Todd Bentley lifts Jesus high

Posted on June 12, 2008 by Peter Kirk

Todd Bentley has written a new article (dated 8th June) called Lifting Jesus High! (Thanks to commenter Rick for drawing this to my attention.) This article is a response to the critics of his ministry and of the Lakeland outpouring. In it he responds to concerns about his visions, unusual miracles, angels, his encounter with the Apostle Paul etc.

Todd also mentions, in his PS, a message he received from Dr. Gary S. Greig, PhD., a former Associate Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Regent University School of Divinity. Dr Greig testified to how he had been healed through Todd’s ministry and offered a 55 page booklet Biblical Reasons to Receive God’s Glory and Give it Away in Power Evangelism, “written at a high level of scholarship for pastors, church leaders, and theologians yet is understandable to the layperson”, available as a PDF download (free but donations requested). I have not yet read this. UPDATE: Now I have read it, and have summarised and reviewed it in a new post.

I recommend you, my readers, to read Todd’s article in full. But for those of you who are too busy here are some extracts:

Someone once said that limiting revelation is like trying to fit an ocean into a cup. God is continually restoring truth and light to His Church. Therefore, we should place no limit on further revelation. To have a view that everything that happens in someone’s life because of God’s loving response to us as His children should be listed in the Bible or else it’s wrong or evil, is like saying that Jesus, who is the Word represents a list of do’s and don’ts. Jesus is a Person who, through intimacy and relationship, we perceive and understand by the Holy Spirit what is good and what is evil. If Jesus listed for us everything that we needed to know, then knowing Him would have become an option. It’s in knowing Him, who is The Word that we enter into what He has prepared for us.

The Bible is full of visions, encounters, signs, wonders, miracles, and manifestations that people have experienced, some of which may be downright hard for many to wrap their minds around, let alone believe it could happen today. Again, it’s all relative to each individual, their experiences, and backgrounds, and with what they have learned through intimacy with Christ Jesus, and what they have received as a love response from God.

Here is part of what he now writes about the angel called Emma:

In the case of the angel called “Emma,” who I described as having mother-like nurturing qualities, some have automatically assumed that my doctrine is that I believe in female angels. This has never been the case! For whatever reason God chose to show me this angel in a female persona, He did. This isn’t to say that the angel was female. Angels are spirit and appear in many forms. Perhaps that’s the form God chose this angel to take for the purpose of the revelation He gave me. They are spirit beings of light, created out of God’s glory, without gender, and appear in whatever form God chooses to send them to us.

Deadly sins and blog boredom

Posted on June 10, 2008 by Peter Kirk

I admit to committing, at various times on this blog, almost all of Lingamish’s seven deadly blog sins. But I don’t think I have ever posted a cute photo. Somehow I don’t do cute. When I am tempted to admire pictures of babies and kittens, I think of what the baby would be like to look after and what the kitten will grow into.

Today I could commit another deadly sin by boasting to you that my blog has just passed the 100,000 visitors milestone. Well, of course I am guilty by writing this even in a hypothetical sentence. As this figure is from WordPress blog stats it probably means counting only since last August. In fact visits have been averaging around 1,000 per day (more during the week, less at weekends) for the last three weeks, because of the revival that Todd Bentley, or discussion of him, has brought to Gentle Wisdom. Several hundred people each day have been finding this blog from searches for “Todd Bentley” and similar. I am glad that they are finding what I hope is some sense about him, and not just the ranting condemnations which are so widespread.

But somehow I have lost the heart to boast or even to post about anything significant. Am I getting bored with blogging? Perhaps. Am I getting bored with discussing and defending Todd Bentley? Certainly. While the Lakeland outpouring seems to be continuing, I haven’t heard anything new from there recently. And I haven’t even heard anything new from the critics of Todd, just more mindless rants that I have mostly stopped responding to. And since I don’t have anything new or interesting to say just at the moment, I will not try to dredge something up just to keep my regular readers happy.

But I will report one piece of good news, even though doing so is I’m sure committing another deadly sin: I’ve won a competition! I correctly guessed which was Matthew’s lie, and am expecting a small prize in recognition of it.

Impartation and Ordination

Posted on June 6, 2008 by Peter Kirk

Henry Neufeld asked the question, in this post at Threads from Henry’s Web, whether there is some kind of impartation, analogous to what Todd Bentley offers, in ordination to the priesthood or pastorate. The following is adapted and expanded from a comment I made on that post.

