Tag: Bethel

09/3/24

Does Jesus Have a Multiple Personality Disorder?

In an earlier article, “Kingdom Now: Bringing Heaven to Earth,” I said Bill Johnson of Bethel Church in Redding California distorts the meaning of Scripture to support his theology. I argued he is systematically deconstructing the theology and structure of the modern church. Johnson and Bethel assert a theology of the supernatural that goes beyond what Scripture and the church have claimed from the time of Pentecost. In his 2003 book, When Heaven Invades Earth: A Practical Guide to a Life of Miracles, he made several assertions that approach—if not go beyond—the boundary of heresy. Here we will examine the validity of Johnson’s claim, that “Jesus could not heal the sick.”

The above quote was the opening statement in chapter 2 of When Heaven Invades Earth. Johnson had just told of a healing miracle when he and other members of his church had prayed for a man. He commented that stories like this were becoming the “norm,” as people make room for God, “believing Him to be good 100 percent of the time.” He concluded chapter 1 with: “Our mandate is simple: raise up a generation that can openly display the raw power of God. This book is about that journey … the quest for the King and the Kingdom.”

He then said Jesus couldn’t heal the sick, raise the dead or deliver the tormented from demons, supposedly because of the self-imposed restriction to live as a man. Johnson cited John 5:19, saying “Jesus Christ said of Himself, ‘The Son can do nothing.’” He focused on the word “nothing” having the same meaning in the Greek as in English—nothing—understanding Jesus to be saying,

He had NO supernatural capabilities whatsoever! While He is 100 percent God, He chose to live with the same limitations that man would face once He was redeemed. He made that point over and over again. Jesus became the model for all who would embrace the invitation to invade the impossible in His name. He performed miracles, wonders, and signs, as a man in right relationship to God … not as God. If He performed miracles because He was God, then they would be unattainable for us. But if He did them as a man, I am responsible to pursue His lifestyle. Recapturing this simple truth changes everything … and makes possible a full restoration of the ministry of Jesus in His Church. (p. 29)

In Reckless Christianity, Holly Pivec and Doug Peivett noted this belief was a version of kenotic theology or kenoticism. According to the New Dictionary of Theology, kenoticism refers to, “a number of related Christological theories concerning the status of the divine in the incarnate Christ.” It is not a popular way of expressing the nature of the incarnation. “The reality of Jesus’ temptations, his single (as opposed to double) consciousness, and the depth of pathos of the cry of dereliction from the cross are universally affirmed today. In the 19th century these were often considered part of the kenoticists’ heretical innovations.” Modern evangelicals are “justifiably sceptical of any metaphysical speculation concerning the process of incarnation and sees the use of kenotic language as almost always inviting such speculation.”

They [Bethel] have this really, foggy kenosis with Christ that they keep tiptoeing around that isn’t good because … he’s [Jesus] either fully God and fully man or he’s not—because God can’t change. We can’t have a God that was God, stopped being God; only performed miracles as man and then became God again.

This quote was from a YouTube talk given by Jesse Westwood, “Breaking Bethel Episode 2 (Part 2).” Jesse is a graduate of Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry (BSSM), who thought “’everything Bethel’ was normal Christianity.” He eventually walked away from all things Bethel and Bethel affiliated churches and now seeks to help others on that same path. You can also listen to him on AGTV, Breaking Bethel, “Your First Week at BSSM (Part 2).

In Counterfeit Kingdom, Pivec and Geivett also said other NAR leaders beside Bill Johnson teach that when Jesus came to earth, He gave up the use of His divine powers and worked all His miracles as a mere man.  Johnson and the other NAR leaders do not claim that Jesus ever stopped being divine, which would be heresy (and then should be condemned as such). But Johnson’s teachings on Scriptures such as John 5:19 and Philippians 2:7 subtly distort what they do mean, compounding the danger of this so-called “new” interpretation.

