Mike Winger opens with a blunt claim in his latest video:
there is a cover-up culture inside parts of the charismatic movement, and it is harming real people.
This recent episode of Mike Winger secretly centers on Shawn Bolz (sorry for the spoiler), whom Winger alleges used data mining to manufacture prophetic words. The issue, however, is larger than one prophet. The core accusation is that Bethel leadership had substantial evidence of misconduct yet failed to clearly warn their own people.
The featured witness is Elijah Stephens, a former insider who defended Bethel, served within its ecosystem, and believed in its culture of honor. He now alleges financial devastation, psychological trauma, and institutional silence after raising concerns.
So why did he believe in a ‘culture of honor’?
Interestingly, Mike Winger already exposed the crooked ministry of Benny Hinn.
Benny Hinn was complicit in taking Kathryn Kuhlman’s innovative ‘Anointing’ doctrine and repurposed it to threaten people with death if they ‘touched God’s anointed’. Mike Winger did document Benny Hinn threatening people with curses and death for questioning anointed leadership and his own Benny Hinn ministries.
However, Mike Winger failed to connect John Bevere being a leader that was emerged from Benny Hinn’s cronyism. It was John Bevere that started unpacking not just dangerous shepherding movement theology from the Lauderdale Five and the Jim Jones era. He repackaged it in such a way that made Apostolic and Prophetic leaders in the 1990s and 2000s untouchable with his ‘Culture of Honor’ teaching.
This might explain why Bethel is completely saturated with John Bevere’s ‘Culture of Honor’ (he is a board member Bethel Music along with Mark Zschech (husband of Darlene Zschech of Hillsong – (now of Hope UC));
You can access this document here:
Bethel Music – Full Filing – Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica
Or access the pdf here:
Bethel Music – Full Filing – Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica
Returning to Winger, this video is not a debate about spiritual gifts. It is a question of proper spiritual integrity. If Bethel leaders Bill Johnson, Kris Vallotton and others knew and stayed quiet regarding Shawn Bolz, the problem is no longer a rogue prophet. It is becoming plain that the Bethel system and “prophetic movement” protects platforms at the expense of victims and God’s sheep.
The line has been drawn by Mike Winger: will you be accountable, or will you be exposed?
Timestamps
0:00 – Intro
4:24 Part 1. Elijah Joins Bethel
15:13 Part 2. The False Prophecy
23:57 Part 3. The Physics of Heaven
1:05:57 Part 4. Bethel Betrays Elijah
1:38:55 Part 5. Set Up to Fail
1:49:59 Part 6: Elijah Finds Out
1:54:42 Part 7. Taking Accountability
2:06:55 Part 8. Elijah’s Message to Bill Johnson
2:21:07 THIRTY DAY DEADLINE for Bethel
2:30:09 Part 9. Elijah’s Message to Kris Vallotton
2:56:26 Part 10. Elijah’s Message to Shawn Bolz
3:00:40 Part 11. Exposing Sexual Predators and Frauds in the Renewal Movement
3:09:27 Elijah’s Final Appeal
3:17:08 Important Disclaimers
Shawn Bolz is the false prophet. Elijah Stephens is the Christian who was misled and greatly harmed. Bethel is the church that I believe could have stopped it, and chose not to, endorsing the fake prophet and failing to deal properly with him and warn their people when evidence came out that he was lying in God’s name. This video is made to help stir up positive change in the movement.
Links
1. Elijah’s Notes on The Physics of Heaven (19 pages) https://biblethinker.org/wp-content/u…
2. Elijah’s Notes on How Bethel Should Confront the New Age (15 pages) https://biblethinker.org/wp-content/u…
3. Though it has been taken down from normal wide publication you can view Elijah’s original documentary, “Send Proof,” right here. This is the documentary Shawn Bolz prophesied about. Elijah asked me to share this with you for the sake of integrity, transparency, and accountability, but he doesn’t want it viewed outside the context of this interview. https://sendproof.com
4. My own video on the massive problems with “The Physics of Heaven.”
https://www.youtube.com/live/weHo7pO6…
Source: Mike Winger (@MikeWinger), Bethel Insider Asks Accountability For False Prophet: Will Bethel Respond?, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9577FAA2FGA, Uploaded June 27, 2025. (Accessed June 27, 2025.)
We believe this video might be pulled. So we have downloaded a copy of this video – and provided the entire transcript. Here is also the documents that Mike Winger provided:
PDF: Elijahs-Notes-on-The-Physics-of-Heaven-19-pages
PDF: Elijahs-Notes-on-How-Bethel-Should-Confront-the-New-Age-15-pages
Link to SendProof.com: SEND PROOF
TRANSCRIPT
0:02
How do I even start to explain the need for this video? How important this long video is with tons of evidence? Tons of
0:10
evidence. Um, there is a culture of cover up going on inside charismatic
0:15
churches. Um, I’ve confirmed this. I’ve spoken to many, many witnesses already. I have a number of videos that’ll be
0:20
coming in this year basically. Um, and this is one of them. This in particular
0:25
relates to a guy named Shawn Bolz on your screen. Now, this guy is a false prophet. How about um May 3rd? Does that
0:32
mean something to you? That’s your birthday. God knows you. He knows when you’ve been born. I’ve never seen you in
0:37
my entire life that I know of. He looks at people’s data online. He then goes around and says, “God told me to tell
0:43
you this.” And I’ve talked to multiple of his victims whose lives he messed up because he gave them a fake prophecy.
0:49
There are other ministries that are still echoing his fake prophecies. But anyways, that’s for another video where
0:54
I’ll talk more about that. One particular victim of his is a guy named Elijah Stevens. That’s who I interviewed
1:01
today. Now, Elijah, you have to understand, Elijah now coming out and sharing his story is a really big deal
1:07
because he has been he’s been the guy going around telling people, “Hey, you guys are getting Bethel wrong. He’s
1:13
defending Bethel.” And he has a great heart for Bethel. Okay? He was a member of their church. and in his membership
1:20
and while he’s at their church. That’s where Shawn falsely prophesies to him. Actually, let me just add this. The
1:26
reason why we’re doing this video is to help bring positive change inside charismatic churches, not to destroy
1:31
them. The desire is that if accountability will not rise from the leadership and they’re actually creating
1:37
a culture of cover up that accountability can be demanded from the people, that’s you. You can demand that
1:42
kind of accountability and that kind of integrity that should be in these ministries because you cannot build your
1:47
house on the sand of fake prophecy, fake miracles, fake words from the Lord. It’s going to fail. And I say if it’s going
1:54
to fail sooner, better. Let’s clean it up. Let’s get real integrity. Let’s have
1:59
real biblical methodologies for how we handle the gifts and not this culture of cover up. Throughout this video, you’re
2:06
going to see you’re going to hear, you know, Elijah’s story. If you’re listening on audio, I recommend you watch this on video, not audio, because
2:12
there’s a ton of stuff on screen that’s very relevant, very important that you’re going to want to see. He spent
2:17
175 grand of his retirement, all of him and his wife, what they had, just about all of what they had saved for retirement. It’s hurt him. It’s hurt his
2:24
marriage. It’s caused him major psychological trauma. He is currently just benching himself because of Well,
2:29
you’ll hear you’ll hear all this stuff. when he started to suspect something might have been wrong with this word,
2:35
this prophetic word that he got from Shawn Bolz, he reached out to his leadership at Bethel. Bethel knew that
2:41
there was evidence, a significant amount of evidence to prove that Shawn Bolz was a false prophet. At this time, they were
2:47
not warning their people, though they were warning some other leaders, the elites, but not their people. The people
2:54
who Shawn had prophesied to, the people who they had put Shawn in front of as a trusted prophet, they didn’t warn them.
3:00
and other stuff. You’ll hear it all. The the the short version of the story is here’s a false prophet. Here’s a member
3:07
of a church at Bethel. He should have been protected by his leaders who had evidence of what was going on. They
3:12
chose not to. And it has damaged him severely as a result. This is one
3:18
example that we’re going to focus in on. There are so many other examples I’ll bring of this type of thing sometimes
3:24
connected with Bethel or Morning Star or Jesus image or just other churches. I am sorry to do this. It would grieves me to
3:30
do this. I don’t take joy in it. I want to add that I think you should watch this entire video. Like I strongly encourage you to watch the whole video.
3:36
I’m going to not monetize this video. Like I now the monetization doesn’t affect my paycheck. That’s the way my ministry is structured. It has no effect
3:42
on my paycheck. But I’m going to cancel monetization for this video just so that you’ll know when I say please watch the
3:48
whole thing. It’s not for me to get better ad revenue or something like that. This is just because it’s so
3:54
important. It’s the long version of the story. So with that, let’s start. And there are of course timestamps down
4:00
below if you feel like you need to skip around a little bit. Although I recommend watching the whole thing, you know, I hardly ever say that. I I I kind
4:06
of never say that just about. So, uh yeah, with that, my cat I b you do.
4:17
[Music] So, Elijah, tell me about your
4:22
background and your connection to Bethel in particular. [Music]
Part 1. Elijah Joins Bethel
4:27
My background is uh grew up in a Christian home. Uh somewhat abusive. Uh
4:35
met Jesus when I was 12. Um because I wasn’t sure if God was real or not. And
4:40
I prayed, “God, if you’re real, show me in a way that I know that I know.” And uh had a very powerful encounter and
4:47
gave my life to Christ. Went to college uh studied philosophy and psychology at
4:52
Covenant. It’s a reform school. and then uh started asking questions about
4:58
miracles and I went to a vineyard church and started
5:04
doing vineyard stuff. I deployed to Iraq for a year and I read tons of books on
5:12
on the charismatic movement. Came back, started a small group where basically
5:18
what we do is just dial down and uh wait on the Holy Spirit. And I saw tons of
5:24
miracles. I I I saw people get free from demons. I I saw people get saved. And
5:31
that was my thing. And so what drew me to Bethel honestly was when Heaven
5:36
Invades Earth uh came out and I read that and I’m like this is like Anaheim
5:43
in in the 80s where John Wimber was the pastor and I was like I didn’t get to
5:50
see that and I wanted to be a part of something like that. And so I uh one
5:57
night I I had a dream where Bill Johnson said, “What do you want to do with your life?” And I said, “Plant churches that
6:05
see signs and wonders.” And he said, “Come to California.” And I told Allison about it and she’s like, “No, I’m not
6:11
moving. My family’s here.” And so we went to Reading for about three months
6:18
and uh just traveled there to see it. And I had some of the craziest
6:26
experiences of my life. Like that was glory cloud time.
6:34
This was and this it was 2009, right? I want to say 2009, but my memory
6:39
sometimes is a little off. It was about that time. Um and then uh while I was
6:45
there uh one day we were feeding migrant workers or going to feed migrant workers
6:50
and I asked this girl, “Have you you ever seen a miracle with your own eyes?” She tells me the story of like praying
6:57
for a man with a bone on bone knee injury and he holds up like this
7:03
brace. And so I’m like, “This is amazing.” And I thought of a guy I’d
7:09
prayed about or prayed with last Sunday at uh Kevin Deadman’s fire starter
7:14
class. And so I started uh thinking about him and I
7:22
thought he had a bone on bony knee injury from a motorcycle accident. And
7:27
so he walked with a cane for 30 years and was in pain. I thought, well, Bill Johnson says, tell the testimony uh
7:34
whenever you pray for people if if you have one that’s similar. And sometimes God uses that uh as as a part of the
7:40
process. And so, as we’re driving down the road, um
7:47
I see Dave pass us in the other car, like in the other lane. And so, the driver then was Jason Chin. And he I
7:55
tell him the story and he turns the car around, flags the guy down, and then
8:01
what happens is uh he we pull into a lumber yard and he’s like, “Tell this
8:07
guy the story.” And so I I or or what you just told me. And so I was like I
8:12
asked her this question and I thought about telling you a testimony and uh can
8:17
I pray for you? And so I pray for him and then I’m like test it out. And so
8:22
instead of just putting a little bit of weight because these are very bone painful injuries like bone on bone means
8:29
like the nerves is touching the bone. He jumps on it and falls to the ground and starts crying. And I think to myself,
8:36
“Oh no, we just injured this guy.” And he gets up and runs off and he doesn’t
8:41
come back. Like 5 minutes go by, 10 minutes go by and I’m like, “Okay, we’ve
8:47
got to go.” Oh, and we get in the car and we drive down the road and I see him running down the road going, “Thank you,
8:52
Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.” Wow. And like that was Bethel to me. And
9:00
so I go back home um I think I work in ministry for a few years and I want to
9:07
say 2011ish in October Allison told me we went to
9:13
Reading. Uh I become a member there. I go through BSSM
9:18
and I love it, man. Like I I learn to renew my mind. They’re really good at teaching identity in Christ stuff like,
9:25
right? And this, for anybody who doesn’t know, this is this is the the uh school of supernatural ministry that Bethel has.
9:31
And it’s a two to threeyear program. Mhm. Or third year, you’re an
9:37
intern, right? But but yeah, so it’s a it’s a program people go through to get trained in how to do supernatural ministry. Yeah. Yeah. And and it’s
9:44
different and it takes me a while to learn how it’s different. Um because
9:51
Bethel was was renewal and vineyard was third wave. And so third wave is word
9:58
and spirit. And renewal is kind of like let’s take all the charismatic
10:04
Pentecostal people um and even those outside of that framework and put them
10:10
together in an environment where like maybe primary issues matter but
10:19
secondary and third uh issues we’re not really going to focus on too much in the
10:24
school. and let’s teach them to learn to push past fear and not be afraid and and
10:32
to dream with God. And so I I really enjoyed the place. Like I I made a lot
10:38
of good friends. Uh people I still call to this day and like I I don’t have this
10:44
like Bethel is this negative place vibe. Um it it’s my church.
10:51
I think that’s why I think that’s what’s what makes everything that you’re about to share. Yeah. Um Yeah. It just it just
10:57
comes off with a different tone and with a certain kind of credibility because of how you’re you’re going to get into it, how involved you were, how committed you
11:04
were, how on board you were. Yeah. And then uh some concerns. Yeah. And I I loved my church like to the point like I
11:13
wanted this thing to be as healthy as it could to leave something for the next
11:18
generation. Um because I I benefited from it a ton.
11:24
So once I graduate uh I start leading missions trips there. I went to Costa
11:29
Rica a few times. Um I taught the equip classes which is like Sunday school. So first John, Philippians. Um, I taught
11:37
what are called advanced ministry trainings, AMTs, on thinking deeply about the supernatural. So, I took all
11:44
of my apologetics trainings and taught on like God’s existence, the
11:50
resurrection, uh, how how to critically think about miracles, um, like it it was
11:58
on like how to integrate your intellect in the supernatural. Um, and I helped
12:04
launch like networks in my home. Like we took our master bedroom out. Um, we
12:10
helped Michael Berdor launch pastor’s coach and then catch the fire which is
12:15
uh John and Carol all know. Uh, he coached their churches and we put up a
12:21
studio for him uh in our master bedroom. Um, and I I I still love it to this day.
12:30
Um, and so while I was there, I became a member uh back in 2012. And I want to
12:38
talk about this because I I feel like one of the things I want to do with this
12:44
podcast is encourage us to like take stepward steps upwards into integrity
12:52
and like maybe even a bit of reformation back to some scriptural principles
12:59
because I see like it it really harming us not thinking through some of these
13:05
issues. Um, and one of the things in our membership class and covenant is that
13:13
our leaders would foster trustworthy leadership. That is, you could always trust them to
13:21
submit to the word of God and that they were willing shepherds and they would be
13:26
approachable. And I’m like, I love that. Like, you want that for your church. Everybody wants that for theirs. And um
13:33
and and I can sense it. Every time I’ve looked at stuff with- with Bethel or people from Bethel, I I see the amount of
13:40
trust, the incredibly high amount of trust there is, especially for the leadership for kind of kind of all the
13:47
leadership, but but Bill and Chris, you know, being the more unquestioning trust almost. Um and in a lot of ways that
13:56
works. H it’s helpful to just be like all right I’m not going to look for the
14:01
bad in a person. Uh and yeah um and so
14:08
but just to be clear you were would it be fair to say that you were in leadership in Bethel because you’re
14:14
you’re you’re teaching classes uh yeah on staff there though, right? Not staff
14:19
level leadership. Uh but they would they would call me an empowered leader in the
14:24
environment. Um, okay. And so, and I
14:30
over time once I got out of school, I began seeing that covenant broken.
14:37
Uh, and and and the integrity piece falling apart. And I’m not telling this
14:43
to call people out. I’m I’m saying this because
14:49
I got really harmed in that process and I want to help call people up to
14:56
remember who they are in God. Uh in kingdom culture, Dan’s book, it it’s the
15:01
Bethel values and it says we are responsible to speak up with loving confrontation when others in the family
15:07
of God sin based on the truth that as a new creation in Christ that they are too amazing to behave that way.
Part 2. The False Prophecy
15:16
Well, when I was a third year,
15:22
um, in February of 2015, I’m at my house and I start getting
15:28
texts and the texts say, uh, Sean Boltz
15:33
just called your name out. And I think to myself, huh? And then another person says he called
15:39
out Allison Elijah. And so I drive to the church, he tells me my name, my
15:45
birth date, that I lived in Chattanooga, grew up in Georgia, my wife’s name, uh that she’s an occupational therapist,
15:53
and um that God’s commissioned me to make a
15:58
film. It’ll touch lots of doctor’s lives. And he goes on to tell me that uh
16:05
Allison has an aunt named Karen and a daughter named Silky. And so this is like eight pieces of information. And as
16:11
he’s telling me all of that, I knew the first part was on the internet. And uh
16:18
the last part about Karen and Silky, I was like, “Huh?” And so I go home. Just
16:25
for anybody who doesn’t understand like you just mentioned Shawn Bolz’s name, but Shawn Bolz was seen at the time as a
16:32
very reliable friend of the house, uh a prophet, a reliable prophet. Um, Bill
16:37
Johnson introduced him as one of his most trusted friends. Uh, Terresa Deadman introduced him, I believe, as
16:44
one of the most prophetic people on the planet uh, to a Bethel audience. And so, I want you to get on your feet and honor
16:50
one of the most prophetic, creative people I know on the planet, Sean, the
16:55
good friend of the house. He’s amazing. We’ll get you a podium.
17:07
But we’re also weaving in the prophetic. And one of our dearest friends, one of our most trusted friends is Sean BS. And
17:15
the Lord’s shown him several things. And so he calls out your name. He’s got like words of knowledge, it seems, about you
17:21
and instructions about what you’re supposed to do with your life. Yeah. So it was a big deal. And so it was a huge
17:30
transformative deal. [Applause]
17:42
So Elijah and Austin got here. I’m Elijah here. Yes. I I was pulling out my
17:47
driveway and I started getting texts. And you’re from the beach state. Are you from Chattanooga by a chance or Yes.
17:54
Chattanooga, Tennessee. I I live there and I grew up in Georgia.
18:00
Yeah. Wow. So, uh, does November 24th my birthday?
18:07
Yeah. Um, so God God wants to really, um, touch you and this this year, I’m
18:13
glad you’re in third year because you’re starting to come into the formulation of the greater destiny that’s on your life.
18:18
And I saw your birthday related to it. And I heard the Lord when I was here at the creative conference, I heard the
18:24
Lord speak to me in my left ear again. And he, the same way he spoke to Darren Wilson, he said, “Make the film.” Can I
18:30
hear what I’m saying? Yeah, I’m I’m making a documentary on
18:36
miracles with medical evidence before and after. Yeah.
18:42
You’re making a documentary on miracles and before and after evidence. So, this is a commission from heaven for you.