First I want to look at some biblical material which links impartation and what might be considered the biblical prototype of ordination.

We do have at least one mass impartation meeting in the Bible, in Acts 8:15-17, where Peter and John placed their hands on large numbers of people in Samaria and they each received the Holy Spirit. In verse 18 we read specifically that “the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands” (TNIV). These people were already baptised believers but had not experienced the Holy Spirit in their own lives. This sounds all very like Lakeland to me, although I am sure many of the people receiving an impartation from Todd Bentley have been filled with the Spirit before and are seeking a refilling (cf Acts 4:31, Ephesians 5:18) or greater power.

Within church tradition (at least Anglican and I think Roman Catholic) this event in Samaria is seen as the prototype of confirmation, rather than of ordination – a blessing imparted by the apostles and so now to be imparted only by bishops, but offered to all believers and not just those chosen for office in the church; also it is not transferable in that those confirmed do not acquire the power to confirm others. In fact not even Philip who evangelised Samaria seems to have the power to impart this blessing; he had been commissioned by the apostles with the laying on of hands (Acts 6:6) but for a different role as a prototype deacon, in what is understood in the tradition as the first ordination to the diaconate – not to the episcopate, so he could not confirm people. Note, however, that Philip had received the power to perform signs and wonders (Acts 8:6-7), something which is in principle available to all Spirit-filled believers, not just ordained clergy.

Now it is interesting to see what Simon the sorcerer made of this, in Acts 8:18-19. Presumably he received along with all the others the impartation which was not transferable, analogous to confirmation. But he wanted more, and made the serious mistake of offering money for it. What he wanted was the transferred power to impart the Holy Spirit to others, or in the terms of church tradition he wanted to be ordained or consecrated to the episcopate so that he could confirm others. Peter and John, as apostles, could presumably have performed this impartation, but for very good reasons refused to do so. So, whereas the non-transferable impartation was offered to freely to all who believed, the transferable impartation was carefully guarded.

It is not entirely clear how, if by any human means, the power to impart the Holy Spirit was passed outside the immediate circle of the apostles. We can surmise that when the apostles sent Barnabas to Antioch (Acts 11:22) he was given this power of transferable impartation; or, in traditional terms, he was consecrated bishop. When later (Acts 13:2-3) he and Saul/Paul were commissioned with laying on of hands for their missionary journeys, it may be that Saul was also given this power; certainly by the time he gets to Ephesus (Acts 19:6) Paul is able to pray for people to be filled with the Holy Spirit. However, Paul insists that he received his apostleship direct from the risen Christ, and not from the original apostles (Galatians 1:1). Paul seems to have passed his commissioning on to Timothy in some kind of ceremony of impartation (2 Timothy 1:6), and he and Titus (Titus 1:5) seem to have had the right to appoint elders and “bishops”.

This is, I suppose, the biblical basis for the (Roman and Anglo-) Catholic concept of the apostolic succession, that true bishops and priests must be ordained through an unbroken succession of laying on of hands from the apostles. Most Protestant Christians do not consider this necessary, and indeed do not have bishops. The ordination Henry Neufeld referred to was into the United Methodist Church which does have bishops, but they are not in the proper apostolic succession because the first American Methodist bishops were ordained by John Wesley, who was a priest, not a bishop. Interestingly, some charismatic and Pentecostal denominations, such as the one which consecrated Bishop Michael Reid, do consider it important to have bishops in a genuine apostolic succession.

Now while I would be surprised if Todd Bentley actually considers the apostolic succession to be important, his concept of transferable impartation seems to be in the same tradition. He believes in and practises laying hands, or cloths, on people so that they receive for themselves not only filling with the Holy Spirit but also the power to pass this impartation on to others.

Now an interesting corollary of the traditional apostolic succession teaching is that if one rogue bishop chose to ordain or consecrate everyone at mass meetings and taught them to do the same, a situation could quite quickly come about in which millions of believers worldwide became bishops and would have to be recognised as such by the Catholic churches. One might however argue that this rogue bishop would be doing the right thing, in fulfilment of Moses’ prayer in Numbers 11:29 and Joel’s prophecy quoted in Acts 2:17-21, which foresee a universal outpouring of the Holy Spirit not restricted by the limited number of apostles who could mediate it.

