Didn’t our hearts burn within us?
I have heard people ask why Todd does not take his gift out of the church and into the streets. I have seen it written that he only sees these manifestations where he has whipped the crowd into a frenzy and there is some sort of mass trance.
You gotta love youtube!
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Here is what I would like to see at the Florida Healing Revival with Todd Bentley in Lakeland:
Anything you want to see?
note: This is not a place for critics of the revival. Your posts will not be published.
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There is another move of God afoot so that is sure to bring out all the people who hate God. Sure enough, Hank Hanegraaff has checked in on the Lakeland Revival. Hank Hannegraaff sees that people are having their faith restored in God, are getting saved, and healed and here is how he views the events,
“We’re in desperate times, and we’ve got desperate people. And they’re looking for a quick fix,” Hanegraaff said in an interview from Charlotte, N.C. “But all they’re getting is false hope.”
There you have it folks. Hank has played his final hand. Faith in Jesus is a false hope. There is no salvation. Jesus never heals. God does not deliver. To believe in the God of the bible is to put your trust in fables.
Jesus warns the church repeatedly to beware of false teachers. In fact, we know that the anti-christ will try to divert attention from Jesus to himself. Surely this is the foundation for the end time deception. If the devil can convince enough people that sickness is from God and healings are from him then he can set the world up for the anti-christ.
edit: I have made corrections based on the response by Michael.
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The Florida Outpouring has made it to the front Page of Lakeland’s newspaper.
“Tumors are going to be pulled right out of people’s bodies tonight. … Someone has a growth on their face, on their neck, a woman in this room right now. Put your hand on your face. It’s being burned off by the fire of God. … Somebody else uses an oxygen mask, and the Lord’s touching you tonight. God wants to open your lungs,” he said, while pacing the stage.
A line of people formed at the foot of the stage. Bentley’s assistants talked with them before bringing them up to Bentley, who asked a rapid-fire series of questions of those who approached him - “What are you feeling? What’s happening? Can you move your arm?” He labored over several people who said they had hearing problems, shouting at one, “I command this deafness - go! - in Jesus’ name” and asking, “Can you hear me now?” Responses varied from uncertain to yes.
I went there Saturday night and my report will follow but let me say this, this thing is real.
Here is a video the secular newspaper has on its site:
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The church seems to have misplaced the anointing that was on William Branham. I want to find it again.
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At about 2:00 the testimony of Shara Pradham. Check it out.
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Head on over to Mark’s blog and check this out. Here is a snippet:
We sat him down and asked permission to place our hands gently on his hip and minister Father’s love and healing to him. He agreed. We thanked our Heavenly Daddy for His love and commanded a restoration of the man’s hip. Straight away, he said “this is lovely, I could stay here all morning”. We asked him what he meant and he explained that all the pain had lifted away and he couldn’t remember when he last wasn’t in pain.
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So I am working the altar the other day when I went to pray for a girl. Instantly I knew that there was an unclean sexual spirit at work. But I did not feel like she was in sin. That may sound odd but that was my impression. I asked her if there might be some sort of relationship that she was involved in that the Father may not be pleased with. This was nothing heavy handed. Just felt that I had to ask the question.
She was vehement that there was nothing. I am ok with that. I don’t run a cult, I am not going to make someone come up with something just to make me happy. It’s the Holy Spirit that convicts, not me and it is the Holy Spirit that draws, not my words. I left her alone and continued working the altar.
A little later I came back to her. I felt like I had a little clearer picture. I told her that I felt like something had happened and God wanted to heal it. As I continued talking I told her that God would show her what I was talking about. As we talked I knew she was seeing it.
Often as I counsel people they begin to receive revelation. I frequently meet with people who want counsel and before they are done telling me the problem they know the answer. That’s just how the gift works in me.
So as I was talking I could tell that she knew what I was talking about. When I felt the time was right I laid my hands across her eyes and told her to see that situation. This is not guided imagery. I am not telling people to see anything. I never tell people what to do or what to see. I told her that I do not need to know what happened or what the memory was or any of that. She had a memory that Jesus wanted to heal her heart of. As soon as I told her to see whatever it was Jesus was pricking her heart about she started crying. I asked her if she sees it and she answered that she did.
I then told her to look for Jesus. The bible says that He will never leave us or forsake us. That He would be with us to the ends of the earth. That means if we are His, He is with us. When I told her to look for Jesus she started bawling uncontrollably. I prayed till the peace of God overcame her. I then asked if the memory had changed and to tell me what Jesus was doing to which she said,
“He is keeping my father from touching me.”
Selah
I wish I could tell you that I was shocked but I wasn’t. You hear lots of statistics about girls getting touched inappropriately but when you start to see how it ruins girl’s lives the numbers take on a disturbing reality.