18:50
[Applause]
18:56
something that Mike Alison will have to do with the future of your film projects. She’s a therapist, I believe.
19:02
That’s right. An occupational therapist. Yeah. Therapy was important for her because it
19:08
developed a life perspective she needed to be able to help people break through and understand their house. There’s
19:14
there’s so much she won’t be necessarily her long-term career. It’ll be part of her, but it won’t be your long-term career because something that you’ll do
19:20
together that she’s going to get inspired for something you’re inspired for is going to redefine a whole genre
19:26
of ministry. And especially because you’re going to take it to media. And it’s not that you guys are the most gifted or annoyed. You don’t have to
19:32
worry about being the most gifted. You’re showing up first. Yeah. You’re literally showing up one of the first people to show up in that whole genre of
19:38
media with the documentary. And because you’re showing up at the right time first, God’s going to use that. You’re
19:44
getting one of the first impressions that people in the church world have of what God’s doing and also doctors and
19:49
medical professionals who are going to trust you. And so I’m telling you like make the movie your commission. Yes.
19:55
Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Yes.
20:01
Yes. I saw you because I saw the spirit of Elijah on you. That’s how I saw you.
20:07
And uh and I I saw your wife’s family and I saw like the Lord wants to touch
20:13
some family members um especially in pain and one of them’s name is Karen. Maybe an aunt or Yeah. She’s got an aunt
20:19
Karen. Yeah. And Karen’s going to God’s going to touch Karen either her heart or her body. There’s a pain issue that he’s
20:26
going to touch and then her daughter. It’s like silky or silky. Yeah. What?
20:32
Yeah. God’s going to touch this daughter. He’s going to transform their lives. and uh give them a greater opportunity
20:39
than we’ve ever had in their entire lives. And you’re going to see as that happens with them, it’s going to be a dominoes with the rest of her family.
20:45
All this family is about to get apprehended by Yes. Thank you, Jesus.
20:50
Yes.
20:58
Um like people were sharing about it online. Uh
21:05
and like after that like my life changed like people were paying for mission
21:11
trips for me um and just opening doors and it it was an amazing experience. I
21:17
went home and told Allison and uh I mean she couldn’t sleep that night. Uh, and
21:24
like we I want to say start film a Kickstarter
21:30
and raise about a $132,000 to make this film that God’s
21:37
commissioned me to touch doctor’s lives with. Yeah. And that how could you not
21:44
go all in at that point? Right. If you’re feel like this is the Lord, then Yeah. Okay. I give it all. Only thing else I could think of is seeing Jesus or
21:51
an angel. Like there it turned the knob of at one point I thought about making a
21:58
documentary and tried collecting cases and I was done with that but but it was
22:04
still online to uh from a two and I I
22:10
was going to like take over a church uh in another city to a 10. Like I’m like
22:17
you get this once in your life, you marry this. Like you cannot do anything
22:24
else but this. And so the So you held off on other ministry stuff you were going to do. Oh yeah, pastoral ministry
22:31
you were going to do and you you you set that aside. You redirected your whole life to this because now because of what
22:36
Sean said, right? No jobs for eight years to finish this this thing. So like
22:44
and that causes a little marriage stress because I’d imagine cuz my wife thought this
22:50
would be over in like one and I I didn’t have a film background like I started
22:56
from um just like I’ve got a dream in my heart to like you wanted to you wanted
23:04
to marry together this like apologetics evidence intellectual like pursuit with miraculous and the work of God and have
23:11
evidence for the miracle working of of God through Christians. Um, so this
23:17
would this fit into your background, but yeah, you had to learn all the film stuff and all the cinematography things. And like
23:24
one of my best friends in Chattanooga who who was a pastor I work for apostated
23:30
and he said there’s no God, no miracles. And I thought um well, we are seeing them. There has
23:37
to be medical evidence somewhere. and I thought about writing a paper on it, but I’m like, no one reads papers, uh,
23:44
especially in that environment. And so I’m like, uh, making a film would be awesome. And so this guy calls me out.
23:51
And so I I put together a team and, uh, we end up traveling the world.
Part 3. The Physics of Heaven
24:00
What I’ll call call this is organizational integrity where it’s it’s not about a person lying to me. It’s
24:06
about an institution. uh is that when Lindsay Davis left and
24:14
went on the Cultish podcast, I listened to that because, you know, I’m I’m very
24:19
apologetic minded. And um she’d watched American Gospel and
24:26
came to the conclusion that uh Bethel was teaching heresy, the Kosis uh
24:33
understanding of Christ, which is he was a man and not God. uh or ontological
24:39
kinosis like we all believe in functional kinosis which is sometimes Jesus restricted himself or set aside
24:45
his prerogatives um and we didn’t talk about par repentance or didn’t teach the Bible in
24:53
school um and we were synchizing the new age with physics of heaven and I thought
24:59
a lot of what she said was false and I come from a reformed background so like
25:06
Westminster confession of faith a talks about like
25:11
in in one of the questions on lying is like not giving a just defense a as a
25:18
form of lying. And I felt like Bethel was misrepresented in this. And so
25:25
on my own dime, well, first of all, I got permission from like Eric and Dan.
25:30
Hey, I want to go down and set the record straight, right? And so
25:37
just so Eric is Eric Johnson, one of the pastors of Bethel, and then Dan Fairley, who’s like the teaching a teaching
25:44
pastor of Bethel. Yeah. Yeah. And so I go down and uh I we set the record straight
25:52
and they’re like they thought we were heretics. Like we denied the God man. Uh
26:01
Mhm. And they’re like, “Man, you’re our brother.” And like we even said it on
26:07
the podcast. And so like there’s this unity happening as we just tell the
26:12
truth about Yeah, we we look at this. Our our students do read the Bible and
26:17
here’s examples of repentance. And like everybody at Bethel loved this.
26:23
And then the one thing I got tripped up on was physics of heaven. Um right. Um
26:30
I’m like I can’t uh defend this like No, this is
26:37
a book. This is this is a book that they’re teaching. Uh well, Bethel leadership has endorsed it. There’s
26:42
written endorsements. Bill Johnson’s a contributor to the book. A number of main leaders have endorsed the book in
26:48
the actual matter of the front matter of the book. And it’s also something that um people in the school of supernatural
26:55
ministry are there’s a good chance they’ll be exposed to. Judy Franklin at least would routinely come the author of
27:00
the book come and do some of the practices that she writes about in the book for the students in the school.
27:06
Well, there there’s a partly true uh so
27:13
I’m just going to tell you what my memory of school was. I heard her teach once. Um I don’t think it was from that
27:21
book. And like when I went down to cultish, it had sold 50 copies out of
27:28
Bethel Media in the last year. So I don’t think it’s as pervasive as media made
27:33
it. But there are It wasn’t so much about I think for people who criticize
27:39
it wasn’t so much about how influential is it. It was about what is this telling us about the doctrines that are floating
27:46
around. Yeah. Yeah. And and on the podcast uh I I read this quote about
27:53
uh quantum light and how it it’s everywhere and Jesus had access to it.
28:01
Um you can probably pull it up and read it. So it says Jesus redeemed everything
28:06
we need to know what this power is. A seal of quantum light that undergrads everything and most importantly we need
28:14
to know how to access it. We have the zero point field within us individually.
28:20
Each of us may not have a square yard of 0 point filled energy in us. Uh but two
28:27
or three of us do. And the Bible says whatever two or three of us agree on will be done. Uh so we truly have the
28:36
power within us and around us to move many mountains. Jesus calms storms. We
28:41
should be able to do that too. Jesus healed the sick, cast out demons, raised the dead. We have the same power within
28:47
us. And we have power all around us undergarding the universe. And so what a
28:53
language game is is that what the words mean in something is contingent upon the
29:00
game being played. So if I’m telling you a joke and uh the words mean something
29:07
different if I’m giving you a command or if I’m praying or if I’m
29:13
doing a question. And so when prophetic people read that, they just edit
29:19
everything out in their head and they go, “All right, well, I see the big bang and I see God’s power and this inspires
29:26
me to be like Jesus and pray for the sick.” In the teaching language game,
29:32
the the thing you do is try to communicate truth accurately and you
29:39
judge something based on whether or not it matches reality. And so what prophets tend to do is they
29:48
feel like if you’re critiquing something that a prophetic person
29:54
is writing, then um it’s kind of like being a word policeman. Like if I said,
30:02
uh, I want to get better at this versus I want to get goodter at this. and you
30:09
came to me and you called me out and you’re like, “Hey, Mike, uh, or Elijah,
30:14
uh, you use the word goodter. Look at how stupid you are.” Like that’s how they feel about that. But, wow. Yeah.
30:22
But if I did, uh, through the teaching lens is like you’re talking about the
30:29
deity of Christ. And um if you’re saying he pulled on
30:36
energy or a quantum field, then what you’re doing is talking about like
30:45
he he’s sinning or he may not be God. And like if you think about sins,
30:53
there’s like a they’re all wrong, but there’s degrees like stealing is less
30:58
than murder. And if you think of the highest degree of sin, um, well, there’s
31:06
blaspheming the Holy Spirit, there is denying Christ, and then there’s heresy.
31:13
And heresy is, uh, like
31:18
if you have there’s two types, formal and informal. So formal heresy is
31:24
like I believe something false about Christ. Like Christ was an angel or he
31:31
was just a good man rather than the God man. And so what teachers are supposed
31:36
to do is say, “Whoa, stop. You’re touching the glory of God.” And
31:44
it’s not just a minor thing. Um, and so
31:50
like you have to you don’t get a pass on
31:55
that at all. And the and it hurts the heart of God whether it’s material or
32:02
formal. And so I’m like, no. Like this needs to be pulled
32:09
uh and rewritten. I also said uh when heaven invades earth uh needs to be
32:16
rewritten and w that’s Bill Johnson’s book, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he
32:22
did it and I admire him for that. And this So did he rewrite this section that people
32:28
about uh That’s what I understand. I think he talks about it in the Rediscover Bethel videos. Hey guys, this
32:34
is uh me after the fact. I’m currently editing the video that you’re watching and here’s me to interrupt briefly to
32:39
tell you um yes, Bethel did claim to change these exact passages in the book.
32:46
I’ll play a little clip of that now. Uh in the next uh releases of that book, I I just wrote the publisher cuz it’s
32:52
maybe 8 months or so ago. Yeah. And and said, you know, it’s causing too much of a stir. It’s not communicating what I
32:58
intended. So, let’s change the language there. That was four years ago, but I got the most recent edition I could
33:04
find, and I’ve asked others if they can find another edition. I emailed Bethel to try to see if they would give me a newer
33:10
edition. It appears as though the book was never updated. So, I think that this was actually in the end kind of a
33:15
misleading thing for uh Bill Johnson and Bethel to do, to have for four years a video up saying that they have edited
33:22
and changed or that they were going to edit and change four years ago, a book that they never edited or changed. Yeah.
33:28
He says he wrote the publisher, but the implication is clear. Anyways, it didn’t happen. Um, the reason why this was
33:33
included in the interview in the first place was to give credit to Bill to say, “Hey, thank you. Good job here. What a great example this was. Thanks for
33:39
that.” But because I checked and I usually try to fact check stuff, you know, and it turns out to not be the
33:46
case. So, me and my cat are very disappointed. And so, this leads to
33:51
reconciliation uh over the long term between everybody.
33:59
Um, Lindseay Davis a few years later reaches out to Bill and like, “Hey, Bill, I’m
34:06
sorry. I got some things wrong on you. I still disagree with some stuff, but I see you’re my brother.” Jerry calls me
34:14
up. Hey, Elijah. We got some things wrong. Thank you. And like like everyone is
34:22
cleaning up their mess except Physics of Heaven
34:29
and that is a huge deal for me. Um it was for for anybody who’s curious I I do
34:36
have a video at least from my perspective. I don’t know how much Elijah would agree or disagree but uh on the physics of heaven and I would agree
34:42
it was it was a shocking red flags like just shocking shocking stuff that was in
34:48
there. It caused me to ramp up my concerns about Bethel as a result, right, because of the endorsements that were in
34:54
there. Yeah. Right. And we don’t catch that stuff very easily because we’re
35:00
just trained like read into stuff the good
35:05
rather than like discern it at that level. And I I think you need to do
35:11
both. Like I And so I’m not saying Judy is a material heretic. that that would
35:18
really surprise me. Uh, no, no, no, no. I am not saying Judy was
35:25
is a formal heretic. What I am saying is she wrote material heresy. Uh, and
35:33
that’s an easy fix. All you do is say, “I’m wrong
35:38
publicly because you published it publicly.” That’s how you clean up your mess. You go back and you fix your book
35:44
just like Bill did. And so when I do that, uh, a few days I realize like
35:52
Chris is going to get a ton of emails when this drops. Shoot him an email over. I tell him the problems with it.
35:59
Shoots me an email back. I agree with this. Okay. Um, and then uh, he said, “I wrote
36:07
the forward because I love her and I want to be loyal.” And I’m like, “I love
36:12
her.” are like loving somebody is good. I’m not saying that should be a moral
36:19
thing. I’m just saying this is what happened. And uh what I’m saying is
36:26
ethics is like it’s not deciding between right and wrong. It’s deciding between two goods
36:33
and which one should be ranked higher. And so I would say loyalty is a good I
36:40
think articulating the cause of Christ correctly is a higher one. And in
36:46
scripture when loyalty like you can be loyal and tell someone to fix something
36:51
like Nathan came to David and was like hey you took the the one sheep and gave
36:57
that prophecy and he’s like yeah uh he was being loyal and still calling
37:03
something out. Right. And so and there’s there’s a concern for that incredible
37:09
high level of trust that people have for Chris in the movement. Yeah. for the fact that when he writes an endorsement,
37:15
nobody thinks he’s writing it because he loves the person. He they think he’s writing it because he’s endorsing the
37:21
content of the book. That’s fair. And so that that message comes across. You can
37:26
trust this book because look, I read it and you trust me and I endorsed it. It has little to do with how you
37:32
emotionally feel about the author. Yeah. Um but he his endorsement was a shining endorsement. He’s I if I remember right
37:38
he called them prophets like said that they were he said something along the lines of God this is this is God using
37:43
them this isn’t even just their opinions. Mhm. So that was a pretty powerful thing. And I could say this uh
37:51
when I read books I read like okay this is a fact this is
37:57
a fact. This is false. This is a fact. And so I don’t think everything in that book is
38:04
wrong. like every sentence is wrong, but that clearly was. And um it can be
38:11
fixed. And so uh
38:16
Chris is like the next day when the emails comes in is like, “You’re talking about this in public?” And I’m like,
38:22
“Yeah, uh I was told by the church to or not told by the church, they they didn’t
38:27
tell me. I I volunteered, but yeah. Uh it’s like, don’t write me again.”
38:33
Yeah. And he this is this I really want to highlight Elijah is this was a this
38:39
this was public endorsements public material and it was publicly being
38:45
scrutinized and you responded to it publicly as well and said yep here’s here’s one one where we can take a
38:51
lesson and we can go this is a problem we should address this this this book has material heresy um and and then his
38:59
response to you was it seems the fact that you openly
39:04
talked about this thing that you were you were right. You were speaking truth. The fact that you said it out loud publicly, you were cut off from him
39:11
relationally. Do not contact me again. And that was my duty. Like I I I could
39:18
be a propagandist or have integrity like and sometimes you
39:24
get put into situations where telling the truth it it it cost
39:33
and for me that was just like what like and
39:38
in the back of my mind as as they’re asking me about the book I’m thinking
39:44
about our value. We always clean up our mess. Like there’s just no possible world in which anyone at that church
39:52
would want us to val break our values. And there’s not a Christian ministry in
39:58
the world that I think doesn’t believe you should clean up your messes or or if you make mistakes, like that’s just
40:05
confess, you know, make restoration. Like this is Christianity 101, right?
40:11
And so it it was just weird. Um yeah, and it says it, you know, in in kingdom
40:19
culture, uh God’s word transforms is our value. Every word in the Bible should be
40:25
applied with proper interpretation. And it’s possible for a Christian to be deceived. And so like assuming she can
40:33
be wrong is just normative uh in in the movement. And so I end up
40:42
uh within a few months like it’s always hard to get an audience with Chris. Uh
40:49
we end up sitting down and I talk through him through it and he’s like,
40:55
you know, I I don’t think Judy’s practicing witchcraft. And I’m like, I I don’t
41:02
think she’s trying to uh but what I do think is this book is so problematic for
41:10
us as a movement. Um when I’m outside of renewal, revival alliance circles, and I
41:17
would say in third wave or people just coming out of cessationism circles, this
41:25
comes up when I’m online. this comes up uh and and I’m teaching
41:32
against witchcraft. Listen, I’m I’m so with you on this because even though my my criticisms of
41:39
Bethel would be probably more numerous than yours and uh and and we would interpret some of that stuff differently, which is fine. the you know
41:47
my background was Calvary Chapel. Mhm. And when I started reaching out online and my my like sort of window opens to
41:55
groups of Christians outside my own tradition, outside my own circles normally and my influence is far beyond
42:01
my local church now and people are reaching out going, Mike, you know, Pastor Chuck predicted the rapture.
42:07
Yeah. What do you say about that? You know, you have teaching against Jehovah’s Witnesses and their end times predictions, but he predicted the
42:13
rapture, right? What do you say about this? And I felt really compelled to actually make a video where I said, “Look, I got the books. I got the
42:19
proof.” I said, “Look, he really did in print.” Like, this wasn’t a private, this wasn’t a one-off little weird thing he said one time. This was like in
42:26
print. He says, “Jesus is coming back 1988.” Mhm. And so I shared it and I did
42:31
an honest evaluation of where he got scripture wrong, how he misinterpreted this here, and this was a mistake. And I
42:37
just did a very honest evaluation. I thought it was a good just like you. I thought this is a good thing for the
42:42
movement. This is a good thing for integrity. Some Calvary pastors reached out to me said, ‘Mike, thank you so much
42:48
for doing this. But there were others and the reaction was that of you’ve
42:54
betrayed, you have you you I can’t believe you did this. And um and I’m in
43:00
this we’re aligned in our thinking was like, “No, no, this was this was good for everyone.” Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
43:06
Every this is good for everybody to do this. People afterwards at the church came and thank me. like they were so
43:13
happy because or well also I went to
43:19
Biola uh where like they are really good apologist and so like all of a sudden
43:28
that book switched from hey Bethel may be Bible light to you are new age
43:35
syncretizes and like that brand in AC Christian
43:41
academia is huge and it is blowing up across academia, but they’re they’re not
43:49
academics there. Uh maybe global Randy Clark really cares about that stuff. Um
43:55
but I gave Chris a copy of Randy Clark’s healing energy and a book uh on the new
44:04
age by Ron Rhodess and I’m like, “Dude, look at these things.” And then we leave the meeting and I’m like,
44:11
“All right, h how do we clean this mess up?” And so I shoot over an email and I’m like, “Hey, let’s get Judy meet with
44:20
my wife. We can or set up a meeting and we can set him up quantum her quantum
44:26
physicist, new age apologist.” Um, I go through the book, give tons of
44:32
recommendations, and like, um, and I go like, here’s five teachers
44:40
I would have her listen to and kind of help recraft the book. So, like, this is
44:48
Bethel. You said in the beginning of our discussion, you’re trying to call this is this is you all the time. You’re
44:53
trying to say, “Hey, this isn’t over. let’s let’s call this let’s call for
44:58
change. Let’s call for a reformation in this area. Let’s just fix it. Yeah. Yeah. And the emails went nowhere. Um
45:06
there was there’s no followup on it. And so that that’s really hard because that
45:13
is our core value. Um, and Chris in How Heaven Invades Earth says, “When the
45:18
body lacks the adequate influence of true five-fold teachers, biblical foundations give way to subjective
45:24
experiences and feelings.” And so,
45:30
um, that is a big issue. Also, um,
45:36
Denny Silk in Culture of Honor says, “This is gold standard Bethel, by the way.” um is like when you make a
45:45
mistake, uh what you do is it’s kind of like a paint can and you drop it and you go,
45:53
who did this affect? And so who did physics of heaven affect?