What Todd seems to be doing is what the rogue bishop might do. Now I don’t mean to suggest that Todd actually stands in any literal apostolic succession, although that is possible. But he seems to be offering a transferable impartation to all, and teaching all to pass it on to others. On the traditional understanding he is consecrating all and sundry as bishops. In this way the impartation will soon make its way to every Christian worldwide who is willing to receive it.

Of course this begs the question of whether the impartation, what is passed on by laying on of hands, is in any way real in the spiritual realm. On that issue all I can say is that this kind of impartation does seem to have been significant to the apostles – also that thousands of people including myself have experienced something real if subjective when given the Todd Bentley impartation either directly or indirectly.

One lesson we can learn from all this is that there are no neat rules or formulae for how this kind of impartation works. God is not bound the apostolic succession but can do a new thing. As he raised up Paul independently of the established apostles, so he can also raise up new leaders even from stones (compare Luke 3:8), people like John Wesley, who was never a bishop, and apparently Todd Bentley. And given the weakness and apostasy of so many bishops in what remains of the original apostolic succession, at least the Anglican branch of it, it would hardly be surprising if God raised up a new source of transferable impartation which he chooses to use to pour out his Spirit on a needy world.

Violence and the Kingdom – and Todd Bentley again

Posted on June 5, 2008 by Peter Kirk

Roger Mugs writes about How I long to be a violent man, based on Matthew 11:12:

This is such a great verse just because it’s so strange. But the more I read it, the clearer to me it becomes that I am called to be a violent man taking hold the kingdom of heaven.

If this really is THE battle for the kingdom, through powers and such that we cannot see, then how passive of a role am I playing? Every time I come across this verse I’m reminded just how weak my prayer life is, and how forceful it should be. I want to be a violent man, a forceful man, I want the Lord’s enemies to be freaked out when I enter into battle with them. …

Wake us up to our wimpyness. Lord make us violent fighters taking hold of your kingdom by force.

Indeed! At first this post seemed so strange that I wondered if Roger was being satirical, but on closer reading I realise that he is both sincere and correct.

Now I don’t think Roger had Todd Bentley in mind when he wrote this a few days ago. But I was immediately reminded of the criticism that has been levelled at Todd that he uses violent methods in healing. In this comment CharismaticSceptic was the first of several people to send me a link to this video in which Todd tells of occasions when he used forceful methods in healing. On this CharismaticSceptic comments:

I’m sorry, but I cannot accept that this is how a minister of the gospel should behave, and have to seriously question if the voice Todd is hearing is that of the Lord.

Well, at the time I didn’t think of quoting Matthew 11:12 in response, but because C.S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian was in the news (I haven’t seen the film yet) I offered this quote from the book (pp. 133-134 of my copy):

Aslan pounced. Have you ever seen a very young kitten being carried in the mother cat’s mouth? It was like that. The Dwarf, hunched up in a little, miserable ball, hung from Aslan’s mouth. The Lion gave him one shake and all his armour rattled like a tinker’s pack and then – hey-presto – the Dwarf flew up in the air. He was as safe as if he had been in bed, though he did not feel so. As he came down the huge velvety paws caught him as gently as a mother’s arms and set him (right way up, too) on the ground.

It seems that C.S. Lewis’ conception of God allowed him to do apparently violent things to demonstrate that he is real. And from Matthew 11:12, at least as interpreted by Roger (and I know that there are other interpretations), it seems that Jesus also endorsed the use of violence in advancing the kingdom of God.

Now the world in the 21st century insists on wrapping everyone in cotton wool and treating violence against anyone (unless there is some rumour totally without evidence that they might somehow be linked indirectly with someone who has contemplated something which just might be considered terrorism) as the ultimate moral evil. And it seems that the critics of Todd Bentley have bought into the world’s thinking on this. But these are not the values of the Kingdom of God.

Wisdom about Todd Bentley

Posted on June 5, 2008 by Peter Kirk

I have been meditating, at first while commenting here, on these verses:

¹³ Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. ¹⁴ But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. ¹⁵ Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. ¹⁶ For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.

¹⁷ But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. ¹⁸ Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

James 3:13-18 (TNIV)

In some other translations verse 17 mentions gentle wisdom, the title of this blog. Note the contrast between this gentle wisdom from above and the other kind of “wisdom” from another place. Note also how to tell the difference: the latter is characterised by “bitter envy and selfish ambition” whereas the former is “first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.”

