Willie T

"Yes", I believe he worships the same God. Does he have heretical views? "Yes", I believe he has heretical views. What does "having heretical views" mean? To what I am certain will come as a shock to many people reading this, "heresy" means "having views that are not the same as Traditional Views." Does that make him "wrong?" Maybe "Yes", maybe "No." In honest truth, it just means he doesn't hold to what I might have been taught in Bible School. But, I was taught that "repent" meant "to feel sorry." I was also taught that "The eye of a Needle" was a very small gated opening in a larger wall that only an unloaded camel could traverse by inching along on its knees (for entry to the city after the main gates were locked for the night) So Traditional Teachings" aren't necessarily correct teachings.

I will repeat. The quote you posted didn't call your Christianity into question. I believe I said that same thing when you posted it a while ago... WHERE is the questioning?

So, you have called or written him? What did you say, and what was his reply?

So you have bravely reported me again? Am I supposed to be surprised? For what? Disagreeing with blind bias? I have called no one names, I have not said even one person was not a Christian. What is my horrid crime? I doubt it will happen, but I would ask that the mods would be objective, and look at ALL the posts in this thread. I think it will be seen that some "crying wolf" the loudest have said some of the more hateful things.

Which one of you has said even one single word to the people you say are wrong? I would guess, not one of you. But you have made post after post about them here where no one in their organization or anyone even thinking about them much even hears your words. It has even been said that theirs is a "doctrine of demons." Not my words, but a direct quote from one of you. I have only repeatedly said that is not what Jesus told us to do. Whether you like it or not, they worship the same God you and I do, and they are brothers and sisters. Jesus gave us a very explicit path to follow when we feel someone else (another Christian) is wrong. I will simply ask, are you, or is anyone here, following the path Jesus gave us?

Go back and find one sentence where I said their doctrine was correct. You cannot do it. I have plainly said several times that they are misguided in that. My entire point is, and has been from the start, that we have no right (no matter what verses we snatch to try and justify it.) to be talking about them like they are demons. They actually ARE Christian brothers and sisters of ours, as much as some of you have tried to deny that. I find that grave stuff they do (remember, they are doing it to my own aunt's grave) just as distasteful as I find much of our conduct right here. But, they are still our brothers and sisters in Christ. Why are we treating them like they aren't?

How did the Bible tell us to restore one we saw caught in something like this? After all, these ARE brothers and sisters we are talking about. Do the things said here about them fall into line with doing that restoration the way Jesus (through Paul) told us to do?

Exactly! The Bible never teaches that angel stuff. Yet it is getting to be quite common in churches that people express this sentiment..... AND we Holy "kick-the-Bethel-people" protectors of Christianity say nothing about THAT.

Almost all our congregations have someone who says their dead relative (especially if it was a child who died) is now an angel watching over them. Just ask around a little. It is quite prevalent. All I am saying is that we "pots" have no business calling the Bethel "kettles", black.... especially with some of the vile, despicable terms I have read that we write about them.

I have heard Christians who were wrestling with something say that after they went to the graveyard and asked some dead relative about it, that they received enlightenment as to what they needed to do. What would you call that? (and I sure hope none of you say you have never heard the same thing)

And yet, God, Himself, secretly buried Moses where no one knew, specifically so that people would not turn the place of his interment into a necromantic site by going there to "pay their respects" to someone dead and gone. We have no need (nor Biblical precedent) to go stand over the ground someone was placed in to "Honor" them than those Bethel people have for whatever it is they think they are doing. Can our dead not be "honored" in a similar manner that we use to honor God? Sure the Bethel people are strange and misguided, but what they do is not far removed from what we, ourselves, do. Almost all Christians I have hear talk about their ritual grave visits, say it was good to go there and be with their loved ones. We almost curse the Bethel kids, but would we breathe a word about our friends doing their thing? I have even seen people stroking the stones in a graveyard.

"Defending aberrant groups" is little more than holding the mirror the Bible spoke of up to Christians to let them see what they are actually doing, and often, in their misdirected zeal, don't even realize.

But, so many of us presume to decide for God that it is us, not Him, who is to judge what these Bethel people are doing......So much so that we start losing it and calling them "Satan followers", and worse. I am really not speaking in this thread so much about them, as I am talking about the disappointing behavior we have stooped to in the way we judge them. And, "Yes" it is judging..... something God says is not ours to do. Judge for yourself, and refrain if you feel that is the right way to go, but don't try to hide prejudices behind some claim of a Biblical command to go around "exposing" people by name-calling.

Do you, or any other good Christians you know, go to grave sites to "spend some time" with their dead loved ones? I know many people who actually say they speak out loud there, as though those dead one could hear them. Are we to label them also? To me, that is strange since I don't even visit my mother's grave. To me, there is nothing there but dirt. Sure, these California people are weird in my eyes, but I just can't label them as Necromants. Labeling is something I have seen that many of us rush to do so that we can dismiss them as a group. (Notice how, above, you just now lumped all "Charismatics" together as a group you have deemed appropriate to dismiss.)

The answer is simple, you just need to move out to Southern California where the people you seek seem to congregate.

Of course it does..... and whatever else we don't agree with or can't understand whenever we run across it.

I was simply going by the dictionary definition of the word everyone has been using to describe their actions, "necromancy."

Well, Kathryn Kuhlman was my aunt on my father's side, and I can tell you for a fact that they really don't want to communicate with her.

Wouldn't 2 Kings 13:20-21 be considered necromancy? Or the widow's son? Or the kid who fell out of the window? If someone was dead, weren't the Jews forbidden to do much more than wrap them up and bury them? I'm just trying to see where people get some of these things from Scripture. It seems they get attacked as though people think they just dreamed this stuff up out of thin air.

Sorry, my bad. I thought Jacob's bones got moved too, and I thought I recalled something about David burying Saul's bones. It just seemed the old ones had a pretty big hang-up on the importance of dead bones. I even thought God, Himself, secretly buried Moses so the people wouldn't worship the place where his bones were.

I know nothing, PERSONALLY, of this Bill Johnson or his church, but I would like to ask a related question. What was the purpose of the ancients of our faith, after whom we pattern much of our religious practices, always digging up the bones of revered dead people and taking those bones with them whenever they moved... and was that some kind of bad thing that we should now condemn?

Which of us here can say, truthfully, that we really understand how God is dealing with people who lived and died BEFORE He asked that men believe in Jesus for Salvation? Want a number? It is "ZERO." Not a one of us, no matter how much we want to claim we do, has an inkling.

80% of the posters in this thread.

It is kind of nice to see parts of rational explanations finally coming out, rather than just "Holy" declarations.