46:02
the entire charismatic movement, the entire Protestant conversation, the like
46:08
this requires public address. Um, and so,
46:18
and like when I was in school, just to give you some examples of things, people
46:25
that they’ve made cleanup messes is one, I had a good friend and uh,
46:32
she had been a stripper prior to coming to Bethel and she ended up getting a
46:38
boyfriend during third year and ended up getting pregnant. And so they they
46:43
talked to her about it and you know she said I want to clean up my mess. And so she confessed her sin in front of the
46:49
whole school. So that’s normative. Um I had two students. So there was a there
46:55
was a public accountability everybody who knew and then prayed for it and it was like a celebration moment of like
47:01
yeah you got free and you did the right thing and like that’s beautiful. Like that is the most
47:09
beautiful thing in the world. And then there was uh these two girls on a
47:14
missions trip with me. I led them and uh they ended up drinking alcohol and
47:20
that’s forbidden on missions trips. And so it was it was a sip and we had them
47:26
confess and I said don’t shame them like let’s celebrate them and never may we’ll
47:32
never talk about this again. And like that’s who we are. And so the fact that
47:38
leaders in our environment didn’t do that is a is an ethical betrayal. This
47:44
to me is so key because this keys into a bunch of stuff I’m currently investigating and researching. I see it
47:50
over and over again. If if anybody’s wondering why are we having you tell all this stuff so far, I I think that one of
47:56
the reasons is to to reveal this what I would call elitism. Um it’s rules for you, not for us. M this is why he can
48:02
endorse a book because she’s, you know, Judy’s part of the in crowd. Um she’s one of the ones of the important ones,
48:09
you know, and then Bill’s important and Chris is important and these the there’s the important people and they have a different kind of accountability than
48:16
the rest. It’s almost like the the the the whole movement’s in danger if they
48:21
have to be open about something whereas other people have to be open about it
48:26
just for the sake of integrity. Mhm. And and Chris wrote spiritual intelligence.
48:32
One of the ways we can tell that people have a healthy relationship with God is
48:38
that their weird and anti-biblical revelation gets pruned off.
48:43
And so he’s saying like, “Hey, if if there’s material heresy or like weird
48:52
things about energy, the evidence that you’re growing closer
48:57
to Jesus is you when given evidence of that, you go, “All right.”
49:03
Yes. And that book stayed there for a
49:10
long time, I would say years. And so we didn’t have this like try everybody
49:17
rising up and doing the right thing that uh now I I want to interject if I can
49:22
because it was it was a quite a while later when that book actually got on my radar and I did my video on on the
49:29
physics of heaven. It was I don’t know if it was two years later, three years, I don’t know. It was sometime significantly later cuz I don’t follow
49:35
this stuff and I’m not normally looking into it. And I was like, I read it and I was so shocked. I did a video on the
49:40
topic. I did a bunch of research, really thorough and detailed. Mhm. Right after
49:45
my video, they pulled it from the bookstore. Mhm. And the only public statement I could find was where I think
49:52
it was Chris who said it, but somebody about the public, it was a public statement, official statement. It was to say, um, we we took it out of our
49:58
bookstore because there are some things in it we don’t agree with. Okay. Super. No other details. Yeah. But the problem
50:05
I have is that that looks suspicious given that you were you had already
50:11
publicly called this out. You had you had sat down. You had created a document to try to walk through the problems to
50:16
try to say, “Hey, let’s fix this.” You had been reaching out to the leadership. Let’s talk about this. You’d had conversations and and it stayed in the
50:23
bookstore at that point. And so it starts to feel like the book was just
50:29
more P suddenly they’re like, “Oh, this is too much PR problem for us. Let’s just pull it and have a vague statement
50:35
about it.” Instead of an integrity move about the about the contents of the material. Yeah. And so, well, I didn’t
50:43
even know that, so I’m happy to hear that. At least that’s some type of step forward. Uh but but I I I hear you,
50:50
Mike. Uh sort of. But at that time, it was still there. And so what I did, by
50:57
the way, so because all this stuff is going on at
51:04
this time about physics of heaven and American gospel, I spend
51:12
hundreds of hours studying occult apologetics at Biola. Like I I took so
51:19
many classes. Every time I could, I would write my paper on some weird area
51:26
like what’s the difference between ESP and philosophy or excuse me, prophecy? What’s the difference between uh astral
51:34
projection and what happened to Paul? And uh I I’ve read uh like the history
51:42
of the occult in the west like all of western history like I I am engaging in
51:48
this stuff. And what I realize if if this book is not moving maybe a better
51:55
way to move it is to put together some notes where I go through this is what
52:02
the new age is. This is how to to separate Bethel language that may sound
52:08
similar like manifestations and stuff like that. Uh Dan told me he’d
52:13
help me make videos. Never happened. And so I would I would put hundreds of hours
52:19
into something, get it to the finish line, and he would be like, I got to go talk to Chris about this. And then it
52:24
just stopped. And like it just felt like this thing that was we could not get
52:30
out. And for me, it’s it’s the integrity of well, I put my time into this and we
52:37
never made them. And this is why this is so so important. Um,
52:45
there is a rising movement of Christian witchcraft and you can probably look at
52:51
the books on the screen right now. Like there everywhere. There’s Christian
52:57
witchcraft conferences. And I’m not saying people are doing this at Bethel. What I am saying is those people
53:06
watch Bethel stuff. I listen to hundreds of hours of people practicing Christian
53:13
witchcraft. And what we’re going to do right now is play a clip by uh a
53:19
Pentecostal prophet named Calvin Witcher. And he’s going to give his testimony of practicing Christian
53:26
witchcraft. And I want you to see what happens when teachers don’t teach uh
53:34
about the difference between the spiritual gifts and the occult. But I grew up Christian and really did every
53:41
position throughout the Christian church. I was a minister of music. I was the choir director, the youth president.
53:46
I was an associate minister and then a pastor. I was a pro house prophet what they called it in Tennessee to two
53:53
churches. I’ve been to seminary. I go by prophet. People know me by that. Still love Jesus. And I I always like to say
53:59
that um love Jesus, love the Christ, which to me are different um entities. I
54:05
teach mysticism, I teach the occult, I teach witchcraft, I teach sorcery, I
54:11
also teach um the scriptures. When you start to unravel the history of the
54:17
Bible, it’s full of astrology, other faiths, Egyptology, and other cultures.
54:22
If I were to own the term Christian witch, here’s how I look at it. One,
54:28
Christ is not even a name. Christ is the position, the power he operates. You know, lots of Christ consciousness, we
54:34
talk about this. Our Buddhist friends say Buddhahood, bodhic safas, by different names than other sex, but the
54:39
energy remains the same, which is the one that is anointed. I I happily take that on because I be pro a prophet like
54:46
that. I am willingly the messenger of the divine. And so even witchcraft just means the
54:53
craft of the wise. Christian witch is someone that is able to understand the magic that is inate in everything. Very
54:59
much like the the orendas the native Americans someone that’s able to tap into their destiny tap into the divine
55:06
use that for their own unfolding to affect change in the world and to do that with the level of divine power.
55:11
It’s that superhuman aspect of us. I know a lot of people that love Jesus that are wicked and pagan and a cultist.
55:19
Jesus was a huge alchemist and I you know I’ve said this on many occasions he was a magician by you know you know
55:26
there’s no stretch of the imagination with the miracles that he did. My my personal belief is if you don’t police
55:34
the boundaries between the new age and Christianity and make it absolutely
55:39
clear in 5 to 10 years the charismatic movements going that direction cuz they’re always looking for the new
55:46
thing. And also inside of let’s say a
55:51
Bethel Kingdom-Now theology, what happens is you get people who
55:59
uh believe well if a miracle is not happening, it’s not on God’s end. And so
56:06
we’ve got to figure out how to get access to miracles. And so either you go
56:12
toward intimacy which is I fast I pray or you start looking at mechanism.
56:19
And so that is what leads people into the occult is they’re going how do I get
56:24
more of the supernatural in my life and I love the supernatural. You love the
56:29
supernatural but there’s a difference between the supernatural and Jesus. And if you have to pick between the two you
56:34
pick Jesus every time. And he says don’t do this stuff. And the Old Testament
56:41
describes uh magical practices, occult practices
56:46
as detestable. And I I want to help prophetic people get pictures of what’s
56:52
detestable. Like if I went into a church and I took a cigarette out, lit it, and
56:57
put it on a kid’s arm, that’s detestable. Like you should feel like
57:03
this is disgusting. And that’s how God feels about the stuff you just heard from Calvin Witcher.
57:10
Yeah, absolutely. And and and the reason why this is so relevant to the physics of heaven is because that book, if you
57:16
were to just read and follow the instructions of the book, you would you would have a bridge to exactly what Calvin Witcher is talking about. Um
57:23
maybe not as extreme, but like it it could become a starting point. You would have Yeah. you would have no safeguards
57:29
against it and you would have assurances that it’s okay to experiment with these things because the Holy Spirit will just
57:35
protect you. You effectively Christians aren’t going to be deceived. Um and so they can have this overconfidence about
57:41
this. This is something I highlighted in my review of of the of the physics of heaven. And um and talked about in
57:47
Deuteronomy about like don’t learn the ways of the pagans. Like don’t don’t worship me using their methods. This is
57:52
not safe. And and the thing that turned me on to what they were doing was uh I
57:59
just one day started asking the question, what happened with Jason Westerfield?
58:05
Like this is the guy Bill Johnson. I’ve only seen him once formally excommunicate someone from the pulpit.
58:12
Like if you’ve pushed Bill Johnson to there, you’re into some crazy stuff. And
58:18
uh the what got me to Truth Seeker’s site uh wi-i which is one of the guys in
58:25
the video, the white guy uh was that Jason Westerfeld uh was appearing on
58:31
there talking to how to have telepathy and and and the blue beings. And so
58:38
I feel we really need to turn the volume up on taking educating
58:47
people in the movement because against the new age because when I see
58:54
students apostatize um or I meet people or I met people in
59:00
reading I always asked them uh what did you read and they they would tell me
59:05
physics of heaven. And I’m not saying Judy was advocating for that. I’m saying
59:13
I talked to at least two or three people that would have a magic worldview. Now
59:22
that got there and so why not produce content that goes this is how you tell
59:28
the two apart. And uh one of the phrases that I hear
59:34
all the time is redeeming the occult in in the movement. And what what the
59:40
idea is there’s something neutral out there or good in it. And and I there’s
59:45
something called common grace insights. So God causes the rain to fall on everyone. And uh that has happened a few
59:52
times in church history like spiritual alchemy became chemistry. But the way you redeemed it was you took the
59:59
spiritual out and then uh you gave it a new name so that you could tell the sin
1:00:04
and the pseudocience from the new science. And so uh you know people used
1:00:10
to do astrology and they’d look at the stars and try to write down omens and
1:00:16
then someone came along and was like this is sin. But what you can do is study the stars
1:00:25
and learn how to guide ships or whatever. And we’ll we’ll call this astronomy. And so
1:00:33
that happens occasionally, but not that often. And the
1:00:39
possibility for error is so high. Like if if you’re at a graduate level in
1:00:45
seminary at an apologetics program, that may be something worth pursuing
1:00:52
academically when you’re surrounded by like occult apologist, but like this is
1:00:59
not something you teach an 18-year-old to do with their spirit. And it’s it’s explicitly you’re trying to import
1:01:06
spiritual things. It’s not it’s not these examples of like scientific kind of observations uh being brought over
1:01:13
with spiritual things being ditched. This is different. This is let’s just import spiritual things purely. Yeah.
1:01:20
And we’ll color it Christian is how I would put it anyways. That’s what the physics of heaven was getting at. Um
1:01:25
that’s that’s a that is inherently um unbiblical. God says don’t even inquire
1:01:33
of these of these pagan nations like how did they worship their gods? and then I’ll I’ll do that with my God. He goes, “Don’t even don’t even find out if
1:01:39
that’s if that’s what your plan is. Don’t even dig into it.” Yeah. It’s it’s such a huge danger. And then he
1:01:45
repeatedly comes at Israel when they try to start treating him the way that these other religions functioned. Um it’s a
1:01:52
great example for us, you know, when in Acts when they when they have a bunch of people from from from witchcraft and the
1:01:58
occult, all that kind of thing. They come into the church, they burn their books. Mhm. They don’t they don’t copy
1:02:04
and paste all the bits they can see. Yeah. Yeah. They just destroy it. Yeah. Yeah. And when I study the ancient near
1:02:11
east, uh I see what we would say are
1:02:17
modern like energy practices. Uh you can
1:02:23
see in Egyptian literature like I’m going to say this wrong because I don’t speak Egyptians, but it’s Ka and Ba. So
1:02:30
KBA uh is like they believed spirit their spirits could leave their body. Um you
1:02:37
would see quotes of people talking about uh channeling uh life energy into them.
1:02:44
Um and so this is not like hey we’re just discovering this. It it’s Moses who
1:02:52
lived in Egypt saw all of this and said this is detestable. And so we we need to
1:03:01
think about the then and there and do good hermeneutics uh a as we go through this process. So
1:03:09
that was something that just didn’t get cleaned up for a really long time and I it looks like it’s going better. But
1:03:16
cleaning it up is not just we pulled a book. It’s we have to teach a new
1:03:22
paradigm. [Music] The next big thing is my movie. So I
1:03:29
told you I got the word from Sean and uh like we raised the money and I share and
1:03:37
I go around the world and film. You know recently we see this alumni statement
1:03:42
come out. It says in about Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it said in 2019
1:03:48
uh world leaders came to us and told us about this uh
1:03:56
like uh words that he may have looked up.
1:04:03
I was never told about that in 2019. But what did happen in 2019 is I showed my
1:04:11
movie to Dan uh and the communications team. Let me let me say for anybody who doesn’t know the the statement that came
1:04:17
out. So Bethel um it it was leaked online that people were highlighting look
1:04:22
here’s examples that Sean has been getting information from people online. He’s been faking prophecies. He has been
1:04:29
he even has bring been bringing harm to some people who follow his instructions thinking God’s leading them. All this
1:04:34
stuff started coming out online and it just got so big that Bethel finally made a statement that they released just to the alumni. not to everybody but to the
1:04:40
alumni from the school of ministry and supernatural ministry and then they in this statement they said yeah there were
1:04:47
you know years ago we heard some stuff and we didn’t tell everybody um this
1:04:54
means that at least some of the leaders you’re interacting with at this time while you’re working on your movie while
1:04:59
you’re gathering evidence while you’re getting footage from it they they know that that that some of them actually
1:05:06
have a packet of information with a bunch of evidence Sean has been and you have not been
1:05:12
warned. Nobody Nobody outside of some small circle knows about what’s going on with Shawn. You you were not warned. The
1:05:19
the public has not warned. People are not given a big public, hey, if you’re
1:05:24
packing your bags to move to South, you know, India because you’re going to be
1:05:30
doing a missionary work because Shawn Bolz gave you a prophecy, take that to the Lord and double check because he’s
1:05:35
been doing this. Nothing. None of that happened, right? but they date it to 2019. And so
1:05:42
20 uh 2020, January, that’s when I’m meeting
1:05:48
with Chris and Dan talking about physics of heaven. And I’m introduced as Elijah,
1:05:54
the guy that got the word from Sean. And uh like that’s a perfect time to sit
Part 4. Bethel Betrays Elijah
1:06:02
down and be like, “Hey buddy, let’s have a hard conversation.”
1:06:09
And I’m open because I’m very truthdriven. Let’s do a lot of any option if we need
1:06:17
to clean up a mess. Um and so
1:06:22
that that hurt. That that stung. Um, is that and I know I know for for a fact
1:06:30
Chris was at this time calling other leaders. He says in a text messages that I have. Yeah. That he was at this time
1:06:37
calling other leaders and warning them about Sean. But only only a certain kind of elite circle of leaders. Not not you
1:06:44
right in front of him. No. No. Who’s literally investing your entire life savings Yeah. in a in a movie because of
1:06:51
a word from Shawn. And he knows this. Yeah. Well, I’m not elite. Uh, I’m just
1:06:56
kidding. But, uh, like you’re you’re it’s true though. It’s true though. I mean, that is certainly what I think is
1:07:01
the case. I think that you were not viewed as um in and of yourself important enough. Whereas a a true
1:07:09
Christian perspective is every single believer is important enough um for that kind of a a warning to go out or or not
1:07:16
trusted enough. Oh, you expose physics of heaven. Maybe if you know about Sean, you’ll expose that. And they’re trying
1:07:22
to not have it exposed. Yeah. Hey guys, Mike Winger editing here adding a very important piece of information. I was
1:07:29
looking over this statement that Bethel made where they said that in 2019 they had first become aware of Shawn’s
1:07:36
fraudulent behavior or evidence of it. On your screen here, it says, “We communicated our concern, confusion, and
1:07:42
his denials to the leaders who initially raised concerns about the words of knowledge with us, as well as, and this
1:07:48
would include Elijah, realistically to leaders closely connected to Shawn and
1:07:53
made the evidence available to them for them to make their own decision.” Did they make the evidence available to
1:07:58
Elijah? No, they did not. He asked about it. You will you will see the emails and got this curt response. And then Dan
1:08:06
later tells him, “Oh, I haven’t heard anything about this. That was very misleading. It it it looks to me, okay,
1:08:12
Elijah is not saying this. It looks to me as though he was lied to.” And then everybody else, most recently in this
1:08:19
announcement from Bethel, was lied to about the situation. I I don’t know how to reconcile these statements with the
1:08:25
reality that this is not what happened. So, it looks like Bethel not only dropped the ball, but is now lying or deceiving
1:08:33
or at least misleading, misrepresenting the facts about what actually happened when they took care of this situation in
1:08:39
the first place. The whole thing is just atrocious and offensive. And I’m asking
1:08:47
for Bethel to be accountable and take responsibility for what they have done
1:08:52
and have not done and what they have misled others to believe about what they did. According to this, Elijah should
1:09:00
have been told he was not and he paid the price.
1:09:08
I’ll just tell you what this cost me. Um, I worked on this film eight years, no
1:09:15
salary. If you put me at $50,000 a year, that’s $400,000. If you put me at a h 100red um, which I’ve made before,
1:09:23
that’s $800,000. Um, we pulled $175,000
1:09:29
uh out of our savings uh to pay for it and then paid that
1:09:35
back. Uh, so like that’s that’s 300 grand. And like the irony of this is
1:09:45
that on April 2020, April 17th, 2020 is when Chris and this
1:09:53
intern start this dialogue. And the next day is when I’m pulling my money out.
1:10:01
And so, right, this is this is all your personal money beyond all the fundraising you did and the promises you
1:10:08
made in the name of of of what Sean Bulls said. You’re fundraising. You’re telling people, look, the Lord is in
1:10:13
this. Yeah. And he’s and you’re getting support from others for it. Yeah. And he’s texting him. I’ve told many leaders
1:10:18
in our network about Sean’s dishonics prophetic ministry. Um I told him he
1:10:24
needs to clean up his mess before we can have relationship with our people. I’ve told our entire team that they’re not to
1:10:30
min like right what on earth. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so
1:10:36
um this is in May 2021. So 3 years later
1:10:44
uh which is I launch in September 2021.
