Bethel Church - A Different Gospel

[missmuffet]

5 hours ago, ayin jade said:

There are a lot of bad ones out there. I agree with you on that list of names. But there are also a lot of good ones out there too. Dont throw the baby out with the bathwater.

From doing my own searching in the past there are more bad than good.

[angels4u]

23 minutes ago, missmuffet said:

From doing my own searching in the past there are more bad than good.

Why not praise the Ministries who lift the name of Jesus and preach the old fashion gospel message?

[simplejeff]

8 hours ago, frienduff thaylorde said:

God considers it ABOMINATION.    Elisha would have said this.  IF you want to serve baal then go serve baal , but if the LORD be LORD serve Him.

but stop blending the TWO cause lukewarm is the worst , abostlute worst place to be.

I see this generation as a whole for what it is.   most who profess his name , profess witchcraft and other gods and other religions as good too.

I leave us with this word FROM GOD who said............IF you want to go serve baal then go , serve him, BUT LEAVE MY NAME OUT OF IT .   oh GOD did say that.

This generation will see the wrath of GOD .   its only getting worse and will do so unto the end.  ALL we can do is keep warning and exhorting and praying

Test everything.   "The wicked continue becoming more wicked,  the righteous continue becoming more righteous."

The wicked have always greatly outnumbered the righteous.  (i.e. wide road to destruction with many on it is always bigger than narrow road to life that few find )

[GandalfTheWise]

My concern is when good sincere Christians start engaging in witch hunts with few standards as to proof or evidence other than accusation and innuendo (repeated rapidly by link upon link to produce a monolithic sea of denunciation all based on the same couple of sources).  I spent years doing that myself.  I then realized I had hit the point where I had started to assume that any Christian minister or church or denomination was lying or deceptive merely because I thought they were.  I was not accountable to anyone except my own conscience (and the figurative mob I had joined myself with) in accusing someone of being aligned with the occult or heresy.

I had reached the point where I was looking for occult symbols (and thinking that I was finding them) in stained glass windows in churches and bulletins and newsletters.  It didn't matter that they said it was a symbol of something Christian; I knew better and that they were inviting demons into their church by having those particular stain glass windows.   I would read sermons and statements of faith and pull single words and sentences out of context to find the hidden heresies and occult meanings.  I would read books (this was before the internet) from people pointing out all the hidden and not so hidden occult influence in the church.

One day, I recall being in church talking with a few people about how deceptive some particular evangelist was and someone called me out on it.  A brother in Christ (that I respected) looked me in the eye and asked me if I had ever read any of his books or listened to any of his sermons.  My honest answer was no I hadn't.  He actually liked that evangelist and had been listening to him for many years.  He gave me a couple short tracts written by that evangelist to read for myself.  It's been long ago, so I forget the details and I cannot even recall who it was.  But I do remember this,  the tracts seemed pretty good to me.   I went back and re-read all of the stuff I had read about this evangelist (which included direct quotations from him from those very tracts I had been given) and I realized it was all taken completely out of context.  The individual quotes were lifted out of their original context to produce something that this evangelist never said.  In the search to prove this particular evangelist was not from God, this author thought that it was okay to misrepresent what he said!  I then went through that book and realized that was his method on everything he attacked.  I threw the book away.  Perhaps he was right on some stuff, but I had no way of knowing what stuff he was right about and what stuff he was wrong about.  He had adopted a probably well-meaning but dishonest method of unveiling what he thought were lies and deceit.  He was denouncing at least one man of God by effectively lying about him purely because he was convinced something was wrong with him that needed to be exposed.  I also realized that I had been doing this very thing myself.  It was sort of a Nathan telling David, "You are the man!" moment for me.

I see this same type of behavior and methodology today.  Why does it keep going?  Because many Christians take these types of overzealous crusaders at their word and get sucked into it.  It must be true because a Christian posted it on the internet and other Christians linked to it.  Plus, they sound so reasonable and authoritative and biblical when they talk about it and they include actual quotes from the person to prove they really said it.  It can become a figurative mob with torches and pitchforks stirred to rage to cleanse the village all because one or two people said so and woe be to whoever gets in their way.

