The Evangelical Sensation at the Moment

In April Todd Bentley of Fresh Fire Ministries in Canada began leading a revival in Lakeland, Florida. Intended to last just a few days, he has extended these revival meetings well into this summer, taking a small break after this ABC Nightline interview, but returning not long afterward. Very concerned about what is happening in Lakeland, I'd like to write about this Nightline interview.

'Just him and God'

In this interview, we learn that Bentley "defiantly steers clear of any organized denomination, any chain of accountability. As he sees it, it is just him and God." The idea of 'just him and God' sends off alarm bells in me. I am not so much bothered that he is not connected with any denomination, for I myself attend a nondenominational church. But the fact that he is not connected to any denomination for accountability and is not accountable to anyone in what he is doing in these revivals- again, alarm bells.

A person of Mr. Bentley's growing fame needs the accountability of counselors. (Actually, all believers need accountability.) That person can get lost in his own thoughts and ideas, believing he is walking in the way of God, yet, without the wise counsel of of othrs, can err in doctrine and even in conduct. He can be caught up in secret sin, as well-known men and women of God can be more tempted than other believers in areas of pride, self-righeousness, greed, and other sins, only to eventually fall loudly and disgracefully.

I can understand the idea of 'just me and God', I really can, having spent spent most of my Christian living that way. However, I can also attest to the freedom I found from secret sins and in incresing faulty ideas about God born of my own fallen mind and introspection when I began adding other believers into the 'just God and me' formula.

As Psalm 37:30 says, "The godly offer good counsel; they teach right from wrong." Proverbs 11:14 says, "Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety." Proverbs 19:20 says, "Listen to counsel and accept discipline, that you may be wise the rest of your days." Colossians 3:16 says, "Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he (Christ) gives."

'I believe miracles happen in their own time'

June Cochran (sp?) interviewed in this piece says Bently's followers pressure her to come to the revival and be cured. "They're not hearing what they're saying," Cochran feels. "They're saying something's wrong with us, and if we don't already have our self esteem already built up, then it just tears us down even more. Like we're not even worthy to be here."

I have to wonder. How many of Christ's followers would notice a woman like June Cochran, a woman who gets around town in an electric wheelchair, were it not for the idea that 'revival' is happening and the belief that people like 'that' are getting healed? How many of Christ's followers really see Ms. Cochran, beyond the disability to the woman, instead of a broken body needing to be mended.

How many of Christ's followers have seen Ms. Cochran and invited her to church, just as she is, no strings attactched, no expectation of healing, just invited her to be a part of the community of God, encouraging her toward repentence and faith in Christ and in growing fully in that relationship? How many respect her belief of, "I believe miracles happen in their own time", understanding that the timing of physical and other kinds of healing in a person are up to God?

How many followers will go back to ignoring the June Cochrans when the sensation of the healing revival dies down?

'Not a single miricle claim of Bentley's could be verrified.'

And how about those healings?

When asked by Nightline for verifiable information of just three people who've been healed (we just want three people, they said), Bentley offers a them a 'media package' with incomplete contact inormation and a few pages of incomplete mediacl records with doctors names crossed out.

Nightline was given the name of a woman whose cancerous tumor had shrunk upon returning to the doctor after she saw Bentley. However, her husband stated that this could just be a coincidence because she is still receiving medical treatment. He did send Nightline some of his wife's medical information, but with doctors names and clinics named obscured. Not a single miricle claim of Bentley's could be verrified.

I am concerned that the ministry of Todd Bentley is clearly spiritualy abusing and deceiving many. More on that later.


Pt. 1



Pt. 2

Update of Janet Rivera

Update of Janet Rivera

From the Fresno Bee:

Rivera cousin granted temporary conservatorship

The cousin of Janet Rivera, a comatose Sanger woman, was granted temporary conservatorship of Rivera this morning, which means she will be kept on life support for now.

see full article

Related post, A Waste of Life?

I Am a Hypocritical Christian

I think there's a bit of hypocrisy in the post I just wrote. As a Christian it is much easier to speak out against the errors of the secular world. The secular world almost by definition is errant. Without the redemptive viewpoint of Christ, its morals and ideology are fallen.

But what about when those in the Church are erring? What about when, in the name of God, pastors spew false theology, thus blaspheming God, and in grandiose manner, claiming the gift of healing and prophesy, mock, abuse, and financially exploit their followers, hurting most those who are hurting most- those struggling with disabilities illnesses, and other painful life issues? Who holds them accountable?

What about those who claim a secret message of Jesus, where Christianity becomes a life of good works and relativism, where the mystery of the faith morphs into mysticism, the Word of God is questioned as the actual Word of God, and the sacrificial atonement of the cross becomes, rather, more of a generalized sacrifice for suffering?
All kinds of Christians come together to march for life, but it feels to me that we are reluctant to come together to speak for truth.

Gerri McGhee of Abiding Life Ministries wrote, "Beware that now in many churches self-appointed prophets, pretending to be sheep, are working at redefining Biblical Christianity; treating the Word of God as if it were irrelevant."

And I've been becoming aware. I don't know what to do with my awareness. Who am I to speak out against my brothers and sisters, or at least what they are doing? Who am I not to?

What, as Christians, do we do in light of false teaching in the name of our God and our faith? In this church of billions, how do we, as Biblicaly mandated, go to them in first in private, and then, if they do not respond, let the church deal with them? Who are the elders of these elders who will love them back into the faith?