1:10:49
Someone reaches out to me. He’s a producer and he said I showed him my movie and
1:10:55
he’s like Shambol is in this uh no one tell you like so I’m finding out about
1:11:01
this for the first time someone uh outside of the states that I
1:11:08
would not have ran across had it not been for Providence at some level. And
1:11:14
um so Chris in school of the prophets says uh about prophets they must uh create
1:11:22
equipping cultures where there are coaches and refs. Coaches are expected to give feedback to the players and the
1:11:28
refs will call fouls when people behave in a way that is destructive to the game
1:11:34
so to say. And so we’re in this culture where they’re saying we are trusted
1:11:40
leaders. You can trust us. put your trust in us. Trust is we’ll protect you,
1:11:45
you’ll be safe, we’ll do the right thing always. And um one of the promises Chris makes
1:11:55
at as the prophet of Bethel is that he
1:12:00
will call balls and strikes and uh students they do this with other
1:12:08
people. other people have to openly deal with their issues and it’s as public as the problem is that’s how public the the
1:12:14
mess clean up is is right but not with shambles and so I not with
1:12:20
physics of heaven and I write it and uh I say uh I talked to the producer of
1:12:27
blank he told you uh that you suspected Sean Bulls uh of
1:12:33
hot reading from Facebook and conference lists and that he gave you evidence
1:12:39
and that you concluded uh it was most likely the case. He said that Shawn was
1:12:47
no longer invited to the church and people were no longer to read allowed to read from their phones. Is that true? Is
1:12:54
that still your position? And then I go on to tell him how I’m editing my film. I I I need to know to make a cut. I
1:13:02
leave my phone number and he says, “I would cut it out if I were you.” like he
1:13:07
doesn’t make a one it’s a oneline response. He does not answer your question. He does not confirm or deny.
1:13:14
Yeah. Um you have currently you’re operating under the belief that God is
1:13:20
in this and you are you are obeying the word of the Lord. Yeah. Right. So so this is going to take a lot to derail
1:13:26
something like you’ve invested your life savings, you’ve invested other people’s savings, you’ve taken loans. Um Yeah.
1:13:34
And you get a you get a one-s sentence response. I would cut it out. And what did you think that meant? Uh it could
1:13:42
mean a lot of things like it could mean uh he did it. It could mean hey I’m
1:13:50
talking about skeptics in this email and I’m nervous about him. It could mean and
1:13:57
I I don’t think you would mean it this way but like hey stop asking about this.
1:14:02
Um, but it’s like asking, uh, “Hey, Chris, was my child molested
1:14:09
at church?” And him coming back and saying, “I would take him to therapy if I were you.” Like, it it’s such a gut
1:14:17
punch. Like, who does this stuff? Um, in
1:14:22
March of this year, I I reached out to Bethel to kind of set up a Matthew 18
1:14:28
meeting uh between or not I uh someone and myself and uh he wrote the email,
1:14:37
but uh to Dan and Chris, uh Chris doesn’t show up. Uh and he’s like, “Hey,
1:14:43
I told him I would cut it out.” Like what more could he want is what was relayed to me. And so he scheduled the
1:14:50
meeting and he was a no-show for it. Well, he didn’t schedule it. I I I don’t think he thought he should come. Um but
1:14:56
like it was like trying to have like this conversation and you just don’t miss Matthew 18
1:15:03
meetings. Um especially when people have been harmed at this level. And
1:15:11
like I couldn’t just stop right that second and be like, “Well, you told me to cut
1:15:18
it out.” Like I I’m an evidentialist and like this is my word and like I I needed
1:15:25
more clarity. Um and there’s more to the story for people who are currently thinking like,
1:15:30
“Well, yeah, he told you to cut it out. Why didn’t you cut it out?” Well, you’re going to find out. Elijah is going to share other pieces of the puzzle and
1:15:36
you’ll very much see why he thought, “Oh, okay. Maybe this was some cautionary thing. Well, I’m willing to
1:15:41
walk in faith and trust the word of the Lord. Yeah. Um Yeah. So, there’s reasons for that. But, but the the idea here is
1:15:47
that um I think in my this is my read of it is that Chris’s message to you seems
1:15:54
in hindsight um to be calculated to have the least amount of person of responsibility and
1:16:02
the least amount of exposure at the same time. Um we don’t want to expose this thing. you know, if Elijah knows about
1:16:07
it, you know, maybe he’ll he talked about physics of heaven on cultish, maybe he’ll talk about Shawn publicly,
1:16:13
which is be the godly thing to do. But the thing that they were working, they were all working very hard to make sure
1:16:18
it didn’t happen for Shawn to be publicly exposed. It’s crazy. But they all knew. They all knew. Chaon knew,
1:16:24
right? They all all these people, the elite people, I would call them, knew about it and didn’t warn anybody. But
1:16:30
I’m I’m getting I’m getting flustered thinking about that. So, let me I’ll put pass it back to you. Well, just think
1:16:35
about how many messages in this culture are about pastoring people in the prophetic. Like,
1:16:42
at the very least, like, let’s have a phone call. Uh, like that’s a weighty
1:16:50
thing to tell a man, I put my retirement into this. Um, and what happens at these
1:16:58
points is the Bethel spin machine comes on. when I ask people about it and they’re
1:17:04
like, “Oh, Chris doesn’t write back more than one sentence in emails
1:17:10
sometimes. I can’t figure it out.” And like I think that’s something that needs
1:17:15
to stop in the culture if if you want a culture of integrity is
1:17:22
we can’t keep putting these types of things in the best light because there’s
1:17:29
not a good light to put it into. Um, I felt subhuman, like I felt like a dog.
1:17:36
Uh, like this man is a guy I’ve went to his church for
1:17:43
eight years. He knows me. We’ve we’ve talked together. And it’s like, this is
1:17:50
terrible to treat somebody like this. Yeah. And so and school of prophets says
1:17:57
prophetic cultures require that every prophetic declaration is judged and scrutinized for its authentication
1:18:04
and application. Uh the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. Therefore, everyone’s personally
1:18:10
responsible for their prophetic words. And that’s the time to call foul ball. It’s
1:18:17
it’s time to say my duty that I proclaim
1:18:22
in my book is to protect you and our culture.
1:18:28
And they sat on that until it was forced
1:18:33
up. And so, right, I Yeah.
1:18:39
Um, I couldn’t figure things out uh for a while. And so I ended up writing Sean
1:18:49
uh and being like, “Hey, dude. I’ve got to figure this out.” I mean, I’m I’m launching in three or four months and he
1:18:56
writes me a beautiful letter explaining he’s never done this. He’s never Facebook researched that there’s this
1:19:02
right. And for those who are listening, if you’re listening the audio version of this, you should know there’s a bunch of things that Elijah is sharing that we’re
1:19:08
going to show vid physical video evidence of emails and pictures and stuff like that. So, you may want to
1:19:13
look at the actual video of this, but yeah, we’ll put that on screen. Yeah. Um, and uh, School of Prophet says, “I
1:19:22
want to make two points for this powerful illustration. First, uh, we want to raise up a prophetic company of
1:19:28
people who are giant killers and can destroy the works of the devil. We must
1:19:33
uh become empowering prophets and propheticesses who developing a power an
1:19:38
empowering culture. And as we talked about previously leaders who are
1:19:44
empowered allow people to experiment and to make mistakes. But such leaders
1:19:51
uh also make decisions with people not for people. uh they do not withhold
1:19:59
information or tell people only what they need to know to get the job done
1:20:05
because this produces slave camps in which one person does all the thinking.
1:20:12
I agree with you, Chris. That’s that’s like a perfect description of what Chris
1:20:18
did to you. Yeah. And and to be honest, it’s not just you, Elijah, and this is why I’m glad you’re speaking out. It’s
1:20:23
you and it’s so many other people. You know, we know about Jubilee Dawn, but there’s other people as well. You know,
1:20:28
she, you know, experienced ongoing abuse partly as a result of Shawn Bolz and his
1:20:34
lies. And I have example after example. I’ll be releasing a video about Shawn Bolz where I go through tons of examples of
1:20:41
this sort of thing, witness testimony. this stuff could so much of the harm
1:20:46
could have been avoided if when they found out they had just told people not
1:20:51
withheld information and told people um not only what they need to know to get the job done where Chris says oh we we
1:20:57
shouldn’t it’ll it’ll hurt the prophetic no this is this is what’s going to cleanse the prophetic this is going to be a case in point for this is why
1:21:05
scripture says you know the elder who’s sitting like rebuke in the presence of all that the rest also may fear is that it produces a unleavening effect on
1:21:12
everyone Yeah, it’s just it’s crazy um to see that this happened and and it
1:21:18
seems as though it’s ingrained amongst leaders that even would would otherwise
1:21:24
say that this is the wrong way to do things. Yeah. One part of the spin machine is uh it it adjusts to we’re an
1:21:32
apostolic team and we weren’t completely in agreement.
1:21:38
And I think that’s the case. Um, but what I also think is the case is that
1:21:45
referees don’t go get agreement. They make the
1:21:51
call to the best of their knowledge. And um it’s okay to sit someone you know
1:21:59
down and say half our team disagrees. Um, but uh this is my opinion and I
1:22:09
think there’s a moral duty to your sheep at this point. Um it it’s kind of like
1:22:16
if let’s pretend there’s two people and they both see my wife and one think she
1:22:23
are they talk and they’re like this one goes I wonder if she’s having an affair
1:22:29
and this one goes I know she’s having an affair. Um the one end’s like who’s not
1:22:38
sure I don’t hold accountable at all. So anyone at Bethel at that time who goes I
1:22:45
was not sure that uh
1:22:50
he did this okay because I I was in that case at at the time but once you cross
1:22:56
that line you have a moral duty to go to that person and tell them and and that’s
1:23:04
where the spin machine tries to blur that is like he had a moral duty at that
1:23:10
point and he writes about it in his book. And so, right. Um, Right. And they and they pulled Shawn, they pulled him
1:23:17
from from events. Yeah. They he instructed at least some of his team members. Certainly not you. You would
1:23:23
have thought of yourself as being on the team to some degree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I found out, I guess. Yeah. Apparently
1:23:28
not. Um, he he instructed some of them like, “Don’t do stuff with Shawn.” According to Chris, he calls up other
1:23:34
leaders of other ministries outside of Bethel to warn them about Shawn. Yeah. and he goes and confronts Shawn and
1:23:41
openly tells him like, I I I believe that you are that you’re guilty of this. And it seems it seems to me that Bill
1:23:48
did not believe this. Um but that that the the mature thing for them to do to treat people as not slaves is to say
1:23:55
there are some legitimate questions about Shawn’s ministry. We’ve put him on hold for a while. You guys should know that. If you have any words from him,
1:24:02
maybe take it back to the testing block and and and think about it. that would be a conservative, safe, like respectful
1:24:08
thing to do for the for the movement and it would have allowed you to have the liberty to say, “Okay, this is this is
1:24:14
legit. This isn’t just rumor.” Well, that BSSM alumni letter could have went out as was at that time. Um, and so
1:24:23
after that, I go to Dan and I’m like, “Hey, Dan.” because Chris and I had had
1:24:30
this like conflict and uh on on Physics of Heaven. And so I
1:24:37
I don’t write Chris back because it’s like if you write that short of a sentence,
1:24:44
you’re not wanting to have a conversation. And and so I asked it’s socially it’s socially obvious that that
1:24:50
he’s out he’s out. That’s all I don’t want to talk about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I and I mean he’s my closest
1:24:55
leader and I’m like, “Hey, I had this thing with Chris.” Um, and this this guy told me about sent
1:25:03
over some evidence, but he didn’t want to send it to me. And so I I’m like,
1:25:09
“Have have you heard anything about this?” He’s like, “No, I’m I’m a senior
1:25:16
leadership team member. Like, of course, I would have heard it.” And so I this is
1:25:22
this is this is revealing though because it’s like Chris said his his whole team. You didn’t know but but Dan didn’t know.
1:25:29
Dan is a major pillar in in Bethel. I’m just telling you it’s seared in my mind.
1:25:35
Uh and so like I’m like well can you follow up about this? And he’s like
1:25:41
sure. And so a few weeks go by, uh, nothing happens and, uh,
1:25:48
I like go back to him. Have you talked? No. Uh,
1:25:55
and so I just start reasoning, well, maybe some wires got crossed with this
1:26:01
producer. And this happens all the time, by the way, is I’ll hear a story, I’ll think something happened, and it’s just
1:26:09
something’s off. And I’m not saying that guy lied to to me or I even thought he
1:26:14
lied. It’s just it’s just normal in a culture that large for wires to get
1:26:20
crossed and then I think well Chris would have called a foul and Dan’s not
1:26:26
heard of anything. Let’s keep going. And uh like uh I have
1:26:33
an investor sign on after that. Like just because Sean’s looking clean, like
1:26:40
coming back is clean and there’s questions, but suspicion isn’t
1:26:46
knowledge. Right. Right. And Bethel’s used to operating in the realm of suspicion. Yeah. So it’s not probably
1:26:54
that alarming Yeah. that there’s rumors or suspicions. If you see your leaders,
1:27:00
yeah, are not confirming it, then then yeah, it makes logical sense with you
1:27:06
and this sort of vacuum information. You’re trying to sus things out, especially after you talk to Dan fairly and you have extended periods of time
1:27:12
for him to confirm. Here’s a major prophetic voice in our movement and Dan continuously seems seems to from your
1:27:18
perspective know nothing about any legitimacy to this at that point. Yeah. And so
1:27:25
but for me I still have questions and even though he and I talked recently I
1:27:30
think more of emerged is just like that feels like a five alarm fire question.
1:27:38
Um and when this is an emergency meeting question. this is a yeah or or a text
1:27:44
voicemail like um and it just makes me go well why wasn’t
1:27:51
it a higher priority uh finding out that information um and so September comes
1:27:59
around and this is
1:28:04
I want to say 12 days before launch
1:28:10
and uh I start posting social media which
1:28:16
starts attracting attention and some people reach out and they’re like why is this guy in your film
1:28:23
and uh they tell me about kind of the the
1:28:31
exchange the text exchange between him and Chris and uh another guy sends over
1:28:37
some words and Uh there there’s some more details that
1:28:43
they told me and I go back to Dan and I’m like Dan I don’t know what to do. Um
1:28:49
I’m not convinced these words are showing that mine is false. Like I had
1:28:55
some correlation between Facebook and I had some parts that weren’t on there.
1:29:01
Right. You had some stuff you had you had really tried to find and you didn’t find. And that helps you think. Yeah.
1:29:07
Were you were you kind of thinking at this point, Elijah, like maybe Sean pressure and expectations, cheated, you
1:29:15
know, he looked up some information for some people sometimes, but but it seems like maybe what he shared with me was
1:29:20
still legit. Is that what you were thinking? I didn’t go that direction. I I went
1:29:26
maybe it’s logically possible that some people had more overlap than others. Um,
1:29:34
and so maybe it was still the Lord. just happened to be that you could find that. Yeah. And uh I think for me the
1:29:42
discernment piece was like
1:29:48
what happened with mine more than anything else. And so I would ask these
1:29:54
people, have you seen direct evidence of what he’s done? And they could not point me to I saw him
1:30:04
on a computer and then I saw this. They could point me to indirect evidence. Uh
1:30:11
you know, sometimes he’d ask for a conference list. Uh but that was he
1:30:18
would ask for a list of who’s going to be at a conference. Yeah. But also that would not be odd if you were not in that
1:30:28
type of ministry. If if you’re like, “Hey, is so and so coming?” or whatever.
1:30:33
Um did we also talk yet about about um the continued connection that you did
1:30:38
still see in public between Shawn and Bethel leadership? Uh that’s coming up. Okay. It’s coming
1:30:45
up. So there’s there’s still more there as far as like people need to understand, I think, why the there were
1:30:51
there were legitimately these kind of mixed signals, you know, seeming affirmation type signals from
1:30:56
leadership. And you’re you’re operating in a void. You’re not being given the actual information they have or have promised to give you if they do have it.
1:31:03
So you’re thinking, okay, maybe it doesn’t exist because that’s their leadership commitment is that they would they would be transparent with me. Yeah.
1:31:09
And Yeah. And I’m asking him for the
1:31:15
evidence every time I see him is like, “Dude, whatever you got, I would love to
1:31:21
see it.” Asking uh Dan or Chris? Dan. Uh I Dan I Yeah, Chris. Uh I didn’t go back
1:31:30
to him to talk about this. Uh right. And so
1:31:35
like at this point he kind of tells me like yeah there’s some different views on our
1:31:43
team about Chris and uh you mean Sean? Oh sorry Sean and uh
1:31:52
like it’s what I find near impossible
1:31:58
is pulling how do I put it? I want to have a truth conversation
1:32:05
where I am told this is what’s most likely the case
1:32:12
and here’s how to make the best decision I can. And
1:32:20
the language game he’s playing is what I’d call Bethel empowerment coaching,
1:32:25
which is what’s in your heart? What do you think you should do? And I would say
1:32:31
that’s classic Danny Silk Culture of Honor 101, but it’s not helpful in that
1:32:37
case. Um, right. Yeah.
1:32:43
So, this is just days before launch. Mhm. People are reaching out to you. You’re getting more information. You
1:32:48
find out about text messages and you’re I’d imagine you’re internally panicking. You He’s There’s footage of him in your
1:32:54
thing. He’s part of the reason you did it. You’ve invested so much. Yeah. It’s the whole the whole point of this movie
1:33:00
that you’re making is to try to demonstrate the reality of the supernatural to skeptics. Yeah. And to
1:33:05
have him as like some sort of a key element this late in this days before.
1:33:10
Um Yeah. So yeah. So what you’re I imagine Yeah. you’re just going through
1:33:16
the ringer, but what what happened next? Yeah. So, you know, the next thing I do
1:33:22
is I think, well, at some point prior to this, Benny
1:33:28
Johnson had gotten sick and uh Bethel was like, “Do not write Bill. He needs to be
1:33:35
with his wife. Um, she’s in instage uh cancer.” Uh, and so I think, well, I
1:33:42
wonder what Bill’s doing about this. And so in the Bethel alumni statement on
1:33:48
Shumboltz, it says, “We received uh and value the feedback that our actions may
1:33:55
have been too subtle and difficult to decipher and that it would have been more helpful to at least openly
1:34:01
acknowledge that we were creating distance with Shawn due to our concerns.” But I went on Bill’s uh
1:34:09
Instagram page and just scroll back. That’s 2025. Just happened this year. Whereas what you’re about to discuss is
1:34:15
like you’re back in 21 September. And I go through and I’m seeing like pictures
1:34:21
of him and Shawn from 2020. Also, I’m seeing pictures of him and
1:34:26
Chris and Shawn, which uh in in in 2020. And so it’s
1:34:33
giving me this impression that maybe whatever happened in 20189
1:34:43
uh has fixed itself at some level. Yeah. Because they’re not just taking pictures
1:34:48
together, they’re doing public ministry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Together. They’re on stage together. They’re doing events together. Uh Bill’s Bill’s writing. Uh
1:34:57
let me see it. He says um love being with this guy again. Such a great word. in Johannesburg at Shawn BS. Yeah. This
1:35:05
is this is sending you a message of like this is obviously not a guy who’s like lying in the name of God who’s mining
1:35:13
people’s information and then going public with it. At least the impression you get is that um
1:35:21
there you wouldn’t treat someone this way if they were guilty of those things. Yeah. And so you’re getting these mixed
1:35:26
signals from the leadership to what some people are telling you. And the latest one is April 30th, 2021. And so I write
1:35:34
Chris in May and I just think, well, maybe that’s why he wrote a short sentence. Uh, and so this is the
1:35:42
confusion I’m trying I’m struggling in of making a decision.
