Third Wave 'Spiritual Warfare' movement indoctrinating young children to do battle for the Lord

Alternet - September 8, 2008

Weird Theology in Wasilla: A Look Inside Sarah Palin's Pentecostal Church

Exposing the unusual, highly politicized religious beliefs held at the Wasilla Assembly of God

by Bruce Wilson | Talk To Action


On June 8, 2008 Palin was publicly blessed, with the "laying on of hands" before six thousand Wasilla area church members, by Head Wasilla Assembly of God Pastor Ed Kalnins and on the same day both Kalnins and Palin described, at a "Masters Commission" ceremony at the Wasilla Assembly of God church, how she had been blessed prior to winning the Alaska governorship by an African cleric known for driving the "spirit of witchcraft" out of a town in Kenya, after which town supposedly crime rates dropped "almost to zero."

Sarah Palin's churches are actively involved in a resurgent movement that was declared heretical by the Assemblies of God in 1949. This is the same 'Spiritual Warfare' movement that was featured in the award winning movie, "Jesus Camp," which showed young children being trained to do battle for the Lord. At least three of four of Palin's churches are involved with major organizations and leaders of this movement, which is referred to as The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit or the New Apostolic Reformation. The movement is training a young "Joel's Army" to take dominion over the United States and the world.

Along with her entire family, Sarah Palin was re-baptized at twelve at the Wasilla Assembly of God in Wasilla, Alaska and she attended the church from the time she was ten until 2002: over two and 1/2 decades. Sarah Palin's extensive pattern of association with the Wasilla Assembly of God has continued nearly up to the day she was picked by Senator John McCain as a vice-presidential running mate.

Palin's dedication to the Wasilla church is indicated by a Saturday, September 7, 2008, McClatchy news service story detailing possibly improper use of state travel funds by Palin for a trip she made to Wasilla, Alaska to attend, on June 8, 2008, both a Wasilla Assembly of God "Masters Commission" graduation ceremony and also a multi-church Wasilla area event known as "One Lord Sunday."

At the latter event, Palin and Alaska LT Governor Scott Parnell were publicly blessed, onstage before an estimated crowd of 6,000, through the "laying on of hands" by Wasilla Assembly of God's Head Pastor Ed Kalnins whose sermons espouse such theological concepts as the possession of geographic territories by demonic spirits and the inter-generational transmission of family "curses". Palin has also been blessed, or "anointed", by an African cleric, prominent in the Third Wave movement, who has repeatedly visited the Wasilla Assembly of God and claims to have effected positive, dramatic social change in a Kenyan town by driving out a "spirit of witchcraft."

The Wasilla Assembly of God church is deeply involved with both Third Wave activities and theology. Their Master's Commission program is part of an three year post-high school international training program with studies in prophecy, intercessory prayer, Biblical exegesis, authority and leadership.

Watch Bruce Wilson's video documentary detailing the extreme Religious Right connections to the Wasilla Assembly of God church, "Sarah Palin's Churches and the Third Wave": [removed]


The pastor, Ed Kalnins, and Masters Commission students have traveled to South Carolina to participate in a "prophetic conference" at Morningstar Ministries, one of the major ministries of the Third Wave movement. Becky Fischer was a pastor at Morningstar prior to being featured in the movie "Jesus Camp." The head of prophecy at Morningstar, Steve Thompson, is currently scheduled to do a prophecy seminar at the Wasilla Assembly of God. Other major leaders in the movement have also traveled to Wasilla to visit and speak at the church.

The Third Wave is a revival of the theology of the Latter Rain tent revivals of the 1950s and 1960s led by William Branham and others. It is based on the idea that in the end times there will be an outpouring of supernatural powers on a group of Christians that will take authority over the existing church and the world. The believing Christians of the world will be reorganized under the Fivefold Ministry and the church restructured under the authority of Prophets and Apostles and others anointed by God. The young generation will form "Joel's Army" to rise up and battle evil and retake the earth for God.

While segments of this belief system have been a part of Pentecostalism and charismatic beliefs for decades, the excesses of this movement were declared a heresy in 1949 by the General Council of the Assemblies of God, and again condemned through Resolution 16 in 2000. The beliefs and manifestations of the movement include the use of 'strategic level spiritual warfare' to expel territorial demons from American and world cities. Worship includes excessive charismatic manifestations such as hundreds of people falling, 'slain in the spirit,' and congregations laughing, jerking, and shrieking uncontrollably.

