Heretic Bill Johnson's Bethel Church in California is in the news trying to resurrect church member's 2-year old who died December 14th

Opinion: Tragically, Bethel leaders praying for 2-year-old's resurrection are believing God for promises He hasn't made

Bethel Church leaders, members trying to resurrect worship leader's deceased 2-year-old daughter

ἤδη ὄζει -- John 11:39

Bethel Redding's Beni and Jenn Johnson declare "cancer free zone" in April 2017, Beni comes down with it in March 2018

You can't make this stuff up.

Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him.

 

-- Proverbs 29:20

Beni Johnson is the wife of Bill Johnson, a so-called miracle worker and faith healer.

From the story here:

Beni Johnson, co-pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, California, is being treated for a cancer diagnosis that "shocked" her. "When this all began in March and I walked out of the doctor's office shocked." ...

Just over a year ago in April 2017, Beni's daughter-in-law, Jenn Johnson, urged members to pray for a "cancer free zone" at Bethel during a during a worship session while singing "By the Blood." During that service, Beni Johnson revealed she had a heavenly encounter with Jesus in the spirit and gained access to healing power over cancer. "All through worship whenever I start to sing this song and I close my eyes I just actually step into Heaven. And I was looking around Heaven but I noticed that my brother-in-law Jim, and my father-in-law Bill's dad are standing on the edge of Heaven and they are looking down," she said. "And both of them died from cancer. And I said, Holy Spirit, Jesus, why are they standing out to me? Why are they standing and looking down and then Jenn said 'we declare healing over cancer,'" Beni Johnson said as the audience applauded. ...

As people were encouraged to pray for those with cancer, Johnson stated, "Don't pray; declare. This is a time, this is an open Heaven right here and we're calling down the healing power of Jesus over cancer." 

After 20 years at Bethel Church in Redding California, "miracle worker" Bill Johnson still hasn't put the region's top employers out of business

If his book When Heaven Invades Earth is to be believed, "miracles" occur so frequently at Bill Johnson's hands at Bethel Church that that's "the normal Christian life", as he calls it.

Close readers of the book, however, will note that none of the people who experience these so-called miracles seem to have last names.

Not only that, you can't be sure of their first names either.  "Some of the names of the people mentioned in this book have been changed. The author has done so where he felt anonymity is essential", we are informed in the fine print on the copyright page.

This is despite the fact that the miracles are supposed to "reveal the nature of God", not hide it under a cloak, "bring courage" instead of such caution, "reveal His glory" and "give Him glory", not make one wonder if he's really telling the truth.

One would think that if so many miracles were happening at that church that the scads of recipients would be writing their own books about it instead of Johnson. One would think that the population of Redding would have burst by now as people beat a path to it instead of stagnating as it has. One would think that its hospitals would be out of business by now.

And yet after 20 years of Bill Johnson, almost half of the jobs of the top four employers in Redding remain medical jobs at Mercy Medical Center and Shasta Regional Medical Center.

Redding, California, in fact remains "the medical hub of rural far northern California", according to the Wikipedia article.

The new pool of Bethesda it is not.

Paul mocked wealth-obsessed dominionists like Bill Johnson of Bethel Redding

"We were born to rule--rule over creation, over darkness--to plunder hell and establish the rule of Jesus wherever we go by preaching the gospel of the Kingdom. ... [C]reation has been infected by darkness, namely, disease, sickness, afflicting spirits, poverty, natural disasters, demonic influence, etc. Our rule ... is focused on exposing and undoing the works of the devil. ...

"Jesus destroyed the power of sin, sickness, and poverty through His redemptive work on the cross. In Adam and Eve's commission to subdue the earth, they were without sickness, poverty, and sin. Now that we are restored to His original purpose, should we expect anything less?"

-- Bill Johnson, When Heaven Invades Earth (2013), pp. 33f.

What do you have that God hasn't given you? And if everything you have is from God, why boast as though it were not a gift?

You think you already have everything you need. You think you are already rich. You have begun to reign in God's kingdom without us!

I wish you really were reigning already, for then we would be reigning with you. Instead, I sometimes think God has put us apostles on display, like prisoners of war at the end of a victor's parade, condemned to die. We have become a spectacle to the entire world—to people and angels alike.

Our dedication to Christ makes us look like fools, but you claim to be so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are so powerful! You are honored, but we are ridiculed. Even now we go hungry and thirsty, and we don't have enough clothes to keep warm. We are often beaten and have no home. We work wearily with our own hands to earn our living. We bless those who curse us. We are patient with those who abuse us. We appeal gently when evil things are said about us. Yet we are treated like the world's garbage, like everybody's trash—right up to the present moment.

-- 1 Corinthians 4:7ff.

Bill Johnson of Bethel Redding erects his whole theory of signs and wonders on a Christological lie

From When Heaven Invades Earth (2013), p. 29, where Bill Johnson attempts to drive a wedge between the two natures in Christ in the manner of an Arian, an Adoptionist, or a Nestorian:

'Jesus could not heal the sick. Neither could He deliver the tormented from demons or raise the dead. To believe otherwise is to ignore what He said about Himself, and more importantly, to miss the purpose of His self-imposed restriction to live as a man. Jesus Christ said of Himself, "The Son can do nothing" (John 5:19). ... He had no supernatural capabilities whatsoever! While He is 100 percent God, He chose to live with the same limitations that man would face once he was redeemed. ... He performed miracles, wonders, and signs as a man in right relationship to God. . . not as God.'