So what has this to do with Todd Bentley and the Lakeland outpouring? I have received hundreds of comments on my posts about this; all but a very few purely abusive ones I have allowed to stand. I have also read quite a lot of posts by others on this subject, some linking to my posts, some not. Some commenters have linked to pages of other material about Todd Bentley, only some of which I have read. Almost all of these posts, comments and linked pages have been written by people who profess to be Christians.

And, I am sad to say, a large proportion, probably a majority, of these comments, posts by others and linked material have been clearly negative about Todd Bentley and what is happening in Lakeland. Furthermore, they have typically, although with some honourable exceptions such as Lee’s comment (but much of the material quoted at his website is not an exception), been characterised by unreasonable negativity, judgmentalism and condemnation, often of a very personal kind, directed against Todd Bentley and his associates.

The relatively few good arguments that I have seen to bring Todd’s ministry into question, such as that he allegedly focuses too much on angels (or is it that his critics are focusing on just two or three occasions in a decade-long ministry when Todd has mentioned angels?), have been largely lost in the overlay of judgmentalism, of writing Todd off as a false teacher and an agent of the devil because of a supposed weakness in his theology – and in some case of vicious personal attacks on myself for daring to defend Todd. Agathos of Scotteriology seemed to be putting forward some serious arguments, but his aggressive reaction to my comments, attacking me for making explicit some obvious implications of what he wrote, betrays what kind of attitude is behind his reporting of this matter.

So, I’m sorry to say, the defining characteristic of these negative comments is bitterness and condemnation. In some cases I suppose that this springs from the “envy and selfish ambition” which James mentions. It would not be fair to suggest that it always does, but in very few of these condemnations of Todd’s ministry have I seen anything “first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.”

By contrast, the comments I have seen endorsing Todd’s ministry, and those expressing genuine uncertainty about it, have mostly fitted well into the model of wisdom which is “first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.”

So, I wonder, which kind of “wisdom” about Todd comes from heaven, and which from some other place?

John Hobbins writes, in a different context:

The old polemical premise of Bible thumperdom is that Scripture’s purpose is to prove that the views of an opponent are incompatible with biblical teaching. According to that template, the Bible is a bludgeon to hit someone over the head with.

The very people who complain about Todd’s apparent violence on stage seem to think nothing of using this kind of metaphorical violence in an attempt to knock out their opponents. Is that the wisdom which comes from heaven?

I’m afraid that the more I read intemperate and bitter negativity about Todd, the more favourably I think towards him. After all he clearly has the forces of evil going for him in a big way from the way that they have spurred people on to comments clearly characterised by evil attitudes like condemnation. Todd clearly has Satan worried! So, with enemies like these critics of Todd, who needs friends?

PS: One thing we do need to make clear about Todd is that he is primarily an evangelist. He is not a Bible teacher; that is a different ministry in Ephesians 4:11 and we should not expect him to do both. That is not an excuse for teaching what is wrong, but it is a good reason for Todd not attempting deep Bible teaching and for some of what he does teach being shallow. I take someone’s point that at Lakeland he is primarily preaching to the converted, to those who are at least nominally Christians, so is perhaps not operating as an evangelist. But then doubtless many of these people are nominal or backslidden if ever truly converted and so need the ministry of an evangelist. I am sure that Todd would also say that Lakeland is a special time for him for which he has been called and gifted in different ways. In fact there he is operating more in an apostolic ministry – although I would hesitate to call him an apostle because of the sometimes misleading connotations of authority in that word.

UPDATE: I just found Pastor Steve Hickey’s interesting series on the Florida outpouring. His first and second posts refer to the critics I have mentioned as the “seat of scoffers”, and also give clear positive stories of what he has witnessed at Lakeland. His third post is mostly a link to an hour long sermon on the subject (which I have not listened to), interestingly enough based on Matthew 11 which I have just referred to. His latest post is about the angel Emma, and concludes:

I’m thrilled to hear angels are visiting Todd Bentley. I hope angels visit you too.

