has been paid in full?

    Think!
    It’s not a sin!

    Sincerely,
    Studenteacher

  148. As mentioned before, when I was about 19 I was in the middle of prayers that resulted in three miracles. They were:

    1) A toddler fell into a pool and drown. It was a pastor’s first born. The kid was resuscitated but doctors said she was mostly brain dead and gave the parents no hope beyond being a vegetable. This was on a Saturday. Next day the whole church was called to prayer and fasting for little Amber White. The next Sunday she was in church with her parents and had no signs of any brain damage. The doctors had no explanation as to how this happened. I was one of many who fasted and prayed as I was close to this youth and music pastor. This person, as far as I know, is still alive and married living in the Phoenix area somewhere.

    2) A high school girl had badly injured her foot and severed the nerves, that do not grow back. She was in a cast for almost a week and told that would be permanent. We were told the doctor had shoved a pin into the middle of her foot and that she felt nothing. After a mid-week class I was grabbed by the same pastor just mentioned to pray for this girl that I had never met before. A small group of me, the pastor, and some high school students began praying for her. Her injured leg soon grew hot to the touch. We thought God was doing something so we prayed more. We took off the brace and her foot was very hot. As we continued to pray, we saw her start to wiggle her toes and then we all went Pentecostal in that room. She walked out that night without the brace and with normal feeling and movement fully restored.

    3) Not too long after those events I met this young 18 year old woman who was brought to the Singles group I was a part of by a friend of hers who was a regular. She had not been coming too long when she received some dire news after going to an eye doctor for some problems she was starting to have. The doctor told her that she had a degenerative eye disease and that there was no treatment available for it. She was counselled that she would go totally blind in a very short period of time and that she should sign up quickly for blind school because it is easier to start the lessons while you still have some sight left than to wait until you have none. We remembered Amber White, and so the single’s group decide to declare one day for fasting and prayer, before her next doctors appointment. I did on that day along with others. A couple of days later she went to that doctor and he was beside himself. All traces of the disease had vanished and he said that what had happened was impossible!

    There were some other healings too at a different church when I was a kid. My dad, whom never became a believer had a non-malignant growth on his neck and my mother put him on the prayer list at that church. Between doctors visits the growth mysteriously disappeared shortly after his name was added. That doctor also had no explanation as to where the tumor had gone. So, to those whom would say that the gift of healing is dead, and so is the Holy Spirit (there His gift, not ours) I say poppycock! Just because these things never happened in your church ghetto segment, it does not mean that these things never happen anywhere on the planet…

  149. Mr. Jesperson,

    Thank you for your anecdotal stories of healing. I asked for something more in-depth than that. A complete documentation of the illness which means X-rays, doctors’ notes, blood work, etc. Anecdotal experiences are not proof of a miracle. You told me hearsay evidence about what the doctors’ said or believed. There Is only one way to prove that Asl the person to get a copy of their medical record and then let the church claiming the miracle read the notes and see the tests. Until that time, you have no proof what happened.

    Also, spontaneous remissions of cancer are well known. This happens in people who were not prayed over and were not believers. Sometimes, a person’s own body can rally and fight the cancer. Is such an occurrence a miracle?

    Before shouting poppycock, please do the hard work of a person who really investigates the truth. Get the indisputable facts. Your stories prove nothing.

  150. linda: most churches either live stream, offer videos of the services, or at least won’t through you out too roughly if they catch you using your smart phone to record at least the audio of the service. If you are finding yourself all caught up in emotion, or fantastic happenings, or really good music,

    Most? I’m not sure. Plenty of people don’t get bowled over by the emotion of the service, because the service is not designed to bowl over the emotions.

    Life has enough emotion. Church does not need to add more. I’d rather leave my emotional burdens behind at church, and leave feeling quieter and lighter.

  151. Captain von Trapp,

    Do you have any facts about a potential prosecution, or are you just trying to imagine an explanation for this series of events?

    (Interesting, two “Sound of Music” references in aliases…)

  152. dee,

    “A complete documentation of the illness which means X-rays, doctors’ notes, blood work, etc. Anecdotal experiences are not proof of a miracle. You told me hearsay evidence about what the doctors’ said or believed. There Is only one way to prove that Asl the person to get a copy of their medical record and then let the church claiming the miracle read the notes and see the tests. Until that time, you have no proof what happened.

