Film Warning: The Secret Life of Bees May Leave Dangerous Sting

Here’s an important warning from Lighthouse Trails blog.  I would like to add that Sue Monk Kidd started out on her path to decption by doing contemplative prayer. 

 

Film Warning: The Secret Life of Bees May Leave Dangerous StingCategory: * New Age Movies/Films
  Source:  Editors at Lighthouse Trails

Many will no doubt find The Secret Life of Bees, a new film which opened in theaters this month, to be a heart-warming, endearing movie, but behind the outward storyline lies a New Age theme and a spiritually dangerous sting.

 

The film is based on former Guideposts contributor Sue Monk Kidd’s best-selling book, The Secret Life of Bees. Monk Kidd, once a conservative Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher, now worships the goddess Sophia (a New Age, mystical concept of “God”). Her new spirituality began to take form when she started reading Thomas Merton. From there she started practicing eastern meditation and eventually moved into the Divine Feminine/goddess-within camp.

The Fox Searchlight film has woven within its seams the representation of the Black Madonna. Most viewers will have no idea what the Black Madonna stands for. Monk Kidd discusses her role:

As I began the novel, I wanted the driving impetus in Lily’s life [the girl in the film/book] to be the search for home and for her mother. But clearly in the back of mind, I knew there was a less tangible, more symbolic search for home and mother that needed to take place: a coming home to herself and the discovery of the mother within. I knew Lily would have to find an undreamed of strength, and that she would do it the same way the powerful black women around her did it – through the empowerment of a divine feminine presence, in this case a Black Mary.1

In Larry DeBruyn’s expose of the best-selling novel, The Shack, he discusses New Age Episcopal priest Matthew Fox’s Black Madonna (much like Monk Kidd’s Madonna):

Fox’s description of the Black Madonna (or the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis as she is alternately understood) included her supposed leading of distressed people to find emotional healing within themselves.

In Fox’s article “The Return of the Black Madonna: A Sign of Our Times or How the Black Madonna Is Shaking Us Up for the Twenty-First Century,” Fox states:

Today the Black Madonna is returning. She is coming, not going, and she is calling us to something new (and very ancient as well)….The Black Madonna calls us to our Divinity which is also our Creativity. First, our Divinity. Because she is a goddess, the Black Madonna resides in all beings. She is the divine presence inside of creation. She calls us inside, into the “kingdom/queendom of God” where we can co-create with Divinity and feel the rush of Divinity’s holy breath or spirit.

In Monk Kidd’s book The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, she elaborates on the theme of the goddess dwelling in everything when she states:

Deity means that divinity will no longer be only heavenly … It will also be right here, right now, in me, in the earth, in this river, in excrement and roses alike.(p. 160)

In her book, When the Heart Waits, Monk Kidd’s spirituality is spelled out clearly when she explains:

There’s a bulb of truth buried in the human soul [everyone] that’s only God … the soul is more than something to win or save. It’s the seat and repository of the inner Divine, the God-image, the truest part of us. (pp. 47-48)

The cast of the Bees movie was on Oprah earlier this month, and, as always when Oprah promotes a movie or a book, millions of women will be drawn to this story because of that promotion. But before ladies buy those theater tickets with the hopes of spending a girl’s night out with daughters, mothers, sisters, and friends, they should keep in mind that they will be exposing themselves and their loved ones to a subtle but dangerous spiritual message and a sting that could have far-reaching effects.

Paul Washer’s 10 Indictments

This is one of the most popular posts right now on Sermon Index and it has been downloaded over 7,000 times since it was put up this past week.   Please take the time to listen to this important message!

Ten Indictments (A Historical 21st Century Message) by Paul Washer

Description: Preached Wednesday, October 22nd at the Revival Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Paul Washer delivers a urgent appeal to the Christians and Churches in North America that many have been believing a false gospel and have false assurance of their salvation. He lists 10 indictments against the modern Church system in America. This is a historical urgent message, tell others and spread the message. We need a reformation and revival of a biblical standard!