Anglicans in Lakeland

Posted on June 4, 2008 by Peter Kirk

I have just been asked privately if any Anglicans, apart from myself, have been involved in this Todd Bentley and Lakeland outpouring thing. After all, in some ways it looks a very un-Anglican thing. But then there has been a long tradition of Anglican involvement in healing ministry, in ways which often differ more in style than in substance from what Todd is doing.

I did mention in a previous post that my Church of England vicar, his wife and two youth ministers from my church went to Lakeland. They returned last Friday fired up with the Holy Spirit and held “impartation” meetings on Friday and Sunday evenings. I missed the Friday meeting, but on Sunday night the Holy Spirit was moving powerfully. In these few days we have seen at least two clear healings and probably others that I haven’t heard about. I may write more about this later.

I have heard that there are a number of other Anglicans involved in this movement. But the only one I can name is Rev Mark Stibbe of St Andrew’s Chorleywood. Mark has written a short article on his church’s website about how since he returned from Lakeland in May his church has been holding weekly “impartation” meetings, with the inspired acronym FIRE: “the Father’s Impartation for Revival through Evangelism”. For indeed this outpouring should be motivating and empowering the church for evangelism, not just for sitting around waiting for crowds to flock in.

If you know of any other Anglicans involved in this, please mention it in a comment.

Lakeland in the news

Posted on June 3, 2008 by Peter Kirk

I was away at a conference for a few days, and I may report on it later. Since then I have been catching up. But now I have found time to get back to this blog.

Some readers of my ad hoc series on Todd Bentley and the Lakeland outpouring in Florida have made the point that these events have received little coverage in the secular media. I discussed possible reasons for this here.

But in fact there has been some coverage. In this comment I linked to several stories in the Florida local media. Today, thanks to an e-mail from God TV (which wasn’t really a scam, despite being detected as one because it included a hyperlink which did not match the accompanying text), I have seen this report at MSNBC, one of the USA’s main secular news providers, which gives a very fair picture of what is happening at Lakeland. Perhaps this is a bit late coming, but the secular media are being forced to acknowledge that something significant is happening in Lakeland.

I like the final paragraph of this news report, referring to Erik Thoennes of Talbot School of Theology:

Thoennes believes many Christians today are open to the idea that God might move in miraculous ways, even if they don’t embrace movements like Bentley’s. And, he offered specific advice to non-Christians who may be confounded by such reports: “I’d hope they wouldn’t get distracted by movements that seem odd, or by how goofy Christians can be, so that they miss seeing Jesus as the most beautiful, good, loving, just, true, person there is.”

Meanwhile I have discovered a great blog about what is happening in Dudley, basically one man’s stories of the healing and evangelism he has been doing there: Miracles on the streets of Dudley.

The devil, bad pizza, and Todd Bentley's healings

Posted on May 28, 2008 by Peter Kirk

Brian Fulthorp writes an interesting post on spiritual warfare, a follow-up to an earlier post.

What he says is mostly very sensible and important. But there is one issue that I would like to take up. He writes:

We don’t want to confuse coincidence with causation – sometimes it really was the bad pizza from last night and not always a Spiritual attack.

He goes on to talk about Paul Hiebert’s “flaw of the excluded middle.” But it seems to me that his own thinking is characterised by a version of this flaw. For he seems to believe that a bad stomach, like the one his wife suffered on Sunday night, has one of two causes: either it is a spiritual attack from “the devil and his cohorts”, or it has a physical explanation such as a bad pizza.

But this is a false dualism. The problem seems to be that in Hiebert’s worldview, at least as I see it summarised in this short article which Brian linked to, the two separate tiers of a typical western worldview have been replaced by three separate tiers. And by implication any one action must originate in just one of these tiers. So, to the physical explanations and the transcendent divine explanations accepted by typical western theists, Hiebert seems to add a third separate explanation related to spirit beings in this world.

Now I believe Hiebert, and Brian, are right about the reality of this intermediate spiritual world. But it seems that they separate it from the other worlds, and if so they go wrong here. A better picture would be of this intermediate world as the filling which links together the otherwise separate world into a united whole.

An implication of this for me is that it is wrong to say that any event has a cause just in one of the three domains. So, I would say, Brian’s wife’s bad stomach had a physical cause, perhaps a bad pizza, but it also had a cause in the spiritual world, the devil or one of his minions attacking her. And it also had a cause in the divine realm in that God only allows such things for a good purpose.

