Bill Johnson's Followers Imply: "He's Equivalent to Jesus" and "The Apostles Were Pharisees"
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Since the article "Bethel Church Tells Witch She's On the Right Path…" came out, there's been a lot of comments made to Chris Rosebrough's Facebook page; most of the comments were supportive, but some were trying very hard to refute the article. The handful of arguments defending Bill Johnson and his church were pretty similar to each other and the article "Diffusing Demonic Dirty Bombs" covered most of them already, but a very interesting pattern emerged: The Bethel supporters (un-knowingly, to be sure) equated Bill Johnson with Jesus, and reduced the Apostles (the real Apostles in the Bible) to the role of unbelieving Pharisees.
Bethel supporters claimed that "Pharisees" and "Religious Nuts" were responsible for criticizing that church; they are totally convinced that what goes on there is a genuine work of the Holy Spirit and that questioning anything there is the same as when the Pharisees questioned Jesus and refused to believe that He was the Son of God. Here's the GIGANTIC problem with that:
Bill Johnson is NOT Jesus, and therefore, being skeptical of his teachings is not the same as being a Pharisee! On top of that, Jesus and the Apostles tell us to "watch out for false teachers" and "test the spirits" and "watch your doctrine closely" but the Bill Johnson/Bethel supporters think that makes someone a Pharisee. So, in their own little confused world, they've made Bill Johnson equivalent to Jesus (we must not question him or his church-that would be blasphemy against the Holy Spirit!) and they've turned Jesus and the Apostles (who wrote the New Testament) into "Pharisees" and "Religious Nuts."
Lastly, the other comment that was made multiple times was: "Oh, so now you're gonna believe a witch?!" This is the equivalent of saying "I don't want to believe this, so it isn't true." Otherwise you need to believe an incredible story that goes something like this:
"This girl, Annika, who pretends to be a former Christian but is now a (pretend?) witch, pretended to go to Bethel Church on several occasions so she could make up a story about it and then publish it on the Pagan channel of Patheos. She also brought along her friends who pretended to go there and then wrote about this pretend event. They also took photographs at Bethel Church, but those were all pretend photographs. This girl then pretended to get "prophetic words" so that she could blog about how encouraging those words were for her. She knew that eventually this would get published on a different website (half a year later), and that this would make Bethel Church look bad. She is very very very clever."
Ultimately, the most important thing is to compare what is being taught at Bethel to God's Word-regardless of what Annika Mongen (or anyone else) has to say.
“Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
“But as for you, speak the things which are fitting for sound doctrine.”
“But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good...”
“Hold fast (retain) the pattern of sound words (doctrine) which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. Guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you.”