Latest / The Remnant Radio's Podcast / Is Bethel Church Past the Point of No Return?

Transcript

Is Bethel Church Past the Point of No Return? · The Remnant Radio's Podcast

• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Hey guys, welcome back to the wonderful world of Remnant Radio.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: In this video, we have created what I can only hope is a one-stop shop for all things Bethel controversy.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of this video, we're going to address recent reports suggesting that Bethel Church in Reading, California is laying off the very people who have been advocating for change inside their movement.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be an interesting episode, guys.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: You guys stay tuned.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Hey guys, Joshua Lewis here.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for tuning back in.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Today's discussion centers around Bethel Church in Reading, California.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, many of us know that critiques around Bethel have been dropping for well over a decade now, and a good chunk of those early detractors came from cessationist spaces.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: The word cessationist just means people who believe the gifts of the spirit have ceased.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: So we have cessationist churches, blogs, podcasts, and conferences that are critiquing the movement.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Their concerns range from minor theological disagreements to outright heretical statements as they see it.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: But in the last five to ten years, even those among the continuationist people who believe the gifts of the spirit have continued, uh, seem to have begun having similar problems there with Bethel Church, calling them to repent for promoting fraudulent translations of the Bible, syncretizing New Age practices within their teachings and publications, and appearing to have a pervasive culture of cover-up.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: This video is not meant to be like a big pylon in Bethel Church, uh, as actually the church that we all love to hate.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: I actually think that Bethel is full of God-fearing, God-honoring people uh who love Jesus.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Some think, Josh, how could you possibly say that?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I say that because of all the whistleblowers and all the former alumni from the Bethel School of Ministry who are calling their church to repent.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: And many reports of the staff that I have heard are actually calling uh their leadership and their executive leadership out for their error and for them to clean up their mess.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: In large part, this video is for them, those disciples of Christ who are willing to speak truth to power.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I hoped that we can reach them with reason and compassion, showing them that at least some critics actually want to see the the church there in Reading, California redeemed rather than being burned to the ground.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And the only way that we can accomplish this if those local members actually stand up and speak truth, speaking out and calling their leadership to repent.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: But this video is not only for Bethel Church.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: There is a learning moment for all of us here.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: What do we do when something like this happens in our own church?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: What's our responsibility?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're all prone to fall.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Every single one of us is a sinner, but the holiness of God's church really matters.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the people of God are meant to be a light to the nations.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And when that light gets covered up, it's worth talking about.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Not so that we can feel spiritually superior from everyone else, but so that we can put the fear of God in all of us.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: When things go sideways in our own house, we have a responsibility to clean it up.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: And if we don't, destruction will certainly ensue.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: So in this video, we will briefly go through the timeline of exposure.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have time to go through all of the responses from all the discernment ministries on YouTube channels, read every single blog that's posted about Bethel Church.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: So instead, I'll be highlighting specific ministries that I've either participated in or ministries that I closely follow.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Additionally, I want to be talking specifically about ministries that are predominantly continuationist, ministries that believe the spiritual gifts have continued.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: I do this because I don't want people there at Bethel Church to think that these are concerns coming from the outside trying to burn down the movement, but these are actually coming from within the movement seeking from reform for their own good.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: So the outline of today's content is simple.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: First, we want to go through the timeline of Bethel Church and those scandals.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Then we want to move to some calls to actions with specific pleas to the staff there at Bethel Church who have allegedly signed or potentially about to sign non-disparagement agreements.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Turns out California law does not keep you bound in the way you might think it does.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: But if you already know the history of Bethel Church, we have timestamps below.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: You can feel free to skip around this video.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: But watch the whole video if you would.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: I would encourage you to do so because I think when you put all of these timelines together and you see all of the uh man's statements and issues kind of back to back, you actually begin to see that those repeated errors actually show that there's something that really needs to be addressed rather than covering it up.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: So let's get into the timeline.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: So as previously stated, there were scandals surrounding Bethel Church there in Reading, California over the years.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Some of those issues they have addressed, others they seem to have brushed by and ignored.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but here, Bethel was caught up a couple of years ago, 12 years ago, into what is called the grave soaking scandal.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh students and leaders within their movement went out to deceased revivalists to try to soak up their anointings.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh over the years, some have played this off as, oh, this is just a couple of students.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: But like Bill Johnson's wife was there.