    ….Before shouting poppycock, please do the hard work of a person who really investigates the truth. Get the indisputable facts. Your stories prove nothing.”
    +++++++++++++++++++

    dee — i really appreciate this post and the opportunity to process and dialogue.

    but why do you need proof? i don’t think you doubt that God can heal.

    i was healed of something life-threatening. it disappeared. doctors/nurses called it a miracle. it took some months for the pain to leave and things to right themselves.

    it changed the course of my life.

    i didn’t get documentation then because i was too preoccupied with pain and surviving. my family’s lives were in tatters at that point.

    i didn’t pursue documentation in the months/years following because quite frankly i never imagined someone would demand it of me. even if people had reservations about the veracity of my story, they were happy for me and said thank you to God.

    i’m not going to pursue documentation now. it was 32 years ago. i doubt any of it still exists. i don’t have the time, the need, nor the interest in satisfying anyone’s need for proof.

    people can exploit others’ healing experiences for money or to build a ministry or agenda platform.

    similarly, i think people can exploit others’ healing experiences by tearing them down in order to build some kind of anti-miracle agenda platform. or anti-spiritual gifts agenda. or anti-charismatic agenda.

    if your position falls into that last category, in part or in whole, i’m quite sure you aren’t intending to exploit.

    but i have to say – it feels harsh and cruel.

    i’m hoping you are simply happy for me.

  153. Friend–services not designed to hit you emotionally? Wish I knew where you live. Where I live almost all of the churches are most certainly designing engendering emotion into the service. Took us 1 1/2 years to find one that does not. If you get busy on google you will find tons of info for “worship leaders” that are specifically teaching how to arouse emotional responses of various sorts.

    Like you, I do not go to church for an emotional experience. If the Holy Spirit stirs my heart and I have one, fine and dandy, but I do not want some “worship leader” deciding on Tuesday that at 10:16 a.m. Sunday I need to cry or laugh or quack like a duck.

    I’ve seen and read of some interesting happenings when churches decide to “fast” the music and the production side of things for a set period of time. Amazing how many people will refuse to attend if they are not going to get their dopamine fix.

    And while I believe currently manipulation is more likely with contemporary music and concert worship, I have seen it done with a pipe organ and great hymns and a shyster preacher. When style becomes more important than content, or used to manipulate, then it becomes a problem. No matter what the style.

    And in Colorado and where I live now, yeah, MOST churches either live stream, or post sermon videos or audios online. Even tiny low tech ones use cell phones and a youtube channel. If not a person can simply audio record the sermon when they visit a church and then later in the week compare what they thought of the sermon Sunday with what they get without the hype later in the week by relistening.

  154. elastigirl: i don’t have the time, the need, nor the interest in satisfying anyone’s need for proof

    In John 9, the Pharisees investigated the healing of a man born blind. They called this miracle of Jesus into question by repeatedly interrogating the poor man. He continued to repeat his simple testimony when questioned how this could have happened: “I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see.”

    Frustrated, the Pharisees threw the man out of church. Jesus went looking for him. Jesus will stick with you when the church won’t.

  155. Maria/Captain Trapp

    Do not use different names to sign in. Yo0ur comments have not been approved because they are quite confusing. Also, they are quite lengthy.

  156. The most humble man born lost his head to the appetite of a king for a dancer . . .
    There is Order to Life.

    ++++++

    Desert Dweller
    A lone man on the sand —
    I was there in the air
    Dark dust dancing ‘round your head
    Like the raven’s hope —

    Olive Tree.

    There are words here in the mist —
    They beg and bother the dust-dancer’s soul

    Ask
    What
    You
    Wish

    The earth…
    To care for the earth.
    To be near The Teacher —

    Hope deferred makes the heart sick
    Me, thought of as nothing….

    The sun shines through the mist
    And the colors cover the Dust Dancer

    Desert Dweller

  157. dee,

    Why do you ask?
    You know.

    I read that the length of a comment is not an issue. Did you change your policy?
    Additionally, creative writing should not be a problem for you… unless it is.

