The weak, helpless, puny god of Bethel’s ‘Physics of Heaven’
This is part 5 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:
In the Garden of Eden, the devil, in the form of a serpent, tempted Eve by saying she could have an attribute of God.
The oldest temptation is still going today, in the form of Bethel and the Word of Faith movement.
One of the core tenets of those groups is the idea that man can be like God, that we can share in His attributes.
Kenneth Copeland — who preached at Bethel in January 2023 — has said the following:
“Adam is as much like God as you could get, just the same as Jesus. ... Adam, in the Garden of Eden, was God manifested in the flesh.” (1)
“You’re all God. You don’t have a God living in you; you are one! ... When I read in the Bible where God tells Moses, ‘I AM,’ I say, ‘Yah, I am too!’” (2)
And with an exaltation of man comes a degradation of Christ. Copeland once “prophesied” as if Jesus was speaking, “Don't be disturbed when people accuse you of thinking you are God ... They crucified Me for claiming I was God. I didn’t claim that I was God; I just claimed that I walked with Him and that He was in Me.” (3)
Put those statements together, and we’re God even more than Jesus was! And Bethel welcomed that heretic onto their stage with glowing praise.
Bethel’s blurring of the distinction between Creator and creation is more subtle. Bill Johnson has said that Jesus was “born again,” and has written that Jesus performed signs and wonders not as God, but as a man in right relationship with God. His stated reason for believing this is so that we can exercise the same power.
Creators like God
The Physics of Heaven includes a common belief of this movement — that we have the same creative power as God.
Cal Pierce writes in chapter 9, “God … said that because God spoke His creative will, man can also speak words that create.”
A section in chapter 12, by Ellyn Davis, is titled “By Faith, We Can Speak Things Into Existence.” As a previous post in this series pointed out, she applies Romans 4:17, which says God “calls those things which do not exist as though they did,” to us, as do many in the movement. In that section, she writes, “It shouldn’t be a stretch for us to believe that, as ‘observers’ to whom Jesus gave all power in heaven and earth, we can, through faith, intent, prayer and declaration, call things into existence.”
Notice there that she applied another verse to us that’s about Christ — Matthew 28:18, where Jesus said, “All authority has been given to ME in heaven and on earth” (emphasis mine).
According to them, we have the same power and authority that Christ Himself does. We are like God.
They substantiate this claim with a phrase that was also in my earlier list of misused verses — Hebrews 11:1, where the 1611 King James Version reads, “faith is the substance of things hoped for.” David Van Koevering writes in chapter 13, “Hebrews 11:1 says that faith is a substance. It is the invisible substance from which your physical world was and is being created by Jesus Christ. Annette Capps said, ‘God used faith substance and word energy to create the universe.’”
God used faith to create. Therefore, so can we. That’s the idea. Copeland preached this when he spoke at Bethel.
Ponder the implications of this. If God used faith to create, then faith is an entity that has existed outside of Him since before creation. It’s a force, a medium — and the power of creation is in this medium. In teaching this power, the authors don’t point to the Person; they point to the medium.
It’s a medium that’s apparently self-existent — if God used it to create, then how could he have created it? — and needed by God, which means it has power apart from him.
Popping qwiffs
The premise of the book is that this medium involves quantum physics. One of the sections between chapters is titled “Popping Qwiffs by Faith.” (If you’re wondering what a qwiff is, look it up. Too complicated to go into here.) That section says, “Annette Capps says that faith is an energy force that affects the vibrational realm and can cause things to be brought from the invisible realm into the visible. ‘Faith is an unseen energy force. It is not matter, but it creates matter and actually becomes matter. You have a choice to use the energy of your words to change matter.’ … If this is true, it means we can bring into existence whatever reality we have chosen by ‘popping that qwiff.’”
Davis in chapter 12: “Another idea that ‘popping a qwiff’ forces us to at least entertain is that somehow human consciousness is a fundamental creative force in the Universe, since it is our consciousness … that seems to determine whether something appears as matter or not. If this is true, it means that we have the power to create, manipulate and change the ‘reality’ of our world by our expectations or intentions.”
Notice she said, “human consciousness is a fundamental creative force” — not just Christians, but humans have this capability. This brings up another of the book’s fundamental points: Because this power is in quantum mysticism, it can be and has been accessed by the New Age movement. They’re operating in it, and we’re not. It’s been “stolen,” and God needs us to take it back from the pagans.