1:35:48
And so I just go, “All right, well, I’ve still got those two missing parts of my
1:35:53
word. I’m I’m married to this and if I need to
1:36:00
stop, I’ll stop. But like also, it’s the abandonment that we’re talking about of
1:36:07
a word that’s turned everything up to a 10. Um I I’m getting feedback from Sean.
1:36:13
And so we launch uh go around the world and uh start sharing this stuff.
1:36:22
[Music] Yeah. And it got a lot of attention. It did. Um the movie is the movie’s called
1:36:28
Sin Proof. There’ll be a link for it down below if anybody wants to check it out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh I mean I was
1:36:34
on Eric Mataxis. I showed this at Oxford. I did an Australia tour. Um I
1:36:40
Craig Keenir in Miracles Today. Uh like thanks us for helping him. Uh
1:36:48
like I I was on podcast with like Keenir and Michael Shurmer. Like this is it
1:36:55
blows up. We win awards. Like we won a Remy award. Uh I spoke at Google. I was
1:37:01
on Fox News. Um a Remy is like uh I I
1:37:07
came in second and I need to note this. Second place goes to a lot of people with these, but like Stephen Spielberg
1:37:15
won this. like this is a big deal. Um Mhm. And
1:37:23
uh I won a crown reward at the N national radio broadcasters and so
1:37:31
like this is too big to just do this to
1:37:36
if that makes sense. Like it it it’s right right. It’s you’re not just hitting pause on something. you you are
1:37:43
you are um worldwide launch you’re killing something that is
1:37:49
it’s a it’s the momentum is there this the snowball has been rolling for a long time so I I think that I I just want to
1:37:57
help help others by knowing at least that I understand why you thought I’m
1:38:03
going to continue with it you have Shawn himself boldface telling you there’s no way no sir and super gracious he wrote a
1:38:10
very well-crafted email to Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I Yeah, you can believe what you need to believe. I I I would
1:38:16
never do such a thing. Oh, I’m pure as driven snow. And he encourages you and he uplifts you. You’ve got Bill who’s
1:38:23
still fellowshipping and doing ministry with him even in public. You have Dan who says, “Yeah, I don’t really know
1:38:29
anything about that.” You have Chris who gives you one line. Chris who already has been hostile to you back and forth
1:38:34
in emails who you already feel is like an irritable Yeah. individual. and and
1:38:40
so you you and you have others who come and are bringing criticisms, but you feel that you’ve heard a lot of invalid
1:38:45
criticisms brought to Beth and like I knew Chris had like talked to Sean at
1:38:52
this point, but also I I saw how he reacted to me at Physics of Heaven and I
Part 5. Set Up to Fail
1:38:58
thought maybe this is just like his em emotionalism
1:39:03
getting the best of him and like also I can’t slander a
1:39:09
like I need evidence to convince me that
1:39:14
uh he has committed a crime. Um and like
1:39:21
falsely telling words in public, it it
1:39:26
gets close to something like that like it’s a big crime. I mean it that is
1:39:33
you’re blaspheing. It is blasphemy to say God said and God didn’t say and you know it. You know it. Yeah. Um that is
1:39:41
Yeah. That is high level highlevel evil that it goes on there and and when you
1:39:46
start to realize Mhm. like what that what Sean has done it you go from
1:39:52
suspicion to rightfully indignation. That is
1:39:57
that is wicked. How do you think so lowly of people that you would do this to them? How do you think so lowly of
1:40:03
God that you would exalt yourself like this and do this? Yeah. It’s it’s hard
1:40:08
to overstate how big of a deal it is. Yeah. So, one of the things that happened uh as I was prepping the movie,
1:40:15
like Dan promised me like I’ll I’ll help you launch it. I’ll help you launch it through VSSSM. Um,
1:40:22
and I set up a private viewing for the healing rooms
1:40:27
and uh they send out like a
1:40:35
full invite of the church like 4 hours before the film and like it throws me
1:40:41
into a panic because I have investors and backers I’ve told I will fly you out
1:40:47
when we show this at Bethel and So, um, one of his admins, so Bethel Bethel’s
1:40:54
official healing rooms email sends out to everybody, hey, we’re we’re No, no, no, no, no. So, the the whole church
1:41:02
email sends out to everyone 4 hours before and then I get an email from an
1:41:08
admin that’s not an email, but like, “Oh my gosh, we made a mistake. I’m so sorry.” Um Elijah uh Dan said he’ll help
1:41:18
you launch it to the church. And then I come back later and they never helped me
1:41:24
launch it to the church. Um he told me like I’m busy. Uh I can’t do BSSM. And
1:41:30
like I spent 8 years of my life on this film and you’re like
1:41:39
not showing it to your organization and you’re not calling a spade a spade on
1:41:45
Shawn. And so like it just puts me in this awkward position
1:41:50
where I know there’s some discussion about whether this is right or wrong
1:41:56
with Shawn as I’m watching a film where every leader in the movement has been
1:42:02
notified of something and so they’re kind of just like some of them are pulling back and
1:42:09
that’s just a weird place to be, Mike. Uh yeah. Do you think that the reason they didn’t want to show it was because
1:42:15
Shawn was in it? Possibly. I mean, Bill’s in it. You’ve got major leaders from Beth. Yeah. Yeah. Sean’s also in
1:42:22
it. Um, and you’ve been trying to get a clear answer on this. You also see, you know, Bill doing stuff with him. And he
1:42:29
even even just earlier this year, 2025, endorsed Sean on uh on on on Yeah. What
1:42:36
what what network was that? They did? I think TVN possibly. TBNN. But you wrote that this was one of the most exciting
1:42:43
books that you had read. Why was that? Well, the book by itself is incredible. Knowing the life that backs it up adds a
1:42:50
a power to it because it’s so it’s so practical. It’s it’s what you dream of. It’s like if you could have a perfect
1:42:56
relationship with the Lord and see its impact on humanity, that’s what it would look like. I get excited knowing that we
1:43:02
could actually raise up generations of people to do the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. And so you’re seeing this stuff even
1:43:08
even still going on. But but uh but you got to wonder why why you were
1:43:17
just left out in the dust. Your your your film everybody’s celebrating it and all this stuff, but they’re not going to
1:43:22
do it. And the story I was told is, “Oh, we don’t want to launch a documentary
1:43:28
every few months.” I’m like, “We’re not launching documentaries every few months.”
1:43:33
Um, and so, and after I left Bethel in
1:43:39
August of 22, they showed Darren Wilson a few months later. And so, like, it
1:43:46
it’s if you’re calling yourselves fathers, like there’s no father that
1:43:52
doesn’t sit his son down and go, “This is what you need to do.
1:43:57
This is how to have success. You’ve put your whole life into this.
1:44:03
And uh it was pretty miserable going through that time and and the rejection
1:44:10
and yet still trying to push something out and like I I felt set up to fail just to be
1:44:18
honest. And it’s just so it the amount of investment, the amount of time Mhm. the
1:44:25
number of opportunities that were there for you just to be told the truth. Mhm. which is which is what they’ve
1:44:30
covenanted with you to do. Um
1:44:36
to to then like feel like I’ve I’ve done all this. Mhm. Because partly
1:44:44
because of the trust I have in in the leadership here and then they just drop you like Yeah. Yeah. like almost like
1:44:54
you they don’t care if you just epically fail and bring embarrassment to yourself.
1:45:00
Yeah. And the very movement that you’re trying to create apologetics for. And you could say at the end, well, I told
1:45:07
him to cut that scene. Uh and like
1:45:12
it feels inhuman at times. Like it it’s wounded my soul
1:45:18
at some level. And so that that was kind of it. Um I well
1:45:25
there I will mention you you talk about this uh you let me know about this anyways is that Dan had he promised to
1:45:31
help you. He then said all of a sudden we’re not they they told you we’re not going to do it. We don’t want to launch
1:45:36
stuff all the time. Nine months later they show another documentary film. Bethel helps launch it. Helps encourage
1:45:43
people to watch it. One by Darren Wilson. You’re not ripping on that film at all. You’re just trying to show I I think that’s the real story here. Yeah.
1:45:49
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so that going through that I I’m just like I don’t
1:45:54
know what to believe anymore. Like it’s logically possible. Everything I’ve ever
1:46:00
heard from them is the exact truth exactly as it happened,
1:46:06
but so are unicorns existing. And I I just go like I just want the
1:46:13
truth conversation with no spin of exactly what happened. And if you’re a
1:46:20
Bethel student and you’re in BSSM, why don’t you ask really good questions during question time about this or about
1:46:29
uh what is the edge of the new age or or stuff of that nature. Um, I feel that we
1:46:38
need to figure things out. Thought I was just
1:46:45
thinking it would be cool to have like at some point a timeline of just a few bullet points like in this year Sean
1:46:51
gave you a word. In this year they knew to question Sean’s words. In this year
1:46:57
um you you went to them and asked about it. So let me let me run through that. So in in what year was it that Sean gave
1:47:03
you a word? 15 19 they knew 21 uh I went to them uh
1:47:12
late 24 um I I found out
1:47:20
Wow. Yeah. That’s that says everything. Mhm. Yeah.
1:47:27
[Music] Uh by December I find out about like
1:47:33
Allison finds the picture online and
1:47:40
like it just mentally breaks me. And what picture online? Uh the one of Silky
1:47:47
and uh Karen that uh Sean had looked up.
1:47:55
The one thing that you can hang on to is you have some aspects of what Sean
1:48:00
communicated that to your knowledge he couldn’t he couldn’t have data mined. One thing you’ve been you’ve been
1:48:05
clinging to this whole time. This whole time it’s been like in the back of your mind you’re like I looked it up. I tried to find it. I couldn’t find it. And then
1:48:13
sadly is was your wife that found it. Yeah. And so she shows you this and I’ll
1:48:19
put it on screen for people to see. The word that Sean gave that you couldn’t find was in just a photo from on
1:48:26
Facebook and I don’t know how we missed it just to be honest. Like I spent hours online.
1:48:32
Um but like this is consistent with my research in Sean is I found that I would
1:48:38
scroll through people’s Facebook page forever. Yeah. And I didn’t find what he shared and then I would click on their
1:48:44
photos. Yeah. And I would go, “Oh, yeah. He probably didn’t scroll their whole Facebook page.” I mean, maybe maybe in
1:48:50
this case at least, he just looks through their photos cuz that’s when you find people’s names, connections between
1:48:56
different individuals, people are tagged, and that’s what he finds. Okay, you’ve got you’ve got the names of the people he calls out, the stuff that you
1:49:02
thought he couldn’t have known. And this this must have been like such a gut punch because this this seemed I would
1:49:08
have taken this as confirmation, like absolute confirmation that in your specific case, Yeah. he data mine. Well,
1:49:16
yeah. And so this is what pe people listening may struggle with is well
1:49:22
isn’t it logically possible that God gave him everything online
1:49:29
and uh but it’s still a word from God and I’m like prophecy is to reveal the
1:49:35
secrets of your heart not the secrets of Facebook and like he could have told me
1:49:42
I had a dog named Duchess when I was a kid and that would not be online or that
1:49:47
I love uh vanilla ice cream. And so there’s a
1:49:52
ton of stuff he could have revealed. And when it comes to knowledge, I think
1:49:58
something we need to think about is there’s a spectrum from logically impossible like square circles,
Part 6: Elijah Finds Out
1:50:06
doubtful, very doubtful, 50/50, probable, highly probable, 100% certain,
1:50:12
like I exist. And in court or whatever, if you reach more
1:50:20
likely than not 51% in not a capital case, but like fraud or
1:50:26
something, you convict on that. And so that at least pushes it to 51%.
1:50:34
Uh if not, very generous. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, well, when you add when you add some other elements, and
1:50:39
I’ll share some of this in a future video about Sean, you add other elements like there’s a a a woman who he calls
1:50:44
out by name in a in a in a meeting and then he mentions to her among other things that he got right on. He’s like,
1:50:50
“Does this mean something to you? Does that?” And she’s like, “Yes, yes, yes.” And then he says, “How about Slaughterhouse? Does Slaughterhouse mean anything to you?” And then some
1:50:57
researchers confirm this that there was another woman, cuz she says, “No, Slaughterhouse doesn’t mean anything.”
1:51:03
And he moves on, right? Mhm. There’s another woman by the exact same name who lives in the exact same area who lives
1:51:09
on Slaughterhouse Road. Ah yeah. And so even a miss a wrong calling out of
1:51:15
something was a piece of information that was publicly on Facebook. This is the kind of thing that um it’s too
1:51:22
consistent. There’s just too many things and it’s detailed Yeah. words of
1:51:28
knowledge that are public information and then vague prophetic statements about the future. Yeah. you know, from
1:51:33
details to vagory, which I’m not saying that can never happen, but when it always happens, you add that to your
1:51:40
ratio. Right. Right. Right. Right. And so you just take this case, this case, this case, this case and you combine
1:51:48
them together and you’re like, man, God has given 400 pieces of Facebook information or
1:51:56
he’s or he’s looking up stuff. The Holy Spirit really likes Facebook. Right. Right. Maybe he’s the one doing the data
1:52:03
away. I’m kidding. Uh and so like
1:52:10
[Music] and so I want to apologize. Uh I’m I’m
1:52:16
I’m so sorry. I I’m not sure why we missed this. And I
1:52:22
want to apologize to our backers, uh people that supported me.
1:52:28
Um, and I was naive, uh, perhaps
1:52:33
overconfident in my ability to check, and I wish I’d hired some type of prov
1:52:39
private investigator, and I’m asking for your forgiveness. Um,
1:52:46
and Sean had looked me up to the best of my knowledge, and uh, like I wouldn’t
1:52:54
have ran a Kickstarter if I’d known that. And I told people I thought this
1:52:59
was from God and I spent years of my life showed it around the world and I am
1:53:06
very saddened by my failure and uh I’ve dishonored the name of Jesus
1:53:14
and I ask you as my audience and friends and family to forgive me and uh I’m
1:53:23
sorry for breaking your trust and Uh
1:53:28
yeah, and I I also went on his podcast at one point and
1:53:34
that was naive and foolish and I regret that. And I’m sorry to all the
1:53:40
researchers in my film, the apologist. Um some of them didn’t even know I had
1:53:46
this word and I I I hope it doesn’t bring any shame to
1:53:54
you. um that this happened. Um
1:53:59
yeah, thank you Elijah for sharing that. Yeah.
1:54:05
And I want to I think that that’s I think that’s you doing what you just described is trying to say let me deal with the plank in my eye. Yeah. Yeah.
1:54:12
This is may have felt like a big wind up where you’re just criticizing a bunch of other people, but instead you’re
1:54:18
explaining the whole story. And now you’re taking accountability. Yeah. And I’m grateful for you doing that. And I think that’s a healthy thing. Yeah. And
1:54:26
um and where else can we go if we’re going to be pursuing truth than to do that? Yeah. Um uh there’s so much more.
1:54:33
I will be releasing a video on Shawn Bolz where I have so much more stuff we haven’t even touched. That is um the man
1:54:41
is and these are my words, not yours. sick, demented, wicked, evil, a plague
Part 7. Taking Accountability
1:54:49
upon the church. I do not exaggerate at all. Those are my words, not yours, Elijah. I won’t, you’re not accountable
1:54:54
for them. This is based on a bunch of witnesses that I’ve talked to and a bunch of evidence I’ll be sharing in the future. Um, I wanted you to be able to
1:55:02
share your story because it ties together these two different things is not only the kind of like Shawn Bolz and
1:55:08
the stuff he’s been doing and he needs to be called out publicly, more publicly than he ever has been from the leaders who knew and didn’t say anything, but
1:55:16
also to affect some change within the movement where there’s going to be even
1:55:21
if the leaders didn’t listen, if they don’t pay attention to this video, even if they toss it off, they just get mad.
1:55:26
Even if that happens, the people in within Bethel, I think they’ll listen. I
1:55:32
think the people who are part of the the the alumni, the BSSM students, I think they’ll listen and they’ll be like, “We
1:55:38
need we need to grow from this. We need to see change. This stuff cannot just be
1:55:43
washed under the culture of honor. It has to be dealt with.” And let let me tell you the consequences of this. uh
1:55:49
since December like my anxiety rest at a 5 to 7 or an
1:55:57
eight each day. I sleep three hours a night. Uh I
1:56:04
have contacted the VA, filed for disability. uh my psychologist
1:56:11
wrote uh you know a note saying that this will probably affect employment uh
1:56:16
for me. And so this is a big deal like the truth matters
1:56:23
and when you withhold it, you set people up for major injury.
1:56:30
And uh if you’re a leader or an apostle or a prophet or a teacher
1:56:39
inside the renewal, is this okay with you? If if you if you go to Bethel
1:56:44
Leadership Network, is that okay with you? If you’re a Bethel student or staff
1:56:50
member, is that okay with you? Because if it’s not, then you need to break the
1:56:56
cycle of when these things happen and someone’s
1:57:01
talks about it in public is patting people on the back and being like, “Oh, you you’re suffering.” What if you said,
1:57:09
“Let’s take the high road and get your integrity back.” What if you said, “Um,
1:57:15
let what what if you encouraged people to start calling this stuff out?” Uh,
1:57:20
what if you started going public with stuff you knew? Um, because I I think
1:57:28
we’re at a point in the charismatic movement where we are on fire. We uh God
1:57:34
snuffed out IHOP and he is pruning the church and we’re
1:57:40
supposed to find out what God’s doing and join him. And part of it bringing
1:57:46
holiness back, bringing integrity back, going back to the word. And we need a
1:57:51
reformation right now. Um to
1:57:57
like take the Bible seriously again as our functional authority where if we
1:58:04
disagree with it, um it wins. instead of the pastor of the
1:58:12
house or saving the organization.
1:58:18
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know what else to say to that except Elijah. That’s Yeah. Um if
1:58:26
Bethel had dealt honestly and properly and with integrity. Yeah. This we would
1:58:32
not be doing this. You would not need to. Yeah. Cuz you would have received early warning. Yeah. But but but at
1:58:39
every stage in my opinion it is damage control and preservation of of their p
1:58:45
perceived self-preservation which is ultimately often times that’s the thing that undermines us is what we the things we perceive that are preserving us.
1:58:52
Yeah. But um but yeah that from the statement they made but I’ll I’ll be I’ll be making my own videos my own commentary on this stuff. I want this is
1:58:58
your chance to share I want to talk about ethical
1:59:03
betrayal and moral injury. So, uh, the VA has this concept for soldiers
1:59:11
that have went to war where they were raised in a like a moral environment,
1:59:17
let’s say a Christian home, and then there there’s two ways to get a moral
1:59:22
injury. One is you break your own values. And that is where you let’s say
1:59:31
are driving down the road and it’s a time where there’s IEDs on on the side
1:59:36
of the road and so you’re ordered like do not stop for anything and you run over a kid or something because you
1:59:42
can’t stop like like that’s a type of moral injury. The second is ethical betrayal by leaders. And so, um, I feel
1:59:51
at some level being in the charismatic movement, I have gotten some type of
1:59:56
ethical betrayal, uh, moral injury. And
2:00:02
like that’s how important integrity is. [Music]
2:00:08
And like I think a lot of people are going through that type of
2:00:14
traumatization right now, especially those who were affected by IHOP or Shawn
2:00:20
or the sexual falling out. And we really need to look at how to heal. And we also
2:00:28
need to look at how to expose predators. Um,
2:00:33
and we also need to start by cleaning up these messes. I think we need to clean
2:00:38
up the new age. And I’m still open to making those videos. I I I think we need
2:00:44
to clean up my movie and make restitution for it and and and not
2:00:49
pretend like, oh man, this is a uh uh
2:00:55
too much for us or we’re busy. Like this is the call and the duty of the day. And
2:01:01
the leaders of the next generation will be marked by the courage to tell the
2:01:08
truth in institutions where that’s not common.
