Category Archives: Individuals

Wisdom about Todd Bentley

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Todd Bentley's tattoos and baldness – and the dead are raised!

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At the risk of being accused of fuelling revival on my blog by blatantly posting on a subject which brings many hits, as Lingamish (now David Ker) was accused of doing, I will mention Todd Bentley’s tattoos here. Today I was watching some recorded extracts from one of his evenings, and he was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “JESUS Loves me & MY TATTOOS!” And his neck and forearms emerging from the T-shirt were indeed covered with tattoos, as I had seen before.

When I first saw this I thought that he must have got all these tattoos during his days as a drug dealer, before he dramatically became a Christian and started on his evangelistic and healing ministry. But apparently not. I have Todd’s 2004 book “Christ’s Healing Touch volume 1” (I don’t know if there is a volume 2), and this is illustrated with a number of pictures of him preaching and healing at various campaigns around the world, most in Third World countries. So don’t say he ignores the Third World! Several of these pictures clearly show his neck and forearms without tattoos. So he must have got all the tattoos within the last few years, when he was already a Christian in a major ministry.

As for what this means, I don’t know. I’m sure some people will see it as proof that he is of the devil. To me at least it shows that God is able to use powerfully a man with tattoos, and that getting tattoos is not an unforgivable sin!

These older pictures also show Todd with a mess of curly blond hair on the top of his head. Mike M wrote in a comment here that Todd was bald, and wondered why God hadn’t healed him of this. But surely baldness is not a sickness, but rather a glorious part of how God made some men “very good”? In a further comment I suggested that Todd was not actually bald but that he had shaved his head. But looking more closely I see that both are true. Some of the TV pictures clearly show very short hair growing at the back and sides of his head, but not on top. So Todd has done what many balding men do: he has shaved his whole head to disguise his advancing baldness. Why not? He certainly has more street cred in his appearance like that than as the boyish blond in the older pictures. Yes, I’m sure that is deliberate, becoming like the people on the street to win the people on the street.

But I must say I wondered if I should even post about trivia like tattoos and baldness as I watched bald, tattooed Todd taking testimonies. That evening, as well as several dramatic healings testified to by nurses who had brought their sick patients for healing, there were no less than four testimonies of people being raised from the dead. These included a stillborn baby, a woman who dropped dead in a gym, and a baby who drowned in a pool; medical or paramedical staff had given up on all of these but after prayer they came back to life. Most dramatic was the story of a three year old girl who was pronounced dead on a Monday night and came back to life on the Wednesday morning, in a hospital on the way to being cut up for organ donation.

Mike M asks why the mainstream media do not report healings and raisings from the dead. Surely the answer is obvious. Their reporters and editors cannot cope with this kind of thing as they, like most people in the western world who have been “educated” into a materialist worldview, don’t believe such things are possible. Indeed, as I wrote nearly two years ago, even most evangelical Christians in the West are Bible deists, by which I mean, among other things, that while professing to be Bible-believing Christians they don’t actually believe that God does anything in the world today. So for these people, as well as for those with a materialistic and atheistic worldview, miraculous healing simply cannot happen, and therefore any reports of it must be fakes. They are simply embarrassed by any proofs of genuineness. The media are dominated by people who think like this and so avoid reporting what they simply assume, despite the best evidence to the contrary, to be fakes.

Nevertheless, whether the media report it or not,

The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.

Luke 7:22 (TNIV)

Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of what the Holy Spirit is doing through Todd Bentley and others involved in this outpouring.

A revival of Gentle Wisdom

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All this talk of revival and outpouring at Lakeland and Dudley seems to have brought revival to this blog, at least in terms of the number of readers. My daily readership has grown steadily from 218 on 4th May, the day before I posted on speaking in tongues, to 856 and still counting today.

Some other blogs linking to my series on revival and outpouring or discussing the same issues:

Dave Faulkner: Welcome to Todd World

maggi dawn: An Unequal Blessing

the red pill: An outpouring on outpourings

Leaving Münster: Bored of Outpourings!

MetaCatholic: Still a sceptic for Jesus

The Simple Pastor: Revival or Jesus?

42: More on Todd Bentley

It should be obvious that I by no means endorse all the positions taken on these posts. Nevertheless they are all worth reading. I have left comments on most of them giving my reaction.

No dream is impossible

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A few days ago Doug tagged me with the Impossible Dream meme. Since then we have had our disagreements about the Dudley outpouring. But there are no hard feelings, so now I have more or less recovered and caught up from my tiring weekend I have some time for the meme.