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, these are predominant leaders in the space who are participating in this action.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, then we've got a whole bunch of reports of Bill Johnson's daughter teaching that the Holy Spirit is like a little blue genie.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_04: And the Holy Spirit to me is like the genie from Aladdin.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_04: I view the Holy Spirit like the genie from Aladdin.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_04: And he's blue.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_04: Unplanned.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_04: Perfect.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_04: And he's funny.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_04: And he's sneaky.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_04: And he's courageous, and he's everywhere.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_04: And he's wonderful.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_04: So he is the mean.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_04: And he's funny.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_04: He's sneaky.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_04: He's silly.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_04: He's wonderful.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_04: And I view him like the genie from Aladdin.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, not a great look.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: And around that time, uh, man, lots of accusations surrounded Bethel about not being Orthodox, particularly on their teachings and Bill Johnson's teachings, that Jesus gave up his divinity in the days of his earthly life.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: People would accuse them of not teaching against sin, not preaching against sin clearly, and some of their dangerous views around the doctrine of the gift of healing.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: About nine years ago, Dr.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: Michael Brown, being viewed as like the man orthodox continuationist, he's really theologically robust, is trying to assuage all of these concerns.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: So he interviews Bill Johnson, trying to clear up many of these.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Bill claims that they've put the grave soaking thing to rest, pun intended.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: His daughter was corrected on the little blue genie thing, and she won't teach that anymore.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: And around that same time, Bill Johnson also uh made clarifications that he always believed that Jesus uh was divine in his earthly life, but not choosing to act on certain divine prerogatives.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that interview settled many concerns for many people, seeing Dr.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Brown as like the Orthodox gatekeeper of charismatic doctrine.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Others remained deeply unsettled still.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: A year later, in 2018, Mike Winger released his first review of Bethel Church.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: His assessment was measured.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: He saw Bethel as a sincere Christian movement, real believers, with genuine zeal for revival, possibly even seeing real healings and prophecies, but he still had some serious theological problems.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: He argued that they distorted scripture in bad, if not necessarily heretical, sorts of ways.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: He said that their risk model for prophecy could normalize false and even fake prophetic words.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Little did he know that would probably be prophetic foreshadowing of what was to come in the future.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: And he said that the revival culture had some real uh man uh potential to stir up zeal within the people of God, but was also spreading some real substantive error.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Later in that same year, Winger released the work on the Passion Translation that he raised serious questions on whether Brian Simmons was even qualified to do translation work at all.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Turns out he had fabricated some of his credentials.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: It seriously undermined the translation's credibility, but because of men like Dr.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Michael Brown and Bethel Church itself continuing to endorse, the book held on to some credibility over the years.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Winger kept working on what he called the Passion Project, paying respected and qualified scholars to compare the Passion Translation against the original languages, and every single one of them came back with some seriously deep concerns.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Two years later, in the year 2020, of Our Lord, Stephen Bacchars, a former New Ager, came on to yours truly the Remnant Radio to talk about Bethel's engagement with the New Age.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: He walked us through a book called The Physics of Heaven, where author Judy Franklin, Bill Johnson's former assistant, goes through in this book and lists practices found in the New Age and said, Hey, we need to investigate these things to see if there's anything the church has missed, and if so, reclaiming those New Age practices for Christian use.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: The book publishes ideas and encourages ideas such as like quantum mysticism, energy healings, uh vibrations viewed as spirituality, light and color, mysticism, and some kind of Christianized version of the law of attraction.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Stephen also brought to my attention a year later that Bethel Church had invited disgraced prophet Bob Jones into their assembly to teach them how to spiritually travel to heaven through deep breathing and mindlessness, like to empty out your mind and through deep breathing you can travel to heaven.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: So in 2021, we released a video analyzing and condemning that practice.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Then in 2023, Mike Winger also picked up on the same thread and exposed the physics of heaven directly as New Age mysticism.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: That same year, Bethel invited Kenneth Copeland, a man most discerning-minded believers recognized to be a false teacher to their church.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: That only deepened the suspicion that this church was no longer a safe environment.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: And we reported that on that on January of 17th, 2023.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: But it's important to note that we heard lots of rumors that the Bethel Alumni were very unhappy, and many in the church were very uh uncomfortable by the fact that Kenneth Copeland was present.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Then things really began to spiral out of control on January 10th, 2025.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's when the Minor Prophets released their video showing evidence that Sean Bowles, a traveling prophetic minister who was closely tied to Bethel Church in Reading, was stealing information from the internet or data mining information from the internet and repackaging it as prophetic words.