In early 2008 an outbreak of those phenomena commenced at the palatial former ministry estate of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, recently bought up and restored by prominent Third Wave author and leader Rick Joyner's Morningstar Ministries. The (spiritual) "breakout" lasted for many weeks and was publicized in an extensive collection of video footage available on YouTube. Healing services in the Third Wave movement claim to heal the sick and injured through methods that in some cases can appear bizarre - including, as in recent cases involving Todd Bentley, the patient being head butted or kicked by the anointed healer. Recipients of such "spiritual" or miraculous healing make a wide range of astonishing claims - to have been cured of life-threatening illnesses, had joints repaired or replaced, been given gold teeth or gold fillings, regrown stunted limbs and even had deformed skeletal structures straightened and reshaped.

Worldwide mission efforts of the movement are built around the idea of combating witches, warlocks, and generational curses, which prevent churches from being able to take root. Mike Rose, senior pastor of Juneau Christian Center has a long relationship with Rodney Howard-Browne, credited with being the instigator of the outbreak of 'Holy Laughter' around the world, including the Toronto Airport Revival. Thomas Muthee visited Wasilla Assembly of God and gave 10 consecutive sermons at the church, from October 11-16 2005. As both Palin and Wasilla AoG Head Pastor Ed Kalnins have attested, Thomas Muthee 'prayed over' Sarah Palin and entreated God to "make a way" prior to Palin's successful bid for the Alaska governorship. Muthee made a return visit to the Wasilla Assembly of God in late 2008. Thomas Muthee's Word of Faith Church is featured in the "Transformations" video which details an account on how Muthee drove "the spirit of witchcraft" out of Kiambu, Kenya, liberating the town from its territorial demonic possession and enabling a miraculous societal transformation. The "Transformations" video set is used as an argument for social improvement through spiritual instead of human means, and as the best method for fighting corruption, crime, drugs and even environmental degradation.

In the video, producer George Otis declares that after Thomas Muthee and his followers banished the "spirit of witchcraft" from the town, the crime rate in Kiambu dropped almost to zero, along with the rate of alcoholism, and according to Otis most of the residents of the town joined churches. The "Transformations" video has helped spark a network of 'Transformation' ministries and mission organizations and 'transformation' has become a buzz word for change based on supernatural instead of human efforts.

The Third Wave, also known as the New Apostolic Reformation, is a network of Apostles, many of them grouped around C. Peter Wagner, founder of the World Prayer Center. This center, which was built in coordination with Ted Haggard and his New Life Church in Colorado Springs, was featured in an article by Jeff Sharlet in Harpers, May 2005, "Soldiers of Christ." Sharlet was one of the first to write in the secular press about the World Prayer Center which is often referred to by those familiar with the Third Wave as the 'Pentagon for Spiritual Warfare.' It features computer systems that store the data of communities around the world, mapping out unsaved peoples' groups and spiritual mapping information for spiritual warfare. Wagner has his own group of about 500 Apostles in his council and each of these Apostles has ministries under their authority, sometimes hundreds or thousands. Recently various networks of Apostles came together to form the Revival Alliance. Leaders of the Revival Alliance including Rick Joyner of Morningstar anointed Todd Bentley whose Lakeland Healing Revival has recently been a controversial topic in the Evangelical world.

Wagner's top leaders often conduct spiritual warfare campaigns against the demons that block the acceptance of their brand of Christian belief, such as 'Operation Ice Castle' in the Himalayas in 1997. Several of their top prophets and generals of intercession spent weeks in intensive prayer to "confront the Queen of Heaven." This queen is considered by them to be one of the most powerful demons over the earth and is the Great Harlot of Mystery Babylon in Revelation. (The "Great Harlot [or 'whore'] of Mystery Babylon" theme also figures prominently in the sermons of Texas megachurch pastor and Christians United For Israel founder John Hagee, former endorser of John McCain's 2008 presidential bid.) Wagner and his group also claim that the Queen of Heaven is Diana, the pagan god of the biblical book Ephesians and the god of Mary veneration in the Roman Catholic Church. Following the 'Operation Ice Castle' prayer excursion which included planting a flag for Jesus on Mt. Everest, one of the lead prayer intercessors from the excursion, Ana Mendez, reported that there had been dramatic results including, "millions have come to faith in Asia... and other things happened which I believe are also connected...an earthquake had destroyed the basilica of Assisi, where the Pope had called a meeting of all world religions; a hurricane destroyed the infamous temple 'Baal-Christ' in Acapulco, Mexico; the Princes Diana died... and Mother Theresa died in India, one of the most famous advocates of Mary as Co-Redeemer."