    If you have a question, ask.
    That would be a true advocate, would it not?

    “Whistles are for dogs, not for children and not for me!”

  158. I have determined, that the explaining and debating has caused a kind of short circuit in the watch-dog’s mind. It appears that people have “married” the words and titles of the internet and so its become a kind of culture confused by communication outside the realm — depending on victim’s to survive.

    Now, unless you can convince me with proof otherwise —
    Unless you’ve prepared another place for me where I am understood more than a debate…

    I am using one email address.
    What does my name matter unless it is easier for a “reader” to stereotype?

  159. linda: Where I live almost all of the churches are most certainly designing engendering emotion into the service.

    Your situation sounds frustrating, and I’m glad you found a good place even though it took some time.

    I live in the famously dying mainline and go to a church with a liturgy, organ, choir, readings, sermons written just for us, etc. The style is venerable but not for everybody, and I would not feel right recommending any church or tradition to anyone. But you did get me thinking. Catholic churches also tend not to have praise bands, nor do Orthodox, Quaker, and probably Anglican and many of the smaller Lutheran and Presbyterian denoms.

    What helps me is described in Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” I believe this is a gradual and often quiet process, worked out over a lifetime.

    What helps you? 🙂

  160. elastigirl: proof?

    I don’t think folks here are questioning other folks’ “I was healed” stories, or the Gospel stories.

    Some people are questioning stories that come second and third hand, and are even wondering about the authenticity of things they experienced in the past.

    I believe you, and I’m happy for you. 🙂

    If you don’t mind a slight tangent, I did heal inexplicably well after some innovative medical treatment. The doc was delighted, and willing to say he didn’t know what worked. He asked to keep studying my case over time, to figure out what he might do to repeat the success with other patients. It’s interesting to see a doc who is comfortable with the happy mystery, yet determined to see how he can help.

  161. AProblemLikeMaria,

    Oh, and then the people of zeros and ones said, “What about me? I can put it all on a screen and you all can call it a tool. With a little editing and more pixels, you will look brighter and better than life itself! You’ll sound so, so… nice. It will be so inspirational. Hey, Jesus himself will come back on the internet! How else will “the whole world” know at the same time? We’ll all be behind some kind of screen and respond to: “Lights, Camera, Action… like all good actors responding to their director…. Let’s say satellites are what the book of Revelation means by “angels’!”

    Satire — but I don’t think its funny.

  162. “ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

    And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

    And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

    And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good….”

    Do you have a problem with sea lions?!!

  163. linda: It isn’t rocket science to get a basic grasp of mind science. Some schools are teaching the hows and tips and techniques to grade school kids as part of arming them against the sales techniques of the unscrupulous. Your grandkid or child may recognize “oh now the music is supposed to make me feel relieved and happy” or “those colors and that music together are supposed to make me angry and make me want to join their cause and fight on their side by using their telephone service”. They get the appeal to emotion much better than we sophisticated adults, and are better equipped than we are to call bs when need be.

    My favorite TED Talk on the subject:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S0FDjFBj8o

    (Previous postings of this link have attracted comments that “this looks and acts just like a Megachurch Sermon!”)

  164. linda: I’ve seen and read of some interesting happenings when churches decide to “fast” the music and the production side of things for a set period of time. Amazing how many people will refuse to attend if they are not going to get their dopamine fix.

    They can always try crack, crystal meth, or their latest tap-and-swipe smartphone App.

  165. elastigirl: ‘kept a pinch at the tip of her index finger’ — i don’t quite understand. i can’t picture this. what exactly did the pray-er do with her index finger?

    Not sure myself, but it sounds like the pray-er held or pinched either her own index finger or that of the pray-ee. Never heard the term “Polaris” in this context, though.

    Could be one of those quirky “spell gestures” that start somewhere and go viral among their group; some sort of superstitious gesture or “ritual”.

  166. AProblemLikeMaria,

    “Additionally, creative writing should not be a problem for you… unless it is.

    If you have a question, ask.”
    ++++++++++++++++++++++

    creativity will reach a new height if it moves from indulgent to true communication.

    there’s not enough intelligible material there to begin to formulate questions.

