Great Florida Healing Revival

Caught wind via the ElijahList this morning of a revival going on in Florida. They are broadcasting it on the Internet and the evangelist, Todd Bentley, is incorporating all types of communications technologies into the meetings. He's healing people via cell phone, for example. I just got done watching last night's 4-hour service (while also working on gheat :^P). Here's the format:

• an hour and a quarter of worship music
• 15-minute introduction of Bentley, including testimonies sent in via email
• 30 minutes of Todd Bentley whipping the crowd into a frenzy of prayer in the Spirit
• a 5-minute musical interlude, transitioning to ...
• an hour of healing
• another brief musical interlude
• another hour of healing

The way the healings work is that Bentley will call out "words of knowledge," e.g., "There's a man here with a nerve problem in his left arm." Then as he's calling these out, people start coming forward. They get in line, and write down the word of knowledge they're responding to on a slip of paper. Then there are a couple handlers, James and Richard, that bring the person up on stage and introduce them to Todd. Somebody else stands behind to catch them as they fall to the ground after being "annointed," and another drapes a blanket over their midriff.

This Bentley guy is a trip. He's heavy-set, with jeans on, arms covered in tatoos and he's got a couple piercings. Chin-strap beard. His catch-phrase when healing someone is "BAM!!!!!!" Apparently he healed some guy the other night by kneeing him in the stomach.

Most of the healings were as you'd expect, people looking for a miracle and Todd giving them exactly what they wanted. It's a giant soup of who-knows-what-the-heck-really-happened-but-it-probably-wasn't-a-miracle.

There was one moment that was genuine, however: a lady came up on stage responding to a word of knowledge for someone specifically named Angela. She was obviously really down and out, and Todd says something like "You came here tonight thinking that no-one knows who you are or cares about you, but today God called you by name," and she just melts in tears. That was sweet. That was the one that wasn't a miraculous healing.

Even the "healings," though, had as their implicit purpose the demonstration of God's love for people. My take is that this represents people—both those running the show and those in the audience—trying really, really hard to convince themselves that God loves them. The good news is that it doesn't have to be that hard. Feed back to Chad Whitacre.