Praying for Resurrection

[Marmion]

11 minutes ago, Nikedagain? said:

I've seen a couple of references to the "miracle that befell little Jackson a few years ago". Anyone know what that's about? Bethel is taking credit for it, so it must be a member's child?

Here is what I found out from a fundamentalist website , albeit one that's strongly critical of such churches as Bethel .  https://pulpitandpen.org/2018/01/01/bethel-church-cant-heal-desperately-sick-child-of-their-music-ceo/  ,  https://pulpitandpen.org/2018/01/05/in-jesus-name-pee-bethel-child-miraculously-healed-by-western-medicine/ 

[Giraffe]

The article @theotherelise shared says Bill Johnson himself  says he’s supporting the family in their pleas for life.
 

Bill Johnson, you are a despicable human being! 

[Giraffe]

I’m furious! Bill Johnson, you are despicable and vile and evil for not only allowing this to continue but to publicly speak about it! I will laugh the day your empire comes crashing down! These parents need therapy, not people who support their delusions! There is nothing biblical about what you are doing at Bethel Redding! Nothing!! 

[CherylV]

Several people from my church have posted support on her Instagram- I am shocked - I’m worship team also and we do a lot of bethel stuff but I haven’t looked into them as much as I should. I know our actual church doesn’t do nonsense like this. At some point they will have to accept that child is gone. 

Edited December 20, 2019 by CherylV

[punkiepie]

I remember when they aired the 19KAC episode where Michelle found out she had miscarried Jubilee and almost immediately she was saying over and over again, “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”  I don’t know what crazy universe I’m in, where it’s actually possible that I’m saying Michelle Duggar is the more rational one here.  I can’t imagine the feeling of losing a child, but for people of faith, there’s supposed to be comfort in knowing their child is in heaven and they will be reunited one day.  My two cents; it’s almost like this “faith” that Jesus is going to resurrect their daughter is actually emblematic of a lack of faith that she is already in heaven and they will one day join her.  Which, I totally get, but also makes me really sad that these people who profess such faith in Jesus don’t have any comfort in these terrible days. So much so that they would rather her corpse rise from the dead, post autopsy, one week later. 

[ColeJo]

 I believe in Christ's resurrection and that those in Christ will be resurrected when he returns. Can Olive be revived? No. Can she be resurrected when Christ returns? Sure. I think this whole thing can start a conversation on the difference between resuscitation and resurrection. Resurrected individuals are immortal. What the parents and the congregation is asking for is a divine resuscitation. To put it bluntly, it is selfish to want to bring this girl back from the presence of Jesus to grow up and experience the wickedness in this world. I get that the parents are grieving, but their flawed theology is making them blind to that. This cult is essentially teaching that they are little gods and it is definitely what it looks like.

 

[ViolaSebastian]

For a really excellent, theologically Christian view of why this situation is messed up, check out Phylicia Masonheimer’s IG stories. There’s some very interesting stuff on there about the charismatic tradition. 

[adidas]

Olive’s story has hit mainstream media in Australia now. It’s front page on news.com.au (which is only slightly better than daily mail).

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-stories/biblical-precedent-megachurchs-bid-to-resurrect-olive-alayne-heiligenthal/news-story/6c6821d00a868dfc7a0fe842215b684e
 

[JemimaPuddle-Duck]

5 hours ago, ViolaSebastian said:

For a really excellent, theologically Christian view of why this situation is messed up, check out Phylicia Masonheimer’s IG stories. There’s some very interesting stuff on there about the charismatic tradition. 

Her stories today were so good. The two ladies she tagged, as well. 

[ViolaSebastian]

The Sacramento Bee updated their article. Apparently an autopsy has been performed, but there's no conclusive result yet.

Edited December 20, 2019 by ViolaSebastian

[AmazonGrace]

Spoiler

 

Cops confirm 2-year-old’s death as California church continues resurrection prayers

BY JARED GILMOUR

DECEMBER 19, 2019 01:27 PM 

Police in Northern California have confirmed the weekend death of a 2-year-old girl as the child’s family and church community continue praying for her resurrection.