So I don’t accept Brian’s apparent dualism. I would say that every bad stomach has a physical cause. I don’t think I believe that the devil can affect stomachs directly apart some physical means. I would also say that every bad stomach has a spiritual cause in that such bad things are always indicative of the activity of personalised evil. Also everything is subject to God’s sovereignty and only happens because he wills it. In other words, every event has causes in all three realms.

I would apply this principle also to good things that happen, like healings. Here we come back to the discussion of what Todd Bentley is doing. I would hold that healings like those reported at Lakeland, Florida are ultimately caused by God. I would suggest that in them there is some kind of agency of good spiritual forces such as angels – and this would partly justify Todd’s interest in angels. And I would also say that there is some kind of physical cause of each healing.

So, I would expect that when someone who has been healed at Lakeland presents themselves to a doctor, the doctor will generally find some medical explanation of the unexpected cure, some unusual coincidence of factors which has allowed a complete recovery. This may be one reason for the scarcity of medical attestations of healing. Even the girl who was raised from the dead on the third day was probably, according to the doctors, wrongly declared dead and in fact just in a deep coma. But does this invalidate these things as miracles? No, because God who is in control of all things is able to bring together the medical factors to bring about the healing at just the time he wants to. If he chooses to do so at just the time that Todd declares someone healed, then he is being faithful to his promise to do anything his faithful people ask (John 16:23-24).

Now I don’t claim that absolutely everything that happens has a physical explanation according to the ordinary laws of physics. The resurrection of Jesus, which was not just the healing of someone who looked dead but was not, is a clear example of an event with no normal physical explanation. And the final resurrection of our bodies will also be such events. I suspect that this happens rather rarely. Maybe it happens in some unusual healings, what Todd Bentley and others call creative miracles such as regrowing of limbs – but see this story about how even this can have a physical explanation. I really don’t know how common such miracles are in the world today. But when they do happen they are a sign of something extraordinary, the new world breaking into the old. There is a lot more to explain there, but I won’t try to tonight.

So let’s avoid unnecessary compartmentalising of events, good or bad. Let’s avoid overblown claims that every healing involves a complete suspension of the laws of physics, rather than what the world might describe as a lucky coincidence. Let’s also avoid the scepticism which denies any healings, which so often comes from a worldview which does not allow for the suspension of the laws of physics. Let’s instead glorify God for the wonderful things which he is doing, even when he is using physical processes to do so.

"Reformed" perspectives on Lakeland

Posted on May 28, 2008 by Peter Kirk

I have posted a lot here about the outpouring in Lakeland, Florida led by Todd Bentley. And I have received a lot of criticism in comments from people, mostly with an evangelical perspective, who have apparently written off Todd on the basis of rumours that he is theologically unsound, and extracts from old articles and recordings offered out of context.

So I was pleased to find that not all “Reformed” evangelicals are following this knee-jerk rejection line. Several are cautiously welcoming what is happening. Thanks to CHARISMATICA for most of these links.

Adrian Warnock has posted a series (three parts so far, to be continued) by Jesse Phillips, a Sovereign Grace pastor in Florida. Jesse offers a fair assessment of a visit to Lakeland from a Reformed charismatic viewpoint. He is not overwhelmed by the experience, but accepts it as genuinely from God. It is unfortunate that he visited on one of the few nights when Todd Bentley was not present in person, which might partly explain the less than overwhelming atmosphere.

See also Jesse’s “Reformed-TULIP-Charismatic-Girl” sister Janelle’s report of the same meeting. She is disappointed that the teaching was shallow, but then Todd doesn’t claim to be a teacher, and presumably his stand-in doesn’t either. As Ephesians 4:11 clearly teaches, God’s gift for some people is to be teachers, and for others like Todd to be evangelists or in various other ministries.

The international leader of New Frontiers, Terry Virgo, has posted twice about Lakeland, starting here. Part 2 is the best analysis of what is happening that I have read. Terry points out that

God’s gifts are [not] proofs of holiness or marks of maturity given only to the most advanced Christians to demonstrate God’s approval of their spiritual progress.

So we can accept that God is working through Todd without endorsing him in every way. So, referring to Toronto in 1994-95, Terry writes:

What influenced me most significantly was not the extraordinary physical manifestations but the extraordinary lasting change that I observed in the lives of people I knew. Many displayed a new love and devotion to God and a new sensitivity to the Spirit’s presence. Some embraced a new commitment to Christ and his mission to win the world for his name. The physical manifestations gradually faded but the transformed lives have remained.