Distorting Scriptures

John 5:19 in the ESV says: “So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.” Notice where Johnson edited his quote of the verse in When Heaven Invades Earth, leaving out that Jesus could do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. D.A. Carson said in his commentary on John, that a better translation would be ‘on his own initiative,’ and it does not mean that Jesus had even partial independence from the Father. Carson said 5:19-23 is structured around four gar (‘for’ or ‘because’) statements, and:

It is impossible for the Son to take independent, self-determined action that would set him over against the Father as another God, for all the Son does is both coincident with and coextensive with all that the Father does. ‘Perfect Sonship involves perfect identity of will and action with the Father.’ It follows that separate, self-determined action would be a denial of his sonship. But if this last clause of v. 19 takes the impossibility of the Son operating independently and grounds it in the perfection of Jesus’ sonship, it also constitutes another oblique claim to deity; for the only one who could conceivably do whatever the Father does must be as great as the Father, as divine as the Father.

Similarly distorted, when Philippians 2:7, says, “but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” Paul did not teach that Jesus emptied Himself of His divine powers. In Counterfeit Kingdom, Pivec and Geivett pointed out the significance of Jesus emptying Himself is explained in the very next verse: “Jesus’s Incarnation is a manifestation of divine humility.”

By making Jesus out to be a model miracle worker, and looking for a way to justify this claim in Scripture, NAR teachings [and Bill Johnson] lower Jesus’s status and mislead people into thinking they can perform the same miracles He did.

In his commentary on Philippians, Grant Osborne noted Paul saying that Jesus Christ “emptied himself” in 2:7 has fueled debates for centuries, including what is known as the kenotic heresy, a view that Jesus emptied himself of divinity when he became human. Osborne said the key issue was whether the Greek verb kenoõ (to empty) was literal or figurative—meaning “to take the lower place” or “to make of no effect.” A modified kenotic approach, which seems to be what Johnson implies, sees Jesus divesting himself not of his deity, but his divine prerogatives such as omnipotence or omniscience, when he became the God-man. “The problem with this is that he still could demonstrate divine power, as in his nature miracles, and omniscience, as in his knowledge about Simon, Nathaniel, and the Samaritan woman (John 1:42, 47–49; 4:16–19).” A footnote for Philippians 2:7 in the Reformation Study Bible says:

Christ is not said to have removed from Himself either His deity or His identity as God. Instead, the Son of God added to his person a human nature without surrendering any of his divine attributes. The phrase means that He humbled Himself (v. 8), not relinquishing His divine being but embracing dishonor by becoming human.

In Reckless Christianity, Pivec and Geivett also noted that Jesus performed at least some of his miracles with his own, direct, divine power, giving as examples the calming of the sea, raising Lazarus from the dead, and others. But Johnson either doesn’t believe this, or he rejects the biblical evidence cited by Pivec and Geivett. They said Johnson likes to say, “Jesus modeled what it looks like to be full of the Holy Spirit.” (See a sermon by Bill Johnson at Bethel Church in 2021, “Jesus, Full of the Holy Spirit.”) After citing several Scriptures where Jesus is said to be full of the Spirit, Pivec and Geivett said: “It is a mistake to assume that we may be filled with the Spirit in the same way Jesus was in this instance, and that we can therefore do all that Jesus did in the same way Jesus was in this instance, and that we can therefore do all that Jesus did in dependence on the Spirit.”

In another sermon titled “When Heaven Invades Earth,” Bill Johnson alluded to how he was frequently misunderstood on this point, namely that Jesus lived his earthly life with human limitations. Here he paraphrased John 5:19 and did mention how the Son of Man could do nothing but what he sees the Father do. However, he again asserted the interpretation he gave of the verse in the book, When Heaven Invades Earth: “He couldn’t do anything.” All the stuff he was famous for, all the miracles he did were because the Spirit of God came upon him and revealed to him the very word of the Father. Although he doesn’t say so, it seems he almost thinks about Jesus the God-man as having two independent natures within one person. See this quote from the sermon:

So he was modeling something that could be done by any other believer. Now if I see Jesus doing extraordinary miracles in Scripture, and he did them as God, I’m impressed, but I’m not compelled to follow. . . But when I found out that he did it through Jesus, who in a sense put aside his access to everything as God, and instead tapped into it as an obedient yielded man, that was Spirit-filled if you will. When I realized that he did it as a man, yielded and surrendered to God, then suddenly I can’t stay where I’m at. I’m suddenly … I am compelled to pursue an example that was given to me, that changes everything.