Emergency Declarations Smooth Way for Vaccine Makers

Published on 20-10-2008
Source: Kansas City Star Sure, the economy is causing a crisis, but what about anthrax? How about smallpox? In a little noticed move, federal officials this month have declared a series of public health emergencies relating to potential weapons of biological terror. On Oct. 1, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt declared an anthrax public health emergency. On Oct. 10, he declared health emergencies for smallpox, radiation sickness from the detonation of a nuclear device and poisoning from botulinum toxins, the active ingredient of Botox. There’s no clear evidence that terrorists have managed to weaponize anthrax or stolen large caches of Botox from cosmetic surgeons in Beverly Hills. But by declaring these public health emergencies, HHS has granted manufacturers of anti-terrorism drugs and vaccines and others involved with the products protection from lawsuits if the drugs were to cause unfortunate side effects. In the past, drug companies have shied from vaccine development because of low profit margins and legal risks. The actions of HHS are a necessary reassurance to persuade companies to make the drugs, and doctors and other providers to administer them, federal officials and some terrorism experts say. But consumer advocates see it as a giveaway to the drug industry that strips the public of legal protections. “It gives the manufacturers and other people involved a ‘get out of jail free’ card,” said Joan Claybrook, president of Washington-based Public Citizen. “These are potentially dangerous products. There could be a bad vaccine, and suppose people relied on that?” Claybrook asked. “There is no deterrent if there’s no liability.” The emergency declarations cover a host of antibiotics to fight anthrax infection, anthrax and smallpox vaccines, and a drug to stimulate white blood cell production in people harmed by radiation. Concerns about the safety of vaccines against potential bioweapons have been raised repeatedly in recent years. Some soldiers, for example, have balked at anthrax vaccinations. And a federal effort to inoculate 500,000 doctors, nurses and other health care workers against smallpox resulted in only about 40,000 volunteering for the vaccine. Health and Human Services’ authority to grant drugmakers liability protection comes from a controversial measure that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert added to a Defense Department appropriations bill in the waning days of 2005. The Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act targets liability protections for products used during epidemics and pandemics, or as security countermeasures. The HHS secretary can trigger the protections by declaring that a public health emergency exists or that there’s a “credible risk” of one in the future. And legal immunity can apply to anyone involved in the development, testing, manufacture or distribution of the drugs. Also covered is anyone who prescribes, dispenses or administers the drugs, including state and local government officials. Public Citizen and the Consumer Federation of America were among the groups that protested the bill. In a letter to Frist and Hastert, Sen. Ted Kennedy and 20 other members of Congress called the measure “a stealth provision to shield manufacturers from responsibility for making faulty drugs and vaccines.” As the law was written, it could be applied to virtually any drug or vaccine, Kennedy and the others said, and not just to the medications needed to fight pandemic flu or bioterrorism.

The Nanotechnological Transhuman Cyborg

For those wanting more information on transhumanism I recommend doing some research on Tom Horn’s site:  Raider’s News Network. 

Here are a few videos he and his wife did last year:

 

New post from Herescope:

 

This is the topic of a radio interview!

John Loeffler of the Steel On Steel radio program interviewed Dr. Martin Erdmann this week on the topic of the new emergent scientific religion of transhumanism and how it seeks to use nanotechnology to design super humans and super soldiers of the future: part human, part machine. Herescope readers have special permission to access this fascinating interview online.

Dr. Erdmann, a historian and theologian, serves as a senior scientist at University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland. On the radio show he discusses the ethical implications of transhumanism and nanotechnology. He is also the author of Building the Kingdom of God on Earth: The Churches’ Contribution to Marshal Public Support for World Order and Peace, 1919-1945 which documents the early efforts a century ago to set up a global governmence structure (the United Nations) via the mainline denominations creating a Dominionist mandate.