What is the problem with this?  Isn't it good to point out any possible occult influence?  Of course it is.  The problem is that if we start to see the devil in places where he is not, we lose our ability to discern where he really is attacking.  We spend our time worrying about stuff that should be of no concern instead of focusing on what should be of concern.  We also lose our credibility and lessen our impact when we actually see a real problem.  

Many years ago, I used to spend significant amounts of my time researching all the possible stuff the devil was doing in the world and the church. I spent more time reading books exposing occult dangers to Christians than I did reading the Bible.  I was soaking it in like a sponge and seeing it everywhere.  Then I realized most of it was in my head.  Anything and everything I looked at I viewed with suspicion and assumed the worst.  I started to believe that anyone who disagreed was being deceived.  God finally started convicting me that I should be spending all that time and effort growing as a Christian rather than being a witch hunter and inquisitor.  I realized that time was much better spent studying scripture and getting closer to God and becoming a better Christian.  I started to find that I started looking at the totality and context of what individuals and groups were saying and doing rather than trying to read my suspicions between the lines.  Instead of seeing problems everywhere, I started seeing fewer but much more serious problems that I had completely missed before.

My entire point on this thread is not defending Bethel per se but calling us to a higher standard of inquisition and discernment so that we are indeed calling out the right stuff and not just making things up in our own imagination and passing on half-truths and unfounded accusations.  I think it prudent to investigate claims of occult practices and other things rather than merely repeating what other people say they are doing.  For example, a photo of US soldiers doing grenade practice (with outstretched arms for what I assume is good grenade throwing technique) was being claimed on social media to show US soldiers practicing Nazi salutes.  I think we Christians need hold ourselves to higher standards than this type of behavior of passing on links to links to links and accepting them all at face value without holding the links to any standard of accountability.

If Bethel is doing occult practices, they should be called out on it.  I rarely watch YouTube videos of different groups or ministries.  As I clearly stated, I was looking at their web site and taking them at their word as to what they believed.  What I am trying to figure out is what links are pointing to actual stuff they are doing and saying as an ongoing typical practice that they fully endorse and what links are cherry-picked unusual outliers that they themselves were not happy about from people with an axe to grind and what links are people making incorrect assumptions about what they do?  What stuff have they renounced (or not)?  What stuff have they stopped doing because someone called them out?  I do not claim to know.

Do the leaders actually call themselves a "Christian Hogwarts"?  Or did some person who thought they were crazy make that comment as an insult one time and it kept getting repeated in headlines and link titles?  If the leaders are saying that, then that's a serious issue.  If one visitor (unassociated with them) made the comment and it keeps getting repeated by other people, then that's a completely different issue.  Other than having that term plastered in headlines, does it really represent what they think of themselves, or is it an unfounded accusation that they do?  I don't know.  Do they deserve the benefit of the doubt or not?

At what point do we as Christians ignore what a church (or an individual Christian) says they believe and assume that they are liars or hiding something?  This is a very slippery slope that we need to be very careful of who we denounce and why we do it.  I do not denounce someone simply because someone else does.  I try to look at it for myself and determine if there is something there to denounce. 

With regard to Bethel's music, I think some perspective is needed.  Frankly, I think a lot of modern Christian music is rather vacuous and too emotional for my tastes.  But there are a few gems in there.  The same goes for old music.  We have kept the gems from 100, 200, or more years ago and forgotten about the rest.  Of course, the good old hymns are great because we've had centuries to keep the great ones and ignore the vast majority that weren't great.  I've personally gone through old songbooks and hymnals that were decades old and some pushing a century or so old.  I thought I was going to find some lost treasures.  I really didn't.  We already kept the best ones and forgot about the rest.  I think that the same process is going on today.  Should the Lord tarry, a hundred years from now, there will be a handful of beautiful hymns written by our generation that will be proclaimed to be the "good old hymns" and a new generation that denounces modern music as not being as good as the old greats.  Charles Wesley is said to have written over 6000 hymns, we've forgotten all but a handful.  Off the top of my head, I can only remember "Oh for a thousand tongues to sing, my great Redeemer's praise...".  Isaac Watts wrote 750 hymns, we've forgotten all but a few.  Off the top of my head I can only remember "Oh God our Help in ages past, our Hope in years to come...." and "Joy to the world, the Lord is come...".   Obviously the church as a whole did not think the majority of Wesley's or Watt's hymns were worth hanging onto.

