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.
That’s cool to hear that there was a story on it by MSNBC. They definitely are one of the big cable news providers here in the US. Usually stuff like this doesn’t seem to get much mainstream attention in the news…nice to see that this has.
Please see “A Call for Discernment” by going to http://www.justinpeters.org. Justin is an evangelist and in addition to expository preaching, also holds seminars on the “Word of Faith” movement. He has cerebral palsy and concurs with the apostle Paul, “My grace is sufficient for thee.”
You can view his brief overview of the misleading Word of Faith movement given at Southwestern Theological Seminary here:
http://www.justinpeters.org/demo.htm
To God be the glory!
Caron
Los Angeles
Caron, can I ask you, on what basis do you consider your comment to be at all relevant to the subject of this post? Todd Bentley is not part of the Word of Faith movement. He may have some teachings in common with it, such as that he believes that God heals – but then so did Jesus! Even Justin admits that “Not everything that the Word of Faith teachers teach is wrong. Some of it is right.” So, has he written anything explicitly about Todd Bentley or the Lakeland outpouring? Or is this simply an attempt to smear Todd by associating him with a movement which he is not part of? Or an attempt to publicise his ministry? If you want me to allow comments like yours, you need to show some direct relevance to the post.