To listen to this radio interview visit: http://www.steelonsteel.com/broadcasts.php
User name: herescope
Password: herescope

Dr. Erdmann was the featured speaker at the Discernment “Transformation of the Church” conference held last weekend in Niles, Michigan. See the previous Herescope post for details on how to order CDs of his talks.

The Collider Project as a new “Tower of Babel”: Is Our Government Gambling With Our Lives?

This is something we need to be very concerned about.  I just finished listening to a series of interviews with Tom Horn and Steve Quayle   where they mention the Haldron Collider project. (Click to listen or download this 5 Part Series here: PART 1 / PART 2 / PART 3 / PART 4 / PART 5)

It is interesting to note that there is a statue of the Hindu god Shiva doing the dance of creation, outside the building in Geneva.  This tells us of the spiritual forces behind this. 

For more information go here:  http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/LHC/LHC-en.html

By: Ron Seigel

The most immediate danger to our environment and the greatest threat to our national security might possibly be something that is receiving little attention and something most people know nothing about. At the present time our government is using our tax dollars to help fund an international scientific project which might threaten our safety and the safety of people across the world.

The project does not involve our national defense. It seems to involve nothing more than the satisfaction of scientific curiosity and perhaps the exhilaration of playing God.

The project involves an attempt to replicate the “Big Bang,” which according to some scientific theories was the way our entire universe came to be. William Akbar of the Citizens Against Corrupted Politicians and I did research into this matter and discovered this is supposed to be accomplished by a $9 billion international project to build a special machine called the Long Hadron Collider (LLC). The Reuters news service was quoted on the internet as saying this miniature duplication of the Big Bang can “unlock secrets about the universe and its origins” and it might, if we live long enough afterwards.

However, according to some scientists, such a process may create black holes that could conceivably swallow up the whole earth. One of the main scientists involved in the project was quoted as saying, “We have been shown to meet all safety standards.”

Without questioning the personal honesty and good intentions of anyone in this projects, one has to wonder if there may be some psychological denial there or at least an all too human hubris in brilliant people that makes them unable to admit the limits of their knowledge.

Since the Big Bang, if it ever occurred, took place long before this planet or anyone on it ever existed, it is hard to see what human standards can be developed to assure we are safe when it is being reduplicated.

One internet writer, Lila M, noted even if this were true about the immediate effects (which seem to me far from a certainty) “The answer does not signify a solid answer as to whether we are going to be safe or not from what might happen months or years after this collider button is pressed.”

Medicines often have side effects that don’t show up for years. It has been written that scientists involved in creating the atomic bomb did not understand the lingering effects of radioactive fallout. William Akbar declared, “We know of many government experiments, which were callous about people’s safety. Nobody knew about them till years later. How many experiments have been conducted which were never disclosed? In what ways have people been affected by them? If the government conducts the Big Bang experiment (and if we survive it) will the general public know about the side effects or will we have to wait 20 years to find out?”

It seems safe to say that those conducting the experiment are dealing with forced they know nothing about.. This experiment is equivalent to a group of babies satisfying their curiosity by planning with matches. Indeed it is equivalent to a group of babies playing with hydrogen bombs. This experiment is a gamble with our lives and the lives of everyone on this planet.

Even if there were a remote chance of having the earth swallowed up by a black hole, I for one, would find the risks too great. I must add that as an occasional lottery player, I never once gambled with other people’s tax money and certainly never gambled with other people’s lives. This experiment is nothing less than reckless endangerment.

The only winnings in this gamble with the the collider seem to be satisfaction of curiosity. Without personally criticizing the character of the scientists involved, one might suggest that they ask themselves whether they are unconsciously influenced bya desire for personal glory and the enhancement of their egos.

The Bible said that “Pride goeth before destruction,” and this might be the destruction of us all. Cannot the nations of the world find something better to spend nine billion dollars on?

