Joel and Justin Peters argue churches must reject Bethel and Hillsong music, labeling these groups cults promoting Word of Faith heresies like easy believism and the "little gods" doctrine. They condemn Bill Johnson's overrealized eschatology equating heaven with wealth and Seth Dahl's blasphemous claims that Jesus sought forgiveness from him. While Hillsong remains seeker-sensitive, both organizations demote Christ to elevate man, relying on false prophecies instead of Scripture. Ultimately, this theology creates a culture demanding daily miracles, ostracizing those who cannot perform them while distorting the Trinity and hypostatic union. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
Time
Text
Why Stop Using Bethel Music00:13:55
In this episode, I have the privilege of sitting down with returning guest Justin Peters to discuss three reasons why you should stop using Bethel and Hillsong music in your church.
The three reasons are as follows.
Number one, Bethel and Hillsong are not true churches.
Number two, by using Bethel and Hillsong music, you're subjecting weaker members of your body to heresy.
And number three, even the non heretical songs by Bethel and Hillsong.
Still, they are not theologically robust enough to combat the idolatry and heresy that already exist in our sinful hearts.
Now, we recorded this in two parts, and so for this part one, we're just going to tackle that first reason Bethel and Hillsong are not true churches.
And we're going to do this by explaining precisely why they're not true churches and providing a biblical criteria for what constitutes a true church according to God.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
All right, so I'm privileged to have again as a returning guest Justin Peters.
Justin, would you go ahead and just introduce yourself to our listeners?
Tell them a little bit about yourself and your ministry.
Yes, Joel, my name is Justin Peters, and my wife, Kathy, and I live in Bozeman, Montana.
And I am in full time evangelism.
I travel and preach and teach.
And I suppose that for which I'm most well known is my critique of the Word of Faith movement, New Apostolic Reformation, the Health and Wealth, Name and Claim it, Prosperity Gospel.
I have a seminar entitled Clouds Without Water that is a biblical refutation of that movement.
And it's not my only interest.
I'm committed to expositional preaching, I teach on some other issues as well.
I've written one book, thus, well, I've technically written two books.
But only one of them is available in English.
And the one that's available in English is entitled Do Not Hinder Them A Biblical Examination of Childhood Conversion.
How to know when conversion has really taken place in the life of your child before you rush them off into the baptistry just because they've made intellectual assent to a few basic gospel facts.
So, yeah, so I deal with a number of other issues.
I have a YouTube channel, I have a podcast.
And so, yeah, a lot of irons in the fire, I suppose you could say.
Great.
That's great.
All right.
So, without further ado, we'll go ahead and hop into our topic.
We're talking about why local churches should not use Bethel Hillsong Elevation music in their worship services.
And I know you and I would both probably go further than that and just encourage Christians to kind of chunk it all together.
But especially on the Lord's Day, when the saints gather together for our worship, we want to be reverent, we want to be scriptural, we want to do that which God prescribes in His Word.
As our ordinances of worship.
And so that's the big thing that we're arguing in this particular episode of Theology Applied.
Local churches should not use Bethel and Hillsong for their worship services on the Lord's Day.
And so we kind of are outlining three reasons.
And so the first reason that I know you and I both agree with, we've talked a little bit about this offline, and I know you've done a lot on this subject in the past, but we both agree that both Hillsong and Bethel are not churches.
And so could you speak to that for a moment?
Sure, Joel.
Yeah, they're not.
They certainly have church in their name, but they are not churches by the biblical definition of a church because both Bethel and Hillsong are cults.
And a lot of people chafe when I say that, but I stand by it.
They do not have a biblical leadership structure.
They do not practice church discipline, the first command, actually, that Jesus gave to his church, Matthew chapter 18.
They don't do that.
And they are both committed to word of faith theology, word faith slash new apostolic reformation, the very subject matter for which I'm most well known, that which I teach against all over the world.
The belief that it is always God's will to be healed, it is always God's will to be wealthy.
You can have physical healing and monetary prosperity as long as you have enough faith.
They hold the word faith theology.
Little God's doctrine, positive confession, speak things into existence, all of these things.
And an argument could certainly be made that Bethel, pastored by Bill Johnson, is certainly more heretical from a purely doctrinal standpoint.
I mean, they are more heretical.
But they are.
They're cut from the same basic cloth.