“We responded originally to a medical call on Saturday morning around 6 a.m.,” Sgt. Brian Torum of the Redding Police Department said in a phone interview with McClatchy News on Thursday. “It resulted in a death.”

The girl, Olive Heiligenthal, stopped breathing at her family’s Redding home and could not be revived that morning, her family said in posts on social media. But since then, parents Andrew and Kalley Heiligenthal have been praying for Olive to come back to life, along with fellow congregants at Bethel Church in the Northern California town and other followers of the Redding-based megachurch around the world.

The Shasta County Coroner’s Office did not respond to a request for confirmation of the child’s death on Wednesday, but Torum said the child’s body was taken to the coroner, explaining that bodies are sent to there “in all cases of death where an autopsy will be performed.”

Torum said police are looking into the child’s death.

“If it’s unexpected, we’ll open up a case to figure out how the death occurred,” Torum said. “It’s by no means at this point a suspicious death — but we still have to investigate to see what happened.”

It could take months for the official cause of death to be released, Torum said.

“The autopsy has been done. There’s no official result,” Torum said. “It’s still pretty early. We’re still talking to witnesses and going through information. It takes time.”

The girl’s mother, Kalley — a singer and songwriter at Bethel Music, which is affiliated with the church — wrote in an Instagram post Wednesday that “Day 5 is a really good day for resurrection.”

“I’ve never been more grateful for Jesus,” she wrote. “He is endlessly worthy of our love, trust, faith and risk.”

Pastor Bill Johnson of Bethel Church shared a video about Olive with the church Facebook page’s half-million followers on Wednesday.

“Mom and dad, Andrew and Kalley, have been praying for the miracle of resurrection. We’ve joined with them,” Johnson said. “We have a biblical precedent: Jesus raised the dead. Jesus raised the dead — not only that, he introduced himself as the resurrection and the life. In fact, in John 11:40, he says: ‘If you believe, you will see the glory of God.’”

The video has been viewed more than 200,000 times in less than a day.

Johnson told followers “the child has been in the morgue ever since the child died. She’s not here, we don’t surround the baby and perform some ritual — we’re just together, honestly, to worship Jesus. He’s the grace giver, we’re not.”

He also addressed questions some skeptics might have.

“Some would ask: How long do you pray, and when do you quit praying? And I don’t have a good answer,” Johnson said. “We’re kind of in the middle of that journey right now.”

 

https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article238558598.html

If God is about to perform a miracle and resurrect this girl, doing it after the autopsy would be all the more impressive. 

I just hope the resurrection will take place before she has already been buried in a cold, dark, lonely grave. 

[ViolaSebastian]

In other news, not one but TWO of my friends have "liked" Olive's mother's posts. Both of whom, I thought, had better sense and theological grounding.

[AmazonGrace]

I wonder if the reality is setting in after the autopsy. Nothing new on the mother's instagram since Day 5.

Edited December 20, 2019 by AmazonGrace

[ViolaSebastian]

1 minute ago, AmazonGrace said:

I wonder if the reality is setting in after the autopsy. Nothing new on the mother's instagram since Day 5.

Someone posted this on r/Bethelsnark. It says in the comments that there's no explicit connection stated (e.g. this is not a family member), but thinks that this is a Bethel Church-goer. I think this is the road they're going to take--that Olive had free will and didn't want to be resurrected.

[AmazonGrace]

That's terrible in its own spectacular way as well... I mean, if Olive is happy playing with Jesus it's awesome but I wouldn't have the nerve to tell grieving parents that their two year old would rather be dead than return to their loving care. 

[ViolaSebastian]

3 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

That's terrible in its own spectacular way as well... I mean, if Olive is happy playing with Jesus it's awesome but I wouldn't have the nerve to tell grieving parents that their two year old would rather be dead than return to their loving care. 

I completely agree. That's part of what is so tragic about this situation. Anything short of resurrection has serious, negative implications on the belief system of the parents and the church. There's no good way to go from here, and shame on the church elders for not realizing that from the beginning.

[AmazonGrace]

Random Instagram post that says those who don't believe God will resurrect your dead relatives are the bizarre one's. 