Church of the Rock, led by Senior Pastor David Pepper, has taken their youth to participate in 'The Call, Nashville.' This event is held at various locations around the country under the leadership of Lou Engle, also featured in the movie "Jesus Camp." At these events youth are worked into a frenzy of anger and consternation at supposed national moral corruption. Engle, who shuffles while he preaches in imitation of Jewish prayer, is featured toward the end of the "Jesus Camp" video documentary.

The Third Wave movement is cross-denomination and is not synonymous with any specific denomination, nor is it synonymous with Evangelical or Fundamentalist. Although the movement emerged from Pentecostalism, it draws its support from a variety of denominations and religious streams. They believe they are forming a post-denominational church to take the world for the end times. To date, all of the writing and objections to this movement have emerged from other Evangelicals and Fundamentalists who believe the movement to be unbiblical. Also, it is other conservative churches that refuse to embrace the 'outpouring of the Spirit' that are targets of much of the anger of the movement.

You can find more information on the Third Wave movement and additional links to the activities of Palin's churches on www.Talk2action.org in the following articles:

Sarah Palin's Churches and the Third Wave, Part One
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/9/5/0244/84583

Sarah Palin's Churches and the Third Wave, Part Two with embedded video: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/9/5/03830/11602

The video is also posted at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K_1Eit0pxM

This article was found at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/97939/?page=entire


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'Arming' for Armageddon: Militant Joel's Army Followers Seek Theocracy

Southern Poverty Law Center - Intelligence Report, Fall 2008




Joel's Army followers, many of them teenagers and young adults who believe they're members of the final generation to come of age before the end of the world, are breaking away in droves from mainline Pentecostal churches.


by Casey Sanchez

Canadian Todd Bentley, who preached for months on end this year in Florida, is a general in Joel's Army.

LAKELAND, Fla. — Todd Bentley has a long night ahead of him, resurrecting the dead, healing the blind, and exploding cancerous tumors. Since April 3, the 32-year-old, heavily tattooed, body-pierced, shaved-head Canadian preacher has been leading a continuous "supernatural healing revival" in central Florida. To contain the 10,000-plus crowds flocking from around the globe, Bentley has rented baseball stadiums, arenas and airport hangars at a cost of up to $15,000 a day. Many in attendance are church pastors themselves who believe Bentley to be a prophet and don't bat an eye when he tells them he's seen King David and spoken with the Apostle Paul in heaven. "He was looking very Jewish," Bentley notes.

Tattooed across his sternum are military dog tags that read "Joel's Army." They're evidence of Bentley's generalship in a rapidly growing apocalyptic movement that's gone largely unnoticed by watchdogs of the theocratic right. According to Bentley and a handful of other "hyper-charismatic" preachers advancing the same agenda, Joel's Army is prophesied to become an Armageddon-ready military force of young people with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian "dominion" on non-believers.


"An end-time army has one common purpose — to aggressively take ground for the kingdom of God under the authority of Jesus Christ, the Dread Champion," Bentley declares on the website for his ministry school in British Columbia, Canada. "The trumpet is sounding, calling on-fire, revolutionary believers to enlist in Joel's Army. … Many are now ready to be mobilized to establish and advance God's kingdom on earth."

Joel's Army followers, many of them teenagers and young adults who believe they're members of the final generation to come of age before the end of the world, are breaking away in droves from mainline Pentecostal churches. Numbering in the tens of thousands, they base their beliefs on an esoteric reading of the second chapter of the Old Testament Book of Joel, in which an avenging swarm of locusts attacks Israel. In their view, the locusts are a metaphor for Joel's Army.

Despite their overt militancy, there's no evidence Joel's Army followers have committed any acts of violence. But critics warn that actual bloodletting may only be a matter of time for a movement that casts itself as God's avenging army.