Creedal Foundation of Orthodoxy

Bill Johnson’s view of Jesus Christ deconstructs an orthodox view of the Trinity and Christ, classically expressed in the Chalcedon and Athanasian Creeds. With the Athanasian Creed, Christianity confesses one God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Father is God, but not the Son or the Spirit. The Son is God, but not the Father or the Spirit. The Spirit is God, but not the Father or the Son. Nothing in this Trinity is greater or smaller; the three persons are coeternal and coequal with each other. The Athanasian Creed says:

Accordingly there is one Father, not three fathers;
there is one Son, not three sons;
there is one Holy Spirit, not three holy spirits.

Nothing in this trinity is before or after,
nothing is greater or smaller;
in their entirety the three persons
are coeternal and coequal with each other.

In The Creeds of Christendom, Phillip Schaff noted the leading ideas of the Christology of the Creed of Chalcedon included an actual union of two natures, divine and human in one person. Christ as the God-man was not a double being with two persons; but one person both divine and human, without division or separation, “so that the divine will ever remain divine, and the human ever human, and yet the two have continually one common life, and interpenetrate each other, like the persons of the Trinity.” As Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

The whole work of Christ is to be attributed to his person, and not to the one or the other nature exclusively. The person is the acting subject, the nature, the organ or medium. It is the one divine-human person of Christ that wrought miracles by virtue of his divine nature, and that suffered through the sensorium of his human nature. The superhuman effect and infinite merit of the Redeemer’s work must be ascribed to his person because of his divinity; while it is his humanity alone that made him capable of, and liable to, toil, temptation, suffering, and death, and renders him an example for our imitation.

In When Heaven Invades Earth, Johnson wrongly said: “Jesus lived His earthly life with human limitations. He laid his divinity aside as He sought to fulfill the assignment given to Him by the Father: to live life as a man without sin, and then die in the place of mankind for sin.” Jesus did not lay his divinity aside. He was one divine-human person who wrought miracles by virtue of his divine nature and suffered through his human nature. As stated in the Chalcedon Creed, Jesus Christ is:

Acknowledged in two natures unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, and inseparably; the difference of the natures being in no way removed because of the union, but rather the properties of each nature being preserved, and both concurring into one person, one hypostasis; not as though He was parted or divided into two persons, but one and the self-same Son and only-begotten God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ.

To support his extreme continuationist beliefs, Bill Johnson imposes a theology of the supernatural onto Scripture that distorts the coeternal and coequal Trinity and presents the God-man Jesus Christ as a divine person with a multiple personality disorder. For more critique of When Heaven Invades Earth, see “Deconstructing the Lord’s Prayer.”

08/13/24

Deconstructing The Lord’s Prayer

Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash

On Sundays, The Lord’s Prayer is recited in thousands of churches around the world. But according to Bill Johnson of Bethel Church in Redding California, the vast majority of churches and individuals have misunderstood what they are praying for and have been getting it wrong from the time of the early church. In his book, When Heaven Invades Earth, Johnson said, “The Lord’s Model Prayer provides the clearest instruction on how we bring the reality of His world into this one.” If Johnson is right, namely that the Lord’s Prayer provides clear instruction on how to bring the reality of heaven into this one, how is it that Christians have misunderstood it for centuries?

As we will see, Johnson is not merely giving us an alternate way of meditating on a well-known Christian prayer. He systematically deconstructs the prayer and how it has been traditionally understood by the Church and imposes his theological worldview upon it. In the end, it has a radically different meaning and significance than when one of Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them to pray (Luke 11:1-4; Matthew 6:9-13). So, let’s see what Johnson says it means when, according to him, we pray it correctly.

In chapter six of Reckless Christianity, Holly Pivec and Doug Geivett said Bill Johnson thought the Lord’s Prayer was not a type of petitionary prayer, as it has been traditionally viewed. Rather, it is what can be called declaratory or “binding and loosing” prayer, meaning that Christians have God’s authority “to bind (or halt) all forms of evil in their tracks and to loose (or release) the blessings of heaven.” This understanding means the Lord’s Prayer teaches believers “to use binding and loosing prayer to establish God’s earthly kingdom, here and now.” Bringing heaven to earth, under the leadership of apostles and prophets, is a believer’s “greatest commission.” Pivec and Geivett quoted Johnson in The Supernatural Power, where he said: “when we pray, ‘Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,’ we’re praying for the King’s dominion and will to be realized right here, right now.”