Grief does such monstrous things to people. 

Spoiler

 

[anachronistic]

It’s one thing to pray for someone to rise from the dead when they are in the hospital. I had a dear friend who technically died a year and a half ago while hospitalized from pneumonia and was revived by the quick action of the medical team and inserting a tracheotomy. I’ve no doubt that her mother, who first noticed she’d stopped breathing in bed, was praying for her to live, and she did. I’m really, really grateful that my friend is still alive because I love her a lot. But that was in a hospital and she hadn’t been pronounced officially dead or anything.

Olive’s body is in a morgue. I understand that in the olden days in Ireland people would hold a ‘wake’ with the body right there just in case they were wrong and the person awoke, there would be family right there. But Olives family is out at church, dancing for her resurrection, not actually waiting by her bedside. I’m pretty sure that, unlike on tv, morgues do close at night and bodies are left alone, so even if a miracle did occur and she regained consciousness, she’d probably die of suffocation because this isn’t an episode of Torchwood, bodies stay where they are. 
 

I hope some of that money raised is used towards getting non-church counseling and a really, really good secular psychiatrist for the entire family, heck, the entire church. I doubt it , though.

[HereComesTreble]

This is a nightmare situation.  These poor, poor parents.  I pray that better people come into their lives to comfort them during this horrible time.  The people promoting/exploiting this madness are just the worst.  They are setting up this grieving family for more pain, possibly a crisis of faith, guilt for not believing enough/being good enough, etc.  

I hope this incident leads to the demise of Bethel Church and Bill "Total D Bag" Johnson. 

[ViolaSebastian]

2 hours ago, HereComesTreble said:

This is a nightmare situation.  These poor, poor parents.  I pray that better people come into their lives to comfort them during this horrible time.  The people promoting/exploiting this madness are just the worst.  They are setting up this grieving family for more pain, possibly a crisis of faith, guilt for not believing enough/being good enough, etc.  

I hope this incident leads to the demise of Bethel Church and Bill "Total D Bag" Johnson. 

Right? If Doug Phillips is a tool, Bill Johnson is a D-Bag. 

[pandorasjen]

Everything about this is horrific. I really don't have any words for it.

[adidas]

 

@ViolaSebastian thanks so much for recommending Phylicia Masonheimer. She makes excellent points.

[Rachel333]

The meaning of her name is a sad coincidence. I know that's not what her name really means, as so people keep pointing out, but you can find those name meanings on baby name sites so the parents didn't just make it up, and they've been saying since she was born that her name meant "victorious awakening." I'm sure it seemed like a huge sign to them that she was meant to come back to life.

I know her parents aren't okay right now, but I hope they're at least surrounded by support and aren't being exposed to all the media coverage of their loss. On one hand I'm glad that the harmful teachings of the church are getting coverage, but on the other it has to be even more traumatic for those parents to have so many people gawking at the spectacle the church made it into (and I'm one of them--it's so bizarre I feel like I can't look away). When they announce the funeral they'll have to face both the comments from people who had turned a stranger's tragedy into a revival of their own faith and are disappointed by the lack of a miracle, as well as the people who have been mocking them and will be making "I told you so" comments. I hope the parents just stay off social media.

[ViolaSebastian]

Looks as though they took the bit about resurrection out of the Go to Me Fund...

Someone donated and posted a picture of his hands with a bump on it, which I guess it supposed to be a stigmata? I dunno, but he posted this with it:

Quote

Please take me to the girl I am he the one you seek these are healing hands let the glory of God ring on HIGH! I am the reason for the season there couldn't be a better birthday present glory to my father in heaven! [Phone number here that I redacted]

WTF, man? 

Edited December 20, 2019 by ViolaSebastian

[Nikedagain?]

55 minutes ago, ViolaSebastian said:

Looks as though they took the bit about resurrection out of the Go to Me Fund...

Someone donated and posted a picture of his hands with a bump on it, which I guess it supposed to be a stigmata? I dunno, but he posted this with it:

WTF, man? 

Oh FFS.

We knew these people would come out of the woodwork. Did Bethel anticipate this? This is now a circus. Horrible. Horrible.