I am so thankful that a reader of Bethel Sozo Research sent in a photo of Beni Johnson's Instagram page from about a week ago. Thank you!
I have seen a similar photo before on Beni's Twitter page. She is posting these photos of herself in cemeteries hugging or somehow embracing the gravestones of dead people. I wrote about that previously and posted a photo of her hugging a gravestone.
What do you think of this? Would God command someone to go hug a grave containing a dead body? The spirit of the person is gone (2 Cor. 5:8). This peculiar, cultic practice is not found anywhere in the Bible. Except for perhaps the Scriptures concerning necromancy (communication/consulting with the dead is forbidden in the Scriptures. God didn't like it then, and He doesn't like it now because He is the same God today; see Luke 24:5, Hebrews 13:8 and Deuteronomy 18:10).
Would the Holy Spirit truly want a person to get some sort of "anointing" (power) from a dead person? Is it
even possible to get an anointing from someone who is dead? What benefit is there in hanging around dead people? Is this seriously happening?
It is exceedingly sad that people are buying into this. This practice was not done by Jesus nor the disciples. None of the earlier Christians throughout the centuries did this. The martyrs did not do this.
What's going on? This is not Biblical Christianity, but this is Kool-Aid drinking. Why do people listen to false prophets like Bill Johnson and his wife, Beni?
The truth is that people stop using their own reasoning when it comes to cult leaders. Cult leaders are intelligent folks actually, and they know how pliable the human mind is. They seek to control the minds of others. This is why the apostle Paul wrote:
"O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified" (Galatians 3:1)
The word "bewitched" here in the Greek is ebaskanen or baskaino, which properly means, "to put someone under a spell so they no longer could think or act according to reason" (Strong's 940;
HELPS Word-studies). Christians should use their reasoning and not lay it aside to follow a cultist!
One
Sozoer, teacher and author named Jenny Barger of Southern California wrote a "holy" memoir chock full of what she claims are "new revelations" she has received from "Jesus" Himself! In fact, nearly every page of the book is author Jenny Barger claiming to have actual conversations with "Jesus". She is claiming that "God" speaks to her directly. The problem is that many of her "new revelations" simply do not line up with the Word of God and what the real Jesus spoke. The Scriptures she uses as "proof texting" are taken entirely out of their proper context. The Bible says the false teachers will indeed twist Scriptures, "There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures" (2 Peter 3:16).
The book, entitled
The Beauty of Holiness, Jenny Barger teaches numerous problematic and heterodox ideas (time does not permit for me to list them all), one of them being the following: using one's own reasoning and logic is a sin worse than the sin of adultery! Barger explains, "Reason also can be the mother of harlots [in Revelation 17:3-5]...reason produces or gives birth to harlots...we've been relying on ourselves, our reason, our logic, and have betrayed the one we love" (2015, p. 123). In her teachings, Barger espouses a dangerous false dichotomy by teaching that using one's own reason is equated with betraying Jesus! She also wrote, "I talked to God about it, and He said, 'I want to give you a key. The key is...too much thinking is not good for the soul" (Ibid, p. 142).
God gave us our brains, and He wants us to use our reasoning. God is an intelligent God, and if anyone asks you to check your brain at the door, run! This is why so many people are duped by con-artists with millions of followers like Bill Johnson, who also demonizes using the intellect in his book
When Heaven Invades Earth. This is how he "bewitches" his followers (remember, in Greek, to bewitch means to control another person by getting them to lay aside their own reasoning and intellect). Why does he demonize using one's own reasoning? Precisely because he wants to
draw away disciples after him! He is trying to create followers because once people lay aside their reasoning, they will buy into anything. It is really quite cruel what Johnson is doing to people through his false teachings. Johnson's teachings look a whole lot like the teachings of the ancient Montanists and Gnostics, all considered heretics by the early Christian church. He also consistently challenges the full deity (divinity) of Christ while elevating the deity of man.
God does not discourage us from using our God-given brains. This is how we can protect ourselves from the cultists in our midst. "Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them" (Acts 20:30).
Barger also teachers her readers that their close friends and family, if they are critics of Sozo, are suffering from a "religious spirit" and the Pharisees of Luke 11:52, and she explains these "close friends and family" are participating in a "tactic" of the devil by warning about Sozo (p. 158). Thus, she admonishes her readers to not listen to close friends and family who are critics of the Sozo cult. This is a tactic of the cults to isolate victims from their family and friends who would lovingly warn them. Beware!
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| I confirmed with the church staff that this is Beni Johnson's Twitter account. Beni is Bill Johnson's wife. This is what she does in her spare time! She lays on the graves of dead people to get "power". If anyone asks you to do this, run, and run fast. These teachers are not from God (1 John 4:1). Author Jenny Barger of Southern California heavily promotes Bill Johnson's teachings in her erroneous and disturbing book, The Beauty of Holiness (2015). |
Sources:
Barger, Jenny. 2015. The Beauty of Holiness. Zenith Publications and Innovations. Las Vegas, Nevada.
Johnson, B. 2003. When Heaven Invades Earth. Destiny Image Publishers, Inc. Shippensburg.
Helps Ministries, Inc. HELPS Word-studies. 1987, 2011. Accessed August 1, 2015. Retrieved from https://biblehub.com/greek/940.htm