2:01:15
Yeah. Yeah. It’s you know what it is? What I I think I think one way to look
2:01:20
at it is holding the same knowledge you have about integrity and right after
2:01:26
you’re in a place where having integrity is going to cost you. Mhm. So once you get when you’re not when you’ve only
2:01:32
been a leader for two months, when you’re not in you’re not a leader, you’re just in the pews, it’s a little easier somehow to see it because you
2:01:38
don’t you don’t anticipate how much it’ll cost you. Oh yeah. To to clean things up. And um and then once you
2:01:45
become a leader, you you can get in the situation. I I I think of it in a drama analogy. I want you to think of this for
2:01:52
um uh for improv. There’s a rule. No blocking. You you can’t block that.
2:01:58
That’s so someone comes up to you and they say something like um you’re dying of cancer and you’re in an improv and
2:02:04
you you can’t go no I’m not right instead you’ll say yeah oh well I am but here’s the cure and you and you can take
2:02:10
it and then oh and I you have to work with it you can’t block it right and I feel like there’s something going on
2:02:16
amongst the the the elites of these movements that feels the same way that even though you have a guy like Sean who
2:02:23
should be rightly exposed it’s too much blocking to call it out and hurt in
2:02:28
Chris’s words hurts the prophetic movement. So they won’t do it when because it’ll just bring the whole like
2:02:34
thing to a screeching halt. But that but that’s how you create improv
2:02:39
versions of spiritual gifts, you know, we’re we’re faking it instead of the real thing. That’s how you create an avenue where where there’s going to be
2:02:47
either a mixed bag or something, but there isn’t going to be the kind of filtering that that has to be there because of the fallenness of humanity,
2:02:54
because of the work of the enemy, because of the desire of people for attention and the and and just these
2:03:00
sometimes well-meaning um fabrications that come. And I think
2:03:07
telling the truth is not safe. It is not safe to speak. Um, but it’s the best of
2:03:17
all possible outcomes for the world and it sets
2:03:22
things right. It sets the world in order. And um
2:03:29
what happens is we are beings that uh we
2:03:35
are designed to survive first of all. Like you know you’re not doing much if
2:03:42
you’re dead. And so humans early on lived in tribes of about 150 people. And
2:03:48
if you got kicked out of your tribe, you like were dead. You couldn’t survive.
2:03:55
And so what happens is the rejection and shame tell us like don’t say something
2:04:03
that will get you kicked out of the tribe. And it it’s like pushing past the hardest thing you can possibly do is to
2:04:12
say the truth in public knowing that there’s a part of the tribe that may
2:04:18
reject you. Um I’m doing that right now.
2:04:23
I was going to ask you if you had any specific words you wanted to give to any of the leaders at Bethel. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would say this.
2:04:36
Okay. So, here we are back in the studio. It has been about two months since we recorded the rest of this video
2:04:43
and me and Elijah are cutting in because he he wanted time to think about and work through how to answer that
2:04:49
question. And also, it’s just taken this long to edit the video. So, here’s our final addition to the video. Elijah has
2:04:54
a lot of things he spent a lot of time thinking about to answer this question that I just asked and answered, I believe, very well. So, um Elijah, take
2:05:02
it away. Yeah. Um I want to talk to Bill uh and to say this. I think there’s a
2:05:09
big difference between missing a prophecy, which is what Chris did with the
2:05:15
uh 2020 Trump elections, and he said, “Hey, uh I think Trump’s going to be
2:05:21
president.” And then he corrected it when he was wrong. Obviously, I I got it wrong, and I felt immediately like I
2:05:28
should apologize. Other people have said things like, “Well, he may run again and
2:05:33
and and he’ll win then and your word will come to pass.” I’d also like to point out that my prophetic word was
2:05:39
specifically that he would win the next term. That doesn’t help that doesn’t help the prophetic word I gave. And I
2:05:45
think that’s how continuationism should work if you believe in the prophetic. Uh between missing it and faking it, which
2:05:53
is someone going online and looking up another person’s information and
2:05:58
pretending it’s supernatural. And I think scripture speaks into this
2:06:04
quite clearly. Um, and and Bill, I’ I’ I’ve seen you excommunicate one person
2:06:10
from the pulpit and it was Jason Westerfield for encouraging people to follow false
2:06:16
gods through the new age. Then he said, “Are you ready?” I said, “Okay.” So we looked at each other eye to eye till it
2:06:23
connected in here in the core and locked on. Goes, “Here we go.” Next thing you know, I went up to the galactic center.
2:06:29
And as I went through that time tunnel, went through that passageway. It’s really like kind of a wormhole that goes through. And as I went there and I sat
2:06:35
on that throne, a screen opened up and I began to watch all the galactic history on the celestia of the cosmos and the
2:06:42
dimensions that was in the DNA but was also in the soul history. And I I I
2:06:47
think this kind of applies to this situation, Deuteronomy 18 20-22.
2:06:53
Um, and it’s talking about two people. the person who uh calls people after
Part 8. Elijah’s Message to Bill Johnson
2:06:58
false gods like Jason Westerfield did and the person who fakes it. But the prophet who presumes to speak the word
2:07:05
to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak or who speaks
2:07:10
in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. And so the same consequences are for both both consistently in the
2:07:18
Old Testament and in the New. And uh I believe Sean faked it. Uh and I
2:07:29
I can give you evidence for why this is, but like it’s ruined my life. It’s ruined my mental health. It’s harmed my
2:07:35
marriage. It’s ruined my finances. Um and and the reason I think my case is different than anything that has
2:07:43
happened is because it happened at Bethel. Like when I read the alumni
2:07:49
letter and they’re like, “Hey, we don’t speak to ministries outside of us.” I’m like, “Okay, if that’s your position,
2:07:55
that’s your position.” But on uh like for me,
2:08:01
uh it happened there in your house under your jurisdiction. And so I think it is
2:08:09
definitive that Shawn Boltz faked prophecy and gave me a fake prophecy. On
2:08:16
February 4th, Chris F posted on Facebook that I was making a film of 2015.
2:08:23
On the 24th, I was given eight pieces of data. All eight pieces
2:08:30
are the first six I knew was on Facebook or other places on the internet and then
2:08:36
two years or a few months ago I I found out that the last pieces were that’s
2:08:43
eight pieces of data and either God looked me up on Facebook and and pushed
2:08:50
him to give those words or he did. But the that that’s the question is who
2:08:57
did that? Um, and I I I am as convinced that Shawn Bolz looked me up online as I
2:09:05
am convinced Bernie Maidoff did a Ponzi scheme and and I understand the gravity of
2:09:13
that. Um, and so I I think that’s why Bethel needs
2:09:20
to look into this. And uh I think this is what should happen. If you conclude
2:09:26
that uh one either he faked it or two, we need an
2:09:32
investigation. I’m open to an investigation. If you guys want to hire an outside
2:09:38
investigator, um I I would love to recommend those, but I don’t think the option is we just
2:09:45
don’t talk about it. Uh we we sit there silently. And I think if you conclude
2:09:52
this is sufficient evidence that he faked me. Um I I think 1 Corinthians 5
2:09:59
and6 comes into play. And in that uh
2:10:05
Paul is writing to the church at Corenth about this guy and he was a member of
2:10:12
the church and he had uh sexual relations with his stepmother. And Paul
2:10:19
is like, “What are you guys doing? Um, this dishonors Christ. Um, it dishonors
2:10:26
the reputation of the people of God and it’s harmful to this man’s soul. And you
2:10:31
guys are okay with this.” And so he in writing this letter in chapter 5:9-11,
2:10:39
he says this, “I wrote you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral
2:10:46
people.” not meaning people of this world who are moral or the greedy or swindlers or idolatrous in that case you
2:10:54
would have to leave this world and so he’s saying hey this isn’t for people outside the church but he goes on to say
2:11:00
now I’m writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a
2:11:05
brother or sister claims that but is sexually immoral
2:11:10
greedy an adulterer slanderer drunkard or a sl a swindler. Do not even eat with
2:11:18
such people. And the Greek word, I’m going to say this wrong. Harpax, which
2:11:24
is translated swindler, describes someone who’s greedy and deceitful, exploiting others through predatory or
2:11:32
dishonest means. And what I am saying is fake prophecy
2:11:38
is swindling because it opens people up to financial contracts. It opens them up
2:11:43
to speaking engagements. that helps them sells books at the expense of others.
2:11:49
And what I am claiming should be done is in the same way
2:11:56
uh type of church discipline that Paul had for this man, it should happen to
2:12:02
Shawn. If you conclude this is fake prophecy, which is when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit
2:12:08
and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan for
2:12:13
the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit might be saved on the
2:12:20
day of the Lord. And so Paul’s vision isn’t to harm the guy. It’s actually to
2:12:26
help him out as a last chance. is for the whole community to say, “Hey man,
2:12:32
you’re doing something so evil, you don’t even need to consider yourself right with God. And as a community,
2:12:38
we’re shooting up one final flare to hopefully help you repent.” And the
2:12:44
beautiful part of this story is that uh this is the best example of New
2:12:52
Testament apostolic discipline because uh the guy actually repents.
2:13:00
He he’s actually sees his own sin and starts to grieve so much that in 2
2:13:06
Corinthians 2 5-7 it says if anyone ha
2:13:11
has caused grief he has not so much grieved me as he’s grieved all of you to
2:13:17
some extent not to put it severely the punishment inflicted on him by the
2:13:22
majority is sufficient so you should rather turn to forgive and
2:13:29
comfort him or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. And so what Paul’s saying is, hey, this guy who fell into
2:13:36
immorality, doing church discipline, right, actually did something in his heart where he met
2:13:44
God and really grieved the evil that he did. And since Shawn clearly has been
2:13:50
unrepentant of this stuff, I think that’s the proper step on this. Uh and
2:13:57
one of the Bethel values uh honor affirms value is if our brothers and sisters sin
2:14:03
we help them to find the root cause of their behavior so that they can be restored to wholeness. And so scripture,
2:14:11
God God’s opinion is, not mine, uh, is that
2:14:17
the way you help someone that’s just that unrepentant, that’s been swindling
2:14:22
or or highly sexual, immoral, is that you call them out in front of the
2:14:28
church, and and and you publicly say, “We cannot associate with you until you
2:14:34
repent.” I just I just want to jump in and say I I so agree. I so think this is
2:14:40
the right call and this is the right request. It is not um let us cast him off forever and his name be blotted out
2:14:47
like no no no actually this would be hopefully for his restoration his repentance his restoration to Christ I
2:14:53
don’t think we can trust him as a prophet but it would be for his good and for his benefit and Bethel this is the
2:14:59
call this is what Elijah is saying to you this is one of your members this is one of the guys who you’ve done ministry with who’s gone on podcasts all over the
2:15:06
place defending you trying to build men mind men mind men mind men mind men mind men mind men mind men mind men mind men mind men mind mend fences and build bridges and and speak highly of you and
2:15:14
he is he is asking you to do this and I think that he’s not the only one. I’m going to I’m going to go out on a limb a little bit and say that I’ll bet you a
2:15:20
lot of your alumni and even people in your own fellowship would ask the same thing. Hey, let’s let’s have
2:15:25
accountability. Let’s deal with this. And you have either you expose Shawn for
2:15:31
who he is, for his own sake, but also really primarily for the sake of all the people he continues to victimize because
2:15:37
he’s he’s still ongoingly uh in a very high place and in high respect to many
2:15:42
people because it has not been dealt with by those who platformed him, you and the other option is to do this
2:15:48
investigation and and you can simply have an investigation. Now, you may not like that, but you’ve already got reportedly like a 20 something page
2:15:56
document with a bunch of other people in their stories. You also have people like Jubilee Dawn, and I’ll be sharing many
2:16:01
stories in a video coming up um on Shawn Bolz where there’s just an overwhelming
2:16:06
amount of evidence. You I don’t think a reasonable person needs an investigation, but if Bethel won’t openly
2:16:12
admit it, then maybe they can at least do an investigation and say, “Yeah, we’re not hiding things. We just think he’s innocent.” And I assume you’re
2:16:18
willing to provide all the information you’ve gathered uh to absolutely help.
2:16:24
Um absolutely. I’d be willing to provide that, help connect witnesses with an investigator and then be completely open
2:16:29
and I’d help publicize the results even if it somehow vindicated Sean. Yeah. And if I’m in the wrong, I I I want to
2:16:35
repent publicly, but I I would not be here at this point if I didn’t think
2:16:41
fake prophecy had occurred and was as confident of it as I am in other type of
2:16:49
faking cases. Um, and I’m I’m just calling on every apostle in the Revival
2:16:55
Alliance to either call this out, say, “I believe it’s fake online.” Randy,
2:17:01
Chay, Heidi, Roland, uh, Georgian, John
2:17:06
and and and and Carol, Lou, Engel, Cindy Jacobs, TBNN, the board members for
2:17:12
Shawn, or say, “Let’s investigate this.” Like the these are big charges,
2:17:18
uh, spiritual charges, uh, but they need to come to light and and there needs to
2:17:24
be a decision made. Um, and and especially at Bethel, like elders at Bethel, like I I was one of your sheep
2:17:31
when this happened. And if someone broke into the church and like beat someone
2:17:36
up, you would investigate it. If sexual abuse had happened, you would investigate it. This is the worst form
2:17:42
of spiritual abuse imaginable and has done significant harm throughout the
2:17:47
body of Christ. And you say, “I believe and I have hope in a glorious church.”
2:17:54
That’s one of your core values. And so bringing darkness to light says to every
2:18:00
predator out there, every uh con artist,
2:18:06
don’t come inside of our movement. You have no safe harbor. and and and that’s
2:18:12
the heart of of Christ for his church is that victims are protected and restored
2:18:19
and that predators are afraid to enter it because the light will be shown uh
2:18:25
for what they’re doing. Amen. Amen. Amen to that. We need predator predators
2:18:30
cannot be safe in the church or else nobody is safe in the church. The following statements from Elijah. This
2:18:35
is about a 30-day deadline that he would like and I agree. We would like to ask
2:18:41
for Bethel to abide by. Let me read to you these words. They’re from Elijah. Uh his words. I’ve thought deeply about how
2:18:47
to address Bethel’s leadership, and I want to propose a clear path forward. Instead of an ultimatum, which might feel manipulative, I’m setting a 30-day
2:18:54
deadline from this video’s release for Bethel to respond to allegations against Shawn Bolz. My goal is to give Bethel’s
2:19:01
board and leaders enough time to make an educated decision. Recognizing that inaction is a choice with realworld
2:19:08
consequences. I don’t want Bethel or its leaders to feel pushed into a corner. But the history of indecision on these
2:19:13
issues leaves me no choice but to set a deadline. In good faith, I’m willing to extend this to 45 or 60 days if Bethel
2:19:19
requests a clear end date with legitimate reason. However, I will interpret silence as a choice not to
2:19:26
engage. I ask Bethel to take one of two actions. One, launch an investigation.
2:19:31
Hire a thirdparty ministry like Grace Investigations, netgrace.org, to investigate Shawn Bolz’s prophetic
2:19:38
practices. I’ll provide all evidence I’ve gathered, connect witnesses, and publicize the results, even if they
2:19:43
vindicate Shawn. If I’m wrong, I’ll repent publicly. I can add my name to this as well. If I’m wrong, I will
2:19:49
publicly repent. And I’m happy to provide all the evidence, which I have quite a lot that I could give to investigators.
2:19:55
Number two, apply church discipline. And if the evidence confirms Shawn faked prophecies, follow 1 Corinthians 5:es 4
2:20:01
to 5. When you were assembled, hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be
2:20:06
saved on the day of the Lord. This is not about harm, but restoration, as seen
2:20:12
in 2 Corinthians 2 5-7, where discipline led to repentance. I also request Bethel
2:20:18
hire a third party ministry like Peacemaker Ministries to repair my relationship with Chris Valatin and
2:20:23
Bethel practicing 1 Corinthians 6 1-6. We should discuss a clear path forward for
2:20:28
other victims to be reconciled and restored, ensuring that they are treated with dignity. My highest priority is
2:20:34
God’s glory, living biblically, accountability, reconciliation, and structural change in the charismatic
2:20:39
movement. I want all parties to take the high road so that Christ may be exalted. I urge Bethel donors, members, BSSM
2:20:46
students, alumni, and Bethel Leadership Network members to let leaders know you
2:20:51
desire an investigation or church discipline for Shawn and proper care for victims. Your voices matter more than
2:20:59
what is said in this podcast. I want Bethel to be a model for other organizations, showing how to take the
2:21:04
high road with integrity. Can I add that would be a wonderful and beautiful thing. Finally, I ask Bethel to
THIRTY DAY DEADLINE for Bethel
2:21:10
greenlight videos addressing occult influences in the charismatic movement as I proposed years ago that would
2:21:16
educate believers, protect the movement, and honor God’s word. If Bethel acts, I’ll celebrate it. If not, this deadline
2:21:22
ensures clarity on where you stand. Right. Uh
2:21:28
I would also like to speak into if there is a restoration process. One thing that
2:21:34
I’ve really seen done poorly in the charismatic movement is that people will
2:21:40
kind of go off and just get back in and talk to maybe
2:21:46
some shady people or whatever. And I I would like to maybe have a thoughtful
2:21:53
process which is myself, another victim, a Christian psychologist with a PhD. I
2:22:00
pick a theologian with a PhD and uh
2:22:08
maybe maybe someone from the Revival Alliance as a rep, but like it not be
2:22:14
very simple of just crying a few tears, but like an actual change of heart that
2:22:22
takes place that convinces victims like this man’s changed. Like I I people can
2:22:29
check Paul changed under the power of Christ but like you don’t want to create
2:22:35
a situation where a predatory person can easily talk themselves back into
2:22:42
something. Yeah. Yeah. Often what happens in the movement is the the person who’s been busted, been caught,
2:22:49
been found out, they will often just relocate to a particular leader who’s
2:22:55
very favorable towards them. And then they will be quiet for a little bit and they’ll get back on stage and
2:23:00
then everyone’s like I guess they’re restored. Yeah. But there isn’t necessarily an accounting. So yeah, this
2:23:06
this would be a process where you you’re suggesting before Sean could be restored considered like back in the fold. Yeah.