  167. Friend,

    tangents are my middle name.

    that’s great, how you healed. truly marvelous.

    it’s all so complicated & confusing. life itself is marvelous. perseverance is marvelous. courage and bravery are marvelous. the life to come is marvelous. suffering sucks… it absolutely sucks. (understatement)

    yes, you are right — the questioning is honest, and not personal.

  168. Friend–yes, we chose a liturgical church. But while ours is very high church, many in our denom are not. Praise bands abound. We transferred so much I have pretty much learned I can worship high church, low church, in between, liturgy lite, house church, style is not important IF it is authentic to the people gathered. My latino neighbors would not have found german high church authentic, my current german/norwegian/high church folks would not find a rollicking latin service authentic. Authentic for me could easily also be a southern gospel community church. But put that same format and music together to “perform” and manipulate and I gag.

  169. elastigirl: creativity [on the part of a certain commenter] will reach a new height if it moves from indulgent to true communication.
    there’s not enough intelligible material there to begin to formulate questions.

    I agree; they’ve started early this year, haven’t they?

  170. Nick Bulbeck,

    Creativity? Bah! This pseuds’ commune couldn’t create graffiti. No wonder it attracts drool from people who need alter-egos.

    You’re all rubbish.

    Up Yours,

    Roger Bombast

  171. Roger Bombast: No wonder it attracts drool from people who need alter-egos.

    A slight change of spelling would have interesting implications: altar instead of alter…

  172. Mr. Jesperson: So while it is obvious that most claims are false and there is much lying out there, to claim EVERYONE is lying is to have an extremely low opinion of others.

    It’s not accurate to say everyone is lying. Many people are personally convinced of what they are saying. That doesn’t mean the facts they relay convince me. But it is not the same as a purposeful lie. Some people are more impressionable than others and some are very positive thinkers who have a propensity to see things through a rose colored lens.

  173. Patti: I’ve actually only heard of a few rare people who experienced what I did and came out on the other side to declare that it was not God when at the time I thought it had to be because I really did think the devil could do that. But just watch some clips of what missionaries have taken of idol worshippers or watch Hindu meetings and then watch Toronto style meetings. Same. And same. Most people who experience what I did still cling to that it was God. We don’t like to think about that we let ourselves be deceived.

    Another possibility besides God or the devil is that some kinds of maladies are responsive to positivity, to support, to encouragement, to hope. These things can have a huge effect on many kinds of disorders.

    When you feel surrounded by support, hopeful that good is going to happen and that God is on your side, it can have a powerful relaxing effect on emotions and on tight muscles, and on natural endorphins that the body can produce.

    We know that certain body chemicals (the fight-or-flight/stress chemicals) can have a harmful effect on the body over years of time. It stands to reason that the chemicals our bodies produce in response to positive things can have a good effect on our health. Norman Cousins wrote a book about his experiment with this idea, called “Anatomy of an Illness.”

  174. Mr. Jesperson

    I have read your entire comment to me. You make assumptions about what I think and believe without asking questions.

    Once again, I ask you for proof of what you say, not anecdotes. If miracles occur (and I believe they do) you better have some evidence, especially when you are claiming medical miracles which will involve documentation via bloodwork, X rays, MRIs, physicians notes, operations, denial.etc. Until I see those, I will withhold my opinion.Withholding an opinion is not the same as

    From this point forward, why don’t you send me an email and when I have time I will respond to you> I’m not debating your opinion of my personal beliefs regarding miracles.

    PS: My husband became a Christian at Dartmouth College while attending a charismatic group.

  175. dee,

    “Thank you for your anecdotal stories of healing. I asked for something more in-depth than that. A complete documentation of the illness which means X-rays, doctors’ notes, blood work, etc. Anecdotal experiences are not proof of a miracle. You told me hearsay evidence about what the doctors’ said or believed. There Is only one way to prove that Asl the person to get a copy of their medical record and then let the church claiming the miracle read the notes and see the tests. Until that time, you have no proof what happened.”
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++

    dee — this is totally unrealistic.

    it is unrealistic and unkind to ask this of the person who was healed. physical illness/injury is so traumatic that even after healing has taken place the person’s life and that of their family are absolutely shredded.

    it is unrealistic to ask it of a person who has prayed for someone else who experienced physical healing. i can’t imagine asking someone i prayed for who may have been miraculously healed to pursue all the proof you are demanding. it’s incredibly intrusive and presumptuous.

    i somehow have a feeling that no amount of proof will be satisfactory. there will always be room for suspicion and doubt.