And he obviously hopes for similar from Lakeland. Of course it is too soon to tell about the long term effects, but there is no reason to expect anything different. But there is an important condition for lasting blessing:

Some who testify to a powerful surge of blessing now in their church through contact with Lakeland, say that this is not happening to them in a vacuum, but in the context of healthy local church life where eldership oversight is clearly in place, Biblical foundations are already established and a longing to reach the lost with the gospel is already in focus. Praise God! This is how it should be. …

In the midst of what has been historically regarded as authentic and powerful revival, Jonathan Edwards found himself exposed to extraordinary phenomena on all sides. He neither dismissed it all nor accepted it all but offered his own critique, sometimes defending and sometimes challenging what took place.

It seems to me that we do not have to take a stance simply dismissing what is happening as a circus or to only demonstrate alarm at the dangers that seem inherent. Nor should we naively embrace and unquestioningly accept the complete package.

For myself, I long for the power of God to be released so that Jesus might be wonderfully glorified in our generation. …

Amen! So do I, and with Terry I pray for this. Indeed this is what I and my church are looking for in our local area. Over the last few years we have worked hard on establishing the biblical foundations and stirring up a longing to reach the lost. Now, I think but it needs to be in God’s timing, we are ready to move on to the next stage.

On Friday my vicar and his wife and two youth leaders return home from Lakeland. That night (7.30) there will be an “impartation” meeting at my church in Chelmsford where they will seek to pass on what they have brought back from Florida. Sadly I will miss this as I had already booked in at a conference in Leicester from Thursday to Saturday, but another similar meeting with something of a youth emphasis is planned for Sunday night (7.30). We hope and pray that this will be the beginning of “a powerful surge of blessing” in our church and our community.

Todd Bentley and an angel called Emma

Posted on May 24, 2008 by Peter Kirk

212

In ongoing discussions about the “outpouring” in Lakeland, Florida a number of people have mentioned as a criticism of Todd Bentley that he talks about an angel called Emma. For the first time this evening I have seen some evidence of this. Ian Matthews lists this as his number one reason for being suspicious of Todd’s ministry, and he gives a link to an article which Todd wrote in 2003. Ian says that Emma

apparently ministers in his revival meetings.

But what does Todd really have to say about Emma? I quote in full the section from the article with the only mentions of Emma:

EMMA, ANGEL OF THE PROPHETIC

Now let me talk about an angelic experience with Emma. Twice Bob Jones asked me about this angel that was in Kansas City in 1980: “Todd, have you ever seen the angel by the name of Emma?” He asked me as if he expected that this angel was appearing to me. Surprised, I said, “Bob, who is Emma?” He told me that Emma was the angel that helped birth and start the whole prophetic movement in Kansas City in the 1980s. She was a mothering-type angel that helped nurture the prophetic as it broke out. Within a few weeks of Bob asking me about Emma, I was in a service in Beulah, North Dakota. In the middle of the service I was in conversation with Ivan and another person when in walks Emma. As I stared at the angel with open eyes, the Lord said, “Here’s Emma.” I’m not kidding. She floated a couple of inches off the floor. It was almost like Kathryn Khulman in those old videos when she wore a white dress and looked like she was gliding across the platform. Emma appeared beautiful and young-about 22 years old-but she was old at the same time. She seemed to carry the wisdom, virtue and grace of Proverbs 31 on her life.

She glided into the room, emitting brilliant light and colors. Emma carried these bags and began pulling gold out of them. Then, as she walked up and down the aisles of the church, she began putting gold dust on people. “God, what is happening?” I asked. The Lord answered: “She is releasing the gold, which is both the revelation and the financial breakthrough that I am bringing into this church. I want you to prophecy that Emma showed up in this service-the same angel that appeared in Kansas city-as a sign that I am endorsing and releasing a prophetic spirit in the church.” See, when angels come, they always come for a reason; we need to actually ask God what the purpose is. Within three weeks of that visitation, the church had given me the biggest offering I had ever received to that point in my ministry. Thousands of dollars! Thousands! Even though the entire community consisted of only three thousand people, weeks after I left the church the pastor testified that the church offerings had either doubled or tripled.

