Visit just about any evangelical church in America on any given Sunday, and you are almost guaranteed to hear music produced by Bethel Church of Redding, California. The church has two award-winning music labels—Bethel Music and Jesus Culture (though Jesus Culture is no longer confined to Bethel)—to complement the bestselling authors who lead the church, the apostle Bill Johnson and prophet Kris Vallotton.

Though Bethel’s music is certainly in the evangelical mainstream, its theology is not. At least not until recently, when the rapid spread of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) transformed evangelical churches and America’s civil politics.

At the center of the theology of Bethel and the NAR is a teaching known as Manifest Sons of God (MSOG). This is sometimes also referred to as Forerunners (Mike Bickle and International House of Prayer), Nazirite DNA (Lou Engle and The Call), or Joel’s Army (Todd Bentley and the Lakeland Revival).

MSOG teaches that during the end times, an elite breed of Christian warriors will perform, based on a hyper-charismatic interpretation of John 14:12, greater works than those of Christ. They will spontaneously speak in languages that they have not studied, eradicate sickness as they perform healing miracles, and even raise the dead.

As William Branham, a central figure in the Latter Rain revival (which preceded the NAR), said:

“As they go along, they heal the sick; they cast out devils; they speak with tongues; they see visions. And they walk with God; they talk with God. No devil can move them; they’re steadfast, looking for Eternal Life. Forgetting those things that are in the past, they press towards the mark of the high calling in Christ Jesus.”

Bethel Church takes the charge of raising the dead seriously. In December 2019, the 2-year-old daughter of worship leaders Andrew and Kalley Heilegenthal died suddenly. 

The church spent nearly a week trying to resurrect the little girl until her parents decided to hold a celebration of their daughter’s life. MSOG theology failed to bring the toddler back to life, but the experience provided the rationale for a billboard-hitting worship song based on MSOG, “Resurrection Power” by Johnson’s son, Brian Johnson, and his colleague Chris Davenport.

Vallotton has openly endorsed MSOG and wrote in his 2010 book “Heavy Rain,” “Christians who were a part of these movements [the Latter Rain and Manifest Sons of God] had some real insights into the true identity of believers.”

To show what he is endorsing, here is an excerpt from a sermon by William Branham in the mid-20th-century:

“Now, and in the Bible, we’re living in the last days, the top of the pyramid, the crossed fishes of the cancer age in the zodiac, in the time of the common of the Leo the lion, the capping Stone, and in the days of the manifestation of the sons of God in the Bible.”

This is blatant astrology, a practice roundly condemned in the Bible, along with pyramidology, a set of beliefs about the Egyptian pyramids common to British Israelists. In fact, Branham was a British Israelist, meaning he believed that white people are the true Israel of the Bible. American British Israelists, including Branham and many of his colleagues in the Latter Rain, believed that the Jewish people were imposters.

What do Kris Vallotton and Bill Johnson think of Branham? According to this video, they want the mantle of Branham, the special anointing that God placed on him, to fall on them. They leave no nuance for his association of the Bible with astrology, pyramidology, or British Israelism.

MSOG can be traced back to one of the most significant British Israelists in American history, Charles Fox Parham, widely regarded as the father of Pentecostalism. Parham referred to this idea as the “Man-Child,” drawing on the imagery in Revelation 12:5 about a son who will “rule the nations with a rod of iron.”

Many theologians have interpreted the Man-Child as referring to Christ. Parham, on the other hand, read this passage through the lens of British Israelism and saw the Man-Child as an Anglo-Saxon elite that will emerge from the true church of God—white people. These white super Christians will be able to heal the sick, raise the dead, even appear and disappear at will. And in keeping with Revelation 12:5, they will rule the nations with a rod of iron.

Like Branham after him, Parham was an ardent racist and sympathizer with the Ku Klux Klan. “No one who has not Israelitish [Anglo-Saxon] blood in their veins will have any part or lot in the ride [sic] of Christ,” Parham wrote in his 1906 manifesto, “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness.” This British-Israelist belief about the true church is core to what became MSOG.

In Mike Bickle’s interpretation of MSOG, Christian “Green Berets” that he calls “Forerunners” will be activated in the End Times to pray the plagues of Revelation down on unbelievers. One premise in developing the International House of Prayer was to train these “Forerunners” by teaching them to pray in such a way that they could bring God’s vengeance on their enemies. Then they would rule with Christ, just as Parham taught the Man-Child would do—with a rod of iron.

Notably, Bickle worked closely with Paul Cain, who served as Branham’s protégé during the Latter Rain years.

Few seminary-trained pastors today would teach anything remotely close to MSOG, even when they preach on Romans 8:19, which says, “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God” (KJV). Yet this white-supremacist theology has crept into the mainstream of American evangelicalism in no small part because of how prolific Bethel’s worship music has become.

And Parham’s bit about ruling the nations with a rod of iron? That sounds like some of the thinking behind the MAGA-ization of American evangelicalism and the U.S. Capitol riot.

Plenty of people from Bethel Church were there.