Those sounding the alarm about Joel's Army are not secular foes of the Christian Right, few of whom are even aware of the movement or how widespread it's become in the past decade. Instead, Joel's Army critics are mostly conservative Christians, either neo-Pentecostals who left the movement in disgust or evangelical Christians who fear that Joel's Army preachers are stealing their flocks, even sending spies to infiltrate their own congregations and sway their young people to heresy. And they say the movement is becoming frightening. "The pitch and intensity of the military rhetoric of this branch of the global Dominionist movement has substantially increased since the beginning of 2008," writes The Discernment Research Group, a Christian watchdog group that tracks what they call heresies or cults within Christianity. "One can only wonder how long before this transforms into real warfare with actual warriors."

'Snorting Religion'

Joel's Army believers are hard-core Christian dominionists, meaning they believe that America, along with the rest of the world, should be governed by conservative Christians and a conservative Christian interpretation of biblical law. There is no room in their doctrine for democracy or pluralism. Dominionism's original branch is Christian Reconstructionism, a grim, Calvinist call to theocracy that, as Reconstructionist writer Gary North describes, wants to "get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God."

Notorious for endorsing the public execution by stoning of homosexuals and adulterers, the Christian Reconstructionist movement is far better known in secular America than Joel's Army. That's largely because Reconstructionists have made several serious forays into mainstream politics and received a fair amount of negative publicity as a result. Joel's Army followers eschew the political system, believing the path to world domination lies in taking over churches, not election to public office.

Another key difference between the two branches of dominionism, which maintain a testy, arms-length relationship with one another, is Christian Reconstructionism's buttoned-down image and heavy emphasis on Bible study, which contrasts sharply with Joel's Army anti-intellectual distrust of biblical scholars and its unruly style. "Some people snort cocaine, others snort religions," Joel's Army Pastor Roy said while ministering a morning program at Todd Bentley's Lakeland, Fla., revival in late May.

As this article went to press, Bentley's "Florida Outpouring" had been running for more than 100 days straight. Many attendees came in search of spontaneous physical healing and a desire to be part of a mystical community marked by dancing, shouting, gyrating, speaking in tongues and other forms of ecstatic release. Snide jabs at traditional church services are fairly common at Bentley's revivals. In fact, what takes place onstage at the Florida Outpouring looks more like a pro wrestling extravaganza than church.

On stage, Bentley and his team of pastors, yell, chant, and scream "Fire!" and "Bam!" while anointing followers.  "The Call," a 12-hour revival of up to 20,000 young people held in a different city each year, is led by Joel's Army pastor Lou Engle. The audience members behave as if they are at a psychedelic counterculture festival. One couple jumps up and down twirling red and silver metallic flags. Dyed-haired teenagers pulled in by the revival's presence on Facebook and MySpace wander around looking dazed. Women lay facedown on the floor, convulsing and howling. Fathers wail in tongues as their confused children look on. Strangers lay hands on those who fail to produce tongues or gyrate wildly enough, pressuring them to "let it out."

Bentley is considered a prophet both by his followers and by other leaders of the Joel's Army movement, whose adherents claim to be reviving a "five-fold ministry" of prophets, apostles, elders, pastors and teachers, as outlined in the Book of Ephesians. Not every five-fold ministry is connected to the Joel's Army movement, but the movement has spurred an interest in modern-day apostles and prophets that's troubling to the Assemblies of God, the world's largest Pentecostal church, which has officially disavowed the Joel's Army movement. In a 2001 position paper, Assemblies of God leaders wrote that they do not recognize modern-day apostles or prophets and worried that "such leaders prefer more authoritarian structures where their own word or decrees are unchallenged."

They are right to worry. Joel's Army followers believe that once democratic institutions are overthrown, their hierarchy of apostles and prophets will rule over the earth, with one church per city. Warrior Nation According to Joel's Army doctrine, the enforcers of the five-fold ministry will be members of the final generation, for whom the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade constituted a new Passover. "Everyone born after abortion's legalization can consider their birth a personal invitation to take part in this great army," writes John Crowder, another prominent Joel's Army pastor, who bills his 2006 book, The New Mystics: How to Become Part of the Supernatural Generation, as a literal how-to guide for joining Joel's Army.

Both Bentley and Crowder are enormously popular on Elijah's List, an online watering hole for a broad spectrum of Joel's Army enlistees, from lightweight believers who merely share an affection for military rhetoric and pastors who dress in army camouflage (several Joel's Army pastors are addressed by their congregants as "commandant" or "commander") to hardliners who believe the church is called to have an active military role in end-times that have already begun.