Pivec and Geivett noted in a footnote how Johnson’s theology here aligned with a version of dominion theology called “kingdom now” theology. “This theology describes the way the church is to establish God’s kingdom, namely by implementing divine strategies that have been revealed by present-day apostles and prophets for this purpose. Thus, the church must yield to the authority of these present-day apostles and prophets for this purpose.”

Supposedly, what is free to operate in Heaven (joy, peace, wisdom, health, wholeness, etc.) is “loosed” on earth. And what is not free in Heaven (sickness, disease, spiritual bondage, and sin) is “bound” here. “We are out to destroy the works of the devil.” Here is a brief YouTube video, “Bill Johnson and Gandalf’s staff,” of Bill Johnson and other “apostles” binding and declaring an end to racism. In When Heaven Invades Earth, Johnson said the Lord’s Model Prayer “reveals the only two real priorities of prayer. First, intimacy with God that is expressed in worship—holy is your name. And second, to bring His Kingdom to earth, establishing His dominion over the needs of mankind—Your Kingdom Come.”

Following the teaching within Word of Faith movement, Johnson says that believers can exercise the authority to bind and loose through their spoken words. He claimed this was “the primary focus of all prayer—if it exists in heaven, it is to be loosed on earth.” He dangerously affirmed that since humans were made in God’s image, and God spoke worlds into being, we can too. According Johnson, these “declarations” or “decrees” must be spoken out loud. In God Is Good, he said: “The decree itself is important because some things don’t manifest until they are spoken.” And making declarations was a critical practice for the church, according to Johnson, because God has limited himself to acting in response to declarations. Johnson said: “Nothing happens in the Kingdom until first there is a declaration.”

This sounds disturbingly like he is saying nothing happens in the Kingdom until an incantation is verbalized. In the Genesis one creation account, God did speak things into existence. However, that was the creative power through the spoken word of God alone. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). He created the great sea creatures and every living creature (1:21) and He created mankind (1:27). In all of those cases, “create” in Hebrew is a word reserved for God’s creative activity alone. When God said let there be light (1:3), let there be an expanse (1:6), let dry land appear (1:9), let the earth sprout vegetation (1:11), he was not binding and loosing. He separated the lights in the expanse (1:14), let the waters swarm with living creatures and birds fly (1:20), and brought forth living creatures according to their kind (1:24), he was exercising His exclusive creative powers. Creating though the spoken Word is an act of God alone (John 1:1-3).

Binding and Loosing Prayer

In When Heaven Invades Earth, Johnson parsed the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13 and then proceeded to describe how it called believers to exercise their authority in binding and loosening prayer. After quoting “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” Johnson said:

This is the primary focus for all prayer—if it exists in heaven, it is to be loosed on earth. It’s the praying Christian who looses heaven’s expression here. . . Everything that happens here is supposed to be a shadow of heaven. . . Conversely, if it is not free to exist in heaven, it must be bound here.

Bill Johnson then quoted Matthew 16:19 from the NAS in support of binding and loosing prayer: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.” He called the reader’s attention to the verb tense of “shall have been” and said, “The implication is that we can bind or loose here what has already been bound or loosed there. Once again, heaven is our model.”

However, it does not seem the passage supports his assertion. Peter had just declared that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God in verse 16:16. Then Jesus said his confession was not revealed to him by flesh and blood, “but my Father who is in heaven”:

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:18-19, ESV).

In his commentary on Matthew, Leon Morris said Peter will be given the keys of the kingdom of heaven because of his confession that Jesus was the Christ, which was revealed to him by the Father (16:17). Then in Matthew 18:18, the right to bind and loose, connected with the gift of the keys, was given to the disciples as a whole. Morris said the metaphor of binding and loosing was used by the rabbis for declaring what was forbidden or permitted, ‘to impose and remove the ban.’ Morris went on to note we must be guarded in our understanding of the passage, because there are several possibilities. “But on the whole it seems that the right to ‘bind’ and loose’ refers to the regulation of conduct, while the keys point to admission and exclusion [to the Christian community].”

