A couple of weeks ago I invested an hour and a half in watching Lakeland: The Movie,
a documentary about Todd Bentley and the Lakeland “Revival.” You may
remember that in April of 2008, a preacher and revivalist named Todd
Bentley was invited to Ignited Church in Lakeland, Florida. The plan was
to have Bentley there for five days of revival services. In the end he
stayed for four months. What was meant to be a small, local event soon
saw hundreds of thousands of people from 65 countries travel to Florida.
Millions more participated through the Internet. Night after night
Bentley would hold wild services full of singing, preaching, speaking in
tongues, prayer for healing and miracles and, of course, the inevitable
collection of money.
The revival was marked by what were said to
be great manifestations of the work of the Holy Spirit—speaking in
tongues, ecstatic prophecies, miraculous healings and even the claim
that somewhere around thirty people had been raised from the dead. Just
about every major media outlet covered it at one time or another. Most
of them went looking for evidence that miracles had actually happened;
not surprisingly, not a single miracle was ever verified.
By
August the revival was beginning to slow down a little bit and Bentley
decided to leave Lakeland and to take the revival on the road. Teaching
that the Holy Spirit could be passed from him to others by the laying on
of hands, he would tour the country and take this outpouring of the
Spirit with him. But no sooner did he leave Lakeland than the media
exploded with reports that Bentley and his wife would be separating.
Apparently he had been carrying on an inappropriate relationship with
one of the women connected to his ministry. He and his wife soon
divorced and shortly afterward he had married this other woman. The
revivals and his ministry came to a screeching halt, at least for
a time. Continue at Tim Challies
No comments:
Post a Comment