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: John Mark Baker from The Minor Prophets produced text messages from Chris Valatin stating that Bethel would no longer allow Sean Bowles to minister in their network until he repented.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Chris said that he didn't want to make a public statement because it could hurt the entire prophetic ministry worldwide.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: So he also said he warned the leaders within his network about Sean's dishonesty in prophetic ministry.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Minor Prophets concluded that, man, the Bethel Church really dropped the ball on this and they covered up some sin.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Sean Bowles made his way onto the scene because of Bethel Church and their early endorsement and had been working with him closely.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: And to endorse him without making a public detraction of that endorsement causes a lot of sheep to say, well, hey, Bethel likes them.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Brown likes Bethel.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: They must be orthodox.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: This guy must be on the straight and narrow.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, he was a wolf in sheep's clothing.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Then on January 17th of 2026, Mike Winger released a video that blew this case wide open.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: Mike called Sean Bowles the white rabbit that led him into a much bigger investigation of the cover-up culture in the charismatic movement.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: His case was similar to that of the minor prophets, that these prophetic words were increasingly uh hinging upon Sean Bowles' ability to do words of knowledge, where he would give people specific names and birth dates and addresses and family details and personal dreams.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he showed that, hey, all of this information is really accessible online.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: So he'd, hey, I give this word to this person.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's my name.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then he checks their name against Facebook.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: It looks like they registered for the conference that Sean Bowles was going to be at.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then he goes to their personal information, goes to their page, sees what they've been posting, and all the information that he is prophesying can be found easily accessible on their Facebook pages.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: In addition to this, Mike also shows that, hey, the word of knowledge is specific about things that are going on in their history and their past, but the direction about what they're supposed to do in their future is increasingly vague, showing that he only knows information about the present that is publicly posted rather than information about the future.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Mike doesn't stop there though at the mechanics.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: He actually shows that Sean's prophecies actually cause real damage to real people.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: He highlighted a lady by the name of Jubilee Dawn.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: And he says that uh Sean Bowles had prophesied over her, giving this her this word that she was supposed to marry the man that she was dating.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: And she did indeed marry that man and then suffered many years of abuse at his hand, partially staying because she believed that God had told her to marry the man.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Mike said he spoke personally with other people who had entered disastrous marriages because of Sean's prophetic words.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And on Bethel's role here, Mike argues that in 2016, Bill Johnson publicly platformed Sean Bowles at the Azusa Now Revival.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: And he says that, look, man, you have made this public statement saying he is one of your trusted, trusted, and most dearest friends.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that endorsement gave Sean enormous credibility, especially among BSSM students and the wider Bethel audience.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: But Mike showed that Bethel knew that there were some serious problems with Sean Bowles because of those public text messages that had been released by Chris Vallaton in 2021 that kind of circulated the internet, saying that, hey, you knew that he needed to clean up his mess, but you did nothing to remove your endorsement from him.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't just about fabricated prophecies anymore.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: As Mike was doing his investigation, he founded multiple witnesses that came forward and was given a secret recording conversation involving Stacey Campbell that there were also allegations of predatorial sexual behavior, stories where Sean had been traveling with male assistants, being naked in hotel rooms, and pleasuring himself in front of these men.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: These rumors of predatory behavior were not only true, but Bevel leadership knew about those as well and didn't warn the body of Christ.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Mike's sharpest point in this whole video was that Bevel privately distanced themselves from Sean while never publicly warning the people that they had already pointed toward Sean.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: Leadership knew enough to quietly remove him from the circle, but ordinary people who had received words from him, people who were making life decisions based on those words, were left completely in the dark.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Mike also called out Bill Johnson for appearing with Sean Bowles on TBN in 2023, praising his book, Translating God, despite knowing that Sean had lied about his prophetic words as they're being pulled from the internet and his sexual misconduct.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Mike called this endorsement atrocious.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: And can I just say, indeed it was, because Bill Johnson goes out of his way to say the book is a little slice of heaven.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: And when you know the character of the man who wrote it, it makes it all the more pungent and potent.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: But don't take my words for it.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the clip.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: But Bill, you wrote the foreword to this book.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's called Translating God.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: But you wrote that this was one of the most exciting books that you had read.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: Why was that?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the book by itself is incredible.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing the life that backs it up adds a power to it because it's so practical.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's what you dream of.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's like if if you could see, if you could have a perfect relationship with the Lord and see its impact on humanity, that's what it would look like.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: What makes this especially atrocious is because, in their view, they're now re-legitimizing someone that Bethel has already considered dangerous, both because of the alleged sexual misconduct, but also for the fraudulent ministry.