In looking at this project, one is reminded of the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. According to Genesis, the descendants of Noah tried to build a tower all the way up to Heaven, but God quashed their project, saying, “This is the beginning of what they will do. Hereafter they will not be restrained from anything they are determined to do.” Did this indicate a recognition that His children might get into areas that were too much for them to handle?

Jewish scholars commenting on the Bible suggested the problem was not building the tower, but the spirit in which it was built, and discussed this in very modern terms that we can recognize in our technological society.

“When a brick slipped [from the construction site slowing down production], people wept,” a commentary noted, “but when a man fell and died no one paid attention.” One does not have to be religious to see the danger in this spirit. A secular psychologist named Alice Miller described how parents become obsessed with driving children to achievement so they will reflect well on them. She might have written about the pressures of our materialistic and hostile modern culture, where people in general are not cherished for their own sake, but for what they accomplish or possesess and arelabeled either as a “success” or a “loser.”

With such pressures, Dr. Miller noted that many talented and successful people grow up feeling with some emptiness, that “Without these superior qualities, a person is completely worthless and can never be loved.”

Perhaps those involved in the experiment may want to consider whether this might have made them insensitive about the risks to human lives, including their own.

Ironically, if the collider gamble goes badly, all human achievements may disappear in one fell swoop: all scientific accomplishments, all ideas, all love and friendships and even moments of warmth, all poetry and plays and literature. Those who do not believe in something beyond our material sphere, will have to concede that there will be nothing left of all we did and all we thought, which can well be a greater reason for despair and an even greater motivation to end this dangerous gamble.

It does seem time for us to get the public officials who are supposed to represent us to call the bet off.. In this urgent situation, I urge people to write or call or e-mail some or all of these officials and tell them to stop all U.S. government funding for the project and to use the power of the U.S. government to stop other countries from doing it.

(1) President George Bush, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. 20500 (202) 456-1111, E-mail: comments@whitehouse..gov
(2) Senator Barack Obama, 713 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20510
(202 224-4854. The E-mail for all Senators can be sent by seeking an on-line form at www.senate.gov. Once you’re on it, write search box and put the senator’s last name and click gov.
(3) Senator John McCain, 241 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20510 (202) 224-2235.
(4) Senator Joseph Biden, 201 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20510 (202) 224-5042.
(5) Governor Sarah Palin, P.O. Box 1101 Juneau, Alaska 99811 (907) 465-3500
E-mail: google stateofalaska homepage . Click on governor, then e-mail governor.
(6) Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, 235 Cannon HOB, Washington, D.C 20515 (202) 225-4965 E-Mail: ss.nancy@mail.house.
(7) Senator Henry Reid, Senate Majority Leader, 528 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20520 (202) 224-3542. See senate e-mail under item 1.
(8) Senator Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader, 361 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20510 (202) 224-2541. See senate e-mail under item 1.
You may also want to write, phone or e-mail your own Senator or Congressional Representative. I also urge you to write letters on this issue to different newspapers and magazines, T.V. and Radio stations asking that this issue be covered.

As an old song on gambling noted, “You’ve got to know when to hold up –Know when to fold up, — Know when to walk away, — Know when to run.” My view is it’s time to run from this project. Fast!

Real Preachers of Genius: Seeker-Sensitive Mega Church Guy

Thanks to endtimes prophetic words for the link to this video.  It’s sad but true. 

 

Bentley Returns To “Probationary Podium”

This is too funny!

18 October, 2008

Lakeland, FL — The Fresh Fire Ministries Board of Directors broke its 2-month silence Friday regarding Todd Bentley’s seclusion. This news comes just 3 days after the official end of the “Lakeland Outpouring” revival that began on April 2, 2008.

Back on August 15, 2008, the Board announced that Bentley would “refrain from all public ministry for a season to receive counsel in his personal life.” Apparently, the season of privacy took 2 months and is now over. “Todd plans to revive revival. I guess you could call it a rerevival,” said a board member who wished to remain anonymous. “But there is a catch. Todd has promised to use more faith and less foot this time around.”