And in fact, when you look at Hillsong's conferences, you see a lot of cross pollination between Hillsong, Brian Houston, and Bethel, Bill Johnson.
They speak at each other's conferences.
They're very friendly with each other.
They're simpatico.
They endorse one another.
And so, yeah, so they're both cults.
Yeah, I totally agree.
And in my observation, it seems like they both have the foundational.
Doctrinal tenets, false doctrines.
The real difference isn't doctrinal, it's more so like a philosophy of ministry.
Hillsong is a little bit more of the seeker sensitive, lighthearted, we don't want to scare you away.
And then Bethel is a little bit more of the, we'll talk about grave sucking, you know, and we're, you know, we're going to scare a lot of, you know, sane people away.
I imagine that Hillsong probably has more sane people among its membership that are just deceived, whereas Bethel attracts a lot of people, but it really kind of a, A type of person, you know, the type of person who I'm sure there's many precious people there, but the type of person who's, you know, just more comfortable with in your face, kind of mystical, you know, things that a normal person would say, that's pretty weird.
So, but my point is that I think they both have the same, a lot of the same doctrinal tenets, but there's a very noticeable difference in their philosophy of ministry.
So, what are some of those doctrines?
If you were to boil them down to maybe just a handful, what are some of the big clear doctrinal heresies that Hillsong andor Bethel would hold to and have publicly preached?
Yeah, there would be a number of them.
Both of them would be an anti lordship salvation kind of message.
Easy believism, pray the sinner's prayer, as long as you recite those words, you're in, you're in the club kind of thing.
No emphasis on.
At all on repentance or taking up the cross, denying yourself.
In fact, self fulfillment and self indulgence is kind of the hallmark of this movement.
You know, come to Christ and Jesus will make you rich and Jesus will heal your body.
They appeal to fallen human desires as the basis for their movement.
Bethel would certainly, as I said a minute ago, doctrinally get more into full blown heresy.
Hillsong, you can kind of think of as kind of like the Joel Osteen ish.
Wing of this movement, you know, kind of the happy clappy kind of stuff.
Bethel is that as well, but they get more into the heretical things.
Like one of the things that I have a video on my seminar that is just truly horrific.
And it's a video that Bethel uses actually in their advertisement.
It's not something that they're embarrassed by, they're actually proud of it.
But it shows one of their staff members, a man named Seth Dahl, D A H L.
And he claims in this video, I wish we had it, we could play it, but he claims in this video that he had a.
Vision of Jesus, and in this vision, Jesus embraced him, held him, like hugged him tightly, and said to Seth, Please forgive me.
Please forgive me.
I mean, think about that the Son of God, the thrice holy Son of God, saying to a wretched, vile, sinful creature, Please forgive me.
Yeah.
And I mean, that is so blasphemous.
Sometimes I feel like blasphemy is not even a strong enough word.
I kind of almost feel myself wanting something even stronger than that.
But it is utter and sheer blasphemy.
And they're proud of this.
I mean, this is something they have used, put out in their advertising.
So, I mean, any quote unquote church that would have such a profoundly low view of Christ as to actually advertise to the world that Jesus is asking any of us for forgiveness, gobsmacking, just gobsmacking.
And so, a very low Christology.
They get into the, in addition to their like grave sucking that you mentioned, they have fire tunnels.
They have the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry that gets into the Bethel School of Wizardry and Witchcraft.
Yeah, it's like a theological.
Hogwarts.
Hogwarts, yeah.
Yeah, it's a theological.
It's kind of a Christianized version of what's his name?
Yeah, I got him.
Yeah.
Harry Potter.
I got you.
Yeah.
So, but they also have a very low view of Christ.
Their Christology is very errant.
They get into the kenosis, the belief that Jesus completely divested himself of deity while he was on earth.
And why, real quick, why do they do that, Justin?
Because there's, you and I both know, there's a really specific reason why they want to, if we could speak to their intentions, not just what they do, but why they do it, there's a really specific reason why they want.
This Jesus who has to ask for certain people's forgiveness, which absolutely is blasphemous, or this Jesus who completely empties himself, divests himself of his divinity, and this emphasis on the kenosis.
What is their intent?
What are they trying to accomplish by kind of getting Jesus small, making him small?
Yeah.
Well, they make Jesus small because they want to make man big.
And they believe that if you are a Christian, Then you stand on equal footing with Christ, that you have all the rights, all the privileges of Jesus.