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: That video hit 1.6 million views, and then Bethel finally had to respond.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: They were able to stay silent through the minor prophets because that video only reached like 50,000 people, a ton of people, but was it enough to like move the scales enough for the Bethel leadership to respond?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: But they couldn't stay silent through Mike Winger's video.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: So they released a statement, and the general reaction from most people, mine included, uh, was that the apology kind of sounded like an apology from Connor McGregor.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_03: I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, I'd like to take this chance to apologize.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: Christian YouTubers across the internet had picked apart this uh man, repentance, calling it out for pride, calling it out for a lack of ownership, the absence of real accountability toward the very people they were teaching accountability to.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: A week later, something shifted.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: Chris Valatin said that God had spoken to him, and what followed seemed to be a real genuine wave of repentance hitting Bevel Church.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Chris Valentin, Bill Johnson, and Dan Varley all took the stage and repented publicly.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: It looked like a complete reversal of what had happened the week before.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Given everything that had happened, a lot of people, myself included, uh approached this uh repentance with some actual caution, not cynicism, but real caution.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the general sentiment was that, you know, if I believe that this is a real repentance, it's actually gonna bear fruit in keeping with repentance.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: If Bethel stays vigilant to protect their people from false doctrine and from predators going forward, this repentance actually means something.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: It actually does something that's beyond theater.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we weren't convinced that that was the case.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: How are they gonna handle all of these allegations?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: How are they going to handle internally what it looked like platforming former predators?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: What does it look like to care for their people who had gone through false prophetic words?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: Were they actually going to do the care of restoring and caring for these people?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: Or is this just a public, you know, PR statement?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to know.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I apologize if that sounds cynical, but when you look at all of the things that have happened before, platforming a Bob Jones who had given prophetic words to women about taking their clothes off so that he could see them spiritually in order to give them prophetic words.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: That was the guy that they they platformed in order to like teach them how to travel to heaven through emptying their mind in deep breathing.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you have Sean Bowles, who, again, was a guy who is, you know, pleasuring himself.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's uh allegations surrounding uh other men in their community, uh, such as Bob Harley and Ben Armstrong, who they have platformed.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, well, what are we gonna do with all of these?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: How are you gonna care for the people in the midst of this?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what are you gonna do about the physics of heaven book that's reclaiming new age practices?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Are you going to make public statements repenting for the passion translation?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there seems to be an accumulation of errors that continued to come over and over and over again.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: And what in real repentance looks like not just not platforming predators, but defending your church from false doctrine.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Soon after that repentance video had gone public, David Fish uncovered something even more damning about the Passions Translation.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't just theologically loose, which Mike Winger's Passion Project had already firmly established, but Fish's argument suggests that the work was largely a work of plagiarism, that Brian Simmons took an amateur online translation done by someone with no real qualifications and mashed it together with other published works.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: For a moment, it looked like Bethel had actually pulled down the Passion Translation from their bookstore.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: We were all thinking, hey, this is a victory.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: This sounds really good.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: People celebrated.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then it came out that this was just an administrative accident, and the book went right back on the shelves.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: It appears that Bethel intended to keep promoting this false translation, which brings us to this week where Mike Winger releases this tweet.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: So Mike Winger took to X and wrote, I spoke to an inside source at Bethel and learned the following info, which I believe confirms that Bethel is not following through with their promise to reform.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, Bethel is laying off about 50 people.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: That is relevant because of the nature of the layoffs, not merely because they're happening.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: I've known for some time that Bethel is struggling financially, but didn't mention it publicly as I don't see how that is worth sharing.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: But it is relevant given what else I am sharing.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, they're planning more layoffs in August.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Number three, the inside source told me that the people being let go are believed by them to be the very ones who ask too many questions and are trying to advocate for change.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: This is a deeply concerning culling, which suggests what I've believed for some time now, that Bethel's initial apology ended up being more strategy than reform.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: This explains a lot of their behavior in recent months.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Number four, that strict non-disparagement agreements are being signed by those who are being laid off in order to get severance.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, we'll give you money, uh, but you have to promise not to say anything that could hurt our reputation.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: Bethel previously stated adamantly that they do not do NDAs, implying that they do not limit what people can say.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: But I can attest that they do bind people to silence in contracts because, completely separate from the new source I have, I have seen one of those severance agreements with my own eyes.