I was in prayer about preaching a few months ago and the Lord gave me a word of knowledge that He was going to bring healing to people who were molested.
At the end of my message I told the 150 or so youth the word of knowledge. I did not pray for a minute before there were youth sobbing all over the building. Boys and girls. I wanted to just sit down and cry but I had an altar call for that and one other thing so they could have plausible deniability and the altar was full. It seems like a majority of the girls that have relational issues that I counsel were molested. I don’t know how many of the boys.
After the girl I ministered to this week regained her composure she began to make excuses for her dad, “I just want to let you know I did not get raped or anything.” She was protecting him. How sad is that.
I wish that I could hear preachers address this in service more often. Just cut your giving message back a few minutes once a month and say something like, “Men, if you are touching your daughter inappropriately you need to repent and move out of the house until you get some professional help. Girls and boys, if you are bing molested call the police.” The fear of the Lord would come upon those who are contemplating it.
I don’t know this girl’s father, he does not attend our church. I truly don’t know what I would do I he did.
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Now playing: Hillsong United - Lead Me To The Cross
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We had a little move of God this past summer. We had a little outreach to some urban young folks and saw lots saved, set free and baptized in the Holy Ghost.
One girl showed up and got right (I actually blogged about it here). What I found out later was that this girl had just gotten out of a correctional institution. I still don’t know what got her there but she lost a year and a half to the place. She had gotten out that week and her younger sister brought her to the meeting.
As it turns out, she had been accepted to a Christian College and had gotten a financial needs scholarship. Now she was right with God and was really excited. She was faithful to the meetings and grew in her relationship with Jesus. As the weeks passed she began to develop an unusual maturity in the Holy Ghost. We prayed for her and laid hands declaring that she would see a move of God at her new school.
The night before she was to leave she called me and asked if I would baptize her friend before they left. Her friend had gotten out of the institution the same time and was now going to go to the school with her. She had come down to make the trip with her. I had lead her to Christ a few days earlier and wanted to be baptized before she went.
I went to her house and baptized her. She came up out of the water filled with the Holy Ghost. We prophesied over her, declared things of the future, broke off things of the past and watched her glow that you see on a person with a fresh filling. I then realized that the roof was awfully close to the pool. 
Of course we spent the next half hour jumping off the roof into the pool. This may be the best benefit of working with young people.
All seemed well until I got a phone call a few days later. It seems they had run into a few problems. Without going into details, I later discovered this on the schools website under beliefs
Without meaning to be unfriendly or unkind to anyone, we feel it only fair to say that Pensacola Christian does not agree with the modern-day charismatic movement, and we believe that students who are a part of the modern-day tongues movement should seek their college education elsewhere as they would not be allowed to participate in or promote any charismatic activities.
That could be a problem! I am waaaaay beyond charismatic. And these girls got right with God under the anointing. They were believing God for a move of God in a place that did not believe that God moves anymore. As time went on people around them began to experience manifestations of the Holy Ghost. there were angelic visitations, sovereign deliverances, works of knowledge and prophesies through people who did not know that such things were possible and the leadership of the school was not liking it in the least.
Last week they were brought into the dean of students office and were given an opportunity to promise that they would not pray in tongues. If they did not promise then they would be expelled. To try to keep this story brief, these girls were expelled from the school three days later.
Those that know me know my intolerance for the biblical liberals who have disregarded whole chapters of the Bible by saying that the Holy Spirit ran out of power sometime around the 3rd century. But on another note, how cool would it be to have the testimonies that these girls will have?
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Now playing: Rick Pino - I Can Hear The Sound
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We had The Mission Tuesday night as usual. But things are never usual at an urban outreach.
I preached on living a double life and how Jesus never changes. I gave a warning about playing in the anointing and then playing in the world. I felt the need to warn the people who come and minister and then lead a double life on the outside. The Mission has become their God time break and then they leave and go back to nonsense.
Don’t fool yourself. Randomly pick 10 on fire young people in your church and visit the pictures on their MySpace page. I guarantee you you will find near pornography on many of them.
I talked about how you can probably live a mildly Christian life and make it to heaven but if you want to be part of the end time harvest it is going to cost you something. And if you throw your hat into the ring and seek the anointing of God, and turn back to the world, the devil will be waiting. Choose wisely I told them.
The conviction fell and I invited all those making the choice for Jesus to come forward for prayer. Among them was a guy I will call Jimmy.
Jimmy had come off and on. He has a (fallen) angel that visits him at night. Sometimes it tells him that he is Jesus. Other times it tells him to do really bad things. I am not making this up. about a month and a half ago he came and ran out of the house at the altar call. I later found out that the angel had told him to come to the meeting, listen to the message, and then kill me and two other guys. After the message he left because he did not want to kill us. Thank you Jesus! This guy is about 6′4″ and over 300 lbs (135 kg, 21.4 stone).