2:23:14
He would he would have to be and we’re saying restore. We don’t mean on stage as a prophet. We mean restored into the
2:23:19
body of Christ. You would want to see like yourself, a Bethel rep, a psychologist, a theologian, maybe
2:23:24
another another victim as well and say, “Hey, let us be a panel who can say and
2:23:30
and you’d be willing to see Shawn forgiven.” You just would want to see Shawn repentant. I would also love to
2:23:36
see this is for him to move into a space where he takes his mask off and is like,
2:23:45
I have sinned. and to teach ministers who do dark things how to repent, how to
2:23:52
go back to their victims. Like that’s a beautiful ministry for them to teach uh
2:23:58
how to spot cons. Uh like it it it doesn’t mean there’s no place to serve
2:24:04
in the body of Christ. Like that would be a beautiful service. Uh and and like
2:24:12
man, I love reconciliation between victims. like that that is the heart of
2:24:17
Jesus. And so like I I I I think that with with these things you’re talking about, those are such good things. And
2:24:24
then in this movement where you’ve got a number of people we’ve seen now who are like this in different ways, I think if
2:24:31
any one of them was truly repentant, they would also help expose the other people they know about. Yeah. Because
2:24:37
it’s not a coincidence that they’re often on each other’s boards. They’re often there’s there’s a connection, you
2:24:43
know, between some of these guys. This is part of my own research, not not so much what you’ve done, I guess, but there’s connections between them where I
2:24:49
thought if one of them was really repentant, he would be helping warn people about the other the other ones he
2:24:54
knows. You know, when uh Bob Hartley’s son found out he was researching people to give false prophecies, fake
2:25:01
prophecies about them, Jedodiah confronted his dad and his dad said, “We all do it.” Yeah. And uh
2:25:10
that reality is I’m not saying every single person in the movement does it. That’s not what I’m saying at all. But
2:25:16
the point is that he’s aware of a network of leaders who are doing this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Sean, if I
2:25:23
understand history correctly, originated out of that IHOP space. And so like
2:25:32
stuff is not done in isolation. And like there’s an interesting story of
2:25:39
him to tell of like how did I get down this path? When did this become okay? Um
2:25:46
and uh I I I think of a a long time ago there’s a guy named Marjo Gunthy. Have
2:25:52
you ever heard this story? Um not not to my knowledge. Okay. So Marjo was a fake
2:25:59
faith healer and his parents had raised him up. Marjo was that they they named
2:26:05
him after Mary and Joseph and just stuck the name together. Uh and so like poor
2:26:11
kid. Uh but like he was raised in con artistry and he’s like I’m disgusted with this. I’m getting out and he made a
2:26:18
documentary. God is going to do something for you. And I’ll turn around to the crowd and I say everyone do you believe it? And you know everyone say
2:26:25
yes. You know I said that’s not enough. If there’s no faith here tonight I can’t do anything. You’ve got to believe it. And I do believe do you believe it? And then by this time the cries, yeah, I’ll
2:26:31
say, “Sister, as I lay my hands on you, it’s going to happen. By this time, you’re just like this sitting on you cuz I do a whole thing on you.” Then I know
2:26:37
I sort of like get down to now I’m going to pray the prayer and everyone bow your heads and all in the name. Okay.
2:26:42
But what is interesting about it is he fell away from the faith. And my hope
2:26:49
for Shawn is that this is the moment of grace. Like rock bottom is where people
2:26:55
meet the real Christ. And when you take that mask off and you start confessing
2:27:01
stuff like the presence of God is there. Uh the healthiest churches I’ve been in
2:27:08
are like addiction groups. Uh where the goal is we just confess our sins and we
2:27:14
are real and raw and honest about the darkest parts of our lives. And I’m like that’s where Jesus is. And uh like I I
2:27:24
have so much hope that uh that mask can come off and just
2:27:32
be transparent and real. Um [Music]
2:27:38
I want to move on to the second leader I want to talk to which is Chris. Um, and
2:27:45
I want to begin by just talking about
2:27:50
Bethel’s. This is the from the BSSM handbook. It is read to every student on
2:27:57
the first day of school and it talks about like what a revivalist is in the
2:28:02
culture. It’s a believer who’s focused on who’s focused and passionate and willing to pay any price to live in
2:28:09
community, purity, and power because they are loved by God whose manifest presence transforms lives and cultures.
2:28:15
And I’m like, man, yes, I want I want to pay any price for purity and community
2:28:21
and uh that. And it says that part of being in community, I’m just going to
2:28:27
read uh is that we confront one another in love. And if someone is doing something scary or destructive, tell
2:28:34
them we have an honor code and I I love you too much to let you make poor
2:28:39
choices going on going unchallenged by love and holiness. And then it kind of gives you a formula.
2:28:47
And I want to do that, Chris. Uh we have an honor code around here. And I love
2:28:53
and honor you too much to let poor choices go unchallenged by love and holiness.
2:28:59
And I am concerned when you break the leadership covenant at Bethel and are silent when you believe people have
2:29:06
committed fraud against your sheep because it destroys lives. And so we
2:29:11
could we agree that if you become suspicious, you will act like a wreck.
2:29:17
Uh, and let’s keep it checking in with each other because I think we share a vision that anyone who’s a con artist
2:29:24
should be afraid of practicing in the charismatic movement.
2:29:30
Uh, because when you don’t do that, you lose your trustworthiness. And I I want to commend Chris on
2:29:36
something. When he found out about Shawn, he went to Shawn, which is a part of Matthew 18,
2:29:44
and confronted him. Way to go, buddy. He went to the TBN board and said, “Hey, we
2:29:50
got a problem.” He went to Sean’s board and said, “Here’s some evidence.” Way to go. Like, that is commendable. It’s just
2:29:57
the next part of Matthew 18 said when he became convinced this guy’s not
2:30:03
repenting says, uh, Matthew 18:17, if they refuse to listen, tell it to the
2:30:08
church. And if they refuse to listen to even the church, treat them as you would
Part 9. Elijah’s Message to Kris Vallotton
2:30:14
a pagan or tax collector. And truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. And whatever
2:30:21
you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. And so when you reach this point
2:30:26
where someone’s in such grievous darkness, the final stage is we tell the people of
2:30:33
God about it. not and and that goes back to the first Corinthians uh five passage
2:30:40
which is God sees the putting out a person from the people of God when it’s
2:30:47
done with the right motives and the right heart and the right evidence. He’s like I honor that.
2:30:53
Um and and reading this passage in its historical context is like it it’s not
2:30:59
about binding and loosing demons. It’s about like if if you put someone outside the fold because they are in darkness.
2:31:07
Uh I I’ve committed myself to that. Um Elijah, let me let me hit you up with
2:31:12
something real quick because I I want to know what you think of this. Um in one sense, you know, Chris, uh you
2:31:19
know, reportedly warned some people about Shawn. Yeah. And
2:31:25
others he didn’t. You even when you asked for it. And yeah, you know, Dan said Dan Fairle was acted as though he
2:31:32
had no idea what was any news at all about. And maybe he didn’t. So let if he didn’t, he didn’t. If he did, he did.
2:31:38
Yeah. I just know he acted that way. Yeah. But um but early this year, Chris
2:31:43
had a post on uh Instagram where he was being asked about Shawn and he says uh
2:31:50
in response I I have a screenshot of this. He said, this is in January. He said in response to uh Spencer Dalton on
2:31:56
Instagram, he says uh there’s always more to the story than meets the eye about Shawn Bolz. He also says, and I can
2:32:01
read it and I can put these on screen later. Uh wisdom is not always played out in front of the crowd. The crowd
2:32:07
demands to know every detail, but there are things that are not for the crowd. This would be a lot easier if you knew me. I believe you’d trust me. He also
2:32:13
said, “Do you know, this is the weird part. Do you know for a fact Shawn did this?” As far as faking prophecy, he
2:32:20
goes, “Do you know for a fact Shawn did this? Are you 100% sure he’s guilty? Have you seen the evidence? Or are you
2:32:26
listening to people on social media? As far as I know, it’s alleged and last I heard, Shawn hasn’t admitted to
2:32:32
anything. Maybe more facts have to come out. I haven’t followed the situation for years if he’s guilty and refused to
2:32:39
deal with his sin in private. Yikes. It’s a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God. So sad. He used
2:32:45
to be my friend. Mhm. Um he also said uh in a reply to another person on on that
2:32:51
same thread, I saw the evidence, spent days examining it, talked to Shawn for
2:32:57
hours. There’s it’s the conflict. It’s it’s the
2:33:02
sense of okay, are you are you warning people? I don’t even know what he really told TBN or these other people. And I I
2:33:08
I don’t know if he warned them like, hey, Sean’s untrustworthy faking things. Or if he was like, hey buddies, we’re
2:33:14
part of the inner circle. Sean’s got some red flags. May you may not want to be too connected to him for like a
2:33:20
self-preservation thing. I couldn’t tell you. But even in 2025, he was writing
2:33:26
something where it was all these leading questions that suggest that Shawn is not really guilty in the way that he seems
2:33:33
to be from all the evidence we’ve seen. And also suggest that Chris
2:33:39
isn’t convinced that he was he was guilty. So, it’s just really
2:33:44
strange almost double speak is what it comes off to me as double speak. But I wanted to share that with you because it
2:33:50
kind of connects to what you were sharing earlier. And um what do you think? Well, I I I can address some of this. First of all, there’s an
2:33:58
epistemological issue that I think if we get to the bottom of would actually be so helpful for this situation, which is
2:34:05
where Chris says, “Are you 100% certain?” Um, and there’s a guy back in
2:34:10
history called Decart. He’s the father of modern philosophy, and he wanted
2:34:15
everything to be 100% certain. And, and he’s the guy that says, “I think, therefore I am.” Which is, what’s the
2:34:21
one thing you can be 100% certain of, is that I exist. Um, and then if you push
2:34:27
that to its logical conclusion, um, well, I can’t be certain 100%
2:34:34
certain you have thoughts. I can’t be a 100% certain I’m not a brain in a vat.
2:34:40
And so what philosophers have done, especially Christian philosophers, is
2:34:45
go, well, truth is true or false. But knowledge is something we have degrees
2:34:51
of confidence in from logical impossibility. Square circles don’t exist. Highly improbable,
2:34:59
uh, improbable, 5050, probable, highly probable, 100% certaint
2:35:06
2 plus 2 equals 4 type stuff. Um, and so, yeah, you can’t be 100% certain of
2:35:12
that. Uh, what what you can do is go, am I 5050 on it? Like that. That would be
2:35:19
very strange looking at this evidence. Just be like, it’s a coin toss. Yeah. Um
2:35:24
I I would be highly probable. Yeah. And he’s not 50/50 because he’s later he he
2:35:30
says it other times like I told my whole team don’t minister with him even though he didn’t tell you. He didn’t tell he
2:35:35
wasn’t openly being told. Um but he says this which would imply that he had some kind of confidence about it cuz you’re
2:35:42
not going to tell someone they can’t minister alongside you because you’re
2:35:47
50/50 on something. Similarly, he then was on stage with him at an event after
2:35:53
this stuff happened as well, as you’ve already showed, and we have the screenshots for that that it it doesn’t
2:35:58
make sense. And I I I’ll be I’ll be honest, these are my words, not yours, is I I question Chris’s personal
2:36:05
integrity because he seems to be answering different crowds in different ways throughout the throughout the things that are going on and including
2:36:11
the public message. So, I felt like I have to share that. I don’t know if you agree. I’m not going to make you just
2:36:16
sign off on that, but because you’re speaking of how he handled it, and I think he actually handled it in a PR
2:36:21
fashion and not in an integrity fashion. Let me keep going and I’ll I’ll come back to that. I I think the most
2:36:28
concerning line in the Bethel alumni statement is this. The leaders who
2:36:34
previously investigated and gathered evidence were of course free to do what
2:36:39
they thought best going forward. And so what that’s saying is there was
2:36:45
no one at Bethel telling him not to speak,
2:36:50
not to come to me. And so in that covenant where it says like, hey, we
2:36:57
want to be trustworthy leaders is um trust is knowing my best interests are
2:37:04
taken care of by another person that I’m safe. And so when you’re saying like
2:37:11
there’s a level of trust broken, I I I think that’s real, at least in my case,
2:37:17
because um like at any point he could have sat me
2:37:23
down. I was in his office uh and and just be like, “Hey, son. Uh I have
2:37:31
suspicions. I’ve talked to TBN. I’ve talked to these people.” And uh when you
2:37:38
say I’m going to be a ref and then you sign a covenant that says I will be
2:37:46
trustworthy, it also creates like these weird legal things that are going on
2:37:52
because like as an organization you’re binding something to members. uh
2:37:58
people are donating to Shawn trusting that uh Bethel has sponsored them like um
2:38:07
and and so I think for me personally I have been more hurt by Chris Chris’s
2:38:16
response throughout this entire process than Sean’s because I’m like cons are
2:38:21
going to con uh predators are going to prey on people But
2:38:28
like I trusted you. I trusted you that you would come to me
2:38:35
if and and call a foul. And like and when I reach out, you don’t come to
2:38:42
a Matthew 18 meeting. Like that is devastatingly crushing. Um and so my
2:38:49
trust is very low. And I think you can rebuild trust. Uh Henry Cloud wrote a
2:38:55
great book called Trust, when to give it, when to keep it. Um I I highly recommend anyone going through this
2:39:02
process or asking should this leader or that leader be trusted is to read that
2:39:07
book. Uh or if you want to restore trust with with people like me. Um I think my
2:39:12
second concern, Chris, is well, you were invited to a Matthew 18 meeting and you
2:39:18
talk about the importance of covenants, like being a covenant people. you have sermon series online about this and we
2:39:25
were in covenant and like did didn’t bother to live it out and I think that’s
2:39:33
destructive. Uh my third concern and I want to use BSSM language. I love you and honor you
2:39:41
too much to let your poor choices go unchallenged by love and holiness. I am
2:39:46
concerned when you teach on culture of honor without addressing celebrity culture because it creates an
2:39:52
environment for covering for predators. Uh and so could we agree that you would
2:39:57
take steps to correct this? Um because I think we both want to see a glorious
2:40:03
church when Christ returns. Uh Chris talks about you talk about a R&D culture
2:40:10
which is like hey we do a lot of experiments and sometimes we fail. Um,
2:40:16
there’s a part of honor culture that I love. Uh, truly honoring and respecting
2:40:22
people, seeing the best and relating to people as the best, empowerment over
2:40:28
control, you know, asking good questions to reveal hearts, having grace and
2:40:33
conflict resolution. That’s beautiful. But the most dangerous part is somehow a
2:40:41
celebrity culture emerges out of that that punishes those who speak out against cons and predators.
2:40:50
Uh, and I would just recommend reading Tove by Scott Mcnite and Pivot. And it’s
2:40:57
about addressing uh that type of celebrity culture and like
2:41:04
how to recognize it and how to make a culture of justice so that victims are
2:41:10
able to speak up in church environments and that it actually justice comes.
2:41:17
And uh like I I think it would create a culture of integrity at Bethel
2:41:24
um where silence in this stuff is not okay. And I think that’s what heaven coming to earth looks like. Like I I I
2:41:31
think that’s the heart of God. Um and so like Chris, you’re the best man in the
2:41:38
right position to do that. like you can fix this problem better than any other
2:41:44
voice uh in the renewal right now. And so I I want to remind you of how amazing
2:41:51
you are and call you back to your identity in Christ and be like, “Hey,
2:41:57
live from justice.” Uh let’s let’s dismantle the unhealthy parts of the
2:42:04
culture of honor. keep the the good ones uh the biblical ones and incorporate
2:42:11
more scriptural values in that so that it matches the heart of God more
2:42:18
clearly. Um yeah, and do you have anything to say
2:42:24
on that? Um I I just No, I just want to amplify your voice and help people hear
2:42:29
it. This this is good stuff. It’s very important and I appreciate you that this you know you took quite a long time to
2:42:36
sit and think through everything you wanted to say and and this is us later going hey there’s a lot more to add
2:42:42
after uh our our previous discussion so this is your chance to say it. Okay. Uh
2:42:49
the the next concern is that uh at Bethel
2:42:54
um I think every teacher and this is way insider of baseball but it’ll help my
2:43:00
community so much. Every teacher can prophesy because they sit under prophetic people and they they do that
2:43:07
with the right heart. prophets can’t execute scripture um in that environment and they don’t
2:43:14
they don’t do that well and there’s not that cross equipping where um and I
2:43:20
think that’s the fundamental problem everyone’s blind to is that if you really believe in a five-fold ministry
2:43:27
then apostles would exede better and teach better doctrine um that prophetic
2:43:34
people would teach scripture in its historical grammatical and cultural context. Um, and in the same way that,
2:43:42
you know, I’m I’m more of a teacher person, like I learned to go out to the streets and pray for the sick because
2:43:48
evangelists trained me to go share the gospel and to talk about sin and repentance and the need for Jesus. And
2:43:55
so like when we see these like gross doctrinal errors coming out of the
2:44:02
movement, it’s because I think the prophetic side hasn’t
2:44:08
humbled itself enough to say, I need to learn this and master this and put the
2:44:15
time into it. And I I just imagine a future where people who c have prophetic
2:44:24
giftings actually go to seminary and learn the word of God and can teach it
2:44:29
accurately so that these grievous errors aren’t made. And and the last concern I
2:44:35
have is I I love and honor you too much to let your poor choices go unchallenged by love and holiness. I am concerned
2:44:42
when you allow books like Physics of Heaven to sit in the bookstore for years
2:44:48
uh because it’s a covering for people who went into magic and uh
2:44:56
and let’s keep checking in with each other because we want to see a glorious choice church when Christ returns. Um
2:45:04
like I have shared with you Chris multiple times the entirety of church history has
2:45:13
believed in energy channeling came from the demonic. It’s not neutral. Um you
2:45:19
can read just go into AI and just be like what did church historians say
2:45:26
about channeling life energy? um you’ll find quote after quote and Bill Johnson
2:45:33
said we need to figure out why revival sustain themselves and die. And one of
2:45:38
the reasons I found over and over and over again is during times of spiritual
2:45:44
renewal like the great awakenings or the Holy Spirit is moving. There’s a group
2:45:49
of the church that opens itself up to exploring the occult. And I want to tell
2:45:55
you about a revivalist in the 1800s. His name was Joe. And uh like he started using sear stones
2:46:05
which is in the you know people in the Old Testament sometimes used sear stones. Um and so he he would use it to
2:46:12
kind of like find treasures and stuff but he also had a passion for revival
2:46:18
and and the things of God. And so he’s just opening the door a little to what we’d call the occult.
2:46:25
And so Joe starts uh just praying, crying out to God. And
2:46:33
when I think he’s 14, he has a vision where he sees Jesus and he hears, “This
2:46:39
is my son who I love.” And Jesus tells him not to join any existing churches.
2:46:45
Quote, “Because they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They teach doctrines for
2:46:52
doctrines of the commandments of men having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof. Later in his
2:46:58
life, he sees an angel and the angel’s like, “Hey, up on this hill is a book.” And if you dig it up, um, what you’ll
2:47:05
find is is like someone buried it and and it’s got teachings about Jesus in it.
2:47:13
And so he digs it up. Dude starts a five-fold ministry. He’s got prophets. He’s called an apostle. Um, teachers, he
2:47:21
sees healings, has visions. And my fear is if he kind of worked next to you,
2:47:26
Chris, for 20 years and was like, “Hey, can you write a forward to my book and
2:47:32
be like, “Cool. Yeah, I love you.” Um, but the problem is Joe is Joseph Smith.
