• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

'Christian Hogwarts': The Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry

Yithian

Parish Watch
Staff member
Joined
Oct 29, 2002
Messages
36,367
Location
East of Suez
Point of interest: I had no idea who these people are before reading this article, but there is a huge church not far from my home run by them (subtle it isn't):

Screen Shot 2018-01-14 at 02.34.27.png


Meet The "Young Saints" Of Bethel Who Go
To College To Perform Miracles

How a school that calls itself "Christian Hogwarts" is upending a small city in California's Trump country.

Originally posted on October 13, 2017, at 12:01 a.m.
Updated on December 7, 2017, at 7:12 a.m.
Molly Hensley-Clancy

It’s the first day of Prophecy Week at the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. Or, as students here like to call the place, Christian Hogwarts.

The auditorium of the civic center in Redding, California, where first-year students have class, is so full of eager, neatly dressed young people that it’s initially impossible to find a seat. The roomful of some 1,200 students hums with expectant energy: People talk in clusters, clutching their books to their chests and stealing eager glances at the stage. There are so many languages spoken here it’s hard to keep track: English of all flavors, spoken with Australian and British and South African accents; Chinese; Korean; Portuguese. It’s a strange medley for a place like Redding, an economically depressed rural outpost about 200 miles north of San Francisco, in the heart of Northern California’s Trump country.

The students are waiting for today’s lecturer, Kris Vallotton, one of the school’s founders and a prophet so prolific he literally wrote the book on it — Basic Training for the Prophetic Ministry, a combined textbook and workbook used by Bethel students to learn how to hear, and speak, God’s words. (“Name the five things that distinguish a false prophet from a true prophet.” “What is the difference between a vision and a trance?”)

The basic theological premise of the School of Supernatural Ministry is this: that the miracles of biblical times — the parted seas and burning bushes and water into wine — did not end in biblical times, and the miracle workers did not die out with Jesus’s earliest disciples. In the modern day, prophets and healers don’t just walk among us, they are us.

To Bethel students, learning, seeing, and performing these “signs and wonders” — be it prophesying about things to come or healing the incurable — aren’t just quirks or side projects of Christianity. They are, in fact, its very center.

Continued:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/mollyhensl...-to-college-to?utm_term=.qeENl7p2x#.idr3dV0AL
 
I wonder how this works?

I mean, Day2 during Freshers' Week must be hell, for Faculty Staff.

Don't students ever-so-slightly notice that miracles (spells /curses /incantations) just Do Not Happen, for 99.99% of the time??

It's not just a matter of sharply-enunciating some cod Latin, and twiddling a twig. To justify a $40k per semester fee, I'd want cancer cures, lead to gold, permanent summer, the moon on a stick.
 
I wonder how this works?

I mean, Day2 during Freshers' Week must be hell, for Faculty Staff.

Don't students ever-so-slightly notice that miracles (spells /curses /incantations) just Do Not Happen, for 99.99% of the time??

It's not just a matter of sharply-enunciating some cod Latin, and twiddling a twig. To justify a $40k per semester fee, I'd want cancer cures, lead to gold, permanent summer, the moon on a stick.

They start off by curing bacon.
 
Followed by a spell in the kitchen, then an oath or two in the bar.
 
Fixed that for you.
That reduces the incident frequency to once every hundred-trillion times (yep, 1 in 10^-14)

Which still might be a bit on the high side....
 
Good read. It highlighted the School, it's critics and the crime in Redding. I never even knew it fell on hard times.

I have nothing against the school. It beats having youngsters getting into trouble and they are contributing to the city coffers. Maybe Redding would be a far larger pit otherwise.
 
The church associated with this school now wants to raise a child from the dead.

A California megachurch is raising money for the family of a little girl who died suddenly last week while at the same time attempting to bring the child back to life through the power of prayer.

Olive Heiligenthal died on December 14 at the age of 2. The circumstances of her death have not been revealed, but according to a church spokesman she suddenly stopped breathing. Her parents called 911, and medical professionals tried to resuscitate her but were not successful, according to the Record Searchlight in Redding, California.

Olive's mother, Kalley, is a singer at the Bethel Church in Redding. The church follows the charismatic Christian tradition that believes God's work is ongoing in the material world and that he performs miracles and otherwise intervenes in human affairs.

In an Instagram post on Monday, Kalley wrote, "We're asking for prayer. We believe in a Jesus who died and conclusively defeated every grave, holding the keys to resurrection power. We need it for our little Olive Alayne, who stopped breathing yesterday and has been pronounced dead by doctors. We are asking for bold, unified prayers from the global church to stand with us in belief that He will raise this little girl back to life."

https://www.newsweek.com/church-raising-100000-raise-child-dead-1478511
 
We are asking for bold, unified prayers from the global church to stand with us in belief that He will raise this little girl back to life
This is horrific. In every conceivable facet of circumstance.

I feel so sorry for the Parents, in their loss: and for the Believers, who shall be even-more bereft of providence than they always were.

If only there was a god/universe/infinite power that had the agency to grant such a miracle. On response to demand, somehow as a function of scale and relative justice.

Proof denies faith, yet is also intrinsically an ultimate personal revelatory expectation for each individual follower.
"Though never before have I personally-seen in flesh your works, my Lord, I know that for me an exception shall be made- if only my faith is strong enough"

And yet: the cold unyielding universe returns not even an echo, let-alone any actual beneficence. I shall certainly as a frail fortean speck of instancy hope that this case is an exception: but I can neither pray nor expect any happy outcome....
 
Do they have any evidence to support the claim that prayer can raise a child from the dead?
Won't their faith be sorely tested when the prayer doesn't work?
 
Back
Top