Elijah's List currently has more than 125,000 subscribers on its electronic mailing list. Rick Joyner, a pastor whose books, The Harvest and The Call, helped popularize Joel's Army theology by selling more than a million copies each, goes the furthest on Elijah's List in pushing the hardliner approach. In 2006, he posted a sermon called "The Warrior Nation — The New Sound of the Church," in which he claimed that a last-day army is now gathering and called believers "freedom fighters." "As the church begins to take on this resolve, they [Joel's Army churches] will start to be thought of more as military bases, and they will begin to take on the characteristics of military bases for training, equipping, and deploying effective spiritual forces," Joyner wrote. "In time, the church will actually be organized more as a military force with an army, navy, air force, etc." In a sort of disclaimer, Joyner writes at one point that God's army "will bring love, peace and stability wherever they go." But several of his books narrate with glee what he describes as "a coming civil war within the church."

In his 1997 book The Harvest he writes: "Some pastors and leaders who continue to resist this tide of unity will be removed from their place. Some will become so hardened they will become opposers and resist God to the end." Two years later, in his book The Final Quest, Joyner described a vision (taken as prophecy in the Joel's Army world, where Joyner is considered an "apostle") of the coming Christian Civil War in which demon-possessed Christian soldiers enslave other, weaker Christians who resist them. He also describes how the hero of the novel — himself — ascends a "Holy Mountain" in order to learn new truths and to acquire new, magic weapons.

Kids on Fire

Bentley, who claims to be a supernatural healer, is no less over the top, playing his biker-punk appearance and heavy metal theatrics to the hilt. On YouTube, where clips of his most dramatic healings have been condensed into a three-minute highlight reel, Bentley describes God ordering him to kick an elderly lady in the face: "I am thinking, 'God, why is the power of God not moving?' And He said, 'It is because you haven't kicked that women in the face.' And there was, like, this older lady worshipping right in front of the platform and the Holy Spirit spoke to me and the gift of faith came on me. He said, 'Kick her in the face … with your biker boot.' I inched closer and I went like this [makes kicking motion]: Bam! And just as my boot made contact with her nose, she fell under the power of God."

The atmosphere is less charged with violence at "The Call," a 12-hour revival of up to 20,000 youths led by Joel's Army pastor Lou Engle and held every summer in a major American city (this year's event was scheduled for Washington, D.C. in August). Attendees are called upon to fast and pray for 40 days and take up culture-war pledges to lead abstinent lives, reject pornography and fight abortion. They're further asked to perform "identificational repentance," lugging along family trees and genealogies to see where one of their ancestors may have enslaved or oppressed another so that they can make amends. (Many in the Joel's Army movement believe in generational curses that must be broken by the current generation). As even his critics note, Engle is a sweet, humble and gentle man whose persona is difficult to reconcile with his belief in an end-time army of invincible young Christian warriors. Yet while Engle is careful to avoid deploying explicit Joel's Army rhetoric at high-profile events like The Call, when he's speaking in smaller hyper-charismatic circles to avowed Joel's Army followers, he can venture into bloodlust.

This March, at a "Passion for Jesus" conference in Kansas City sponsored by the International House of Prayer, or IHOP, a ministry for teenagers from the heavy metal, punk and goth scenes, Engle called on his audience for vengeance. "I believe we're headed to an Elijah/Jezebel showdown on the Earth, not just in America but all over the globe, and the main warriors will be the prophets of Baal versus the prophets of God, and there will be no middle ground," said Engle. He was referring to the Baal of the Old Testament, a pagan idol whose followers were slaughtered under orders from the prophet Elijah. "There's an Elijah generation that's going to be the forerunners for the coming of Jesus, a generation marked not by their niceness but by the intensity of their passion," Engle continued. "The kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force.

Such force demands an equal response, and Jesus is going to make war on everything that hinders love, with his eyes blazing fire." Although Joel's Army theology is mainly directed at people in their teens and early 20s via events like The Call and ministries like IHOP, sometimes the target audience is even younger. In some of the most arresting images in "Jesus Camp," a 2006 documentary about the Kids on Fire bible camp in North Dakota, grade school-aged kids dressed in army fatigues wield swords and conduct military field maneuvers. "A lot of people die for God and they're not afraid," one camper told ABC News reporters in a follow-up segment. "We're kinda being trained to be warriors," added another, "only in a funner way." Cain and the Intellectuals Both Christian and secular critics assailed the makers of "Jesus Camp" for referring to the camp's extremist, militant Christianity as "evangelical."