Based on that, I'd expect most new songs written today to have only limited appeal to a limited group for a short time.  But, there will be some gems written by our contemporaries that (should the Lord tarry) will become part of the standard Christian list of great hymns that are beloved alongside those that we currently hold as the great ones.

Much of the Bethel music is rather vacuous for my tastes.  I did a quick scan of lyrics and found this one  ("You have won me" from Bethel music) as one of the better ones.  We all have a choice when looking at lyrics like this.  We can either say, this is a Christian sincerely expressing what Jesus has done in their life in their own imperfect words, or we can dig into every word and phrase to find hidden occult meanings and heresies in sections that we think should have been written differently.  Frankly, I think that if we all come down like a ton of bricks on every sincere believer today who tries to write a song to worship Jesus their Savior, we run the risk of making sure our generation makes very few contributions to the list of great Christian hymns of the ages.

 

Grace, You've shown me grace
You've lifted my shame
Drawn me with loving kindness
Washed whiter than snow
You have redeemed and made me whole

Jesus, You have won me You have broken every
Chain with love and mercy You have triumphed over
Death and You are worthy of glory and praise

Love, You've shown me love
By leaving Your throne
By bleeding and dying on a cross
That wonderful cross
That took all my guilt and sin away

Shout it out and lift up one voice in worship
Sing it out until all the earth can hear it
Jesus is alive and He saves, He rescues and saves

 

[existential mabel]

yep the devil knows all the good tunes. but hey what music is biblical me wonders these days? can anyone tell me as at times i find it helpful to listen to Christian music on occasion. not big into music these days but there are times when its helpful maybe.

i have to say i dont like where christian music is going its like secular music its racy more like pop/clubbing music etc...

[angels4u]

38 minutes ago, existential mabel said:

yep the devil knows all the good tunes. but hey what music is biblical me wonders these days? can anyone tell me as at times i find it helpful to listen to Christian music on occasion. not big into music these days but there are times when its helpful maybe.

i have to say i dont like where christian music is going its like secular music its racy more like pop/clubbing music etc...

Mabel, you might like to listen to the Psalm in song?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkHqaBxPoAM&list=PLs-e_mJnYlwgPUmMnO2erKVXdlWSoRWLn

 

[angels4u]

Knowing now all of this, does your church sing Bethel Hillsong songs? And how do you feel about that?

 

[angels4u]

1 hour ago, Davida said:

Mine? oh no.

Where do you find churches these days who don't sing those songs?

[existential mabel]

3 hours ago, Davida said:

Find some classic hymns Mabel, let them play in your mind & sing them unto the heavenly Father-they are more akin to the Psalms of praise David wrote. There are modern singers who have redone them so you don't have to stick to choral singing. If you can get a hold of a book of old hymns do it, then read the words in them. Mine is from old Baptist hymnal. They are Biblical, enriching, like prayers  & praises unto God that the Holy Spirit inspired.

ok thanks Davida. been looking and finding some nice stuff.

[existential mabel]

2 hours ago, angels4u said:

Knowing now all of this, does your church sing Bethel Hillsong songs? And how do you feel about that?

 

eeeek what a toxic mix bethel hillsong. i was into these kind of songs once and then i found i no longer had that appeal i started to see that it seemed to be about emotionalism experience. and the fact that music was king i mean it took the church several hours to set up the music stage bearing in mind this was for a sunday service. the thing about this mainstream music is that it certainly tickles the ears.