I was happy he wanted prayer . . . for a minute.
When I began to pray he almost instantly began to manifest. He began to grunt and growl. He clenched his fists and tightened his jaw and began to snarl. His eyes turned blood red and he began to stare at me as if I was a lineman on the opposing team. Apparently I had stumbled onto something.
I began to command the demon to stop manifesting and to come out of the man but it would not budge. When the manifestations would increase I would rebuke the demon and tell it that it could not put on a show. I would then command it to leave until it began to increase the manifestations again. There was a minute when the people kind of gathered around, stopped worshiping, and began to stare in wonder. Fortunately my disciple let them to begin worshiping God who is the only one who can truly deliver.
I have found that one of the keys to deliverance ministry is to establish that the enemy has no authority in the person. I normally lead the person in a confession regarding the birth, life, death, resurrection, and the second coming of Jesus. After this I tell the demon that they have no authority and that it has to leave. Sometimes confession of specific sins is required or the renouncing of sin, but you get the idea.
So I say to this guy, “Repeat after me, Jesus is alive.”
He says, “Jesus is a lie.”
Huh? Maybe I heard him wrong, “Repeat after me, Jesus is alive.”
“Jesus is a lie.”
Wow, that sounded pretty clear that time. That was a new one for me. Not exactly knowing where to go from here I say, “Say - Jesus - IS - ALIIIIVVVEE.”
“Jesus … IS … A … LIIIIIEEEE.”
Hmmm. I was a communication major in college so I can make a sentence more than one way. You want to play games? I can play games.
“Say, Jesus lives.” HAH! Try to mess that one up! Got you devil!
He looks me dead in the eyes and says,
“I am alive.”
Wow! Wasn’t expecting that one. We are now on uncharted territory for Carl Thomas Ministries (if there were such a thing). I pulled the ole ace in the hole and the devil trumped me with a joker. But now I was stuck. This thing was like engaging a pitbull. You can’t just attack it for a minute or two and then walk away. One of you is going down. And every time this thing would manifest this spirit of fear would try to jump on me. And I knew if I let it take root that this guy would split my head open.
And I really did not want that to happen. I like my head just like it is.
So I decided that since Jimmy asked for ministry, that was all the authority I needed. I grabbed this guys head with both hands and began to command every demon in his life to leave. I normally don’t use that language because it is not necessary. I normally just declare freedom and the devil has to leave. But we were way beyond niceties.
I told the devil to get out of him and leave in the name of Jesus. Then Jimmy began to cough so hard I though I might see his liver. You might not believe this next part but I then saw all these demons standing around looking kind of bewildered like, “What happened?” It was almost funny.
I had someone open the front door and I told them, “Get out!”
Needless to say a real soberness came over the prayer time and several others were delivered that night.
The devil truly is defeated and has no authority in the believer. We can all agree with that, right? But does he have authority in my appliances?
The next day my washing machine completely died. It seems every time I have some sort of spiritual breakthrough, something breaks in my house. Once I had a really seasoned minister who has been mightily used in revival come to dinner. The garbage disposal decided to die as they showed up. I have lost my microwave in these times, my refrigerator, my car has broken down as has my van and various plumbing issues. These regularly happen when I see these types of things. This all leads me to believe that the devil does not mind me so much but he hats my appliances.
Coincidence? Maybe so. But it is annoying none the less.
Remember that old Steve Martin movie, The Jerk? “He hates these cans!”
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I have told this story lots of times but have never set it to paper.
When I got saved, I really got saved. I was in my late 20s and had live a pretty wicked life. I had gotten out of the military a few years earlier and was in college. I went into a Charismatic church, got set free from the devil, and never looked back.
Within a year I was part of a rogue deliverance/healing ministry and saw all kinds of signs and wonders. We prayed for people all over the place and saw miracles in pizza places, hospitals, living rooms, and anywhere else you find people. I distinctly remember casting the devil out of a homeless man in the doorway to Winn Dixie before buying Swiss Cake Rolls to break a fast. (Oh the college years)
Within two years of getting free I was part of church plant team sent to south Florida. I was beginning to move in the prophetic in general and had a pretty keen word of knowledge. The church I helped plant was not a very healthy one but I was young in the Lord and I did not know any better. There was lots of judgment. I thought that was part of leadership. Maybe the leaders need to know the struggles of the people but this was something else. The church leadership I was a part of would gossip about people. If anyone left the church, all their dirty secrets would be laundered in an effort to discredit them and their criticism of the church.
Because of my critical spirit, almost all the prophetic words I got were filled with judgment. I spoke lots of words about repentance, sin issues, pride and rebellion.