God … needs us … to take back … the power he used … to create the universe.
What a weak, impotent, pathetic god this book presents.
It’s much like a lot of the charismatic movement, in which god can’t move until we give him permission, or “release” him, or “activate” him. In which he’s thwarted by our lack of faith. In this movement, we’re in control, not god (which Bill Johnson has explicitly taught: “God is in charge, but he is not in control”).
Only a puny god needs external power and can have this power stolen from him. Why would anyone worship such a weakling?
Another god
The god of The Physics of Heaven is also, as pointed out in an earlier post, an impersonal god.
If New Agers can operate in his power, then it requires no relationship with him. In this book, faith is a relationship with a thing, not a person. Reality can change not because a sovereign, loving God changes it according to His will, but because we — anyone — can use an impersonal force that is found not in the Creator, but in creation.
This book degrades the spiritual into the natural by blurring the line between the two. Davis writes, again in chapter 12, “Quantum physics implies that everything that exists, even atoms and subatomic particles, has a form of consciousness (sometimes called a ‘mind’) and is interconnected through a universal consciousness (the One Mind).” While it doesn’t quite cross the line into pantheism (all is God), it’s a confusing morass of monism (all is one) and panentheism (God is in all). I say “quite” because in chapter 11, Davis mentions the quantum mysticism concept that “all must be God which means that you are God” without specifically repudiating it.
It is true that God holds the atoms of the universe together (see Colossians 1:17 and Hebrews 1:3). But His interaction with the atomic and subatomic is willful, personal, and entirely under His sovereign control. All power and authority belongs to Him alone, and always has. He alone determines who can know what, and who can do what. God alone does whatever He alone pleases, whenever He alone pleases. God. Has. All. Power.
And there is no one like Him. Thus says the LORD:
“I am the LORD, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:5).
“Besides Me there is no god” (Isaiah 44:6).
“I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me” (Isaiah 46:9).
“Before Me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after Me” (Isaiah 43:10).
God’s existential holiness and absolute sovereignty are such fundamental attributes that anyone who suggests otherwise is teaching another god. Another religion. The religion of the serpent. A doctrine of demons. The real satanism.
That’s what Bethel’s book does, as if it were published by hell itself.
Conclusion: Run
The Physics of Heaven is a brazen departure from biblical Christianity. It is heresy. It is not something over which Christians can merely disagree.
I’ve heard several defenses of Bethel: They affirm the basic doctrines of Christianity ... They love Jesus ... You’re taking them out of context ... They don’t mean it the way it sounds … They’re not all like that … look at the fruit!
But there is no defense for this. Nothing can mitigate the abominations of The Physics of Heaven.
You can say you’ve never heard them talk like this otherwise, that it’s some small, obscure book, but that’s like saying abortion is just a little bit of what Planned Parenthood does.
This is not something clumsily misspoken in a careless moment. The leadership of Bethel took the time and effort to conceive, write, edit, and publish this book. What do they believe that would possess them to do that?!?
In a video about The Physics of Heaven released in January 2023, Mike Winger said, “This is evil, twisted, deceptive, manipulative, unbiblical, unscientific, untrue, dishonoring to Christ. … It’s hard to put into words how bad this is.”
Bethel’s book distorts both science and Scripture to get Christians to practice New Age teachings.
It’s trafficking in fakery.
It’s either delusional or demonic.
Run from this book.
Run from that church.
Run from that movement.
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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.
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After Winger’s video was released, Bethel removed the book from its online bookstore.
That is not nearly enough. That, by itself, appears to be only damage control.
Bethel must publicly and unequivocally repudiate all of the teachings of the book, including its awful interpretations of Scripture. Bethel must repent in dust and ashes of all of its involvement in the book’s publication. Bethel should tell anyone who owns a copy of this abomination to burn it.
If Bethel publicly condemns The Physics of Heaven, this series will be taken down.
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Citations:
Following the Faith of Abraham I (Fort Worth: Kenneth Copeland Ministries, 1989, audiotape #01-3001), side 1
The Force of Love (Fort Worth: Kenneth Copeland Ministries, 1987, audiotape #02-0028), side 1.
Take Time to Pray, Believer's Voice of Victory, February 1987, p. 9
