The Dissenter (formerly Reformation Charlotte) has covered quite a few of Bethel’s songs over the years, pointing you to the errors, heresy, and blasphemy that much of this organization’s music expresses. We do this so that you and your church can make informed, biblical decisions about worship and choose music wisely based not on the emotional response that the music elicits, but instead, on how biblically sound the lyrics, as well as the movement behind the lyrics, are.

Bethel Music is clearly out of bounds when it comes to biblical orthodox—yet, many mainstream Evangelical churches continue to lather up in the emotionally ecstatic suds that the chord structure of the music is designed to do.

Bethel Church is steeped in the false gospel known as the Prosperity Gospel—it is a perversion of the gospel of Jesus Christ that teaches that Jesus’ primary purpose for his life, death, burial, and resurrection wasn’t to atone for sins, but to make people who have enough “faith” healthy and wealthy. This false gospel carries with it several other false teachings such as positive confession, or, in other words, the ability to speak things into existence the way God does.

Bethel Redding is a hotbed of false apparitions, regularly blaspheming the Holy Spirit by attributing the works of men and demons to Him. One such notable occurrence which happens regularly is Bethel’s “glory clouds.” Glory clouds, they claim, are a manifestation of God during their worship, when, in fact, not only is it unbiblical, it has been thoroughly debunked.

So when churches are choosing to sing music from this aberrant false Christian movement, it is important to remember that even in the rare cases that the lyrics may be biblically accurate on the surface, your church is giving tacit approval to, and legitimizing, the movement behind the music. Your church is feeding its sheep to the wolves.

Yet, the majority of Bethel’s music is not biblically sound—not at all. In fact, it’s mostly an expression of self-idolatry, self-worship, and blasphemy. That is certainly the case with one of Bethel’s highly popular songs, Champion.

The song, Champion, starts out with what seems to be a focus on Jesus and his accomplishments, his power, his authority, and his attributes. And while the beginning of the song’s lyrics are taken out of context and Scripture is misapplied (You are my champion, Giants fall when You stand), at least it seems as though Jesus is who the song is about. But then, once the chorus hits, the song quickly devolves into a self-glorifying version of what appears to be one of the charismatic cult’s flagship heresies—little god theology.

Here are the lyrics:

When I lift my voice and shout
Every wall comes crashing down
I have the authority
Jesus has given me
When I open up my mouth
Miracles start breaking out
I have the authority
Jesus has given me…

As you can see, the song quickly becomes about “me,” what “I” have, and what “I” can do. This popular heresy, little god theology, or the belief that we as humans carry within us the potential to become God, or divine like God is mainstream in charismatic churches. But this is not only a heresy found among charismatics, however, but it is also the underlying teaching of Mormonism–that our future as believers is to partake in the divinity of God and become gods ourselves.

The Roman Catholic Church also teaches this, as it states in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC)

The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods —CCC, Second Edition, Section 2, Chapter 2, Article 3, Paragraph I, I:460)

However, this is patently false. We do not carry within us the divine attributes of God nor do we perform miracles or speak them into existence. The fact that churches blindly sing these heretical songs from Bethel is telling about the theological state our Church is in. Pastors and elders are too lazy to actually examine the doctrines expressed in the music they sing and are instead just feeding their sheep an emotional high.

But 2 Thessalonians 5:21 commands us to “test everything; hold fast what is good.” It is clear that Bethel Music is not good.