Ichabod
July 31st, 2008 by Carl Thomas.I have been following a blog that has written a report every morning about the previous night’s meetings at the Lakeland Revival with Todd Bentley. His latest report is titled “July 31 Last Report About Lakeland.”
What began as a fresh, genuine move of the Holy Spirit is becoming just another Christian Conference driven by formula and hype.
Do people get healed and is the LORD still moving? Yes! Whenever you get several thousand believers assembled seeking the LORD you can bet He will honour that assembly. He will come anywhere that two or more are assembled in His Name.
However, the Holy Spirit and the freshness of what He first began to do, is no longer present in these meetings.
Ouch!
Possibly Related Posts
- Cool Testimony from a Pastor Visiting Lakeland - with 3 comments
- What Lakeland Tells Me About the Church #3: People Still Want to Believe the Bible - with 4 comments
- Read This Post - with 0 comments
I think this is an interesting point. There seems to have been much less focus on healing in recent weeks, and more on training/equipping. Todd has hardly been there, and the quality of preaching/teaching has varied widely in his absence.
Also, there has never been any followup to the hype about the June 22 - July 22 period. If you remember, Bob Jones told Todd that God would increase his presence and do amazing things. Apart from the “ordination” ceremony that occurred on June 22 or 23, I don’t remember anything truly extraordinary that occurred. I wasn’t in the crowd, however, so I just don’t know if there was one night or series of nights with an extraordinary presence of God.
Another thing: I wonder if the very negative Nightline report took a toll on Todd, or on interest in the event as a whole. I think Todd essentially vanished for a week or more immediately after the Nightline report, which is curious.
Finally, I don’t think there have been many reports of bona-fide healings being reported throughout the Christian or secular media. I haven’t reviewed freshfire.ca extensively lately, but I don’t think they’ve posted much evidence of healings/resuscitations, if at all. If they have the evidence, it should be clearly and extensively reported — by someone.
There have been reports of the fire spreading from Lakeland to other parts of the world - notably the UK - but detailed news of this hasn’t bubbled-up into the Christian media. This kind of news (credible testimonies), if you remember, was pretty extensive when Toronto was at its peak, which kept people pouring into Toronto, Pasadena and other watering holes for several years. The transformative experiences also resulted in a new wave of worship music, primarily from Vineyard but also from the Survivor and Newfrontiers groups in the UK, and Hillsong in Australia.
All in all, Lakeland has generated a lot of hype, a lot of criticism, but surprisingly little real news/testimonies from within the Christian community. There doesn’t seem to be the sense of a coordinated move of God happening from Lakeland, as it did with Toronto/Brownsville in the mid-90s (there were related, if quieter, revivals occurring in the evangelical world at exactly the same time).
It may still be very early in this move, however, which is something Rick Joyner just noted in his MorningStar bulletin. God may be doing something that ultimately is very different from Toronto/Brownsville, so we can’t judge this thing by looking at the last revival. Todd will be continuing to travel this year, to the UK and other places.
God may be preparing to drop another shoe, so to speak. I know there’s been significant discussion in Christian circles about the California earthquake earlier this week — the Northridge quake in January 1994 occurred the same day God showed up during Randy Clark’s initial visit to TACV, and Todd had ministered at Mott in Pasadena just the day before!
I think we have yet to see the real fruit from Lakeland; I wish things had been done better in terms of spreading the good news and refuting critics — but I know that an in-progress childbirth looks like a total disaster, until the birth is finished and the mom is crying tears of relief and delight.
[Reply]
This is interesting because I suspect that Todd himself has come to a similar conclusion - if not that “the Holy Spirit … is no longer present in these meetings” at least that this phase of the work has come to an end. See what I wrote here.
[Reply]