During this visitation the pastor’s wife (it was an AOG church) got totally whacked by the Holy Ghost- she began running around barking like a dog or squawking like a chicken as a powerful prophetic spirit came on her. Also, as this prophetic anointing came on her, she started getting phone numbers of complete strangers and calling them up on the telephone and prophesying over them. She would tell them that God gave her their telephone number and then would give them words of knowledge. Complete strangers. Then angels started showing up in the church.

I believe Emma released a financial and prophetic anointing in that place. That was the first angel that I have ever seen in the form of a woman. Some angels I’ve seen seemed like they were neither male nor female. However, Emma appeared as a woman who was like a Deborah, like a mother in Zion. When she came, she began to mentor, nurture and opened up a prophetic well. The people in the church began having trances and visions and the pastor began getting words of knowledge and moving in healing. That congregation also saw more financial breakthrough than they had ever seen before.

What can we make of this? First, Todd, as quite a young Christian, was told about Emma by the respected leader Bob Jones. Soon after this Todd saw a vision which he understood to be this same Emma. So if this is an error, it is Bob’s error, only taken on second hand by Todd. This is the same Bob Jones who last week prophesied over Trevor Baker in the YouTube clip which I linked to before.

Second, this angel is seen to distribute gold dust. But I note that this is a vision of an angel, and presumably the gold dust is also visionary, not literal. In the vision it is clearly symbolic of the generosity which came to this congregation leading them to make a large offering. So there is no call for the mockery I have seen that people should collect the gold dust to raise money for the poor. In fact it seems that Todd’s meetings bring in plenty of money for his work for the poor quite apart from the gold dust.

Third, it is an unwarranted generalisation to write that Emma “apparently ministers in his revival meetings” on the basis of an account of just one occasion when she turned up at a meeting. There is no indication that Todd ever saw her again. I have seen no suggestion that she has been reported as ministering at Lakeland.

So, what is the issue here which has made this such a stumbling block for Ian and others? Is it the idea that angels have names? But that is biblical: the angels Michael and Gabriel are named in Scripture. Is it the apparently modern form of this angel’s name? Well, Emma is a modern name I think, but it might well be an adaptation of the Hebrew word AMMA, which means “cubit”, or AMA “female servant”, both of which would be appropriate names for an angel – “cubit” being suitable for the measuring angel of Ezekiel 40-47 and Revelation 21. Or is the problem that this angel is apparently female? Well, I accept that there may be no explicitly female angels in the Bible, but arguments from silence like that are very dangerous. Or perhaps the problem is simply that Todd is seeing angels at all? But since the apostles, Philip, Cornelius, Peter and Paul did (Acts 5:19, 8:26, 10:3, 12:7, 27:23), why shouldn’t Todd?

Of course the underlying issue here may be that Todd is claiming in any way at all to hear from God and to be in touch with the spiritual realm. For Bible deists that is of course a problem, and maybe that is Ian’s real problem. I took the term “Bible deist” from Jack Deere’s book Surprised by the Voice of God, in which, as I wrote then, Deere

explains how he moved from the position that God speaks only through the Bible to an expectation that God speaks to his people today, if only they will listen to him.

So, does Ian reject (in the words of his second objection to Todd) because of

The Gnostic overtones of special knowledge and revelation

any claim to hear God, or only Todd’s claim? If only Todd’s, what makes him special? If any such claim, then is Ian declaring himself a cessationist and Bible deist? If so, this seems to sit oddly with one of the core values of his church:

We are open to the renewing, empowering and transforming work of God the Holy Spirit.

Surely anyone who is truly open in this laudable way will be open to the possibility that God is really speaking to and through Todd Bentley.

As for Ian’s last objection,

The seeking after ‘blessings’ – it seems to distract from the ‘business’ of being the body of Christ to a needy world

– I have more sympathy here. There certainly are some blessing and revival junkies making a lot of this just for themselves. Todd can’t stop them turning up, but he doesn’t encourage them. What he does encourage is people visiting Lakeland and then taking his anointing back to their home churches. This is certainly happening in some places. This anointing is intended to equip Christians to be more effective as the body of Christ to a needy world. So let’s stop carping about it and seek the equipping for ministry which God is offering.

Gentle Wisdom

Thoughts on life from Peter Kirk

Category Archives: Todd Bentley