  176. SiteSeer: We know that certain body chemicals (the fight-or-flight/stress chemicals) can have a harmful effect on the body over years of time. It stands to reason that the chemicals our bodies produce in response to positive things can have a good effect on our health.

    You are right. However, the patient’s power is limited, and patients recover even when they are stark terrified.

    It’s good to empower patients, but we need to make sure they are allowed to work their way through normal emotions associated with a bad diagnosis and pain. Otherwise patients will blame themselves for not smiling their way to recovery, and others will blame them too.

    Personally, I think access to good medical care, and help from a loving advocate or companion, help healing more than simply being happy. (There are studies about isolated folks having poorer health outcomes, and lack of care is an obvious risk to health.)

    Regarding the power of happiness, though: inner peace is an end in itself, whether or not I get better. God is with us in the worst times and the best.

  177. What if God is not the problem because he always wants to heal/restore/make new? What if there is such a thing as a learning process that we are all invited to sign up with God where we learn to see even more things than what Jesus himself has done while on earth (reported in the Scriptures)? Faith is like a mustard seed, right? So there is very probably such a thing as faith maturing and growing into a deeper understanding of what it means to trust in what God says is true and to put that above our circumstances. I believe that is what Bethel signed up to do: not rest until they grow up more and more into that faith that moves mountains. We are desciples. We are the ones that learn, not God. Why not? And while we learn, we encourage each other and seek to connect instead of separate (listen to the accuser)…

    Let’s pursue a culture of honor as we grow up in him.

  178. Is our faith dependent on a hearsay account of a resurrection in Africa being true? I doubt it. I have met people, though, whose faith is very dependent on being kept wrapped in cotton wool so that it can never be meaningfully tested. For these people, it’s vital to keep “faith” to matters that can never be either proved or disproved. “Faith” is not only completely separate from reason and/or tangible consequence, but even sits in opposition to them.

    It may be that people like this honestly believe the “jesus” they’re following is “real” – at least, in some metaphorical sense. But it’s difficult to know how to relate to them. We’ve seen at first hand how angry and hostile (or, by the same token, patronising and dismissive of our science backgrounds) they can be if we offend their beliefs with evidence from our own experience. But at the same time, we can’t relate to them in the same way as to our openly atheistic, pantheistic or polytheistic friends. Nor do we really think we should.

    There are several reasons why we’re largely Done with church. It’s not only to do with predators and sociopaths in churchianity, building businesses dressed up as churches. It’s as much to do with the simple – if sad – realisation that we have so little meaningful in common with it.

  179. I’ll just say this … if I died … and living in the Glory of Jesus Christ, the worse thing one could possibly do, were to call me back to this place! Why do people think that this is a “good” thing? Sadly, far too many people are still bound up in this world rather than the world to come. Sadly, this is a story of parents who grieve, as parents should do in this situation, and are placing their hopes in worldly answers rather than in Christ.

  180. Just a thought
    Could you please help me to understand what you are saying? Are you saying we should go along with this stuff because they are really trying to trust God to raise the dead when it is quite clear that such a thing does not occur amongst Christians who are as devout (and maybe more so) and possibly more theologically astute than Bethel?

  181. dee,

    i’m totally interrupting, here — my thought:

    demonstrative ‘things’ (the observable impact on living matter from God’s presence/God’s touch/God’s activity) isn’t a reward for or measured out according to how devout one is or how refined one’s theology is.

    from experience/observation, i think openness (individual and corporate) is more a part of the equation.

    there are things that happen in our every day life that more easily happen when we relax and the less we try. they happen as we let them happen. i think we all can think of at least few things that fall into this category.

    i think receiving from God (whether inward or outward things) is very similar.

    i don’t think there’s a thesis that can be formulated on these questions & topics.

    which is good — if the God of the universe can be contained in box of human-making, that should be cause for great concern.

