Friday, August 23, 2013

Picking Sides

In April 2008 Todd Bentley was invited to preach at a revival meeting that would become known as the Lakeland Revival. It would end six months later with an adulterous affair between Bentley and a staff member.  Bentley began an attempt at restoration with a committee made up of Rick Joyner, Jack Deere and Bill Johnson, but the committee abandoned the restoration when Bentley refused to comply with the process.

Bentley divorced his wife, left his children, and married the other woman.

Here are 4 Youtube clips.  The first one is of Todd Bentley being rebuked by several pastors during one of his meetings:

 

 Here are those who did the rebuking after they were ushered out:

 

Bentley has since moved to Fort Mill South Carolina where Joyner's Morningstar ministries are located.  Here is an interview with Bentley and his new wife conducted by Rick Joyner:


We are no doubt living in confusing times.

The name of this post is Picking Sides.  In the first video those two sides are shown.  Whether wittingly or unwittingly, we who consider ourselves Christians watch that video and take one side or the other.  If you pick Bentley's side, that would be an easy emotional decision as long as you don't think about it too much.  For sure you would not want to think about Bentley's forsaken wife, or his children and their view of this "Jesus" their Dad preaches.  On the other hand I find it striking how easy it was to make those rebuking Bentley look bad, like the angry ones, the haters, the unforgiving.  But does not love demand that someone do this?

Here is Bentley's new wife... "ministering":

9 comments:

Glenn E. Chatfield said...

Yeah, the elephant in the room.

Bentley is a false teacher, false prophet, and I really see no evidence in his teachings or his life that he is a Christian. So rebuking him does nothing to him any more than rebuking a pagan. But the rebuke at least brings to people's attention that he is 100% wrong.

Rick Joyner is another false teacher, and false teachers always stand behind one another.

I pick the side against Bentley and his fraud.

Susan said...

Sick!!!! This was hard to watch. God forgive us for allowing what is going on in so many areas today.

Danny Wright said...

It is so good to hear from you Susan.

Stan said...

I pointed out some really disturbing stuff from Bentley way back in 2008. And, yet, we're not supposed to call him on it, right? You're right. "Don't think about it too much" is the only way you can get there from here.

Anonymous said...

Sad that so many are following this man. This is symptomatic of the culture. Everyone is looking for their own little popes.

Danny Wright said...

It's funny. Following a Charismatic man trumps scripture; or worse, scripture is cherry picked to support the man. This does nothing to help the man but it does plenty to hurt everything else. Confusion! If we ever wondered how it would be that the Anti-Christ would be able to fool so many, there is a shinning example of what is to come.

Christian Ease said...

One of the last things God says to the people of Israel before four hundred years of silence after the rebuking of those that divorced the wives of their youth and marriage outside of their faith: Malachi 2:17 "Ye have wearied the Lord with your words. Yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied the him? When ye say, Everyone that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delighteth in them;or, Where is the God of judgement?"

He's still there and his judgement is true.

Danny Wright said...

Very interesting CE. I hadn't thought of that.

Anonymous said...

When speaking to the 5th and 6th graders about false phrophets and false teachings we explained to them what kinds of things a false prophet might say or do.

Youth and younger seem to have an idea of if there was a false prophet he would seem scary, or that it would be obvious that he is trying to manipulate scripture.

This is definitely not the case and needs to be taught to all in the church.