We can't just stay mostly silent as we have been- can we?

A Waste of Life?

In Fresno County lies a woman, Janet Rivera, in a coma. Not able to eat, she uses a feeding tube for nutrients. Not long ago, some court case somewhere decided that feeding tubes constitute life support. Of course, I disagree.

Either way, the county, her legal guardian, wants this piece of 'life support' removed, and had it removed for a little while. However, Mrs. Rivera lived longer than expected, so they reinstated her feeding tube to get a judge's opinion.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Rivera's family wishes to keep her alive. So, apparently, the county of Fresno can decide over her families wishes to take Mrs. Rivera's life.

The medical ethicist and legal experts interviewed for this article, continue to refer to end of life issues, calling this an end of life issue. However, Mrs. Rivera would not be at the end of her life had the county and these medical and legal folks not stepped in.

A person could live a long time with a feeding tube. Mrs. Rivera is alive. She is breathing on her own and she is not close to death. What is at issue here, is a judgment of her quality of life. The county deems it (her life) a waste.

A waste of what- money?

Her family feels that if she had more money or better health care coverage. While those involved in this situation say that financial considerations play no role in the decision to remove her feeding tube, some bioethicists say,

that regardless of whether money is an issue in Rivera's case, her situation raises a question that's impossible to ignore in the end-of-life debate: how to decide whether it's worth spending limited resources to maintain life support in an apparently hopeless case.

"The stewardship of scarce resources does require us to take resources into account," said Ben Rich, a University of
California at Davis bioethics professor. "But it has to be done
carefully."

from the article

Gotta love that bioethics field. I am currently reading Wesley J. Smith's book, Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America. This is what he has to say in that book about bioethics:

Medical ethics deals with the behavior of doctors in their professional lives vis-a`-vis their patients. Bioethics, as it has developed over the last few decades, focuses on the relationship between medicine, health, and society. This last element allows bioethicists to espouse values higher than the well-being of the individual and to perform the philosophical equivalent of triage.

...bioethics seeks to create a new morality of medicine that will define the meaning of health, determine when life loses its
value, and forge the public policies that will promote a new medical and moral order. More than a set of tenuous speculations, bioethics in recent years has ossified into an ideology.

So, bioethicists work to change our morals, people debate or blog in response, and Mrs. Rivera lies in a coma, her fate in the hands of her county, apparently. Should she be allowed to suffer in this way? Not really our call. She's alive, and we aren't supposed to end a life. We are supposed to care for the person suffering, and for Mrs. Rivera's family.

Harming the Hidden

From Daily News Brooklyn

A shocking video shows a woman dying on the floor in the psych ward at Kings
County Hospital, while people around her, including a security guard, did
nothing to help.

After an hour, another mental patient finally got the
attention of the indifferent hospital workers, according to the tape, obtained
by the Daily News.

Worse still, the surveillance tape suggests hospital
staff may have falsified medical charts to cover the utter lack of treatment
provided Esmin Green before she died.

"Thank God for the videotape
because no one would have believed this could have happened," saidDonna
Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

This is for real. This is what is happening in our hospitals and institutions for those with mental illnesses, developmental and other disabilities, and the elderly. This is not an isolated case.

This kind of mistreatment and abuse did not start with our generation or with the one before ours. It has been so since, I imagine, the beginning of the existence of such disabilites. Since the beginning of human weakness and false human strength.

I have lots of ideas about solutions, but I am no expert and really haven't the energy right now to cover them.

Some day I'll share my experience as a patient in various psych hospitals. The one thing I will say now, is that sometimes people in attempt to be sympathetic will show horror that I had to be in there with 'those' kinds of people, meaning of course my fellow patients. And I try as best as I can, without getting into much detail with them, to explain that the patients were not a source of fear or terror for me. It was the staff, well, to be fair some of the the staff, not all of them. More than them personally, though, it was the 'system'.

Years later, I became a 'staff' working in care facilities and group homes for those with developmental disabilities. Their stories and long term experiences in care facilities and institutions were mild compared to my short time spent in psych hospitals. The first facility I worked in was so bad and my experience in the psych hosptitals was still so fresh in my mind that I quit working there only a couple of weeks after I started and steered clear of that kind of work for many years. But I went back because something in my heart pulled me back there.

Thankfully, all of my other jobs, working with those with developmental disabilities have been in small care failities and group homes. Those places weren't perfect by far, believe me, they had their share of problems, but even a small care facility of three to sixteen beds makes all the difference in comparrison to large institutions and nursing home sized facilities.

While working for a six bed care facility, a nursing home sized facility in a town nearby us for men and women with developmental disabilities was shut down. After two deaths and untold amount of abuses.

Several of the former residents came to our facility with such emotional scars that my heart won't let me write anymore.

But here's an old news article about the facility: Choctaw Had Legacy of Abuse

This says much. From the above article, "The things that go on out there, while they are not excusable, they are somewhat tolerable because of the alternative," then-Deputy Health Commissioner Brent VanMeter said after the body of the resident who had been dead for six days was discovered. "What are you going to do with these people if you don't keep them there and hope that that facility is doing the best that it can?"

Here's a related news article: Care Center Bear History of Abuse

It's hard to blog through tears.