 

A TBNN operative working within the Fresh Fire organization was able to obtain the photo (above) of Bentley practicing from his specially engineered probationary podium. The probationary podium permits Bentley to return to a public forum without the Fresh Fire Board having to worry about Bentley engaging in inappropriate contact with donors, staff, or interns.

 

The probationary podium is a small cage-like platform which will allow Bentley to freely raise his arms, but not his legs. It comes equipped with boots bolted to the platform. Once Bentley steps into the boots and ties them, his feet cannot move. Apparently, the Fresh Fire Board has also asked Bentley to wear a yellow vest as a type of “fair warning” to rerevival participants. Much like the warning label on a carton of cigarettes?

http://tominthebox.blogspot.com/2008/10/bentley-returns-to-probationary-podium.html

 

Posted by Brother Slawson at 7:26 AM

Palin and the CNP

Interesting interview from the Threshing Floor with Randy Maugans:

 

“Palin’s Choice: Eugenics and the CNP” with the Collins Brothers [44:16m]:

Palin may be used to promote policies which would go far beyond China’s “one child per family” model—including mandatory abortion, selective euthanasia, and wholesale elimination of “undesirables”.

Part 2-of 2 »Part 1As we earlier reported on the Threshing Floor, The Council For National Policy (CNP) vetted, and championed the rise of, Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, as John McCain’s running mate. A logical choice to balance the centrist McCain, Palin brought to the table the critical Conservative Evangelical Christian demographic crucial to McCain in a tight election race. A mother of four who recently gave birth to a Downs Syndrome baby, Palin represents the epitome of the pro-life ethic of Neo-Conservatism.

But—does she know about the eugenics agenda that sits in the background of the CNP? Paul and Phillip Collins unfold the deep politics and social engineering designs behind this powerful “conservative” activist group. They probe the surprising links from globalist population reduction champions and the racism of Margret Sanger to this secretive seemingly pro-life “Christian” workgroup, and why Palin may be used to promote policies which would go far beyond China’s “one child per family” model—including mandatory abortion, selective euthanasia, and wholesale elimination of “undesirables”.

Christians still caught up in the illusion that the Republican political machine can preserve traditional Christian values on life need to hear this. Just as the wholesale endorsement of George W. Bush by conservative Christians brought us to two illegal wars and the atrocities against the Afghan and Iraqi peoples, so also a McCain/Palin vote may endorse a campaign of massive death among the weakest and most discriminated sectors of humanity.

http://threshingfloor.onevoicemm.net/weblog/?p=1186

The faith healer, his disabled wife, and a possible divorce

This article was taken from the Western Standard.ca blog

Saturday, October 18, 2008

It’s very unusual that someone that I wrote about in my Report magazine days (not once, not twice, but three times) would have since become an international celebrity. This past summer, faith healing Christian evangelist Todd Bentley of Abbotsford B.C. held  a series of “revival” meetings in Lakeland, Florida, broadcast worldwide on satellite, cable TV and the Internet by the British charismatic Christian television network God TV, which made him a “nine-day wonder” in the religious and secular press.

But then, the wheels fell off the wagon. First, an indepth report by the reporters of ABC News’ Nightline news program in July learned that Mr. Bentley—who had claimed not only healings but that 31 resurrections from the dead were connected with his revival in some way—could not provide the name of one person that Nightline could prove had been healed. The day after the story aired, Mr. Bentley decided that he needed an immediate break from conducting the meetings. Then in August, following revelations of some serious moral lapses on Mr. Bentley’s part, he left the revival and temporarily withdrew from public ministry for a time.

I can pass on some news. Ignited Church in Lakeland, the revival’s “host”, which had been keeping the meetings going, quietly held the last special meeting for the revival—the crowds have dwindled since the “star” left—on Sunday October 12. This must be embarrassing to the various charismatics who had predicted that “Lakeland” would begin to be a world-wide revival.