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was extremely strict and far more limiting of speech than a typical NDA.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: It said that a person wasn't allowed to say anything that could harm Bethel's reputation, not just that they couldn't tell lies or reveal private info.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: Number five, according to the source, they seem to be planning to ignore the issues with the TPT or the Passion Translation.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: This is consistent with multiple reports I've seen that Bethel is censoring discussions about the Passion Translation on their alumni Facebook group, a group which used to allow open discussion of any issue until recently.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that they're going to ignore the TPT issue is a true affront to Holy Scripture.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Also, according to recent posts from Candace Simmons to the supporters of Brian Simmons and the Passion Translation, an elder from Bethel apologized profusely for a supposed glitch that happened to remove the book from the Bethel store before they put it back up.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: It looks like Bethel is tripling down in their support of a liar and is thoroughly debunked translation of the Bible.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: None of this is good.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: None of it makes me happy, but I think it helps confirm that Bethel is past the point of no return.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Some may doubt me by quoting a source they don't know, but keep in mind I have been right over and over for months, and not a single significant claim I've brought from a source, many anonymous to you, have been proven false.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: On the contrary, evidence has regularly surfaced to confirm my reports to you.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about what this actually means, why a non-disparagement agreement is essentially an NDA in this situation.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Bethel has stated publicly, as Mike tweeted, that they don't use NDAs.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: And this statement means essentially virtually nothing because non-disparagements do virtually the same thing as an NDA.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: An NDA or a non-disclosure agreement is typically understood as an agreement that keeps someone from revealing confidential information, such as trade secrets or uh internal financial details, that sort of thing.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: So, like uh if you were in charge of finances there at Bethel and you signed an NDA and that NDA is limited to not giving public giving records or information that is um, you know, private to that org, that makes sense to me.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like when an NDA is used to say, hey, you're not gonna take our email list and then start your own ministry uh and book list uh from the people who have subscribed to our email list from the church, or you're not gonna take the giving records and go plaster them all online.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: That that makes sense.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: If an NDA is just that, hey, great, that's awesome.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: But more often than not, we're seeing NDAs that do much more than that.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: A non-disparagement agreement is technically a different document.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't ask someone to keep information secret and ask them not to say anything that could damage the organization's reputation.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the problem.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: In practice, for a former employee trying to decide whether to speak up about wrongdoing, the effect is identical.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Mike Winger says that he has personally seen one of these severance agreements separate from his new source, and that this is more restrictive than a typical NDA.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't just prohibit lies or release of private information, it prohibits that person from saying anything that could harm Bethel's reputation.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Think about what that actually does if you're a staff member who has left because you saw something troubling spiritual abuse, financial mismanagement, doctrinal compromise, cover up of misconduct, and your offer to severance on the condition that you never say anything that reflects badly on the church.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: You're not being asked to keep a secret, you're being paid to stay quiet about the truth.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Calling it something other than an NDA doesn't change that it what it actually is functioning as, which is.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: The very thing that many churches are doing with NDAs, which is causing people to cover up things in secret.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's a distinction without a difference.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where I want to really direct you.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: This practice is not just PR, it's a biblical problem.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Scripture consistently ties the health of the church to the willingness of people to walk in the light.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: Paul tells the Ephesians to have nothing to do with the fruitful deeds of darkness, but to instead expose them.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then in 2 Corinthians, Paul says he and his co-workers have renounced secret and shameful ways.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: They refused to use deception and they set forth the truth plainly.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: First Timothy tells us that an elder who sins is to be rebuked publicly before all if they don't repent, so that the rest will stand in fear.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not vindictiveness.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's how a church protects its people going forward, by letting consequences be visible, not hidden behind a signed agreement of silence.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: And we also got Ezekiel 34, it may be the most sobering passage for leadership in this conversation.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: God rebukes the shepherds of Israel not primarily for their own personal sins, but failing to protect the flock for feeding themselves while the sheep were scattered, wounded, and preyed upon.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: The condemnation of the shepherds is that they focused on their own self-interest and not that of their flocked.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: A non-disparagement agreement essentially does this.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: It keeps the names of the church and its leaders out of the mud while blinding the sheep from the truth that they are being preyed upon.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: So when Bethel says, we don't do NDAs, I think it's worth asking, is that a true statement or is it technically true but functionally acting as cover-up?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because a document that pays someone to stay silent about harm uses different language than NDA, but produces the exact same silence.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: And silence is the one thing scripture consistently refuses to bless when it comes to sin in the camp of believers.