How would you feel if your church youth leaders were teaching your kids New Age
practices on how to visualize and interact with Jesus in their imagination?
If children attend Bethel Church at Redding CA, they are encouraged to follow this New Age practice of ‘Guided Meditation’. If you think we are making this up, you can watch Bethel Youth Leader Seth Dahl in the video below, as he talks about a child in their youth group who wanted to “see Jesus” through these practices taught to him by the Bethel Youth Leaders – soaking, relaxing, visualizing and imagining.
(Watch 2 minutes in. For the record, we came out of the NAR thinking these teachings from Bethel were ‘Christian’ too.)
This “seeing Jesus” practice is nowhere taught in the bible.
Bethel.tv published the following:
“Wow! What a powerful testimony out of the children’s ministry! You gotta check it out!”
Source: Bethel.tv Redding, FaceBook, https://www.facebook.com/ibetheltv/videos/10155064742010930/, Published 31/03/2017. (Accessed 06/04/2017.)
TRANSCRIPT:
“We have such an incredible children’s ministry team here. Our team – a mom came to one of our teams and uh – she was so excited with what’s happening with her son. Her son in kids church and they were having this, um, an Encounter Day, where we built stations. And the kids – like we keep the lights down a little bit and play music the whole time. And the kids go from station to station.
And it’s designed for them just to experience God in different ways in different places. And at one of the stations, he’s laying there soaking. And the teacher’s saying, um, he’s asking them to, um, picture Jesus in their mind and interact with Jesus in their imagination. Which if you don’t know, the word ‘imagination’ in the Greek language is also translated ‘heart’. Yeah. Ephesians 1:18 and Luke 1:51. You can look it up later. BlueLetterBible.org. Check it out.
But so – that’s just for all the people – some people have a problem with the imagination and God doesn’t. So, this little boy, our – the teacher was saying, “Picture Jesus in your imagination.” And so the kids are there, soaking and closing their eyes. And then the teacher says, um, “If you can’t see Jesus, it might be because you’re so busy looking at so many other things that you can’t see him.”
And a little boy – there’s this little boy who’d been laying there and he – all he could see the whole time, (he told his mom this later who told our team), he’d been laying there the whole time trying to see Jesus and all he could see was video games. And he comes home from church this day and this mom is – the mom’s pumped. She said, “My son, he doesn’t talk like this, (he doesn’t- he doesn’t even know this), he comes home – this, this is just a couple of weeks ago. He says, “Mom! I couldn’t see Jesus today when I was looking to see Jesus. And all I could see was video games. So for a week I’m going to fast video games because I want to see Jesus and I want to read my bible and I want to pray everyday.”
NOTE: Youth Leaders like Seth Dahl should not be teaching children if he is prepared to mislead others about the bible. Claiming “the word ‘imagination’ in the Greek language is also translated ‘heart'” and using “Ephesians 1:18 and Luke 1:51,” proves he doesn’t understand Greek, or how language works on a fundamental level.
Who are the people he claims “have a problem with the imagination”? Because the bible NOWHERE teaches these practices. This man is a deceiver and (as the scriptures say), must be silenced.
“For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. They must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach.” Titus 1:10-11
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Categories: Bethel "Church"