Is Bentley done? Hardly. Plans are already afoot to bring him back to full-time itinerant evangelism as early as late this year.  And Mr. Bentley, who announced on leaving the revival that he has separated from his wife Shonnah, after reports in the press of two “emotional affairs” with other women may be divorced by the time he ministers again.

I can also reveal one of the reasons, virtually kept secret by the evangelist, that may be tempting Mr. Bentley to consider a divorce.

It seems that, contrary to the impression that the faith healing preacher has given for the past ten years that he has been married to Shonnah Bentley, she has been crippled by a lingering disability caused by bone cancer….

Mr. Bentley, as I found to my dismay when writing about him, has a way of wording things when talking about his past and ministry that leads people to believe things that are not strictly true. I found that I could only get him to be entirely truthful in some matters when I knew what the answers to his questions *should* be before I put the questions to him.

It would be naturally embarrassing to a faith healer that his wife has a life-long disability. Alas, Mr. Bentley has artfully avoided an embarrassing series of questions from the press, such as “Has your wife Shonnah had any lasting health problems due to her cancer? She has? Have you tried praying for her? How do you explain that your wife continues to have this health issue when your revival allegedly raises people from the dead…?”

How could reporters seeking honesty and accountability from this minister know that they could ask such questions of Mr. Bentley  when he misleads his readers?  Anyone reading either edition of his autobiography, “Journey Into the Miraculous” would get the idea that his wife is completely healed—suffering from no lasting disabilities as a result of her bout with bone cancer at 16.

Mr. Bentley writes:

“Shonnah had grown up Catholic. She got saved   at 16 when the Lord healed her of cancer and a spot on her lungs. Several Christians, including some ministers, prayed for her over a period of several weeks and God blessed her with a miracle The nurturing of the church impacted her immediate family and they all got saved too….”

However, one would see that something is amiss with this description when seeing video footage of Shonnah Bentley on YouTube. She is the heavyset woman that falls after being prayed for Watch her walking and pay particular attention to her left leg in this video:

The above video may be pulled from YouTube once this blog post is circulated. Fortunately the same footage is also used in a YouTube video here posted by one of Mr. Bentley’s critics

 

Why Is Shonnah Bentley hobbling? She has no left knee.

Doctors at a Vancouver hospital took out her left knee when she was 16. Now, her left leg is held together by a straight metal rod to just above her ankle.

I do not blame Shonnah Bentley. She seems to be a honest lady.  Whether she has been deliberately kept in the background until recent weeks I cannot say. Yet, have another look at what Mr. Bentley wrote as quoted above and then hear these excerpts from when she spoke at Lakeland’s Ignited Church on June 11, 2008…

[While her evangelist husband was speaking to large crowds at televised services at night, the church had morning services for those who had come to the revival and wanted extra prayer. These morning services were low key and although this particular service was apparently broadcast over Ignited Church’s own video feed, these video services were not saved on their extensive Ustream.tv feed page archive. I’ve obtained an audio CD of her remarks, which Ignited Church seems not to sell through their online bookstore.]

The service that morning was an informal interview of Shonnah Bentley conducted by Kira Mitchell, one of Todd Bentley’s “associate ministers”. Ms. Mitchell, in the process of asking Mrs. Bentley questions to coax out her life story, asks about her bout with bone cancer:

[The quotes, as you will see, are verbatim]

Mitchell: “And so, Shonnah went through over a ten hour operation and—do you want to share what they did with your leg?—as you can see Shonnah’s leg is physically unable to bend and maybe you’ve always thought like, ‘Why does she walk so funny across the stage?” or whatever, and so can you explain what they did? 

