Healing Revival History and the Lakeland Meetings with Todd Bentley

I've spent some time praying about what is going on in Lakeland, Florida, with the so-called "Healing Revival" (Also known as the "Lakeland Healing Outpouring"). What I'm about to share will probably burn some bridges that I've been forming recently with various ministers around Michigan; nevertheless, the truth must be shared. I know I have a lot of readers, and that puts me in a place where I am held even more accountable to God than otherwise. Therefore, I must be faithful in my commitment to the truth even if it may result in fewer ministry opportunities in the future.

Enough setup--let's get down to business. Thursday's blog post brought the most significant influx of new visitors this site has ever seen; and in that post I made a solemn promise to you:

If this current movement is truly from God, then no one will be able to stop it. And if Todd Bentley is a false prophet, then I can guarantee that God will expose him for what he is. But unless this happens, I have to say, "Amen! So be it! May this be the beginning of the revival we've been crying out for! May the healing power of God be poured forth from heaven on a global scale!" If God reveals differently to me, then I will certainly speak out against these meetings, but I will not do so apart from genuine revelation.

Well, over the weekend, I believe I may have gotten some of that genuine revelation. Believe it or not, it didn't come while reading articles condemning the meetings in Lakeland--it came while reading things from the people who support it!

Of particular interest to me was an angel Todd Bentley reported to have seen, which another minister, Bob Jones, said was named "Winds of Change." Here's what Charisma Magazine reported about this:

Bentley, who looks more like a gang leader than the founder of a Christian ministry, came to Lakeland on April 2 and has shown no sign of leaving since an angel, he said, visited him the day after he arrived.

Prophetic minister Bob Jones told Bentley he believed the angel’s name was "Winds of Change"--the same angel, Jones said, that visited healing evangelist William Branham in the 1940s. (source: charismamag.com)

I don't know how much you know about William Branham and his healing meetings, but I see some significant correlations between his ministry and Todd Bentley's. So I want to give you a short history lesson about William Branham and the "Voice of Healing" revival of the 1940s and '50s.

This particular movement is rarely talked about today, but it involved a handful of traveling ministers who brought significant demonstrations of God's power to their meetings--and William Branham was a key player. David Harrell, Jr., in his book All Things are Possible (1978) said of the leaders of this movement:

Most were dedicated to back-breaking work and spent long grueling hours in the centers of the platforms of the big tents praying, clapping, shouting, pleading with the crippled to walk, commanding the blind to see....It was an exhausting, grinding, draining way of life. William Branham was a broken man after little more than a year; Jack Coe was physically exhausted at the time of his death; A.A. Allan, an incredibly tough campaigner, tottered constantly on the brink of psychological collapse; the resilience of Oral Roberts became a legend among his peers.

Why did these men suffer so much for the sake of ministry? People were genuinely being healed--there were even cases of the dead being raised to life. If this "Healing Revival" was from God, why did these men end up so mentally, emotionally, and physically wrecked?

Many Christian historians seem to offer the same answer: things often went downhill when these men tried to operate outside their specific giftings.

Where Branham was concerned, people were known to fall asleep while he preached--he was that boring! So Branham had his associate, Baxter, do all the talking. Baxter would preach the gospel, and then Branham would come to the microphone and start pointing at people, calling them by name, identifying their ailment, and declaring them healed in Jesus' name (there were no "information cards" handed in beforehand or anything else that could explain this--it was genuine revelation). Many documented cases of healing came forth with medical records to prove their reality. God was certainly moving!

Unfortunately, a series of events that started in 1955 led Branham down a dark road. His ministry faced deficits, and in 1956, the IRS was taking action against him for tax evasion (which he was actually not guilty of--as it turned out, some ministry associates were taking advantage of him. Branham was living on $7,000 a year even though $80,000 was funneling through his ministry.). As William Branham struggled with the emotional impact of these financial issues and the betrayal of his collegues, and as opportunities for ministry became increasingly competitive with the onset of new "healing ministers" toward the end of his ministry, Branham started to drift off the deep end.

Before long, Branham's personal doctrine was skewed severely, and he began to teach some heretical things. He denied the existance of the Trinity, he taught that hell wasn't eternal, and that Eve had engaged Satan sexually while in the garden of Eden. The false teachings didn't stop there, but it goes without saying that Branham's ministry went steeply downhill.

Back when Branham stayed within his gift and only focused on healing, God used him mightily in ways that we haven't seen since. But as soon as he stepped outside his gift and started preaching and teaching, Branham actually developed a cult following who worshipped him as Jesus Christ and baptized people "in the name of William Branham!"