You can do greater works than these, which they totally take out of context.
You're just like Jesus.
You have all the authority, you have all the power that he did.
And so, in fact, I don't have it in front of me, so I might not get this 100% a direct quote, but it's going to be real close if it's not.
Jesus is the most normal Christian who ever lived.
The most normal Christian who ever lives.
So, you know, if you're a Christian, hey, you're just like Jesus.
Right.
All the rights, all the privileges.
So they have to knock him down to elevate us to be on the same plane as he is.
And specifically with the supernatural, with the gifts of the Spirit.
Like Jesus, the most normal.
So, what they don't want to happen in that ultra charismatic kind of, you know, word of faith movement, what they don't want to happen is they don't want you to look at Jesus and say, Well, that's Jesus, which you and I would say frequently.
We would say, well, that's Jesus.
But that's what they don't want to happen.
They don't want people in their mind, they would be thinking, you know, if anyone who's saying, well, that was Jesus, is making in their mind an excuse.
And so when they say the most normal life, that's really intentional language Bill Johnson is using.
So what he's saying is rather than seeing Jesus as the God man exception to all of humanity, far and above, Rather, we look at him as the normative.
And yes, it's true.
We view Christ as the standard in terms of his holiness, his doctrine, what he preached, what he taught, what he did, how he lived.
We look at him as the standard.
But there's a difference in saying Christ is the standard versus saying Christ is the norm.
And when you say Christ is the norm, what you're ultimately trying to accomplish is anybody who's not going around doing miracles a dozen times a day, that's abnormal.
That's abnormal.
And so it's a way of creating a culture where not only is the miraculous permissible or emphasized, but you're actually now ostracized and even demonized if you're not thinking about, talking about, and attempting whatever that looks like, the miraculous on a daily basis, because that's been set as not the standard of holiness, but the standard of what's normative.
The Problem with Realized Eschatology00:05:42
And so anything outside, and so it's a way of just kind of trying to, you know, say, you know, I've heard Bill Johnson say before, he has a, what does he call it?
I have a Jesus theology or a theology of Jesus, you know, anything that, how does he say that, Justin?
You know what I'm talking about?
Yeah, various iterations of that.
But his basic error is that he believes that, for example, when Jesus gave us the model prayer, our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Bill Johnson extrapolates from that that on earth as it is in heaven, that whatever heaven is like, we should have here on earth.
And that's kind of like the foundation for his theology on healing.
He says, In fact, I have this in my seminar.
He said, There's no cancer in heaven.
There should be no cancer here on earth, even though his own wife has cancer.
I don't know the status of it.
Yeah, Benny Johnson was diagnosed with cancer.
Several years ago.
I don't know what the status of it is now.
I mean, she's still alive.
I know that.
But, but, um, anyway, he says, There's no cancer on in heaven.
There should be no cancer on earth.
There's no sickness up in heaven.
There should be no sickness on earth.
And he says this as he's wearing eyeglasses.
Right.
You know, and I thought, it's like, okay, there's no eyeglasses in heaven either, but yet you got a pair of them sitting on your nose right now.
Not you, but I mean, you do, but, but, um, I mean, so, I mean, you see how quickly it breaks down.
So it's this over realized eschatology.
Yeah.
Overrealized eschatology.
They believe that everything that we are promised in the eschaton should be realized here and now.
And that's just not true.
And I might also point out that there is no marriage in heaven either.
You know, when you get to heaven, you're not going to be married to your wife.
When I get to heaven, I'm not going to be married to Kathy.
And yet he's married to Benny.
Right.
So you see how quickly it is not living in a very heavenly manner.
You know, so no, you're right.
It breaks down very quickly.
And it's sad because, you know, you're right.
It's an overrealized eschatology, but it's also a truncated.
Over realized eschatology because it's all focused, so much of it is focused on physical health and wealth, but especially with Bethel, you know, physical health, where it's like, man, in the new heavens and the new earth, when we are there, there's a lot more going on besides just health.
Yes, we will be healthy.
Yes, we will be made physically whole.
We'll have glorified bodies that will never grow weary and die.
But there's a whole lot more.
It's the increase of his kingdom, there shall be no end.
It's the perfect rule and reign.
Of Christ, it's not just everyone's healthy.
It's also there's no Joe Biden.
There's no abortion.
There's a lot of other great things that we could speak of with the new heavens and the new earth.