  182. Brian: I’ll just say this … if I died … and living in the Glory of Jesus Christ, the worse thing one could possibly do, were to call me back to this place! Why do people think that this is a “good” thing? Sadly, far too many people are still bound up in this world rather than the world to come.

    Beware you don’t go out-of-balance in the other direction.
    So tunnel-visioned on the Hereafter that the Here-and-Now ceases to exist.
    In my experience and reading history, THAT’s been a greater danger.

  183. Muff Potter: I think Stevie Wonder sang about this very thing…
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXsxvdF481I

    I remember a background element from Paul Maier’s historical novels Pontius Pilate and Flames of Rome. If he’s accurate (and given his background and the rigor of his novels he most likely is), in the early Roman Empire (around the time of the Book of Acts) you had extreme skepticism conjoined with extreme superstition and magickal thinking. Upper-class Romans who went through the motions of the Roman State Religion while sneering “Gods? There are no Gods” internally, yet would not get out of bed in the morning without first consulting astrologers and/or soothsayers to read the omens. Extreme skepticism mated with extreme superstition.

  184. Headless Unicorn Guy: Has anyone else noticed that the group photo of Bethel’s “Dead Raising Team” are all-male Manly Men (scraggly Manly not-quite-beards and all) showing off their Manly Muscles through too-tight black “DeadRaier” T-shirts?

    Just hit me:

    From their grooming, muscles, dress, and pose…
    ARE THEY RAISING THE DEAD THROUGH THEIR SACRED TESTOSTERONE?

  185. JustAThought: aith is like a mustard seed, right? So there is very probably such a thing as faith maturing and growing into a deeper understanding of what it means to trust in what God says is true and to put that above our circumstances.

    So what you are saying is that some poor kid whose parents are not as grown up in the faith will die from her leukemia while those kids who have leukemia and whose parents believe like Bethel does will be cured of their cancer? So it becomes a faith game. My parents are more faithful than your parent so you will die and I will not?

  186. dee,

    I don’t know whether emdy’s still reading this thread, so I may’ve thought too long and hard about commenting again.

    Preamble

    You’ll be familiar with Carl Sagan’s iconic “Pale Blue Dot” – the photograph of the earth taken by Voyager 1 from a distance of nearly 4 gigamiles. From that distance, the whole earth, with all its teeming life and complexity, was barely even a single pixel. But the converse is true – from earth, at least to the naked eye, Jupiter (a regular feature of Wartburg post photographs) is a tiny, featureless bright dot.

    Amble

    There are two ideological centres of gravity in this thread: God_Heals and God_Does_Not_Heal. As any one of us gravitates towards one of them, our favoured orbital centre gets steadily nearer, and we recognise all of its subtleties and complexity. While we are aware that our beliefs are imperfect and still evolving, we believe them to be balanced and nuanced. And they probably are, to be fair; at least as far as they go. Equally, the other orbital centre gets steadily further away until it appears as a monochrome dot. Everyone orbiting that is invisible, as is any complexity or nuance in their locality, so they’re clearly all wedded to the same noxious extremism.

    In other words, people who tend towards God_Heals are crackpot dupes of the new apostolic reformation. Or something.

    At the same time, people who tend towards God_Does_Not_Heal are all liberals and atheists. Or something.

    There is, perhaps, a third body in this metaphorical solar-system; e.g., God_May_Or_May_Not_Heal. Presumably these people are all agnostics. Or something.

    I’ve never directly encountered someone who became seriously/fatally ill by refusing or discarding medication on the grounds that it represented unbelief. But there are many stories about this happening, and I’ve certainly seen a well-known prosperity gospel con artist caricaturing chemotherapy before stating that if you sent free money to her, God would heal your cancer.

    I’ve often heard christians here in Scotland pray for God to heal people through the wonders of medicine. If he does, then he certainly seems to prefer doing it that way than through spiritual authority or by faith. But he still doesn’t heal everyone, even by the wonders of modern medicine. If I lived in a place or time without insulin, I would have died soon after being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. People still do. For every person crowing about their affordable healthcare, there are many people suffering in poverty without it. So that form of miracle can’t escape a slew of tough questions either.