So as I was praying about the current "Lakeland Healing Revival" and Todd Bentley's role, I asked the Lord what to think of it all. Please weigh this for yourself and feel free to confront me publically if you believe I was deceived, but I felt the Lord say to me, "Todd Bentley's gift of healing is true; but his method of ministry is unnecessarily theatrical and many of his teachings are littered with falsehoods."

After sensing this from the Lord, I started digging through Internet articles written by Todd Bentley, and what I found disturbed me. He shared more about visions he had experienced than he did about the actual Word of God. And never once did I find a place where he added a disclaimer like I did in the previous paragraph, offering his "revelations" up for scrutiny by the Body of Christ. Instead, he just spouted strange teachings--like when he said that he met with the Apostle Paul at his little wooden shack in heaven, and Paul told him that the Book of Hebrews was written by him and Abraham together as he had supernatural heavenly visits with this patriarch of the faith. (see the original article here.)

What?

Now, I have to be honest with you, I have had heavenly encounters myself, but I only ever saw Jesus during those visits. For that matter, the experiences I had always led to action--souls were saved, people repented, and even animals were raised from the dead--but never once did I come out of those encounters with a new teaching or some erroneous claim about something no one else knows. Not to mention that each of those encounters was somehow confirmed to be true (by an outside source) within minutes of having the experience. Heavenly encounters, visions, trances, and the like are real, biblically-supported occurrances that can take place in the life of a believer; but they can also be counterfeited by demons, and I'm afraid Todd Bentley has fallen victim to some of these spiritual illusions.

If you or someone you know has been healed as a result of the Lakeland meetings, praise God! You have not been healed by evil spirits--I believe this was definitely of God. However, be very careful about how closely you follow the words and actions of Todd Bentley. He is a Christian who has been largely deceived by powers and principalities in the spiritual realm, which has caused him to step outside his gifting. We need to pray for Todd Bentley that God would rescue him from the same trap as William Branham.

In closing, I want to make a few contrasts between William Branham (while he was still ministering within his gifting and God was moving powerfully) and what we see happening right now with Todd Bentley.

According to John Crowder (who I'm afraid is falling into the same trap as Bentley) in his book The New Mystics, "Branham never raised his voice when he was speaking, nor did he use any showy tactics." Todd Bentley, on the other hand, parades about the stage slapping people in the forehead and yelling "BAM!" I watched some of it on GodTV and was actually a little repulsed by his showmanship. One elderly woman fell over, and Todd said, "She doesn't know why she fell over!" The ushers helped the old woman up, and she said, "Yes I do know why I fell over: you pushed me!"

Also from Crowder's book: "Often, if the anointing was not present, Branham would simply cut his meetings short and walk out, leaving thousands frustrated. Branham sometimes did this if he felt the congregation was looking too exclusively at him to effect the healings." Todd Bently, however, seems to overlook the absence of the Holy Spirit. One person who I found in an online forum observed, "...when a severely inflicted person comes up on the stage for healing and doesn't 'fall over' when he screams BAM in their face, [Todd] immediately changes the subject, either by calling out another 'word of knowledge', or telling everyone that the atmosphere is changing, either an angel has shown up or a new glory is filling the place."

Likewise, Branham was not a self-promoter during the healthy days of his ministry. But with Bentley, I see that he is strongy promoting his meetings and telling the young people to get the message out through their MySpace and FaceBook accounts. He said, "Young people, announce it to the world!"

The Todd Bentley that I'm seeing today looks more to me like the latter William Branham than the former. There is nothing--other than the healing miracles themselves--that I can compare to William Branham when his ministry was healthy; but there are plenty of correlations with the post-1956 Branham, who taught extra-biblical falsehoods, was a self-promoter, and operated outside his gifting (leading thousands astray).

I love Todd Bentley, and I am not here to slander his name. I believe that he could repent very quickly and be used mightily for the Kingdom of God. However, if he continues on this path, I fear what the result may be. Please, brothers and sisters, be careful with Todd's teachings and so-called "revelations." I believe Todd has a healing gift from God, but that does not automatically validate his teachings. Unfortunately, his healing gift seems to add weight to what he has to say, and people believe him all too quickly. The only reason Todd can heal people in the name of Jesus while simultaneously teaching such odd things is that "God's gifts and His call are irrevocable" (Romans 11:29).

Please be discerning, friends. Chew the meat and spit out the bones. If you want to attend the meetings in Lakeland to receive a healing touch from God, then I will certainly not stop you; but PLEASE be careful to test the spirits and weigh every word out of Todd's mouth.

As much as my life has been impacted in the past through Todd Bentley's ministry, I, for one, can no longer defend it.