Craig Keener said in his commentary on Matthew that while scholars have proposed many interpretations of “binding and loosing,” these terms could refer to authority to interpret the law, and thus evaluate an individual’s faithfulness to the law. Keener further said:

Peter must thus accept into the church only those who share his confession of Jesus’ true identity (16:16). Of course, the church should emulate Jesus’ practice of welcoming the unconverted (9:10), but this is not the same as acting as if all comers were true disciples of Christ regardless of their commitment. Today some churches both admit into membership the unconverted and fail to take the message of Jesus’ identity to the unconverted outside their walls. The danger of building a church on those not committed to Christ’s agendas is that in time the church will reflect more of the world’s values than Christ’s.

There is another passage in Matthew 18:18 where the context clearly supports binding and loosing as referring to the regulation of conduct within the earthly church and cannot be understood as bringing what exists in heaven to the earth. Jesus is advising in Matthew 18:15-19 on how to address a brother who has sinned against you. Leon Morris noted where the verbs for binding and loosing in Matthew 18:18 are also future perfect: “Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Keener said bind and loose in the passage referred to the judicial authority of gathered Christians to decide cases on the basis of God’s law within church discipline. He said the more popular use of “binding” today applies to exercising authority over the devil, and “resembles an ancient practice in the magical papyri,” which is also called “binding.” In “What does the Bible mean by binding and loosing?”, Got Questions said essentially the same thing. This raises a question about the biblical credibility of Johnson’s application of binding and loosing to the Lord’s Prayer.

It seems that “binding and loosing” in Matthew 16:18-19 and 18:18 refers to having the authority to confirm who is or is not part of the church as result of whether they confess that Jesus is the Christ—that he is Lord (Romans 10:9-10)—and not the authority to bind or forbid the works of Satan and loose heaven on earth.

In Reckless Christianity Pivec and Geivett said the teachings on binding and loosing originated with the prosperity gospel/Word of Faith movement, and were adopted by Bill Johnson and others in the NAR. Accordingly, believers have been given the spiritual authority “to bind (or forbid) the works of Satan, including sickness, addictions, fear,” etc. They have also been given the authority “to loose (or permit) God’s blessings, including health, peace of mind, strong marriages, successful businesses, and abundant finances.”

Johnson’s understanding of “binding and loosing” prayer also seems loosely based on a pentecostal theology of the spiritual gifts. In Foundations of Pentecostal Theology, Guy Duffield said Jesus instructed his followers to wait until they are “clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:29). The promise was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost when they “began to speak in the tongues predicted in The Great Commission.” Duffield said the Apostles were not just mere guardians of orthodoxy; “they were ambassadors of Christ equipped with Divine capabilities.” They had a divine commission to do, and now had the power to do it. Duffield said:

They had a Divine work to do and they had Divine power with which to do it; thus, it must always be. The Church’s mission is much more than propagating a new philosophy or calling to a new morality; it is delivering men from the bondage of Satan; it is binding and loosing in the name of Jesus (Mt. 16:19).

Bill Johnson appears to impose his belief in binding and loosing prayer onto the text of the Lord’s Prayer, giving it a theological meaning that is antithetical to what Jesus taught his disciples about prayer. Read “A Crafty Angle on Declarative Prayer” by the Lovesick Scribe, who was once “a proverbial card carrying, Satan binding, tongue talking, declaring prayer warrior” who “had no idea how Biblically illiterate” she was.

This article was heavily influenced by the research and thought of Holly Pivec and R. Douglas Geivett and their books, Reckless Christianity, A New Apostolic Reformation? and Counterfeit Kingdom. For more critique of When Heaven Invades Earth, see “Does Jesus Have a Multiple Personality Disorder?”, coming soon.

11/26/19

The Lying Prophet

© Roman Sidelinikov | 123rf.com

Chapter 13 of 1 Kings tells a rather confusing story of a man of God from Judah that prophesied of the coming of Josiah, who would desecrate the altar at Bethel by burning human bones on it. He also prayed for and restored the hand of Jeroboam, the king of Israel, whose hand “dried up” so that he could not draw it back. He refused the king’s offer to return with him to be refreshed and rewarded for healing the king, saying he had been commanded by the word of the Lord to neither eat bread or drink water; nor return by the way he came to Bethel. Yet he did turn back and ate with the old prophet, who said an angel had commanded him, saying, “Bring him back with you into your house that he may eat bread and drink water” (1 Kings 13:18). But the old prophet lied to the man of God from Judah, who was killed by a lion for his disobedience.