Shonnah Bentley: “So what they did is during the 10 hour operation they removed my knee completely in the left leg. I have no knee. And what they did is they put a metal rod from the top of my leg to just above my ankle and—just to fuse the whole leg together. So, I will never be able to bend my leg unless God does a creative miracle, but, you know, the doctors [say] I’ll be like this until the day I die kind of thing. They just basically fused everything together and the cancer was in the upper part of my leg so what they did is they removed the bone and they removed the muscle and they put the rod through just to fuse everything together and then I was in the hospital for a month after that recovering.”

Mitchell; “And Shonnah also had to have part of her lung removed as the cancer also spread to her lung and so she had part of that removed.”

It would have been very interesting, given that people were allegedly being spectacularly healed, to see Mr. Bentley bring his wife up for prayer in front of an evening audience. She was there one evening for sure, when several famed charismatic Christian teachers and evangelists came to Lakeland to “commission” Mr. Bentley into ministry. Did they lack faith, or lack consideration of Mrs. Bentley’s needs?

Bringing Mrs. Bentley up on stage would have posed a problem for the evangelist. Praying for a miracle for Shonnah, and not having it happen, would have implied that prayers at the revival were only partly successful. Not the best advertisement when you are trying to attract a crowd, I know, but perhaps more honest.

A spectacular healing of Mrs. Bentley, I note, would have been the “just one” person that the ABC News reporter was asking  Mr. Bentley to provide as evidence that his “healing” revival was truly, well, healing people. How unfortunate that he lacked the courage to try. [I’ll bet that Mr. Bentley steered the ABC crew away from his wife, as I know that their reporter and producer were on the ball and would have asked, “Say, why is your wife hobbling? Don’t you pray for her?”]

You see, Mr. Bentley’s theology has difficulties with people not being miraculously healed. Christians of all stripes can attest to times when prayer to God has helped people to recover from illness and times when it has not. Certainly, given the loving and merciful nature of God as reflected in Christian theology, and the several Biblical references to prayer for the sick, it can be an expression of kindness and mercy by the Christian to either  pray for the sick or offer them medical care or comfort.

Mr. Bentley, however, has moved from a balanced and mature approach to the subject to one that, while boosting Mr. Bentley’s alleged expertise in these matters, implies to the sick and needy that there is something wrong with you or your faith if you are not healed. 

In 2004 he issued a self-published book, Christ’s Healing Touch, Volume 1– which I suspect will be reworked a little and published with a new title, Kingdom Rising, by Destiny Image in the U.S. later this month. In this 2004 book, Mr. Bentley relates several stories of alleged “creative miracles”—instances where something brand new and whole such as a new eye was created from nothing—and then adds:

“I believe God wants to raise our faith to the level where creative miracles like these are normal events in our lives and ministries. He wants us to have a revelation of God as Creator so we can have faith to believe for, and to bring about, creative miracles…we will realize how easy creative miracles are…I believe a time is coming when our thinking will be so transformed that when someone says ‘I was in a meeting last night and people’s blind eyes were being opened’, we won’t be very surprised.”

“I have definitely grown in levels on healing in my ministry,”’ he adds (and remember that this was written four years ago). “I remember when [healing] a headache or back pain was intimidating. Today, we see people coming out of wheelchairs or being healed of incurable diseases. I am growing in my spirit to a kingdom place of authority in the area of creative miracles.”

Imagine the pressure this sort of mindset places on those wanting to be healed.

You may remember that Mr. Bentley stated flatly in his autobiography that “God” healed his wife. The whole truth, as his wife related in her remarks at Ignited Church, is that doctors may have had a great deal to do with it.

She relates that several pastors prayed for her to recover from her bone cancer. The added emphasis is mine:

Shonnah Bentley “….My grandmother called me up and said ‘Why don’t you come over to my house?’ This was before I had the surgery…She says ‘Why don’t you come to the house and I’ll get a couple of my pastors to pray?’ And so my family said ‘Okay’ because we were desperate, we wanted, we were willing to do anything…So, basically we went and my grandmother had these two pastors pray and I remember when we had the pastors pray that we went there and—and remember that we were still from a Catholic background—[that] they were praying in tongues so we were like ‘What the heck is going on? What are these people doing?’ We didn’t understand, but at the time we weren’t concerned about that. I believe that was the first time we really felt God’s presence.”

