Apostolic Leadership
We should suppose that the process that produced Bill Johnson’s rebuke of Jason Westerfield’s doctrine and practice included steps of confrontation designed to bring repentance and reconciliation, and that Bill Johnson would bring this particular “next step” into play because the previously efforts to correct his waywardness were not received.
Jason may not be alone in these oddities of spiritual experiences, or the claims made to substantiate them, but Bill Johnson properly exercises his responsibility to involve himself in correction with Jason because of the relational stamp between them.
By the time the opposing views of “love” and “judgement” work through their interpretations and filtering, few people will even understand the real issues because they will have invested their time considering whether any correction should have been given or whether or not Bill Johnson is just as odd as Jason and the reason for Jason’s need for correction.
Love and judgment always walk together because love makes decisions. When apostolic validation has been given, apostolic validation must be updated, and apostolic validation must include the responsibility to invalidate to the same extent it validated.
Jason Westerfield wandered away from healthy doctrine by making his experiences into principles. Then, he began to build new doctrine upon that faulty foundations. This is not a misunderstanding. This is not a failure to love or accept someone who is ‘different.’ This most certainly isn’t a “Holy Spirit leads people in different ways” discussion.
Jason Westerfield teaches false doctrine. Period. Once we get to the place where we can talk about nice people in terms of right and wrong again, we can reestablish kingdom leadership function. All the “we shouldn’t judge” confusion can be cleared away, and we can deal with destructive tendencies contrary to and substitutes for Biblical and kingdom norms.
Of course, the “mystics” love the gnostic freedom that allows for aliens, creating galaxies, super-saints, and spiritual X-men. The “manifested sons” theorists embrace the ridiculous in order to build air castles of “we be better than anyone else.” I have personally seen these ridiculous displays and witnessed the people willing to believe in them.
These outer limits busting scifi saints also feed on odd thinking about quantum physics as if they have crossed into the “realms” and “dwell in the dimensions,” so they live above the scrutiny of the common hoards who still read the Bible. Every once in a while, the publish another volume of “How You Can Be Superman Like Me” to validate their superiority.
They are not misunderstood. They are not confronted much, however, because nobody feels responsible to do anything about it. Simple as that. It is messy to confront super saints, stirs up their defenses, makes you look like the bad guy, etc.
Life in 5D
One wonders how we get from the Gospel and healing to “living in the fifth dimension.” Often, the desire to “one up” the last great revelation, miracle, or teaching pushes super-saints into displays of unproven mysticism. One of Jason’s friends I heard speak here in Jacksonville was bragging about “his son in the spirit” who had just gone to Saturn and “removed one of its rings.” The guy, Ian Clayton, was also explaining to us how he travels into the universe, creating galaxies.
At the same time, Ian was making these claims, he suffered obvious limitations in his body that need healing. He was teaching us that healing of all these things should be as normal as brushing our teeth after breakfast, but he wasn’t experiencing the healing he was making us feel we were missing out on because we hadn’t had enough of his teaching or exposure to his anointing.
Jason’s website advertises “life in 5D” as a means of explaining that he lives in the fifth dimension. So, whatever gifts, anointings, power, and spiritual graces have been part of his life, he explains with a sense of entering another dimension when the whole point of what Holy Spirit does centers upon God entering our dimension from the outside!
Talking with Angels, Dead People, and Aliens
Visionary impressions and dimensional reality differ by definition. The definitions by which we discuss our experiences often become points of diversion, even points of deception. That is, what we experience by revelatory experiences, by Holy Spirit, cannot be properly discussed without Biblical definitions for them, the way God describes “how things work in the Spirit.”
Beware the tendency to appropriate instances in history as norms when they record spiritual experiences. Beware the tendency to expect that because a person in Bible history experienced something, everyone will experience the same thing if they are really spiritual. As well, beware the tendency to discount the possibility that what Jesus, Peter, Paul, or anyone else experienced can never be the experience of a believer. I’m speaking to the improper appropriation of Biblical history.
Perhaps we have done a great disservice by including the idea that “every believer at any time can experience anything that any person in history experienced.” I mean, we do err assuming that “if Adam and Eve could experience it, we can too!” Or, if anybody did that in the Bible “any believer can do that now!” Such a discussion leads to a poor or false appropriation of Biblical narratives.