There is a name, however, that describes Kids on Fire's agenda, if you're familiar with their theology: Joel's Army. Pastor Becky Fischer, who runs the camp, said that a third of the kids at her camp were under 6 years old because they are "more in touch in the supernatural" and proclaimed them to be "soldiers for God's Army." Her camp's blend of end-times militancy and supernaturalism is perfectly emblematic of the Joel's Army movement, whose adherents believe their cause is prophesied in the Old Testament chapter titled "An Army of Locusts."

The stark, evocative passages of that chapter describe a locust swarm that lays waste to Israel (to this day, the region suffers periodic locust invasions): "Like dawn spreading across the mountains a large and mighty army comes, such as never was of old nor ever will be in ages to come." As remarkable as the language is, most biblical scholars agree that it is a literal description of a locust invasion and resulting famine that occurred sometime between the 9th and 5th centuries B.C.E. In the Book of Joel, the locust invasion is described as an omen that an Assyrian army to the north may attack Israel if it fails to repent as a nation. But nowhere is the invasion described as an army of God. According to an Assemblies of God position paper: "It is a complete misinterpretation of Scripture to find in Joel's army of locusts a militant, victorious force attacking society and a non-cooperating Church to prepare the earth for Christ's millennial reign."

The story of how an ancient insect invasion came to be a rallying flag for 21st-century dominonists begins just after World War II in Canada. Out of a small town in Saskatchewan, a Pentecostal preacher named William Branham spearheaded a 1948 revival in which he claimed that his followers lived in a new biblical time of "Latter Rain." The most sinless and ardent of his flock would be called "Manifest Sons of God." By the next year, the movement was so strong — and seemed so subversive to some — that the Assemblies of God banned it as a heretic cult. But Branham remained a controversial figure with a loyal following; many of his followers believed him to be the end-times prophet Elijah. Michael Barkun, a leading scholar of radical religion, notes that in 1958, Branham began teaching "Serpent Seed" doctrine, the belief that Satan had sex with Eve, resulting in Cain and his descendants. "Through Cain came all the smart, educated people down to the antediluvian flood — the intellectuals, bible colleges," Branham wrote in the kind of anti-mainstream religion, anti-intellectual spirit that pervades the Joel's Army movement to this day. "They know all their creeds but know nothing about God."

The Gates of Hell

Branham was killed in a car accident in 1965, but his Manifest Sons of God movement, the direct predecessor of Joel's Army, lived on within a cluster of hyper-charismatic churches. In the 1980s, Branham's teachings took on new life at the Kansas City Fellowship (KCF), a group of popular self-styled apostles and prophets who used the Missouri church as a launching pad for national careers promoting outright Joel's Army theology. The Joel's Army movement began with the 1940s preaching of William Branham, whose group was banned as heretical by the Assemblies of God.

Ernie Gruen, a local pastor who initially promoted and gave citywide credibility to KCF pastors in the early 1980s, cut his connections in 1990. Concerned about KCF's plans to push its teachings worldwide, Gruen published a 132-page insider's account, based on taped sermons and conversations and interviews with parents who had enrolled their kids in KCF's Dominion school. According to Gruen's report, students at the school were taught that they were a "super-race" of the "elected seed" of all the best bloodlines of all generations — foreknown, predestined, and hand-selected from billions of others to be part of the "end-time Omega generation."  Though he'd once promoted these doctrines himself, Gruen became convinced that the movement was turning into an end-times cult, marked by what he summarized as "spiritual threats, fears, and warnings of death," "warning followers to beware of other Christians" and exhibiting "a 'super-race' mentality toward the training of their children."

When contacted by the Intelligence Report, Gruen's spokesman said that Gruen stands by everything he published in the report but no longer grants media interviews. The Kansas City Fellowship remains in operation and has served as a farm team for many of the all-stars of the Joel's Army movement. Those larger-than-life figures include John Wimber, the founder of a California megachurch, The Vineyard, who, before his death in 1997, proclaimed that Joel's Army would not only conquer the earth but defeat death itself. Lou Engle founded The Call based on the Joel's Army visions that KCF "prophet" Bob Jones (not to be confused with Bob Jones III of Bob Jones University) received while at KCF. Mike Bickle, another KCF member, stayed in Kansas City to form the International House of Prayer.