This is sometimes how Christians see prayer at work. In Mrs. Bentley’s account, prayer here, practically, is at least a comfort—if not more—to help the sick person. Yet, doctors are seen as working in partnership with whatever God may be doing behind the scenes. It’s not “either or” But “both and”. Balanced and wise.

Mr. Bentley’s own approach, however, has evolved over the years. In 2001 he told me, for a Report magazine story, that he never told people that they were healed and advised them to work with their doctors. Even a cursory glance at what was happening in Lakeland this summer, however, showed Bentley impulsively implying that people were “healed” again and again.

Todd Bentley’s wife Shonnah’s lasting disability is an opportunity for Mr. Bentley to learn and mature in his faith, one that he would throw away by divorcing her. There are many people who would like to be healed by God, but whom are not. Many Christian theologians and ministers have explored the issue of how God can and does work in and through a sick person’s life and witness even if they are not instantly healed at a revival crusade. As someone who likes to specialize in this particular form of faith healing   evangelism, Mr. Bentley really owes it to the rest of his audience to flesh out his theology.

If we presume that God would want to show compassion to everyone in Bentley’s audience, he needs to think of people like the man featured in the ABC News Nightline feature on him. The man, with a gravely ill son, had brought his son to Lakeland to be healed.  Due to the size of the crowd, it would admittedly have been unrealistic to expect Todd Bentley to pray for his son, or declare from the pulpit that God had “healed” someone with the exact description of his son’s illness. But, the man and his son left the revival meeting with no one having prayed for them at all.

When criticized, Mr. Bentley often cites the alleged woes of his pre-Christian past as a reason for people to sympathize with him. Ironically, his wife’s disability offers him a valid reason to get sympathy, as people would realize that God does not have to heal someone to do good things through them. (The audiences that Shonnah Bentley has begun to speak to as part of Fresh Fire’s work may attest to that.)  Mr. Bentley’s actions this summer show that he is “only human” in a bad way.  It would be much better for Mr. Bentley to be humble, acknowledge his wife’s disability, and thereby show his humanity in a good way.

Mr. Bentley must realize that if, he divorces his current wife in favor of a trophy wife, there will be speculation in the minds of some of his Internet and Christian media critics that one of the reasons that he is getting rid of Shonnah is because her disability embarrasses him—and moreover, that his  theology does not work with a wife hobbling along at his side. 

One hopes that he will do the right thing and stay with his wife. One can pray that he will–and that everyone disappointed by Mr. Bentley’s flawed revival will be ministered to…some day…

Posted by Rick Hiebert on October 18, 2008 in Religion | Permalink

propagating the well oiled machine

 

I spoke to an old friend last night.   We hadn’t talked in many years.  She was telling me her story…. another church disaster.  She and her husband had been very active … busy worker bees helping to keep the hive going.  He was an elder, she an “elder’s wife”, filling many roles to prop up the organization that calls itself the church.  The problem was they questioned things that were wrong and well….. you know the rest….  The queen bee stung them.    

 

I woke up this morning thinking ….. as long as we propagate the well oiled machine it will continue to run.  I looked up ‘propagate’ in the etymology dictionary and it basically means:  “that which propagates, offspring”.   So the question that is running through my head this morning is:  what are we propagating?  Jesus told us to go and produce fruit… FRUIT THAT WILL LAST.   We are called to make disciples.  It’s all about people and relationships.  We are called to assemble, not organize…. to become a living organism…. HIS BODY.   We can have an impact wherever we are but as long as we prop up (support) the organization, are we actually working against the Lord?  

 

The truth is out there… the truth is a MAN…. You will know THE TRUTH and THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE!