Back in August, I noted opposition to a visit to Britain by controversial faith healer Todd Bentley. Malcolm Wicks, MP for Croydon, called for Bentley to be banned from entering the country, and this was eventually the Home Secretary’s decision.
Wicks was at the time already ill with cancer, and he died aged 65 a few weeks later, on 29 September.
For Bentley’s segment of neo-Pentecostalism, in which charismatic leaders claim to have been given special authority by God, the death is of a course a supernatural confirmation of Bentley’s spiritual anointing. Rick Joyner concurs (transcript via Apprising Ministries):
Bentley:… September 29th, I was preaching in Ohio. And just before midnight, I got a report that the man that led the ban and the campaign against us in England died suddenly of cancer; on September 29th.
Joyner: Remember the Lord said, “Mark your calendar.” Now this is an important revelation.
Bentley: And I almost—even just sharing the story with trepidation—I-I-I, started weeping. And I thought, “Lord, this man had been battling with stage 4 cancer. And led the campaign. And all the news reports were ‘faith kicking evangelist that cures cancer.’ And it was all against, whether there’s been anybody who has really been healed of cancer.” And when the Lord gave me the dream I had no idea what was coming because the only promise that I received was, in the ninth month, September; 2-9. And I kept thinking about the Scripture Haggai 2:9. And it was in the ninth month that God gave the promise that “the greater glory—the glory of the latter house shall be greater than the former house.” And all I know is God saying, “staring September 29th there’s something of the realm of My glory, My presence and power that’s going to show up and all things are going to become new and the church is going to be able two years from now look back and mark that from that day there was a clear release of God’s presence and power.”…
Joyner: [clears throat] It said, “Mark your calendar.” Now, I think this represents the major opposition. This was the biggest opposition I’ve seen—a whole country banned somebody—a preacher of the gospel. Now, look at some of the crazy people that get in that country. Terrorists, and I mean—but this—mark this day. God is removing opposition from His people. He is going to take the opposition out of the way. And listen, we need to let the pure and holy fear of the Lord come upon us too. I tell you, it is going to be extremely costly to get in God’s way; for what He’s about to do. We need to take this with the utmost seriousness. And, we don’t want anybody dying. We don’t want Ananias’ and Sapphiras. This is serious business.
Commentary on that is probably superfluous.
However, it’s perhaps worth noting that while Bentley’s position within neo-Pentecostalism is much diminished since his sexual indiscretions came to light in 2008, Joyner is more of an “A-lister”, with particularly close links to the likes of Jim Bakker, Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, and Alan Keyes.
In 2011, Joyner warned that the Fukushima disaster presaged the economic destruction of the USA and an earthquake which would very soon devastate the west coast of the USA. A rather stranger boast is his claim to have been shown Hitler’s secret burial place.
UPDATE: Rick Hiebert took a look at Todd Bentley’s Twitter stream from 29 September, which was when Bentley supposedly received his highly-significant message from God:
I’ve had a look at all his “tweets” from Sept. 29 onwards to when I am posting and I haven’t spotted any mention of his dream, or of the passing of Malcolm Wicks and how sorry he may be about that.
There are tweets about what he eats, where he is going on his travels, his new digital book and such. He tweets about other dreams that he has had, so it can’t be that he doesn’t mention such things on his Twitter feed.
One may draw a fairly obvious inference from that.
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