Are Bethel Church Spiritual Gifts Practices Real?

Are the Bethel Church spiritual gifts practices real? What we are seeing today with Bethel Church, Redding, and the New Apostolic Reformation in general, is manufactured continuationism which some have called charismania. This kind of charismania is unbiblical.

SPIRITUAL GIFTS SHOULD NOT HAVE TO BE TAUGHT

At a “Firestarters” class at Bethel Church in Redding, people are taught how to heal the sick and prophesy. A past attendee reported what happened. Four students who had never prophesied were told to stand on the platform “to be ‘activated’ into the prophetic gift.”¹ They were then told to prophesy in front of the class. After expressing hesitation, the teacher said, “If you don’t know what to say, just start talking and you’ll get there.”² There are many such stories. Catrina writes, “We ladies had a morning of being taught how to prophesy. We were told to tell ourselves, ‘I’m going to start prophesying, even if I have to start in the flesh.’”³ This practice of teaching people to be ‘activated’ into prophetic gifts is unbiblical.

The Holy Spirit determines what gift(s) we have

The Holy Spirit is a person like God the Father and God the Son. The Holy Spirit has a mind (Rom. 8:27; 1 Cor. 2:11), emotions (He can be grieved; Eph. 4:30) and will (Heb. 2:4; Acts 13:2). The Bible says that at the point of regeneration the Holy Spirit exercises His will in determining which spiritual gift(s) a believer gets (1 Cor. 12:11; cf. Heb. 2:4). It is not up to believers which gift(s) they receive. Paul apparently could impart spiritual gifts as an apostle (Rom. 1:11) but the gift which was imparted was not chosen by Paul but rather the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:11; Rom. 12:6).

Not all gifts are available to all people

“Do all have gifts of healings? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?” (1 Cor. 12:30). It is a rhetorical question with the answer, “No!” Yet what we are seeing today with the NAR movement are people being taught how to use the charismatic gifts, as though anybody can have them if they simply learn how to use them.

SPIRITUAL GIFTS SHOULD NOT HAVE TO BE “WARMED UP”

Not only does the Holy Spirit decide which gift(s) people get but the Bible says the exercising of the gift(s) is done by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is “one and the same Spirit [who] works all these things…” (1 Cor. 12:7-11).

This means that people should not have to “warm up” or “drum up” a gift or try to induce power through some means of their flesh. True workings of the Spirit start and end by the Holy Spirit.

Trying to “drum up” the spiritual gifts

What we see today in NAR meetings is not the picture we see in the NT of the Holy Spirit’s work but what Chuck Smith called charismania: “Charismania is an endeavor in the flesh to simulate charisma. It is any effort to do the work of the Spirit in the energies or abilities of the flesh – the old, selfish nature of a person. It is a spiritual hype that substitutes perspiration for inspiration.”⁴

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1. Holly Pivec, “The Problem with Bethel Redding’s Firestarters ‘Prophetic Activation’ Class, Part 1,” Spirit of Error, June 27, 2017, http://www.spiritoferror.org/2017/06/the-problem-with-the-firestarters-prophetic-activation-class-at-bethel-redding/6727
2. Ibid
3. “Leaving the Nar Church: Catrina’s Story,” Pirate Christian Media, April 6, 2017, http://piratechristian.squarespace.com/berean-examiner/2017/4/leaving-the-nar-church-catrinas-story
4. Chuck Smith, Charisma Vs. Charismania (Costa Mesa, CA: Word for Today, 1983), 10