The story begins with the Lord’s anger at Solomon, who turned away from the Lord and went after other gods, despite having the Lord appear to him twice. The Lord told Solomon he would tear the kingdom from him and give it to his servant. But for the sake of David his father, the Lord would retain one tribe for Solomon’s son (1 Kings 11:9-13).

Jeroboam was in charge of the force labor of the “house of Joseph,” Ephraim and Manasseh. The prophet Ahijah encountered Jeroboam alone in the open country and prophesied that he would rule over ten tribes, “because they have forsaken me and worshiped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of Moab, and Milcom the god of the Ammonites, and they have not walked in my ways, doing what is right in my sight and keeping my statutes and my rules, as David his father did” (1 Kings 11:33). Solomon sought to kill Jeroboam, seemingly to remove a rival, but Jeroboam escaped to Egypt where he lived until the death of Solomon (1 Kings 11:40).

When Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, was to be crowned king, he rejected the request of the people to lighten the load of forced labor Solomon had imposed on Israel. This led to the failure of Israel to approve Rehoboam as their king. Instead, they made the returning Jeroboam king over “all Israel.” Only Judah and Benjamin remained loyal (1 Kings 12:20). Jeroboam became fearful that the three annual religious pilgrimages to Yahweh’s temple in Jerusalem—and contact with Davidic loyalists—would lead to revolution and an attempt to overthrow and kill him. So he installed Yahweh-symbols, the golden calves, in the shrines of Bethel and Dan—cities that were strategically located at the southern and northern boundaries of the new kingdom.

Bethel is located on the boundary between the Northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah, about 10 miles north of Jerusalem in the modern West Bank. The Old Testament mentions Bethel more than any other site except Jerusalem. It was a sacred site even before Jacob, who had a vision there to mark it as a sacred place (Genesis 28:10-22; 31:13). Later, Jacob erected an altar there at the direction of the Lord (Genesis 35:1-8). Dan was in northern Israel, at the foot of Mount Hermon. Tel Dan, a 50-acre mound, is about 25 miles north of the Sea of Galilee. As the northern most city of Israel, it was repeatedly referred to as the northernmost boundary of the kingdom. Archaeological work has indicated the site was used as a shrine previous to Jeroboam’s selection of Dan as a worship center. A religious complex and the foundations of an altar dating to the Iron Age were uncovered during archeological excavations.

According to Carl Schultz in the Theological Word Book of the Old Testament, the calves at Dan and Bethel were likely made as pedestals upon which YWVH was enthroned, as he was between the cherubim above the ark of the covenant. This was as much a political move as it was a religious one. Jeroboam saw the necessity of discouraging travel back-and-forth to Jerusalem, but he needed holy places in Israel’s territory that the people would accept as substitute shrines for authentic Yahweh worship. At least one site, preferably both, needed a sacred object to signify Yahweh’s real presence, as the ark did in the temple in Jerusalem. “However, since the calf was a symbol of fertility, the pedestal concept faded into the background and in the popular religion the calves, due to Canaanite influence, became identified with YHWH (II Kgs 17:16; Hos 8:5) and led to apostasy.”

In his commentary on 1 Kings Simon DeVries said the calf symbol had to create problems for those who were trying to worship God according to the books of Moses. All around Israel, and within Canaanite enclaves in its territory, were half-Yahwists to who the calf or bull was the symbol of male fertility. “Officially or unofficially, Baalism was in the land; it was destined in the days of Ahab to gain the mastery. Thus, the golden calves could have done nothing but confuse and mislead.”

Given the readiness with which Jeroboam revised Israel’s worship rituals, it seems likely he himself was not an orthodox follower of Yahweh. Similar to some modern individuals, he readily adjusted his worship style to suit his needs; and his own heart. Tellingly, the words he’s quoted as saying in verse 12:28, “Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt,” are the same as Exodus 32:4, when Aaron introduced the golden calf to the Israelites. The message of the writer of 1 Kings seems to be that Jeroboam was as guilty of idolatry as Aaron, despite his political motives.

As Jeroboam stood ready to make offerings, the man of God out of Judah approached him at the Bethel altar and spoke: “O altar, altar, thus says the Lord: ‘Behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name, and he shall sacrifice on you the priests of the high places who make offerings on you, and human bones shall be burned on you.’”