But it's Johnson who does the ignoring about what Jesus said about himself, and he does so utterly dishonestly.

Not only does Johnson rip John 5:19 from its broader narrative (where Jesus is defending a Sabbath miracle by actually appealing to his intimacy with the Almighty as the divine Son), Johnson deliberately shortens it into a fragment, representing that as if it were the whole:

Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.

 

-- John 5:19

Johnson ignores "but what he seeth the Father do". Jesus is not emphasizing his limitations as a man in this statement, but his glory as the one who is so close to God that he cannot but do what God himself does, because it would be contrary to his nature to do anything else. "No man hath seen God at any time" the Evangelist has said earlier (John 1:18), but here the Son clearly has, and does. Accordingly he cannot do anything but what he sees his Father do. Whereas John is out to show Jesus' divinity in this way in the narrative, Johnson is out to show Jesus' mere humanity.

But Jesus' Jewish opponents in John are not out to kill him for claiming to be a mere man, but for claiming equality with God!

Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.

 

-- John 5:18

Bill Johnson specializes in nothing so much as a violence of his own . . . to the text and to those who follow it.

 

If there were a jail for heresy, Bill Johnson should be celebrating his tenth year in it.

A ridiculously conceived healing miracle from Bill Johnson's When Heaven Invades Earth: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

From the Expanded Edition (2013), pp. 26f., italics in the original:

"He told us his problem was carpal tunnel syndrome. ... [W]e laid our hands on his wrists, commanding the tunnel to open and all numbness and pain to be gone."

But there is nothing "closed" in carpal tunnel syndrome which needs "opening".

The idea of "opening" reflects a misunderstanding of a treatment method in which the name given to a treatment technique has been transposed to a misconceived description of a healthy outcome.

Apart from the non-invasive treatment methods which are initially preferred because about a third of cases self-correct anyway without treatment, the last resort is surgery, either the more invasive open carpal tunnel release surgery, or the less invasive endoscopic carpal tunnel release surgery.

The identical object of both surgical techniques is to get in there and sever a ligament which puts pressure on the nerve causing the numbness and pain.

You either open up the wrist in the traditional manner with a scalpel, or go in through a much smaller incision with an endoscope equipped with smaller cutting instruments.

Always keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.

The NIV, the unhappy translation which can lead one into Christological error similar to Bill Johnson of Bethel Redding

To paraphrase Dick the Butcher, the first thing we do, let's kill all the Bible translators.

If Paul meant in Philippians 2:7 that Jesus set aside his divine "nature" as the NIV translation unhappily implies ("being in very nature God . . . he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant"), Paul would have been contradicting himself.

Paul states clearly elsewhere that there is a qualitative difference between the human First Adam and the human Second Adam, so that the former is entirely earthy, that is, made from a pile of dirt, while the latter is literally "from heaven":

"The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven." -- 1 Cor. 15:47.

As is so common in Greek, the action of the main verb in Philippians 2:7, "he emptied himself", is defined straightforwardly by the modifying participle supplied by Paul, so that there can be no question about what he meant about emptying: "taking the form of a slave".

There is no setting aside of anything going on, but rather taking up, adding on.

Paul means to say in Philippians 2 that the divine Son was so secure in his divinity that his equality with God would not be diminished in the slightest by condescending to take on human nature to accomplish the work of salvation for sinful man. Moreover the whole context is exhortation of believers to imitate the divine Son's example, not doctrinal instruction.

The NIV is irresponsible for introducing "nature" into Philippians. If Paul meant to do that he could have used Greek φύσις, as he does elsewhere.

Shameful business, that.

Off with their heads!

St. Cyril anathematized the way heretic Bill Johnson says Jesus laid aside his divinity

The third anathema against Nestorius:

If anyone divideth the hypostases after the union in respect of the One Christ, connecting them by a mere association in dignity or authority or rule, and not rather by a conjunction of real union, be he anathema. 

Jesus did not become Messiah at his baptism, as Bill Johnson says, but was the Christ from his birth according to Luke

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

-- Luke 2:10f.

The heresies of Bill Johnson of Bethel Redding were long ago anathematized, by Cyril of Alexandria in 431

Anathema Nine from Cyril's Third Epistle to Nestorius:

If anyone says that the One Lord Jesus Christ was glorified by the Spirit, using the power which came through Him as if it were foreign to Himself, and that He received from Him the power of working against unclean spirits and of fulfilling divine signs and tokens, and does not rather say that the Spirit was His own, through whom also He wrought the divine signs, be he anathema. 

Jesus did not "lay aside his divinity" at the incarnation as Bill Johnson says, but is already "from the Holy Ghost" in his mother's womb and becomes "God with us"

A heretic of Christianity is discussed here who teaches that Jesus laid aside his divinity in the incarnation and performed his ministry entirely according to his human nature by the subsequent gift of the Holy Spirit received at his baptism by John, in order to pave the way and make it possible for his followers to receive the same, and do the same and greater things.

Utter nonsense, of course, which the author of Matthew would not have accepted:

Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. ... But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ... "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel" (which means, God with us).

-- Matthew 1:18, 20, 23