    I’ve experienced marginalisation because I didn’t fall over when prayed for. Then again, Lesley was ostracised by a strong vocal group in a local congregation near here when she tried to tell her own story of being healed of chronic and debilitating asthma. We’ve prayed for things for years and seen nothing; and we’ve seen amazing breakthroughs that we knew in advance would happen because God told us. (I won’t explain that phrase here.) We’ve also experienced amazing hostility from christians over the phrase “God told us” (and equivalents).

    Then there’s all that tantalising rubbish in the bible, and the many questions it raises. When Peter said … what I have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk! he was neither praying to God, nor attempting to control God. Did God give that just to Peter, or Paul, or Stephen, or to the church? If the latter, when – and why – did he take it away? If he didn’t, why IS it apparently so hard to restore it to working order? If God used to do that, then when and why did he stop? What did Jesus mean by “I call you servants no longer, because a servant doesn’t know his master’s business“? If “healing” is psychosomatic, then by what process did Peter heal the laddie mentioned above? (Indeed, is the idea of some mysterious and ineffable combination of unconscious and invisible neurochemically-induced responses merely a proxy for “god”?) If miracles literally happened in 1st-century Judea but don’t any more, then what else was incumbent upon 1st-century christians that we don’t have to do any more? If God doesn’t raise the dead any more, will he ever do it again?

    I’m 51, unemployed and autistic (with the corresponding weak CV). People like me – on any of those three counts – cannot realistically look forward to a career. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying, or even praying. Maybe it IS god’s will to steer me towards a job, and he’s willing to let slide the idea of my gaining comfort from believing my prayers influenced it. Or, just maybe, he wants me to have a relationship with him such that he and I can actually talk about it. That is the hope to which I cling: the hope that God really is like Jesus of Nazareth.

    Hated_Heretic_Bill_Johnson has said that he doesn’t have a theology of suffering because he refuses to have a theology for something that should not exist. There was a context to that, but regardless, I think he is wrong. God himself chose to suffer, and therefore we must have a theology of suffering. But God also chose to Do Stuff among humans, so we must also have a theology of God Actually Doing Stuff.

  187. Nick Bulbeck,

    Nick, I had the same with my son, who is autistic. The church labelled him as naughty, a bully, in need of a good hard spanking, and implied I was to blame because I didn’t submit to my abusive husband and allow him to beat my son any more than he already had. I am beyond angry, and sorry that you experienced similar.

  188. Liz,

    So sorry to hear of your experiences too, Liz. I’ve just read a book called “Neurotribes”, which is partly a history of our understanding of autism from Hans Asperger onwards, and partly an inspirational rallying-call for autistic people (and, by extension, the parents of autistic children). Even very recently, autism was blamed on emotionally distant “refrigerator mothers” – predictably, it was never blamed on emotionally hostile “aggressor fathers”.

    It sounds like you may’ve had it tough from both sides – secular and religious. I hope you can find a more supportive community.

  189. Nick Bulbeck,

    I am very glad for your input here. For someone who claims to be autistic and agnostic, your comments reveal you have profound insight, sensitivity, nuance, and deep faith in God.

  190. Preliminary coroner’s reports are of public record within 24 – 48 hours of autopsy.
    Reports are sealed and not available under the Freedom of Information Act if there is ongoing criminal investigation.

    How are victims of religious abuse being proactive and helpful in this case?
    A focus on doctrine and supernatural beliefs reveals and results in a blindness overall.

  191. And the chatbot’s back!

    Doesn’t seem to be able to recognise a defunct thread, though.

  192. Nick Bulbeck,

    Please.

    Can you participate in a logical discussion?
    There is a very good teaching here.

    This is quite possibly an example of the kind of religious abuse some people who write here have found themselves.
    What is similar, what is not? It seems to me that would require a higher lever of intellect. I’d like to push myself beyond the true, not true, true, not true, miracle, no miracle, faith, no faith slow and thick minded debates.

    I’d like to think-tank with a person with heart….
    But if there is no one, I talk to myself..