The man of God said the sign that his prophecy would be legitimated by the destruction of this very altar (1 Kings 13:2-3). Angered by the prophecy, Jeroboam stretched out his hand and ordered that the man of God be seized. But his hand dried up and he could not draw it back. Jeroboam changed his tune, asking the man of God to pray to the Lord to restore his hand. He did and it was. According to the sign predicted by the man of God, the altar was torn down. The prophetic utterance was fulfilled some 300 years later when King Josiah destroyed the altars at Bethel and Samaria, burning human bones upon them (2 Kings 23:19-20).

The episode at Bethel validated the authenticity of the man of God and led to Jeroboam’s invitation for the man of God to refresh himself and receive a reward. He refused, saying the Lord further instructed him to not eat there, nor return by the way that he came. DeVries noted Bethel was a famous Yahweh shrine and was connected to Jerusalem by a major highway. “To return from it by another route would mean following perilous pathways through fields and thickets.”

At this point, the old prophet in Bethel is introduced. He did not attend when the king came to offer sacrifices as did his sons, perhaps pleading his age. He was alarmed when he heard what the man of God from Judah said and did; and apparently decided he needed to see the man for himself. When he found him sitting under an oak tree, he invited him back to his house for bread, which was refused with the repetition that the man of God from Judah was forbidden by the word of the Lord.

The Bethel prophet countered with what we are told was a lie—he said an angel spoke to him saying he should bring the prophet from Judah back to his home and give him bread and water. Now if his sons had told the old prophet all the man of God had done that day, he surely had heard of his refusal to eat and be rewarded by the king. Why ask again? DeVries suggested it was a further test by the old Bethel prophet of the authenticity of his prophecy. Remember what had just occurred.

The king had just instituted two alternate worship sites to Jerusalem and a revised order of worship in order to further separate the new nation of Israel from the Davidic kingship in Jerusalem. The destruction of the altar, and by implication the system of worship it represented, also predicted the ultimate triumph of Judah over Israel. Although healing the king’s withered hand validated the man from Judah as a prophet, would his word come true? Was it truly from the Lord? It seems he was determined to test the man of God from Judah further by falsely claiming to have heard from an angel he was to return and eat at the Bethel prophet’s home.

As they sat at the table, the word of the Lord came to the old Bethel prophet: Because the man of God from Judah had disregarded the word of the Lord and came back and eaten bread and drunk water where the Lord had forbidden, his body will not be buried in the tomb of his ancestors. As he went away, a lion killed him, but did not eat him. Rather, it stood beside his body. Travelers on the road saw this strange site and told of it when they reached Bethel. When the old prophet at Bethel heard, he knew it was the man of God. The prophet took the body back to Bethel to mourn and bury him in his own grave. DeVries said:

Very clearly and emphatically, the Judahite man of God has been instructed what not to do. Because he is unable to discern that the Bethelite prophet is only trying to test the authenticity of his inspiration, but trusts that prophet’s assurance that it is all right to disregard the divine instruction in this one instance, the man of God actually disobeys Yahweh. Through inspiration, the Bethel prophet denounces him for his sin and then announces the penalty. Now all that has to happen is that Yahweh will actually punish him, as he has said through the Bethel prophet. If the Judahite actually does die for his disobedience, the Bethel prophet will know that he did indeed have authority to denounce the holy altar at Bethel. And so it is: the lion kills him; the old prophet buries him. And the old prophet tenderly places his body in his own tomb, instructing his sons to bury him alongside himself, for truly this was a holy man, a man in whom was the very word of God. Had the prophecy not come true and the man of God come safely home to Judah, the message of the Bethel prophet would have been proven false, but not it alone. Most important, nonfulfillment would have proven the man of God false, a presumptuous liar who pretended to obey the word of God when he had received no true word from God.

The consequences of the prophetic word given by the man of God from Judah was simply of too great a magnitude to accept without further testing. While the man of God from Judah failed to discern the lie told to him and thus disobeyed Yahweh, He gave a further word to confirm the judgment would surely happen. Three hundred years later, when Josiah went to Bethel with his reforms and was pulling down the altar, defiling it by burning the bones from adjacent tombs, he saw and asked about the monument at the tomb of the prophet of Bethel. When he was told it contained the remains of the prophet who foretold what he had done against the altar at Bethel, he ordered to let him be; “let no man move his bones” (2 Kings 23:15-18).