Bethel’s quantumania: The sensual mysticism of ‘The Physics of Heaven’
This is part 3 of a five-part series of posts reviewing the book The Physics of Heaven, which came out of the hugely popular Bethel Church in Redding, California.
The claims of this book are so shocking and dangerous that Living and Powerful is doing something we’ve never done before — examine a single work in-depth.
Here are the other installments:
A typical “worship” gathering in a hypercharismatic church like Bethel is all about the feels. I know this from many things I’ve read, from videos I’ve watched, and from my own longtime experience in charismatic churches.
It’s all about the senses — what you feel, what you see, what you hear. These gatherings are overloads of light and color (or dimming, depending on what mood is intended), of pulsating and droning sound, and the vibes you get from the crowd around you and the speaker on stage. This is why terms like “experience” and “atmosphere” are used so often in these circles.
All of this is orchestrated to have an effect on the people. It’s a manipulation of their emotional and mental state that increases their susceptibility to the power of suggestion. It orients their minds away from the intellectual (so they don’t discern what’s happening) to the mystical.
This mysticism can result in bizarre manifestations like shaking, jerking, and making inhuman noises — things that more closely resemble Kundalini Hinduism than anything in the Bible. The late Beni Johnson uses the phrase “drunk in the spirit” in chapter 14 of The Physics of Heaven, a concept found nowhere in Scripture.
Sound and frequency
Mysticism is what The Physics of Heaven is all about, too. It’s about metaphysical interaction with light, sound, waves, frequencies and vibrations.
Chapter 14 is a collection of such interactions. Here’s its introductory paragraph: “Many men and women of God have experienced physical shaking and ‘vibrating’ and seen bright light when undergoing a deep spiritual transformation. Others have described sensations like electric shocks when encountering God’s presence. Here are just a few stories from contributors to this book and others who have had transformative experiences that involved vibrating, electrical sensations, and light.”
But what the book really emphasizes is sound. (Audible sound, certainly not doctrinally sound.) Chapter 7, by Ray Hughes, talks a lot about sound: “Sound can create a story from dry facts. It causes our emotions to go beyond facts to feelings.”
That’s true. Sound can manipulate our emotions like no other sensory medium. The book expounds at length on sound’s metaphysical properties, and examples of its effects.
One section is titled “The Solfeggio Frequencies,” and says, “Gregorian chants were based on the Solfeggio frequencies, special tones believed to have transformative power and impart spiritual blessings. Some modern-day geneticists believe that, when sung in sequential harmony, the sounds of the musical tones in the Solfeggio scale vibrate at the exact frequencies required to open our cells so new programming can be imprinted on our DNA.”
Another section is titled “Music and Near-Death Experiences,” where we read, “according to Dr. Joel Funk, a professor of psychology at Plymouth State College in New Hampshire, nearly 50% of near-death experiencers also report hearing music. Dr. Funk played various kinds of music for 60 near-death experiencers and found that they identified New Age synthesized music as nearest to what they had heard. Not only do people who have a near-death experience hear music, but they also report that everything is alive and singing.”
More on music below.
Hughes goes on to apply sound’s effects on us as worshippers: “The facts’ meaning depends entirely on how the viewer or listener chooses to respond emotionally, and that meaning can also depend on their mood while watching and listening. The revelation that comes to the seer has everything to do with the sound of the scene being viewed. ... The sound being heard as the church moves forward has everything to do with how the seers will interpret what goes on. Therefore, the sound impacts how they will pray, how they will believe, and how they will interpret the activity they see in the church.”
He’s saying our perception of reality and corresponding behavior is derived from our emotional response to sound — not from what we read in Scripture. In fact, to Hughes, sound is a medium of revelation from God: “Christ will be revealed as we hear His sound and release our individual, God-appointed sound as His unique instruments.”
And not just any sound, but music: “Music is the indicator. Sound sets the tone for her destiny. Throughout the generations of history, the spiritual climate of God’s people has always responded to a musical indicator.”
