In the same month that Bill Johnson permitted Kenneth Copeland to preach at Bethel Church, we imparted to transform the circumstance into a discussion on low hanging fruit while begging the question of whether internet pastor Mike Winger of BibleThinker would finally call out Bill Johnson as a false teacher.
It is unlikely a coincidence that in the same month the one teacher Winger will call a heretic preached at the a church he refuses to outright condemn, that he imparted to publish his recent video, “Bethel and Bill Johnson’s Bridge to the New Age and Spiritual Fakery.” The title would implicate a warning against the teachings of Bill Johnson’s Bethel Redding, but does Mike Winger sufficiently change his position?
The answer is a mixed bag, where Winger harshens his position on Bethel, but falls short of calling Bill Johnson a heretic and false teacher. Winger begins by addressing Bethel as a movement, not a church, that is building a bridge to New Age practices and self-deception. Early on, he contends that he should have been harsher against Bethel had he known this information sooner.
Throughout the two-hour video, Winger focuses his analysis on the 2015 book The Physics of Heaven by Judy Franklin and Ellyn Davis, featuring a forward by Kris Vallotton. In the world of Bethel, this book is not a recent phenomenon and has been criticized for its synergy of New Age teachings and biblical Christianity. Melissa Dougherty, whom Winger has performed several livestreams with, has several videos criticizing Bethel’s teachings including one on this book. On Amazon, 17% of the book’s reviews are one star, with reviewers calling out the book’s new age nonsense. None of this is new substance which is the first issue with Winger’s corrective action.
Winger will mention the various New Age practices that Bethel has indulged over the years, including the counterfeit miracles, false prophecies, tarot cards, and fabricated visits to heaven throughout the video. Naturally, it begs the question why he defended Bill Johnson in 2022 when all of these things were documented at the time. If he knew about these scandals when Doctrinal Watchdog and Tim Hurd called him out, then this exacerbates the problems with his defense of Bethel and Bill Johnsons’ gospel. Evangelical Dark Web did a livestream on this internet drama at the time and Winger defended his stance on Bill Johnson.
The meat of the video is a deep dive into this book in which he lays out in detail the numerous flaws, highlighting Bill Johnson’s specific influence over its teachings. As is typical with Winger’s style, it is thorough and exhaustive, especially due to the idiocy of the authors who attempt to bind New Age spiritualism, quantum physics, and Christianity while misapplying Scripture. They also do not understand the science of which they speak. Yet it is 100% the product of Bill Johnson’s theology.
It is commendable that at various instances throughout the video, Winger rebukes the authors and Bethel Church. Against the authors, he says that if he were an overseer in their church, he would “disfellowship” them, while warning that people in Bethel should flee. He even suggests that they would have years of programming that would need to be reversed. At the end of his video, he calls on Kris Vallotton and Bill Johnson to repent while issuing another warning against Bethel’s teachings. However, he stops short of calling Johnson and Vallotton false teachers or heretics. Moreover, he does not warn that those who attend Bethel are false converts, which if not entirely, is mostly true.
Winger vs Critics Continued
One observation from the comment section of this video, which garnered over 100K views in under a week, is that the audience was overwhelmingly critical of Bethel and pleased that Mike Winger did an analysis of their false teachings. By and large, his audience understands that Bethel and Bill Johnson are threats to the Church and spread false teachings. They appear to comprehend that the Bethel movement has an outsized, global influence over other churches, who innocuously sing their music for worship and parrot their New Age practices. His audience would be on board with a harshened and more critical stance from Winger.
However, it is evident that Winger does not want to admit wrongdoing to his previous stance on Bethel, and that is a fault on his part. All of the scandals were known quantities back in September of 2022 when he defended the “in tact” gospel of Bethel and Lakewood. He had a chance to address and offer corrections on his position in light of criticism. He refused.
The YouTube viewer, Teddy with Faith, offered his rebuke, stating that Mike was warned about Bethel but merely did not listen, calling on him to apologize. Winger’s response, declaring that he was never “endorsing” Bethel’s teaching or that his original Bill Johnson video was a warning, ignores the statements from Winger believing that Bill Johnson is saved despite his concerns of fakery. This is a middle ground tactic that is often seen by large channels when discussing false teachers, who have a tendency to pet wolves. Likewise, Allen Parr made his chew the meat and “spit out the bones” comments in regard to false teachers (H/T Jordan Riley). This is not what the Bible teaches, and it is the duty of Church leaders to warn against false teaching. Winger attempts to say that he was critical, but this is inconsistent with his prior affirmation of Bethel’s gospel.
While sarcastically dissing Doctrinal Watchdog’s accuracies as equivocal to Bethel’s miracles, it must be noted that he is on record stating that he believed some of the miracles and prophecies at Bethel were legitimate.
Overall, this should be considered a step in the right direction for one of the larger names in Christian YouTube; albeit, Winger is incomplete in his repudiation of Bethel. For his viewers, he should acknowledge the dangers and confusion his prior stance on Bethel conveyed and then move on to Joel Osteen.
This refusal to admit wrongdoing is all too commonplace nowadays. Many persist in refusing admission of wrong pertaining to Covid and the vaccines. Ben Shapiro infamously came out against the Covid jabs in October of 2022, well over a year after data had already proven the inefficacy and dangers of the jabs. Just like Winger, Shapiro cited “new information” that led to a change of mind, of which the data in question was neither novel or inaccessible. Mike Winger is practicing what was satirically dubbed “Ben Shapiro Christianity.” For this, he should apologize and be receptive to criticism going forward.
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