Have you heard of the DRT? The Dead Raising Team? It’s an independent ministry operated by Tyler Johnson as part of his One Glance Ministries. As its name implies, the “ministry” focuses on raising the dead. Johnson is a graduate of Bethel Church’s “School of Supernatural Ministry.” Because … where else would you go for heresy, blasphemy, and Scriptural defiance but Bill Johnson and Kris Vallotton’s portal of demonic doctrines?
(For more on Johnson, go HERE. For more on Bethel, go HERE.)
Johnson just sent out a blanket email of a Christmas YouTube video he published last year entitled “Did Santa Raise The Dead?” The subtext of his email answers this with the affirming question “Did you know that St. Nic raised the dead?”
According to the charismatic false teacher Johnson, “It’s said that he [St. Nick] raised 100 children from the dead.”
This isn’t a new tale. It’s been popular mythology in Roman Catholicism for hundred of years. The apostate Catholics, like the apostates coming out of Bethel, laud anything miraculous regardless of their Scriptural veracity or Biblical compliance. According to CatholicCulture.org, the Chapel of the Holy Arms in Tolentino, Italy even has the two severed limbs of St. Nicholas’ enshrined. The arms of the inspiring “saint” behind Santa Claus were rediscovered there in 1926.
Here’s the story that Johnson tells in this, “oh, by the way, buy our new book” video.
“St. Nick was in prayer in an area where there was a famine. He got a word of knowledge that there was a wicked innkeeper who, because he couldn’t give meat to the people staying in his inn, went out into the street and found three children, butchered them up – cut up their bodies – and then stuck their bodies in a brining barrel to cure the meat.”
It is, by the way, this “word of knowledge” that Johnson sources as the notion of Santa’s omniscience. “He knows if you’ve been bad or good,” according to the children’s Christmas tune, comes from this dead raising tale of the Catholic saint.
“St. Nick sees this whole thing in a vision, goes into the town, finds the inn that he was in the vision, confronts the wicked innkeeper. The wicked innkeeper takes him down to this barrel. St. Nick prays over the barrel and then tells the innkeeper to open the barrel. The innkeeper opened the barrel and three children crawled out alive and well. Raised from the dead.”
The purpose of Johnson’s retelling of this Catholic myth is to point to the many “creative miracles” that God is still doing. According to Johnson’s website, his own “ministry” claims “15 resurrections to date,” evidence that God is still creating miracles by re-creating and re-animating the dead.
Johnson gives the argument so often heard when a charismatic is challenged for a Biblical proof text that “signs and wonder” gifts are continuing today. Jesus was dead for three days, he says. Lazarus was dead four days, but God brought them back to life “because God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” (We’d offer Andrew Rappaport’s response to this claim HERE)
“Sometimes we can feel like Santa threatens the real meaning of Christmas,” says this charlatan. “But in reality, if we understand where Santa Claus came from, St. Nick points to Christ. His whole life honors God.”
Umm. No. Just No.
It’s following this when Johnson encourages the viewer to buy his latest book. I, of course, do not encourage you to buy his book.
Instead, I encourage you to do as Christ exhorted, “abide in my word.” (John 8:31) Then you won’t be, like so many, likely to wander off the narrow path with the ear-tickling doctrines of demons (1 Timothy 4:1) that come from the likes of Bethel and its protégés.
[Contributed by Bud Ahlheim]