Music as a medium
I love music. God loves music. The biggest book in the Bible is a songbook. Twice in Paul’s epistles, he tells us to sing “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” to one another.
But any good thing can be perverted, corrupted and idolized. In many charismatic churches, music becomes something far beyond what God intended for it.
How often do we see “worship” become a rock concert more concerned with our entertainment than God’s glory? How often do we hear droning background sound from the keys while a preacher is speaking? Both have an effect on us, mentally and emotionally, and many think that effect is spiritual. How often do we say certain music is “anointed”?
Beni Johnson wrote in chapter 15, “I love to hear the sound of heaven come into a room during a time of worship. I will purposely listen for it, because when it comes, it shifts the atmosphere. When that worship leader and his team of worshippers hit the right note or play the right song, heaven comes a little closer.”
So once again, we see the idea that sound is a medium between us and God — a medium even superior to Scripture, according to Bethel’s leader. Bill Johnson has said, “Music bypasses all of the intellectual barriers, and when the anointing of God is on a song, people will begin to believe things they wouldn’t believe through teaching.”
Teaching — as in, from the Bible. He’s saying music is more living and powerful than the word of God. Faith comes by hearing … music.
Following your senses
Therefore, of course, we should pursue this. Chase the sensual, the metaphysical, the mystical.
“Activate your sensitivity to your aural and spiritual environment,” Dan McCollam writes in chapter 8. “When you suspect a unique sound or light encounter — follow it.”
Larry Randolph writes in chapter 10, “Many times, what we label as just an ‘inspired thought,’ ‘feeling a witness,’ or having a ‘gut feeling’ is often a God-vibration, a sound of heaven that comes in simple and natural ways.”
Follow what you feel. That’s the exhortation of Bethel’s book.
It’s another way in which they point us away from Scripture and into metaphysical experience — that’s where we find God, they say. Often, anyways.
The dangers of following our “gut feelings,” especially in the context of a spiritual experience, cannot be overstated. That’s opening the door to not only our own corrupted and manipulated imaginations, but also to the potential influence of ungodly spirits. It sets us up for disappointment, disillusionment, and shipwreck that can cause untold damage to our lives.
And it’s so unnecessary, considering we already have an infinitely superior and sufficient revelation of God: the Bible.
The supremacy of the Bible
When we sense a sound or feeling, we’re left with the question of where it came from, with no objective answer. But we never have to wonder whether the Bible is from God. The Bible is not “often” the word of God, but always.
The things we sense are left to our flawed memories. But the Bible is preserved in writing for anyone to read.
Feelings come from within us, subject to the fallenness of our flesh. The Bible, thank God, is outside of us. It’s the infallible pen of heaven.
We encounter the living God when we read His living word or hear it read, and this experience is far more powerful, trustworthy and authoritative than anything else we see or hear or feel.
Bethel and the charismatic movement go to great lengths to encourage mystical experience — and, conversely, discourage intellectual discernment (the “barriers” Bill Johnson mentioned). The word of God never does that — in fact, just the opposite.
“Come now, and let us reason together,” says the Lord in Isaiah 1:18.
“And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment,” Paul wrote in Philippians 1:9, under the unction of the Holy Spirit.
The greatest commandment, according to Jesus, is “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind.”
God wants all our mind. He wants us to think. He wants us to reason. He wants us to discern. He wants us to carefully examine (1 Thessalonians 5:21) what we see, hear and feel, and judge it in light of His one and only standard of truth: the Bible. Scripture alone determines what’s true, as the Bereans taught us in Acts 17:11. We interpret everything according to Scripture, not the other way around — even if an angel from heaven appeared to us (Galatians 1:8).
We follow what we read, not what we experience.
Next, in Part 4: How The Physics of Heaven perverts the Bible.
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To make sure everything I’ve said about The Physics of Heaven was understood in context, you can read the book here, for free.