And yet, theirs is an over realized eschatology, but also a very truncated, narrow eschatology that really only focuses on a couple elements and makes it as though it's the end all be all.
Right.
The object of heaven, the object of our.
They don't lift up Christ.
In fact, we were just talking about how they demote Christ.
So I tell people often, you know, when I think about heaven, what captures my heart, what captures my attention, what captures my affections when I think about heaven is not being rid of my crutches.
I think you can see one of them in the kind of in the background right there.
Not being rid of my crutches.
I don't, I don't even, I don't ever think about why.
Yeah, I think I could just about say I don't ever think about that.
I know it will be a reality, but it's not what.
What captures my thoughts is that I will be in the presence of Christ, knowing Him fully, being able to worship Him unencumbered by sin, being in awe of His person for all of eternity.
That is what I think about.
Not streets of gold and supposed mansions, which is an unfortunate rendering in the King James, but that's another subject matter.
Not that kind of stuff.
Not having heaven as a big family reunion or.
You know, all these things.
So, yeah.
I agree.
Real quick, before we move on from this, because we'll get to the other two reasons.
But the first reason you shouldn't use Bethel music, Hillsong music in your church is because it's coming out of two institutions that are not churches themselves.
So, if non churches, according to biblical metrics for what constitutes a true church, are producing the music, it just really doesn't make sense.
But, I mean, these days we have evangelical churches doing secular music.
You know, doing a song by you too, and in their worship, you know, so I guess at that point, ACBC and all kinds, yeah, then you might as well throw in, you know, Bethel and Hill song.
But, but the point is, um, we, you know, these are our two false churches, and with that, you know, you mentioned the kenosis, and we've been talking about that the idea of trying to normalize Jesus' earthly ministry so that you know this is what every Christian should expect, and really the emphasis not so much being on his holiness, but more so being on his miracles, the miraculous, and every Christian should expect to be like Jesus because he's.
He's not the standard so much as he's the norm.
Misunderstanding the Incarnation and Equality00:07:52
And so the idea of the kenosis, the emptying of Christ, they would get that from Philippians chapter 2, verses 5 through 8 says, Have this mind, speaking about humility in the church and honoring one another and loving one another.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.
And they would really emphasize that, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself, being obedient to the point of death.
Even death on a cross.
And so I just want to mention that real quick for our listeners.
The way that Justin and I would both exegete a text like that, that word grasped really is better rendered.
The equality with God, that Jesus, God the Father, that Jesus did not count as something that could be grasped, that word is really, he did not cling to it.
And so it's not this idea that Jesus was somehow inferior to the Father.
He's equally worthy of worship, equally divine, equally glorious.
Jesus is the Son of God.
He's very, very God.
You know, very man, very God.
And so he's truly God.
That equality with the Father, what the text is saying is it's not that he didn't have it and it was so far above him, he didn't even think he could reach it or grasp it.
What it means is, no, he had equality with the Father and always has.
And because, precisely because he has real equality with the Father, he doesn't have this, he did not have a petty arrogance or.
Presumptuous attitude that he had to hold on to it, cling to it, and couldn't let it go.
One of the ways you can tell when a person has real authority and they're not just a petty tyrant is they don't always have to boast about their title.
They don't always have to boast of the authority that they have.
And so, Christ in humility, and that's the mind that we're called to have about us not his miracles, but his mindset of loving others, considering others as more significant than ourselves, Christ was willing to let go.
Of that equality, as it were.
And we should add that phrase, as it were.
And what it really meant was he did not divest himself of his deity.
It says he emptied himself, but that's another word that can be confusing.
What it means is that he concealed, his divinity was concealed by the flesh, by the human nature.
So St. Augustine says that Christ is a divinity wrapped in flesh.
And so, you know, the Mount of Transfiguration, we see the divinity of Christ.
And, you know, and Peter, James, and John saw it and were taken aback.
Even at the arrest of Jesus, the Gospel of John talks about.
Twice that the soldiers, when Jesus just says, I am, you know, are you Jesus of Nazareth?
I am.
And when Jesus utters the words, I am, they fall back and Jesus has to help them arrest him.
Otherwise, they were never going to get it done.
So Jesus very much had maintained his divinity at every point and maintained it on earth, but it was often concealed from being perceived by the minds and hearts and eyes and ears of men, including the disciples.
