Bill Johnson is the notorious NAR cult leader at Bethel in Redding, CA. He was recently featured by Dr. Michael Brown (promoter of demonic doctrines, and New Apostolic Reformation teachings and their Apostles, in Brownsville). Brown used his program to not only defend Bethel’s false teachings & practices, but to also promote Johnson’s latest book, “God is Good: He’s Better Than You Think“.

Dr. Brown also took the opportunity to specifically target the very well-known and highly respected Todd Friel (TF), the host of Wretched Radio, a conservative, evangelical Christian radio show,  and Phil Johnson (PJ), who is the executive director of Grace to You, an elder at Grace Community Church and pastor of the GraceLife Fellowship.

As if offended by the following dialogue, Michael Brown plays these two clips for Bill Johnson to comment on, (the first at the 4 min 30 sec mark, the second at the 5 min 26 sec mark) taken from his radio program, “The Line Of Fire”:

TF: If you go google- type in ‘J-e-s-u-s C’, what do you suppose pops up? What would you hope to pop up?
PJ: Jesus Christ.
TF: Jesus Culture.
PJ: Okay.
TF: It’s a worship band out of Redding California, Bill Johnson. Part of the New Apostolic Reformation movement. They are huge. Fifteen minute worship songs. Monotonous droning. And it’s all about the Holy Sp-, ‘Come and fill us! Come and fill us! Let the river flow and fill us! We’re hungry for you’. And kids are buying it by the HUNDREDS of thousands. They sell out arenas. They are huge.”

The first soundbite is probably the most important for Dr Brown and Bill Johnson to address in the entire program because the accusation is that Bethel is part of the “New Apostolic Reformation” cult, which Bill Johnson has tried distancing himself in the past.

There are too many uninformed Christians who admire Dr. Brown and his guests because they don’t know the background of the many false teachers and false prophets given a platform in these last days. However, this next clip highlights that Dr Brown and Bill Johnson show no tolerance to Christian pastors who calls these wolves out:

TF: “What does the Evangelical Church need to be doing, if anything, to be addressing this issue, which is not being spoken of?”
PJ: “It’s a bigger, far more important issue than even abortion. Because abortion, yes, slaughters infants – and we all deplore -that and all of that. But these are false prophets who are ushering people into hell.”

After these soundbites, Dr Brown claimed his goal of having Johnson on his program was so people can “really know who the man is.” This is not true at all.

Having called Phil Johnson and Todd Friel “brothers in Christ” at the beginning of the broadcast, Dr. Brown goes on and allows Bill Johnson to call the faith and beliefs of Phil and Todd “their own perverted doctrine”! (7:15).

Dr.Brown, you do realize your great friend and Reformed theologian Dr. James White also subscribes to the same “perverted” doctrine as Ps. Phil Johnson and Todd Friel?

You do realize you allowed Bill Johnson to bear false witness against two godly servants of the Lord?

This verse comes to mind:

“There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue,and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies…” Proverbs 6:16-19 

There were more serious questions Michael Brown failed to address in his interview, such as:

What is the New Apostolic Reformation and are how are you a part of it?

Folks – Dr Brown is demonstrating a total lack of discernment. If Dr Brown has heard claims that someone is a “heretic” and a “false prophet”, do you think that person will confess to being a heretic and a false prophet? To insist that a heretic is a Christian brother while deliberately misrepresenting Christians brothers such as Todd Friel and Phil Johnson – says enough about the subtle deceptive nature of NARpostle Dr. Michael Brown. You do not give a false teacher air time to convince people they are legitimate. False teachers speak the language of Satan, for the truth is not in them. They will happily lie and distort the truth to further their own ‘devilish’ agenda:

“When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
John 8:44 

Throughout the history of the New Apostolic Reformation, it is evident that their Apostles and Prophets can rape and molest (Frank Houston), slander and lie (Brian Houston, Phil Pringle), plagiarize (Amanda Wells),  steal (Alexander Abraham, Kong Hee, Yonggi Cho, Sunday Adelaja), and commit many other wicked acts of in the name of God… and get away with it. The end always justifies the means. Their ‘standard’ is an appearance of success and popularity at the expense of the Word of God (this is how their apologists defend them). Dr Michael Brown is a ‘Narpostle’ as is Bill Johnson. Since they are now being more closely scrutinized, these men appear to be doing their best to cover for each other, presenting the facade that they represent the face of Christianity and evangelicalism.

Unrepentant liars will not inherit the Kingdom of God. These men are false teachers and these false teachers, as Jesus warns us, are men ‘come disguised in sheep’s clothing but are inwardly ravenous wolves’ (Matthew 7:15).

That’s what this interview demonstrates. It presents a veneer that these men are Godly, when in fact they care only for themselves. Dr Brown is behaving more like Dr. Josef Heiter #humancentipede; connecting his NARpostle buddies together rather than connecting people to the word of God.

To continue with addressing Brown’s failure to ask the deeper questions, here is a clear (unaddressed) example in the interview where Michael Brown allows Bill Johnson to deceive his listeners. When asked about grave sucking, Bill Johnson stated:

MB: Do you endorse, preach, teach, encourage the practice of going to the graves of deceased men and women of God to try to suck the anointing out of the earth?

BJ: No. Absolutely not.

But there is ample evidence of Bill Johnson’s wife engaging in “gravesucking”. For instance, on Beni Johnson’s Instagram account, she uploaded a photo of herself lying on C.S. Lewis’ gravestone. She tags #oxfordtrip. Two people on her Instagram wall asked her to “grab some for me.” Another person by the name of Terri_Wassmer stated, “Brings back memories from the England/Wales trips.”

It’s interesting they mention the England/Wales trips because you can watch what was taught to “all us students” on these trips (video below was uploaded on December 8, 2011). And note they justify grave-sucking by going to the O.T. passage of Elisha’s bones raising someone from the dead. (2 Kings 13:21)

Coming back to Beni Johnson, here she is promoting “Grave Sucking” on her twitter account:

Source: Beni Johnson (prayfor5), Twitter, https://twitter.com/prayfor5/status/394901670402228224, 12:01 PM – 28 Oct 2013. Accessed 16/10/2016.)

When she publicly denied the practice of “Grave Sucking” on her Facebook wall, people rightly challenged her (please read screen grabs below). These people showed more Christian integrity by directly challenging the Johnsons’ promoting grave-sucking unlike Michael Brown.

So there you have it. Dr. Michael Brown is not afraid to have his listeners deceived by false teachers. It wouldn’t have been too difficult to expose Bill Johnson as a wolf in sheeps clothing  by simply researching Beni Johnson’s involvement in gravesucking. However, it seems his ultimate ‘mission’ was to promote Bill Johnson and his new book.

An aside – is there a ‘kick-back’ for promoting such heresy? Does Dr. Brown have his books available at Bethel?

Finally, if you do want to listen to the interview in its entirety, parse Johnson’s words. He often engages in the clarity fallacy known as ‘Distinction Without a Difference’. We will end with Johnson engaging in the clarity fallacy that proves that he DOES promote Grave Sucking:

“We’re actually building a library museum with various artifacts from past revivals. Not to go backwards but to just try to give honor. I really felt that the Lord put it on my heart several years ago [Johnson is claiming here he is a prophet] that if we honor the moves of God in the past, he would release those same anointings again.” (18:01)

It’s funny how Johnson mentioned heretic Charles Finney “for his bold preaching” as an example he wants to “honor” and that his (grave-sucking) wife also visited Finney’s church to… well… gravesuck and impart Finney’s anointing?

We will address other issues in this interview in the near future.

Categories: Bethel "Church"