The meme is a simple one: name your impossible dream. But this gives me a problem, because I don’t actually accept that any of my dreams are impossible. Unlike Eddie, I don’t have any sporting dreams, so it doesn’t matter to me that I am too old to fulfil them. I am probably also too old to serve in the police or the armed forces, or to train as an astronaut, but these have not really been my dreams. Well, doing a space walk would be cool, but maybe not impossible: in a few years time I probably could be a space tourist, at least inside the spaceship, if I chose to blow most of the capital value of my house on three minutes of weightlessness.

But most of the things I might even consider dreaming of are ones which would in principle be achievable for me, if I chose to put my efforts into fulfilling them – although I accept that for some of them I had better get on with it if I am not to be considered too old, or likely to die of old age first. For I have confidence, perhaps too much confidence, in my ability to do well in any area of non-physical activity which I choose to turn my hand to. What I don’t have confidence in is my continuing desire to persevere with any activity that I am not really committed to.

So, like Doug, I could dream of writing a definitive work of theology. And I would not accept that such a dream would be impossible. It’s just that I don’t have the commitment to such a dream to put myself through the years of advanced study which would be necessary first. Mind you, I am learning a lot from reading blogs etc, which, if focused more carefully, could well form the core of a useful book, perhaps more likely to be a cult classic than a definitive work.

So what do I dream of? I think I can honestly say that the dreams I have left these days are all for the extension of God’s kingdom – with just one exception, the dream of being happily married, which I believe is something God has given me to hold on to even through years of singleness and disappointment.

To say that all my dreams are for God’s kingdom may sound impossibly holy to some, but I mean it. The background for this is that I went through a period of depression during which basically I had no dreams at all, everything was shattered. I have come through this depression largely as a result of what God has been doing in my life. He did this in part by giving me new hope and new aims which are entirely for him. I was reminded today, by TC’s strange post with a reinterpretation which I don’t accept, of this verse which expresses where I am:

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Galatians 2:20 (TNIV)

While I don’t claim to be as advanced in this matter as the apostle Paul, there is a real sense in which I can say this with him. My old selfish life with its dreams has been “crucified”, put to death through years of depression, and the life that I now live is the life of Christ in me. Not perfectly so, of course, but to the extent that I can honestly say that, apart from marriage, the only dreams I have left are of playing a significant part in the work of God’s kingdom.

Now I don’t want to be another Billy Graham or Todd Bentley. I don’t really want to be an up front person, even though I sometimes dream of it. There is something of the frustrated leader in me, but that frustration would be satisfied by playing a significant part in the behind the scenes activities of a real revival or renewal of the church – as indeed seems to be beginning to happen. So I see in Lakeland and Dudley what may be the start of the fulfilment of my dream. Now this dream would be impossible to achieve by my own strength, by confidence in my own mental abilities, but with God nothing is impossible.

Well, what started as a not too serious answer to a meme has turned into a devotional self-examination. Not quite what Eddie and Doug had in mind. But I make no apologies for writing what I believe I need to write. However, I don’t want to pressurise anyone else into doing the same, so I won’t tag anyone else this time.

A visit to the Dudley outpouring

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In the most recent of my series of posts on the revival in Lakeland, Florida led by Todd Bentley, I referred to similar things happening in Dudley, England. My vicar and his wife, and a couple of others from my church, are planning to visit Lakeland on Tuesday for a week or so. As I am unable to join them but didn’t want to miss out on anything God is doing in the area of revival, I decided to check out what was happening in Dudley. At first, on Friday, I was thinking of going next weekend, but I felt God saying to me “Why not tomorrow?” I asked my vicar, and he said “Go, get as much blessing as you can, and bring it back!” So yesterday, Saturday, I went. And it proved to be a good day to go.

What is happening in Dudley, just west of Birmingham, is being called the Dudley Outpouring. It is being organised by Revival Fires, which is a ministry hosting renewal and revival conferences and also a local church. Trevor Baker is their main leader. They have been holding daily meetings for more than 20 days, since Trevor came home from his first visit to Lakeland. They have their own blog about the outpouring, mostly of testimonies, although this has not been updated for several days. Last week Trevor visited Lakeland again, and, as can be seen in this YouTube clip, was commissioned by Todd Bentley to bring the Lakeland revival to Britain, to be our very own British TB. And he arrived back in England yesterday morning, so the meeting I went to was the first after his return.

