What a performance it was: For the past few months, Todd Bentley, a 32-year-old former drug addict from Canada’s west coast, was the hottest thing going on the global televangelist circuit. A hog-riding faith healer with a devil-may-care attitude.
Then he failed his flock, the old fashioned way: By consorting with another woman.
The pastor in whose Florida church the Todd Bentley circus started says Bentley kept him out of the loop for his protection.
The loop? Bentley, who claims to get visited by angels, take trips to heaven and talk with the Apostle Paul, recently filed for separation from his wife — days before it was revealed that he was carrying on an “unhealthy relationship” with a female staff member.
In stepping down, Bentley will also refrain from all public ministries, including his meetings in south Florida which have attracted about 300,000 people to a church and baseball stadium since April.
“In the meantime, he’s going to get himself refreshed,” said Ken Greter, International Missions Director for Fresh Fire Ministries.
Three days after reacting to news that controversial evangelist Todd Bentley is separating from his wife, the board of Directors of Fresh Fire Ministries announces that he has also agreed to step down from his position on the Board of Directors and to refrain from all public ministry for a season to receive counsel in his personal life.
They cite an unhealthy relationship…
Todd Bentley, who led a Pentecostal revival in Lakeland from a modest beginning to near-historic proportions, has filed for separation from his wife, a former spokesperson said Monday, and will not return to the ongoing revival.
The Bentleys have two daughters and a son, and are Canadian citizens. Under Canadian law, separation is a preliminary step in divorce proceedings, lasting nine months.
Watch our church… Todd Bentley is bent on exporting the madness he calls ‘revival’ overseas.
Even some fellow Pentecostals have questioned whether Bentley’s revivals have placed enough emphasis on preaching and calls for repentance. A recent set of guidelines from the Assemblies of God, the largest predominantly white Pentecostal denomination in the United States, seemed to question the Florida Outpouring’s emphasis on miracles. Local pastors have expressed skepticism about exaggerated claims.
Todd Bentley talks with angels, received diamond dust from God, kicks people in the face, and claims to heal the sick and raise the dead.
Tens of thousands of undiscerning Christians flock to him like groupies to a rock star — always in search of the latest ‘blessing.’
ABC Nightline took a look. Now Bentley is taking a break.
C. Peter Wagner, the leader of the ‘International Coalition of Apostles’ along with other prominent figures in the real-life ‘apostolic and prophetic’ role-playing game have commissioned controversial evangelist Todd Bentley as, well, an evangelist.
Doing so will reportedly result in a measure of ‘apostolic alignment’ (in plain english: accountablity).
Sadly, Bentley will be accountable to misguided folks who see themselves as ‘apostles’ and ‘prophets,’ but whose lack of Biblical discernment allows them to support and promote error upon error.
The Lakeland Center has been charging Bentley’s ministry $15,000 a day to use the facility.
Whether healing in a medical sense is delivered here may be hard to measure, but more people each night are finding reason to believe and pouring into the 7,000-seat arena. The Lakeland movement, still in its first month, is drawing comparisons to the “Toronto Blessing” in 1994 and the Pensacola Brownsville Revival that fired up the next year.