There are many, many moments where Jesus, you know, he even has to ask them, Who do you think I am?
Who does man say that I am?
Who do you think I am?
Peter gets it right, but only because the fathers revealed it to him because Jesus wasn't walking around on earth with a glowing light above his head, like some Jesus movies would kind of portray him.
But that's not because he lost his divinity or paused his divinity or laid it aside or emptied it.
It's because his divinity was thoroughly concealed, present always, but concealed by flesh.
But we know it was there because there are multiple occasions.
Where Jesus reminds his disciples and reminds us through the witness of Scripture that there's not a moment that he stopped being the fully divine Son of God.
Would you agree with that, Justin?
Anything you want to add to that?
I do agree with that.
And no, I mean, you pretty much covered all the bases there.
Okay.
All right.
I just want to make sure I didn't say anything that you wouldn't agree with there.
But yeah, so that's the problem.
When you have a little Jesus, Theology that he divested himself of his divinity.
He's not really God on earth.
He somehow put that aside or paused it or emptied it.
And the whole idea is, and so now, you know, Jesus, so what's the power source?
Well, it's only, and you'll hear this kind of, it's Jesus is only doing things by the power of the Holy Spirit.
And the gospel never to speak of that.
You know, the power of the Spirit was present to heal the sick, or Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, or was led by the Spirit.
Into the wilderness.
But what they want to do is they want to basically make it seem like Jesus had no divinity in and of himself.
And so he was only ever powered or empowered by the power of the Holy Spirit.
And wouldn't you know it, that's the same power that you and I have.
So there's no excuse for us not to be doing the exact same things that Jesus did.
And we would just say that's a horrible view of Jesus.
And that's just bad theology proper.
That's bad doctrine of God.
That's a bad view of the Trinity.
That's a bad view of.
The hypostatic union of the divine nature and the human nature of Christ.
It misunderstands the incarnation.
It misunderstands the essence of God.
It's just bad theology.
And it's not just bad theology, it is heretical theology.
So, anyway, could you name maybe one other doctrine that we would say, yeah, this is a heretical doctrine that's coming out of these institutions?
Well, related to that is the little gods doctrine.
They teach that we are gods.
Chris Balaton has taught that.
Recently, within the last couple of years, a little God's theology, of course, the kenosis, belief that we can speak things into existence, belief that we can perform greater works than Jesus did.
And also, the false prophecies, that in and of themselves marks them as outside of Orthodox Christianity because they all claim regularly that God speaks to them.
And they hear God speak to them constantly.
God seems to speak to these folks more than he ever did to Moses.
And they're always, you know, it is, you probably could barely listen to 10 minutes of a sermon out of Bethel and not hear the phrase, God told me.
You know, I heard God say, God said this and God said that.
I mean, it's just constant.
It's just, it flows out of them, it oozes out of their pores.
And so the charismatic movement really does not believe it to be a serious thing.
To put words in God's mouth that he did not say.
And yet the Bible marks such people as false prophets.
And they do this all the time, all the time.
I mean, it's, and you listen to their sermons, it's not about exegesis.
You don't hear exposition of the text.
You hear stories and personal experiences.
Well, God did this, God did that.
You know, I saw this, this happened over here.
And they'll throw in a verse here or two just to kind of sprinkle it in, you know, just to make it appear to be.
Preaching, but there's no exposition there.
There's no inductive study of scripture.
It's all about stories, feelings, personal experiences, and false prophecies.
And they do that literally all the time.
Yeah, you're right.
Support Right Response Ministries00:01:00
Justin, thanks so much for coming on the show.
I really appreciate it.
You're welcome, brother.
You're welcome.
God bless you.
Any way that our people can follow you, keep up with you?
Yeah, I have a website, justinpeters.org.
And so they can find out more about me and my ministry, justinpeters.org.
I have a YouTube channel.
I'm pretty active on that, put videos out, you know, fairly regularly.
And, um, Justin Peters Ministries Facebook page as well.
Okay, thanks.
Appreciate it.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, Joel.
As a special thank you for your gift of any amount, we'll be happy to send you a free digital book from our store.
To access this offer, visit rightresponseministries.comslash offer.
We highly recommend Pastor Joel's book, Am I Truly Saved?
If you or someone you know has wrestled with doubts about the love of God, this would be a great resource.
As a reminder, to get this offer, go to rightresponseministries.comslash offer.