Dudley is nearly 200 miles from my home in Chelmsford, and the journey can be a nightmare. But as usual the roads were very clear on a Saturday and the journey took me only 2½ hours each way. The meetings were being held, just for the weekend, in a converted cinema, in fact a rather run down venue in a run down area, but at a strategic location at the very summit of this hilltop town – even slightly higher than the parish church opposite. The venue seats about 800 in the main hall and 600 in the overflow, and both were full last night. I joined the queue nearly two hours before the meeting was due to begin at 7.30, and got into the main hall about half way back.

I must say that I was not entirely impressed by the meeting, which was long, hot and noisy. The first hour and a half was worship, sometimes rather repetitive although not weird, a lot of it of the kind which encourages clapping. 800 people clapping for over an hour in a low ceilinged room left me rather dazed, and it was also rather hot and cramped. I was much more comfortable when they moved on to quieter, more meditative songs, and I was able to worship the Lord in a meaningful way through them.

Then at last Trevor Baker took the stage, and started by giving “words of knowledge” about healing of some quite specific serious infirmities. Those who believed they were being healed were called forward, and quite a lot were invited to give testimonies. This was good, but not what I had gone for. It was probably after 10.00 when Trevor at last got us to take our seats for his main talk. It was also good, but I’m afraid not very memorable, at least for someone as tired as I was by this time, so I won’t try to summarise it.

At the end of this they took up an offering, which was rather protracted but mercifully carefully avoided any prosperity gospel type teaching that people should give so that they get a greater benefit for themselves. Instead the point of the offering was clearly stated as to benefit others, to build up a “war chest” for future outpouring events. Specifically, they are hoping to hire the NEC in Birmingham for Todd Bentley who has announced his intention to visit Britain in the summer. The NEC (National Exhibition Centre) is the biggest such venue in the country, with 12,300 seats in the main arena, and of course is expensive!

So it was getting on for midnight when Trevor got on to what for me was the high point of the evening, the “impartation”. In Florida Trevor had been given a cloth soaked in anointing oil which Todd Bentley had used to anoint people at one of his meetings in Lakeland. Trevor then offered to impart this anointing to everyone present. This is of course a biblical procedure – see for example Acts 19:12 and 2 Timothy 1:6. This anointing was what I had gone to Dudley to get, so I was quick to go forward to get it – as was almost everyone else!

Of course it was bound to take a long time to anoint over a thousand people. How they handled it was to line people up across the front of the hall facing the stage, with space behind them. Trevor walked across the line touching each forehead briefly with the cloth; I reckon he was taking less than two seconds per person. At the touch most people fell over, and were caught by “catchers” and lay on the floor- but only briefly. For, as Trevor had warned would happen, after only about five seconds each person was encouraged by the catcher to stand up immediately and move away, so that a new line could be ready as soon as Trevor finished the old one. It was a bit like serving communion at my church, but faster.

Eventually, just before midnight, I got my place in a line. Despite this conveyor belt approach, necessary simply because of the numbers, this was a profound experience. The cloth touched my forehead with a slight pressure but nothing like enough to push me over. But as it did I felt the power of the Holy Spirit come on me and nudge me over. This is not the first time this has happened to me, and sometimes I have fallen over, although at other times for various reasons I have chosen to stay on my feet. Last night I let myself fall over, and was caught gently and laid on the floor. I felt God’s anointing on me, the anointing which had arrived from Lakeland only that morning. I could gladly have lain there and soaked in God’s presence. I wasn’t allowed to, but getting up and going back to my seat didn’t take away the anointing.

I think this was probably more or less the end of the meeting. It was for me, as just after midnight I joined the stream of people leaving to take the anointing back to their homes around the country, and the world. Some people I met had come for the day from as far away as County Durham, perhaps twice as far as I had come. By the time they got home it must have been morning. I made it home on empty motorways just before 3 am, tired but rejoicing and praising the Lord.

Was it worth going all that way for a touch and a few seconds on the floor? By the standards of the world it might seem not. But things work differently in God’s economy. There were special reasons why I had to be there that night, some I know (I haven’t said everything here) and probably some I don’t. I wouldn’t have gone if it had just been for me, or even just so that I could blog about it. I went, and deliberately asked for my vicar’s blessing first, so that I could bring something back which would bless and transform my church and my community. Already today in my church I was able to pray with many people, especially those I felt were key people for God’s work in this community, to receive the same anointing. Some said they felt the power; one fell over. Others seemed unmoved, but that doesn’t mean nothing happened. As for what will come of it, we will see! Great things are beginning to happen in my church, and we are expecting even greater when my vicar and the others return from Lakeland.