    I’d think that after so many years, there would be some wisdom and outside the box, creative collaborative care that could help.

    No?

    Why would I be wrong thinking that I could find the kind of care on this site?

  193. Nick Bulbeck,

    Have you lost the ability to know the difference? That reveals a lot, does’t it?

    Would you depend on your own detective-programs to know what is human and what is not human? I am not a “chat bot”. I didn’t create chat bots!! Not knowing the difference? THAT would be the result of the “marriage” of a fan-base and the belief that value and worth is determined by “feed back”.

    But that is not a computer problem, is it? The POZO’s just named it all to mimic their own brains — the way they thing. It’s sick. ALL in the name of innovation, unity and what was needed to “start up”? A few “rich young rulers” and the “blessing” of church people to start a little bank and investment club as a means of… “fellowship” riding on the coat tales of the world they say they want to save?!!

    It’s no big deal to carry around baby I-device and tend to it’s every “cry” without ever needed Heart?!!
    What is that thing… “Kills, steels, and destroys”. (“In the name of Jesus” and “building his kingdom” right?).

    I say no. I say not right.
    Look? Who cares for me? The many?
    No, they’re make another rule and claim it’s part of their direction “moving forward” no able to see one.
    One person….

    No standing —
    Always “moving forward”.

    So, what does that say about the MANY who don’t know the difference?
    What does that say about their “angel of light” and “let me see your beauty” concept when they’re tramping all over the soil of The Redeemer?

    If Christ’s death was dependent on betrayal and the exchange of money to buy and sell place-information, would His Life not be evidence of the same thing by his “followers” and “disciples” (never mind the argument about miracles and the argument about bible translations and a new pronoun needed for G-d!! THAT is problematic, and… revealing).

    I find this this whole “strategic plan” , at its core, dependent on…………… the makings of the hands of man, so much so that it threatens to take the breath away from…. me!

    No Heart, no genuine care?

    The person who believes they can write or speak on “the state of the Church” apart from The Church is deceived….
    This is not a matter of an opinion to debate.

    Sincerely,
    Job 37 – 41

  194. Ken F (aka Tweed),

    The last deluge of words convinced me 100% that it’s a chatbot. You’ll notice that the capitalisation of the “song title” name has changed, from camel-case (just initial capitals) to lower case. Also, that the last comment was entirely devoid of any meaning. It was a string of random paragraphs, none of which related to any of the others.

    Were I to create a chatbot (I haven’t yet, but I’m tempted to try to make a chatbot alter-ego that says random nice things to regular Wartburgers), I’d program it to parse the thread looking for instances of its own name; that way, it can detect when one of its comments has prompted a response. At the same time, I’d also program it to look for the word “chatbot” and put in a few rudimentary rules that would make it give a response denying that it was a chatbot.

  195. Nick Bulbeck: The last deluge of words convinced me 100% that it’s a chatbot.

    I agree. I wanted to send another comment just to see if and how the chatbot would respond.

  196. Nick Bulbeck,

    I don’t need to try and convince you I am a Real Person. I am outside the jail of that kind of thinking. . .
    Now, consider the title of this article and ask yourselves if it reveals an understanding of compassion for victims of religious abuse, or in fact participates in the abuse by not identifying the real issue at hand.

    Simple.

  197. I don’t need to try and convince you I am a Real Person. I am outside the jail created by false accusations and those who wait in judgment for “the proof” all the while exposing their love of carrion.

    Now, consider the title of this article and ask yourselves if it reveals an understanding of compassion for victims of religious abuse, or in fact participates in the abuse by not identifying the real issue at hand.

    PS your attempt to “discern spirits” is old news.
    Simple.

  198. Imagine the Creator allowing such things like… chat bots to be created.
    How merciful to show people like you how paranoid you can be and how dependent you are on being fed a line or two so you can test…. How merciful to reveal your lack of trust in “them” through some technological invention so you and other POZO’s could create a scenario where you’d appear blameless.

    But the truth is……
    It was created by judgment of the human being not being trustworthy.
    And………… everyone believed that is true… or “them”

    So the answer? A computer chat bot and some test?!!

    You were warned.
    You didn’t listen.

    It’s not about a football game “sports fans”