Todd Bentley: Poser Prophet of Punch

Todd Bentley: Poser, Prophet of Punch and Divorcee. Good Riddance.

Todd Bentley is sometimes sarcastically called ‘Fraud Bentley’ by the more discerning critics and for so many good reasons. From what I can gather, the ‘long-story-short’ on Todd is that he claimed to have come out of some sort of hardcore life of prison and gangs, converted to a born-again life and was called to a Ministry endowed with amazing gifts of healing, prophecy, wrestling moves and even the ability to resurrect the dead. At some point, Todd Bentley bumped around with Charismatic Catholicism during which time he claims to have been possessed by demons (lots of them) and eventually found his way into the whole Third Wave, Joels Army, Miracle Channel, Kingdom Now, Dominionism, Five-Fold Apostolic movements. (Its like identifying the shapes in a Lava Lamp with these people sometimes).  Todd starts his own Ministry (Fresh Fire) where he preaches and evengelises and eventually hangs with Bob Jones and Patricia King and recently was invited to speak at some sort of Revival Meetings in Florida, USA. Now that's when Todd’s ministry powers and healings ‘blow up big time’ and Todd becomes the centre of what was called the ‘Florida Outpouring’ which is a way of saying his stage show was seeing a high volume of allegedly supernatural healings, signs and wonders. GodTV starts running these day and night as Bentley’s performances become increasingly bizarre - Todd throws ‘Holy Spirit’ like it were an object and namely a weapon, shouting “BAM!” as he struts his self-satisfying power about the stage. Todd screams the new tallies from ‘Resurrected Dead List’, a man with stomach cancer is violently kneed in the guts by Todd and in another case he boasts of how he kicked a woman right in the face as she stood at the end of the stage, another man violently ‘body-checked’ to be sent flying. Welcome to the Ultimate Fighter Championship of Faith-Healing! Its really hard to imagine Todd is capable of such strengths as he is just about the pudgiest man with the slimmest little arms and legs and small frame but then carrying what appears to be about 90% body fat. So I suppose any 300 lb man in his 30’s could very well beat up cancer patients and old ladies. That doesn’t mean he should. Todd claims God instructs him to assault people.
Todd is what you might call a ‘Poser’ or a ‘Wannabe’ anyways. Recall Todd claims for himself some hard time in prison. This might give you the impression of a hardened tough-guy who was running about with some of the roughest gangs. Nope. Todd was probably in segregation to keep Gangs away from him.  Todd was in Custody as a youth after he sexually molested a younger boy and in another incident its said he assaulted his own Mum. Honestly, I do accept Todd’s explanation and justification but I just resent he wears the ‘Street-cred’ of a ‘Gangsta’ when, in fact, he was in Juvey and likely segregated for his own safety for disturbing sexual assaults and not for his ‘thug life’ lifestyle he alleges to have lived. You might notice Todd has tattoo’s all over his body and some may recognise a few that are specifically ‘gang tats’ as well as a few others that are by style and location known to be prison tattoos. They are not Gang or Prison tattoos though. In fact Todd’s biker gear, tattoos, piercings are all fairly recent accessories he bought long after he became a Christian and even long after becoming a Minister. Honestly, I don’t really care that he does have tattoos but I find it annoying he chose to get inked so as to ‘appear’ to have earned them back in his hardcore gang lifestyle which didn’t exist anyways. I know why he did this, of course - it gives him much more ‘church-cred’ with the charismatic crowds who see the worse and more deplorable pre-conversion lifestyle as making one even more miraculous of a salvation. It insinuates he received some sort of ‘extra spirit-filling’ so to speak. I might just mention something here - I know something about Motorcycle Clubs in the Vancouver area. Todd wouldn’t last 10 seconds.
Anyways, I promised to make that a long-story-short and so lets ‘cut to the chase’ and be happy to report that Todd Bentley was quickly criticized and held up to the light by Christians just as fast as Geraldo could jump on it. Not just CRI either but it warmed my heart to see so many in the online Christian community boldly call this nonsense for what it was. It might have carried on a bit longer but low and behold there turned out to be another reason why Todd was forced to disappear from the stage. Adultery. It seems that Todd had decided that his disabled wife and children were less interesting than another woman in his company. Interestingly, the affair has been described as ‘emotional adultery’ but one in which Todd and his mistress (a former Nanny to the Bentleys no less) are unwilling to give up. Divorce proceedings go into effect. Todd insists that his marriage was already irreconcilable regardless of the new lady in his life. Patricia King and all the other Prophets are still able to get revelations about masturbation or that some people will find a dime on the ground in a given year  - but didn’t get tipped off about the inevitable shame and adulterous affairs about to bare in those ‘chosen prophets’ right beside them? Fascinating, sad, disturbing and once again I don’t need to reinvent the wheel on Todd Bentley criticisms when there are just so many excellent online critiques and articles on this whole mess that attempted (with limited success) a mockery of Christianity:

•  Bezel calls out the main problem with Bentley - Its all about ‘glory’ and barely a mention of Christ Crucified.
•  CRS has a mega-video documentation page!
•  CRS extensive Bentley Article Archive.

My Optimist Spin:  Maybe the good news in all this is that Christians (as a Body) were fairly quick to call BS and apply some sort of discernment even if it was on the most obvious false gospel to spot in the first place. Of course, we should be serious to pray Todd comes to his senses, repents and especially pray for his family to come through these hard times. I shouldn’t be happy about people he hurt but I am happy it led to the end of the counterfeit Christianity.