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Bill Johnson Book Review: 'When Heaven Invades Earth'

By Craig of The Crosswise Blog [notunlikelee.wordpress.com]

In his book, When Heaven Invades Earth: A Practical Guide to a Life of Miracles [Treasure House/Destiny Image, 2003, Shippensburg, PA], Bill Johnson teaches New Order of the Latter Rain (NOLR) doctrine, a teaching denounced as heresy by the Assemblies of God (A/G) in 1948. 

This teaching includes Dominionism – that Adam lost dominion of the world to Satan, Jesus won it back, and it’s up to the church to wrestle it from Satan [pp 31-33 (all page numbers from firstst edition)]. 

Integral to NOLR doctrine is the Manifested Sons of God (MSoG) teaching which includes diminishing Jesus Christ to a mere man having surrendered His divinity when the Word became flesh (at the Incarnation) and subsequently re-attaining His deity at the Resurrection.  This is by virtue of the heretical kenosis doctrine (self-emptying) using Philippians 2:5-7 as a proof-text [pp 79, 85 fn. 3].

book coverIn “His self-imposed restriction to live as a man” [p 29], Johnson claims that Jesus “had NO supernatural capabilities whatsoever” [p 29] clearly reducing Jesus to a man given that God is in very essence supernatural.  

Even though Johnson makes the statement, “[w]hile He is 100 percent God, He chose to live with the same limitations that man would face once He [sic?] was redeemed” [p 29] Johnson negates this with “He had No supernatural capabilities whatsoever” and “He laid his [sic] divinity aside as He sought to fulfill the assignment given to Him by the Father…” [p 79]. 

One could construe Johnson’s “while He is 100 percent God” statement as present tense as opposed to past tense (i.e., during the Incarnation) especially in light of his numerous statements pronouncing Christ’s humanity at the expense of His deity including “the anointing is what linked Jesus, the man, to the divine enabling Him to destroy the works of the devil” [p 79].

This diminution of Jesus Christ’s deity is crucial to MSoG doctrine as Jesus “became the model” [p 29] for all to follow “to do as He did and become as He was” [p 138] in order to attain our own divinity as fully manifested sons (and daughters) of God. 

This glorification of mankind is spoken of by distorting I John 4:17, “As a sculptor looks at a model and fashions the clay into its likeness, so the Holy Spirit looks to the glorified Son and shapes us into His image.  As He is, so are we in this world” [p 145]. 

According to NOLR doctrine, Jesus can only return once the ‘church’ body receives this perfection as his tweet on August 20, 2011 illustrates: “Jesus is returning for a bride whose body is in equal proportion to her head.”

Bill Johnson also claims that Jesus did not receive the title of Christ until His baptism by John in the Jordan [p 79] which is at odds with Luke 1:35/2:11.  And, while at the very beginning of chapter 7 he states correctly that “Christ” means “Anointed One” or “Messiah” [p 79], he subsequently changes “Christ” to mean simply “the anointing” – an anointing that all can receive [pp 80, 133-35] even describing it as tangible and transferable [p 135]. 

He is more explicit in his book Face to Face with God describing Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan as the ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit’ [pp 21-22, 58, 77-80]: “The baptism of the Spirit comes to anoint the church with the same Christ anointing that rested upon Jesus in His ministry so that we might be imitators of Him” [p 77, Face to Face].  To be clear, Johnson is referring to this as a second ‘baptism.’

While the Greek word Christos is translated primarily as anointed in the Old Testament, in the New Testament Christos is translated each and every time as “Christ” referring exclusively to the person of Jesus Christ our Savior.  To change the definition of “Christ”, as in the person of Jesus Christ, to “anointing” is to pave the way for all to be “Christed” as the “Christ anointing” quote above in Face to Face with God makes clear.

Johnson claims that all those against ‘the anointing’ – i.e., ‘the anointing’ as he defines it – are antichrist. 

This is illustrated in the following two statements: “The spirits of hell are against the anointing, for without the anointing mankind is no threat to their dominion” [p 80] and, “The spirit of antichrist is at work today, attempting to influence believers to reject everything that has to do with the Holy Spirit’s anointing” [p 81] (see here for more details).

Bill Johnson is leading many into apostasy and my heart grieves for these.  May the Lord have mercy upon us all.

See Also: Bill Johnson's Christology: A New Age Christ?

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