2:47:38
And that book is the Book of Mormon. And this happens again and again and again
2:47:43
in church history. It happened in the Renaissance uh when people found the Hermetica. Um and so what they’re doing
2:47:50
is they’re going back in church history and or back in pagan history and they’re finding really cool stuff like this is
2:47:56
how we do paintings and it helped the 16 chapel. Um this is how we do
2:48:02
architecture. Great. And then they find this magic book and they start incorporating it into Christianity. And
2:48:09
the true heart of the prophet is we don’t syncretatize at all. And so I
2:48:14
don’t have a problem with finding great architecture in pagan religion and incorporating it in the church. I I
2:48:20
think we have more beautiful churches today cuz someone learned how to do that. What I am highly concerned about
2:48:27
is when we start bringing in those practices and and scriptures so clear
2:48:32
don’t do that. And uh I really want to catch a vision for you, buddy. Uh
2:48:40
imagine if you took on the prophetic mantel of of someone who became the greatest champion of getting the new age
2:48:46
out of the church. Like imagine if you became a champion of
2:48:53
driving predators out, of driving con artists out. Uh what if you became uh
2:49:00
someone who had prophetic gifting and is like I’m going to teach the Bible in its historical, grammatical, and cultural
2:49:06
context. And what if you lived your teaching and became the most trustworthy
2:49:11
ref in the renewal? Like I think that’s what remembering who you are in Christ is. And uh I I would love to see that
2:49:19
for you. Um, but I think the first step is the same step that Bethel’s asked that
2:49:27
pregnant girl to do. Uh, which is to look at where the paint got and to clean
2:49:34
up your mess. And I I I think that requires a clear apology
2:49:40
and and a plan to fix things. Um, and uh, I want to ask you to turn off the
2:49:47
Bethel propaganda machine that spins stuff. Don’t put anything in its best
2:49:53
light and just apologize. Uh, I wrote out something that I think
2:50:00
could be a template. Uh, I promised the charismatic movement I would ref prophetic words that came into Bethel in
2:50:08
my book, The School of the Prophets. And when I was convinced Boltz had data
2:50:13
mind, uh, I told leaders but not our sheep. I had the freedom to do what I
2:50:19
wanted to, according to the Bethel alumni later. And I chose silence and that was sin and it harmed people like Elijah and
2:50:26
Sean’s former interns. Uh, I concealed the fact from you,
2:50:32
Elijah, for two years. Um, and I had a duty to you and your
2:50:37
investor and it harmed your marriage and your finances and your mental health
2:50:42
being silent. And I didn’t show up for an Matthew 18 meeting and that broke our covenant. And I failed to give feedback
2:50:49
to our environment about the occult, about the new age, and put it in its
2:50:56
proper place. And I want to clean up my mess. And I’m sorry it might have given
2:51:01
students permission to explore the occult. Uh and not commenting publicly
2:51:07
about the relationship between the new age and Christianity harm people. Um and
2:51:13
I call for an investigation of Shawn Bolz. A or B uh I hand him over to
2:51:18
Satan for the destruction of his flesh. Uh that his soul might be saved on the day of the Lord. And Chris, you taught
2:51:26
me the dogs of doom stand outside the door of your destiny. And I know this is scary to say, but
2:51:33
I think you want to become that man based on what you say publicly. And if that’s in your heart, go down the hard
2:51:40
path and become the man who lives the lifestyle you say with your lips. I uh I
2:51:48
want to encourage uh Chris too before you move on to addressing Shawn directly. Um I want to encourage Chris as well and just say, “Hey, Chris, you
2:51:54
know, you it’s it it might be easy. This isn’t a judgment. It’s just a possibility. It might be easy to think
2:51:59
that someone like myself or many of the people who have been showing up in the comments on social media and stuff would
2:52:06
receive there’s nothing you could do to appease us. I think that that can be a thought that you have to that causes
2:52:12
paralysis to keep you from doing the right thing. You should do the right thing regardless of whether it appeases anyone or not. But I would encourage you
2:52:18
if you did the things that Elijah just suggested, I would be applauding and I would be very very grateful and I would
2:52:25
consider that a wonderful thing. um that would be a healthy thing. It is it is not impossible to please the critics.
2:52:31
That is an excuse that can sometimes be used to insulate ourselves from some of
2:52:37
the criticisms that are quite valid. And I am 100% rooting for you. Like
2:52:45
I want to believe you’re that man. I I want to see you become that if you’re not. Um like the entire church is
2:52:54
rooting for you. like this is your moment to in and use your own language,
2:53:00
walk into your destiny. Um and and like become the revivalist that they teach us
2:53:07
to be in BSSM1, which pays any price for
2:53:12
purity and like Jesus will honor that. And it may cost you a little bit of social
2:53:18
status and there’s always going to be people that call you names online, but like you start walking in that level of
2:53:25
integrity and the integr will recognize it. And like you don’t want fans, you
2:53:32
want people of character to say that guy’s got character. And more than that,
2:53:38
you want the person with the highest character to say that. And that’s Christ himself. and he sees the heart and he
2:53:46
sees the actions of people who go, I am doing this for you, God.
2:53:55
Um, lastly, I want to talk to Sean and say,
2:54:00
bro, with the same confidence I think the earth is round, I think you looked
2:54:05
me up online. Uh, and like
2:54:11
uh when I heard things I I saw yellow flags and I should have saw red flags
2:54:17
and and and that was wrong on my part. Uh, and you faked prophecy and and you need
2:54:24
to repent publicly and uh before you do so, write it out.
2:54:31
write all the ugly and say the last 10% that’s the most embarrassing
2:54:38
and like get clean. Uh and
2:54:44
I have a grid for people coming back to ministry. Uh, but I I I do think it’s in the form
2:54:52
probably going to be for you, which is the guy who had to take his mask off and
2:54:57
go make things right with and and restore things with victims. But those guys are celebrated. Zakius is
2:55:04
celebrated. Matthew the uh tax collector is celebrated in church history.
2:55:11
It it’s the most beautiful thing. And sometimes people lose their way. Um, and
2:55:17
sometimes people never even had their way. Um, but I I think there’s a a
2:55:24
beautiful life ahead of you and there’s a freedom that comes when you hit rock
2:55:31
bottom and you go, I can’t do this anymore. And I believe
2:55:36
your world is crashing down. And I have nothing but love and compassion
2:55:42
for that process and mercy for it because I I’ve I’ve been there. Um and
2:55:50
like Jesus put you in this situation
2:55:56
to meet you. And God organizes all of history sometimes. Well, he organizes
2:56:02
all of history all the time so that it can push us toward him. And he’s it’s
2:56:09
grace. The opportunity to repent is grace. And you don’t get an unlimited
2:56:14
set of opportunities in this lifetime. And so take this now and get free and
2:56:22
find real love. Because if you have to pretend, if you have to put on a mask,
Part 10. Elijah’s Message to Shawn Bolz
2:56:27
what you can’t do is let real love in. And I think there’s people who will really love you through this process.
2:56:33
And the love of God will meet you there. And uh
2:56:40
I also uh I’m going to step out of ministry to
2:56:45
deal with my mental health. Uh I’m I’m still at the worst spot of my life. I I can’t
2:56:53
regulate my nervous system. Um I just want to thank everyone that’s poured
2:56:59
into my life. And maybe I’ll be back. Maybe not. Um Elijah, listen. Um, just
2:57:06
thank you for doing this. Thank you for sharing these things. And I I’d encourage anybody who watches this stuff
2:57:11
later to to uh leave leave Elijah alone. Please. Best advice I can give you. Please leave the man alone. He’s he’s
2:57:18
doing this hopefully as part of his healing is to say, “Hey, this is off my chest. This is I’ve I’ve I’ve shared the things that I feel like had to be shared
2:57:24
publicly so that he could kind of like let that anxiety pass from him.” Yeah. Um, and I’m hoping that that that’s the effect it has for you and and it brings
2:57:31
healthy accountability. you did you did an amazing job and I’m really grateful for you. Love you, Mike. And thank you
2:57:37
for your ministry and you actually help this world out a lot. I know you
2:57:43
don’t get that feedback much, but uh people listen like myself who go, “Hey,
2:57:50
I’m not going to agree with everything this man says, but if he says something true, I’ll take it to heart and champion
2:57:56
it in whatever way I can.” And so thank you for the work you do. Yeah. Awesome.
2:58:03
Yeah. Cool. Thanks, Elijah.
2:58:09
All right. Well, Elijah, you uh also have some stuff you want to talk about about the topic of getting sexual
2:58:15
predators and frauds out of the renewal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And what drives out uh
2:58:22
predators, what drives out uh like con
2:58:27
artist is people who see them and the whole crowd is saying, “Hey,
2:58:34
uh we’re pretending this is not real.” And that one person goes, “I will speak
2:58:41
up. I will not be silent.” Every tribe has
2:58:47
something called a taboo. And a taboo is something you can’t say or do without
2:58:54
the tribe punishing you. So um in our
2:58:59
tribe of the renewal critiquing leaders is that so what we did here today um the
2:59:08
whole tribe like I I’m fairly sure I will lose friends on Facebook. I’m sure that
2:59:15
people will talk negatively about me. Um,
2:59:21
that’s okay. I think that the the basic encouragement for people to like say it
2:59:27
may cost me, but I’m going to speak the truth. Yeah. You know, when I
2:59:33
taught about like uh Calvary Chapel, Chuck Smith predicting the rapture, that yeah, that that it it wasn’t the biggest
2:59:40
thing in the world in my life, but it did cost me. And I knew I knew going into it that that there would be a cost,
2:59:46
but I also knew that the the cost of my u my integrity
2:59:52
was there because I thought the same way I do all like I would normally think here’s an issue I better address and the
2:59:59
only reasons I can think not to address it is that I might be like losing status. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know.
3:00:05
Well, I I think the one thing you people don’t understand about the renewal is
3:00:12
like at Bethel, we have 2,000 students
3:00:18
come in each year. Half of them for are from around the world. There’s three
3:00:24
million people in it. And they’re all like, “Man, I want to be at this
3:00:30
church.” And so if you get a job there or teach there, like you are many
3:00:37
famous. And it’s it’s a type of fame you can’t get in any other part of life. And
Part 11. Exposing Sexual Predators and Frauds in the Renewal Movement
3:00:43
so well, yeah, like if you’re a mid-tier leader, why throw that away if you see
3:00:49
someone, you know, faking a healing or faking a prophecy. Um, and why throw
3:00:57
away all the money that would come in to the movement if you had to turn your
3:01:04
number one profit uh and and show him as as lying. Like
3:01:12
those things fall apart fast and and you can tell Bethel’s on the decline. like
3:01:18
schools shrinking and like every one of these stories makes someone go, do I
3:01:24
really want to like travel all the way out to a school like this? And so, right, I’ve been, this has been blowing
3:01:30
my mind what you just hit on because as I’ve been researching into this, I’m realizing how many of these different movements all are really um working hard
3:01:39
to become the place to come to. Yeah. Yeah. So that they can have the reputation of like if I could just get
3:01:44
in the building, if I could just get to that location, then God would be, you know, I would be in the midst of amazing
3:01:50
things God’s doing. And this the the the
3:01:55
impression of that would obviously falter incredibly if they’re like, “Here’s the most prophetic guy on the
3:02:00
planet. Oh, sorry. He was a fraud.” Yeah. Um that would that would obviously hurt that. I would also add this that uh
3:02:10
we don’t know really study the connection between marketing and revivalism like uh George Whitfield was
3:02:18
a master marketer and so this whole thing has this like marketing ploy of oh
3:02:27
let me post this testimony on social media let me show myself eating uh lunch
3:02:33
with Bill Johnson which is way more exclusive than just someone at church with like that we we don’t see. But like
3:02:44
every revival, let’s say influencer traveler ministry, they’re doing these status
3:02:52
photo things all the time. And once you see it for what it is, you realize, oh,
3:02:59
they’re they’re not really helping people sometimes as much as like showing
3:03:05
they’re important enough to get into your organization and bring status to
3:03:12
it. And like that is mind-boggling to me. I think this this
3:03:18
is kicked up to a next to to a it’s the same thing but a a more intense level in
3:03:24
charismatic circles in particular because there’s all these connotations of impartation or of you know having
3:03:31
those connections is important. It’s important to speakers to sometimes be able to say I met soand so he prayed for
3:03:38
me. Yeah. Or he’s my spiritual father. Yeah. Yeah. He’s my spiritual father. Or he told me that God was going to give me
3:03:45
his mantle. Yeah. or phrases like that that outside of the charismatic movement, you’re not going to hear or see that stuff. You’re not going to, you
3:03:52
know, it just there isn’t it doesn’t make sense to to do it. Um, not to the same degree. It’s there, but not as
3:03:58
intense. You want to know the fastest way to status? Faking a miracle.
3:04:04
Faking a m Yeah, faking prophecy. That’s what Sean got. Maybe um I I would have
3:04:09
one more I would add to that. Having an amazing conversion story. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I think because you
3:04:16
could be a baby Christian and you could be like I just and but you have this like amazing conversion story and then
3:04:22
like God this happened and he I was blind for 3 hours and God started flooding all this knowledge and you
3:04:29
could you could tell us now imagine for a second if you were willing to lie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um I think that that
3:04:37
is a very quick way to be like even with no training and with no special skills
3:04:43
except storytelling. You’re on stage and you’re in. You know, you’re drawing crowds, you’re inspiring people.
3:04:50
Yeah. This is my favorite part of the conversation, by the way. So, yeah. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Todd, I mean, if some
3:04:57
of these guys, if you evaluate it’s it’s interesting you brought up marketing because I’ I’ve thought that I even had
3:05:03
a conversation earlier today with somebody. I was interviewing I’ve been doing the whole day’s interview. So yeah, this earlier I was doing an
3:05:08
interview with somebody and I said a lot of the stuff takes on that you’re seeing in these movements takes on a different
3:05:15
connotation if you interpret it as though it was just about marketing. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s trippy to hear
3:05:22
you say that cuz I thought, yeah, that’s that’s an element that I I asked myself. Is it imagine for a second it was all
3:05:28
about marketing. Would that explain everything that’s happened so far? And you go, oh, it it has more explanatory
3:05:34
power than you’d like it to have at that point. Well, going back to that study I was showing you about the people looking
3:05:40
at the three lines and like the group telling like, “Hey, dude.” Uh, yeah.
3:05:48
Solomon Ash’s conformity experiment. Yeah. And so like if you start off and
3:05:56
there’s seven people in the room and all of them be go around and pick the wrong
3:06:03
line, the last guy who will pick the wrong line 37% of the time just to
3:06:09
conform. When you start doing that with miracle stories in a high trust culture
3:06:17
where it’s the senior leader, the revival group pastor doing that like you
3:06:23
can create this ethos that miracles are occurring when it’s just confirmation
3:06:30
bias and conformity. Um, and that’s the dangerous space to me. Yeah. Yeah, I
3:06:39
agree. I there’s so much more we could talk about. We Well, let me ask Elijah. Is
3:06:45
there is there anything else that you had that you were like, I want to bring this up? Uh,
3:06:52
no. [Music]
3:06:58
At the end of this interview, Mike asked me, “Is there anything else uh you want
3:07:05
to say?” And I said, “No.” and we have refilmed and refilmed and so I just
3:07:10
thought I would record this into my phone. Uh there is something um I think we need to
3:07:19
really work toward restoration and of relationship. I think that’s a
3:07:25
Bethel value of creating a healthy family and covenant relationships. We purposely
3:07:30
grow our capacity to trust and be trusted as we empower and confront one another.
3:07:37
in order to live out who we are or who we truly are. And so the Bible
3:07:44
talks about this and especially in a case like mine where there’s monetary
3:07:49
stuff and all that that goodness. Uh and it’s in 1 Corinthians 6. says, “If
3:07:57
any of you has a dispute with one another,” and I I think I certainly qualify with Bethel and and Chris and
3:08:05
Shawn Bolz in those areas. Uh do you dare take it before the ungodly for judgment?
3:08:11
Um instead of the Lord’s people, or do you not know that the Lord’s
3:08:17
people will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not
3:08:22
competent to judge trivial cases? And this is certainly what this is. Uh it’s
3:08:29
not a eternal soul issue. Maybe maybe it is for Shawn. Um but uh especially
3:08:36
between me and Bethel, it it is it does not compare at all to the significance
3:08:43
of souls coming to Jesus. Uh therefore, if you have disputes about such matters,
3:08:50
do you ask for a ruling from those whose way of life is scorned uh in the church?
3:08:58
I say this to shame you. And shame here is is in a different culture where um it
3:09:06
means that you’re not being like the people of God should be. Is it possible
3:09:12
that there is no one among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? And so Paul is saying, we
3:09:20
need people to help bring judgment and reconciliation. And in modern times,
3:09:25
those are called mediators. And their purpose is to help apply biblical
Elijah’s Final Appeal
3:09:31
practices um to these situations. And one model
3:09:37
that I particularly love um is the
3:09:42
peacemaker ministry model. Um and basically the idea is that you go into
3:09:48
this process to glorify Jesus Christ. And it starts by every party sitting
3:09:54
down and like writing out where they sinned in this process and get the log
3:10:00
out of their own eye. And uh I mean there’s mistakes I’ve made along the
3:10:05
way. Um and maybe even mentioning to each other like I I think this is something you need to think about. Uh
3:10:12
you confess to each other, restore gently. Um and I I would like to
3:10:19
ask Bethel to pay for Peacemaker Ministries
3:10:24
uh for mediator. And I happen to I want to disclose this. Uh I happen to know uh
3:10:31
Lorie Stewart who’s on the team there. Um she’s the one that turned me on to
3:10:36
this. And so I would ask her not to be involved. I think impartial justice is really important in these cases. And I
3:10:43
think the reason people Paul says like he says the people of God, not the
3:10:49
elders or the five-fold ministers in Bethel’s context is because sometimes you have to take something outside of a
3:10:55
ministry um in order to have it judged impartially. And I I think that’s God’s
3:11:02
justice. Um, also, uh, I would like for this to be a
3:11:08
trauma-informed process. That is like you guys study up on
3:11:14
how to talk to people who’ve been through trauma and who report trauma. Um, and I ask the mediator to be trauma
3:11:21
informed. Um, and I want to encourage any other victims that,
3:11:27
uh, you go through a mediation process rather than take this to court. Um,
3:11:35
and uh I also want to say that
3:11:41
uh I would like post either handing Sean over to Satan or post having an
3:11:47
investigation and me him either being shown in the wrong or
3:11:54
uh being shown, hey, yeah, you did look stuff up. uh that he and I have a
3:12:01
peace-maker talk and that uh Bethel be willing to pay for mediation for that
3:12:07
since it happened at Bethel. Um and I’m asking Bethel and Boltz Ministries to
3:12:13
offer impartial third-party mediation services to any alleged victims
3:12:19
and uh data mining or sexual predators.
3:12:24
Um, and I asked every church and apostolic network who hosted a known
3:12:29
data minor or predator, you know, that we’ve got lots of those in the movement, uh, to have that type of reconciliation.
3:12:39
Um, and I ask uh, members and donors to
3:12:44
let your voice be heard if you would like to see that happen uh, in these churches. And I’m calling on the elders
3:12:52
and fifold ministers of Bethel to take steps to uh dismantle the unhealthy parts of
3:12:59
culture of honor and incorporate a culture of reconciliation and justice.
3:13:05
And I highly encourage you guys to again read to by Scott Mcnai and Pivot. Um,
3:13:13
and I’m asking all five-fold teachers and pastors to read books on moral
3:13:19
injury and ethical betrayal and begin teaching on it. Um, and I’m encouraging
3:13:26
internet influencers to speak on those topics and to amplify those that we may
3:13:33
be an example of a city on a hill so that the light of Christ teaching can be
3:13:40
shown in the world. And I want to pray for us now. And I
3:13:45
just feel the Holy Spirit in my heart. Jesus, you are the hero of history.
3:13:54
And you are worthy to be celebrated. And you have taught us wise things that
3:14:01
rebuild broken communities. And you say that you orchestrate all
3:14:07
things for our good. And by that you mean make us like you. And so I pray
3:14:16
that you act in the the churches uh all around the world right now that need to
3:14:23
apply your teaching that we could all take the high road together and that we
3:14:29
experience you in this situation. Amen.
Email all comments and questions to c3churchwatch@hotmail.com
“Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?” Galatians 4:16
Categories: Lifestyle Christianity
Tags: abuses, abusive, Bethel, cover-up culture, culture of honor, Culture of Honour, Elijah Stephens, exposed, fraud, insiders, John Bevere, Mike Winger, scam, scandal, Shawn Bolz, warning, whistleblower