As time went on our church became friendly with a man who lived in town who had spoken at Toronto. My pastor went there and got really blown away. Though he was not completely sold on what was going on, he knew God was in it somehow.
Several months later, Jeremy & Connie Sinnott, who were worship leaders at Toronto, were coming to a church in South Florida for what was billed as a worship conference. The congregation was odd to me but the presence of God was there and so I worshiped. On the second day of the conference, Jeremy and Connie were praying for some people so I was waiting for Jeremy (because I was a man and only men could minister to me). Eventually someone said to me that I should have Connie pray for me because she has a real anointing.
I went to her and she ministered to me what I now know to be the Father’s love. She spoke some words, laid hands on my chest, and I literally began to feel hot liquid flow into my heart. I could only cry. When she was done I could not even talk. I told someone that it felt like my heart was being circumcised. Strange indeed.
After that weekend a work of grace began to develop in my life. The hard prophesies began to be softened and I began to flow in a compassion I had never experienced before. When someone came to me for counsel, no longer was my first impression to find a reason to blame them for their problems. Before, no matter what you were going through I could always find a way to make it your fault. That was not the initial response after that.
So this love of God began to swell my heart but I had this problem. I had this word of knowledge that I seemingly could not control. I could look at people and see the sin in their lives. I only had to listen to someone for a minute before I could clearly see all their moral transgressions. This made it almost impossible to have meaningful relationships. All I could see was people’s sins. They would tell me they were fine but I knew better and I wanted to rebuke people so badly.
I now had this issue. I knew the love of God but I was getting all this dirt on people and I was in the leadership of a church that was constantly bringing accusation against everybody. There was no issue that could not be solved with a rebuke.
As an example. When my son was born he had a slight problem keeping down food that caused him to be hospitalized. It turned out to be minor but they had a hard time diagnosing it and he was quite ill. In the midst of this hard time I went to my pastor and told him that I was having a hard time and that I was being tempted with lust. While my son was dieing in the hospital he said to me,
“You know that this sin is the reason your son is in the hospital right?”
Blech! I have to spit that out every now and then. I cannot believe I thought that was godly counsel. (If that man is reading this please repent. If you go to his church, RUN!)
So I had this revelation of the love of God in conflict with what I was receiving and how I saw Him ministered. In the midst of this conflict, I took a pilgrimage to Toronto.
At first, I was really disappointed. The services were quite tame. The ushers did not let people remain in the isles during the preaching and most extravagant behavior was stopped. This was not the kennel I was told it would be.
There were lots of great sessions with great speakers but as I look back God did two things. The first was I got a revelation that I am exactly how God created me to be (this is a major post in itself so I won’t go into it). The second was almost as impactful as my time with the Sinnots.
In the middle of one session John Sanford said, “Just because you have access to the spirit realm does not mean you can go snooping around in everybody’s life. If they have not asked for your ministry, stay out of their business.” This is not a direct quote but pretty close. John then talked about how you can read people by staring at them long enough and how people today call that prophesy but it is not. It is soulish and does not glorify God. His wife Paula talked about walking into a room and picking up the burdens of every person in the room and that she had to learn to not allow that to happen. She had to reject that natural reaction.
This was revelation to me! Just as the ministry of the Sinnots revolutionized my relationship with God, this one little teaching revolutionized my ministry. After that time, when I would start getting accusations against a person I would have to tell myself that I am not going there.
God began to use me in genuine prophetic revelation. That is revelation minus the anger. Since the church could not bring accusation against me regarding my personality they began to tell me that I did not have a prophetic gift and that I was an evangelist so I should only bring prophetic words to the lost. And it just got goofier from there. Eventually the God I knew conflicted with the church I was attending and it was time to go (can you say deliverance?).
In the past few years I have had people tell me that I am one of the nicest people that they know. And I have people call me saying that I always have a word of encouragement. This is a miracle! I was genuinely changed by a few encounters. Now I have read books by lots of the people in this movement and have listened to lots of teaching series and watched lots of conferences online but these two moments were landmarks in my walk.
So when I hear people say that Toronto was a counterfeit move or that it was really the devil I quietly pray that the Lord forgives them. It really is a frightful thing to call the Holy Ghost a demon. Not an area that I would tread.
Were there things in Toronto that were off? Aren’t there in your church? Aren’t there in your ministry? Could you testify that every single person that has ever heard your teaching will respond in a biblically sound manor will produce good fruit? If your church sees a couple hundred people a year how many of them are fruitcakes that you could not help or would not be helped? Imagine if that number was a half million that came through. Give a little grace.
In the end, I know that God was in that place. They have since ended the nightly meetings and the crowds have disbanded but there are congregations all over the world that were birthed in a move of the Father’s love the same way I was.
update: this post was in response to a post by Michael at Charismatica.
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