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to speak to the former employees of Bethel, or maybe current employees that are afraid that they might be former employees of Bethel quite soon.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: We want to let you know that you actually have some option options in front of you, and the non-disparagement agreements that are being put in front of you are maybe not as restrictive as you might think they are.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: First and foremost, we want to let you know you can feel free to reach out to us here at Remnant Radio.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: We want to help if we can.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you need guidance, if you need resources, please feel free to contact us at infotheremnitradio.com.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: We can't respond to every request, but we are committed to helping where we can, and we'll keep your identities anonymous and treat your reports with the carefulness the situation like this actually deserves.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: Secondly, you really need to know your rights here.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: California law does not allow non-disparagement agreements to function as blanket gag orders.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: Under California Silence No More Act, employees remain free to report conduct they reasonably believe is unlawful, including discrimination, harassment, retaliation, fraud, wage violation, and other unlawful workplace conduct.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I hope you caught that.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: That you are able to report if you believe your firing was retaliatory.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: If you're following the core values of your church, which is to clean up your mess and your teaching and calling your leadership to repent and you are fired in retaliation to you doing your job, that actually qualifies you to be able to speak freely about this sort of thing to others and to report it rightfully.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Employees may also cooperate with government investigations, file complaints, and testify truthfully.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: If you are presented with a separation agreement, California law also requires that you be informed of your right to consult an attorney.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it generally provides at least five business days to consider the agreement before signing.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: If anyone has led you to believe that signing a non-disparagement agreement means that you can never speak again, that is simply not accurate and not an accurate description of California law.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now let me say something specifically to Bethel leadership.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: If your goal is simply to care well for people during this difficult transition, then transparency, not intimidation, is the biblical path forward.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: If, however, these agreements are being used to discourage truthful reporting of misconduct or to shield leaders from accountability, that is going to deserve public scrutiny.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I promise you, it will get public scrutiny.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: If Bethel believes that these agreements are enforceable, it is free to test that in court.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: But understand that lawsuits don't happen in secret.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's this thing called discovery.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: If a former employee is sued for lawfully speaking about conduct they reasonably is unlawful, Remnant Radio will follow that case closely.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: Attempts to silence people through intimidation often invites far more public scrutiny than the original allegation ever would.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: And to every former employee who is afraid that if you choose to exercise your legal right to speak truthful about conduct you reasonably believe was unlawful, you will not stand alone.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: We cannot promise legal representation, but we can promise this: any attempt to intimidate whistleblowers or suppress lawful testimony will receive full public attention, the attention that it deserves.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: The church should never fear truth.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Leaders who walk in the light do not need to silence people they've been called to shepherd.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: So here's the thing about Bethel.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: There are moments that actually seem genuine.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: They have these public repentance videos like the one I mentioned before, where they apologize for platforming Sean Bowles, the rediscovering Bethel series, even in some sense, uh some have looked at as an act of repentance because they're saying, oh, these are where the teachings are and they've been misunderstood, and we want to bring clarity to what we really believe.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't really appear to be repentance to me.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm going to be honest, it looks like a reactionary PR campaign.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: They only address people like uh uh Sean Bowles and Ben Armstrong and Mike Bickle after they've already been publicly disgraced in public eye.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's not leading a charge that seems like damage control.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: And when you have a Bible that is out there, this translation that you're selling in your bookstore seems to be illegitimate, you actually look the other way.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: When Elijah Stevens, a former employee, raised concerns about the physics of heaven, they ignored him and slowly pushed him out of his teaching role in the Bible school.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: But then Mike Winger, he releases his critique on the book and they quietly pull it from the bookshelves and told people privately it was because they had some small disagreements with the book.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: But that's a lie.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: Bill Johnson and Benny Johnson co-authored chapters of that book with Judy Franklin.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: Chris Vallatin wrote the foreword to the book, and it wasn't pulled over a disagreement, it was pulled because the exposure was too public to ignore.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: And when confronted about things like platforming men like Bob Jones and Kenneth Copeland, they still say nothing.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, how long do you need to take an internal study of the character of predators before you expose them publicly?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: How long do you need to study the passion when it has been clearly demonstrated as a plagiarized work?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: How long do you need to think about the physics of heaven before making a statement publicly?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: The book openly endorses syncretism.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that hard.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of the day, Bethel isn't purging the evil from among them.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: They're managing PR.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: They're not repenting, they're distancing themselves from anyone who is radioactive in the public eye.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: You could say, well, Josh, you you seem to be really judging people's hearts there.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: You can't judge their hearts.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's not fair.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: Fair enough, okay?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not here to judge people's hearts, but I am called to judge their fruit.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: And their fruit is non-disparagement agreements.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's not a community walking things out in the light.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's a community trying to hide things in secrecy.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: If Bethel were serious about cleaning up their mess, we wouldn't be making whole videos like this.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: If they were marking and avoiding teachers, if they pulled Bibles from the shelves that were clearly Gnostic plagiarized works, if they publicly repented for smuggling in new age practices into the church, if they would call out predators, not just the ones we all know about, uh, but the ones that have not yet been exposed that they're aware about, then Mike Winger and Rusalon and Wake Up and Win and the Minor Prophets and Rembrandt Radio would stop making videos like this.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: To be fair, we don't like doing it.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but purity doesn't appear to be their goal.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Keeping the machine running seems to be the goal.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's why Mike Winger tweeted in that X post that they're past the point of no return.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, I agree.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: I would have to say it's probably time to mark and avoid Bethel Church in Redding, California.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: Guys, if you're out there and you've begin to see, man, concerns in your own local body, uh, it's easy to point fingers at Bethel.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: But let's just kind of look internally with our own current church context.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: If your church laid off a bunch of people, would you ever know why?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: Would you even know to ask why?
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: Would you go out and talk to those people and ask them why they were let go?
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Why did they suspect they were being let go?
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think those kinds of conversations actually are really important.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: When you have individuals in your church who are teaching false doctrine or or they invite someone into your church to teach something that's really new agey, what is your response?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: What are you gonna do?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: Are you gonna let it slip by?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: But because here's the thing I don't think Bethel ever jumped on the scene, was like, you know what we want to do?
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: We want to empower predators and get false prophets up on our stage.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think they wanted to do that.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think they became pot committed.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: They invested too much into the thing to let the same thing begin to fall apart because they were so invested.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I think for many of us, we do the same sort of thing.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: We get so involved, we get so committed to this kind of vision of what we're trying to produce, they're not willing to call balls and strikes.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: So my encouragement to the body of Christ is when you begin to see that doctrinal errors begin to slip up, when you begin to see your church using things like the Passion Translation and recommending books that are really fringe in their theology, call your leaders to account in the early years so that they can see the error of their ways, not before they're completely invested deep down the rabbit hole.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: All that being said, even if you're super invested, even if you're super committed, ultimately truth should out.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's not our leaders or our movement who are, man, the head shepherd of the church.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's Christ's job.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we as under-shepherds, no matter how invested we are, should always be willing to repent and bow the knee before our Lord.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're out there, I would imagine many of you who are watching our congregants.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: The name of the game in this video is Call Your Leaders to Account.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: What caused Bevel to make public statements?
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in some part, yeah, it was Mike Winger, it was the minor prophets, it was some of these YouTube channelers who were like making a bunch of content.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, it was their local assembly.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: It was BSSM alumni, it was guys who'd gone through their Bible school, ladies who had gone through their Bible school who were saying, Hey, you taught us these things.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: We need you to hold yourself to the same standard that you hold us to.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's what's caused all of the reform up until this point.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's what's caused all of the public statements up until this point.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're out in your local church, I think the lesson of the day is that the white blood cells, the everyday believer who's out in the church with a discerning mind is actually the one who sees reform take place in their church.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: So if you see error, stand up, speak out, do the right thing.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: Speak the truth, do it in love, do it with compassion.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: Don't try to be over overly uh contentious.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Don't be, don't try to be divisive in the body of Christ, but plead with your leaders to change if they stumble into error.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: Guys, I hope this video is helpful for you.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: I don't always enjoy making content like this, but we really want to resource the body of Christ.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: We want to resource those staff that are out there in Bethel.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: And we want people to understand why is this even a problem and what can we learn from it.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: Guys, I hope you enjoyed this video.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if so, make sure to subscribe to the channel.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: We come out with content like this all the time.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see you next time.