IHOP members and other Joel's Army adherents are well aware of how their movement is perceived by other conservative Christians. "Today, you can type 'Joel's Army' into a search engine and a thousand heresy hunter websites pop up, decrying the very mention of it," writes John Crowder in The New Mystics. Crowder doesn't exactly allay critic's fears. "This is truly warfare," he writes. "This battle is not a game. They [Joel's Army warriors] will not be on the defense; they will be on the offense — and the gates of hell will not be able to hold up against them."

So far, few members of the secular media have taken notice of Joel's Army, even as they report on Protestant dominionists like Pat Robertson or the more outrageous calls for the stoning of gays and lesbians emanating from Reconstructionist circles. There are exceptions, however. On the DailyKos, a well-read, politically liberal blog, a diarist has been blogging for two years about her experiences as a walkaway from a Joel's Army church. She writes under a pseudonym out of fear of physical reprisals. She may have real cause for concern. As Wimber, the late founder of The Vineyard, put it in one of his most famous and fiery sermons, one that is still frequently cited by Joel's Army followers: "Those in this army will have His kind of power. … Anyone who wants to harm them must die."  

This article was found at: http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=964


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National Post - Canada     August 19, 2008

Bentley bends

B. C. healer, televangelist withdraws for his own healing

Brian Hutchinson | National Post 

VANCOUVER -It wasn't his outrageous claims of raising the dead that finally landed Todd Bentley in trouble. Not the contradictory sermons, or even his criminal past. Not the face piercings, the neck-to-knee tattoos, the biker-dude lifestyle. His followers could live with all that; it was part of the act.

And what a performance it was: For the past few months, Mr. 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.

Mr. Bentley is now taking a long time out from his ministry, for some healing and reflection. The news was delivered on the weekend. "We have discovered new information revealing that Todd Bentley has entered into an unhealthy relationship on an emotional level with a female member of his staff," reads an Aug. 15 letter from his church, Fresh Fire Ministries, based in Abbotsford, B. C., an evangelical hotbed.

The letter, posted on the Fresh Fire Web site, followed another online note three days earlier acknowledging that Mr. Bentley's marriage had unravelled. "Todd and Shonnah Bentley are presently experiencing significant friction in their relationship and are currently separated. We want to affirm that there has been no sexual immorality on the part of either Todd or Shonnah, nor has there ever been," it reads.

The news comes just as Mr. Bentley's ministry -- which began a decade ago on the streets of Vancouver's miserable Downtown Eastside -- had found a worldwide audience. In April this year, the stocky preacher received an invitation to travel from Abbotsford to Lakeland, in southern Florida, to take part in a series of Christian revival meetings.

Audiences there were dazzled. Mr. Bentley was asked to stay. So began what became known as the Lakeland Outpouring, an unfettered expression of charismatic fervour that quickly became a full-fledged phenomenon, with 8,000

people daily packing into a baseball stadium, then inside a church building. Twice a day, seven days a week, through the spring and summer, with Mr. Bentley taking centre stage, yelling and exhorting, and sometimes smacking around the ill and infirm.

GodTV, a specialty on-line service dedicated to Christian worship, quickly made room for the Lakeland Outpouring in its broadcast schedule. Millions of potential worshippers were exposed to Mr. Bentley. Among others, people with health problems travelled alone or with church groups to Florida for his sermons, loud and aggressive multi-media performances punctuated with faith-healing demonstrations and requests for financial contributions.

Mr. Bentley claims that God uses him as an instrument to heal the sick. He demonstrated this capacity at one Outpouring meeting by taking a run at a professed cancer patient and planting a knee hard into the man's gut. The man fell to the floor, grimacing.

At another meeting, Mr. Bentley laughed about kicking a woman in the face in order to help deliver God's healing touch. He spoke of his encounters with angels and prophets. He waved letters in front of his audiences, claiming they were written by relatives of people declared dead. Their dead kin had risen, he explained, after being exposed to his sermons, via GodTV broadcasts.

"I have in my hands the 13th testimony as a result of this Outpouring, of somebody raised from the dead," he said a few weeks ago. "I'm saying to the media, the dead are being raised…Are you ready to hear the 13th story? Now, many of them, we've been following up. We still haven't had a chance to verify this. I can read it to you as I received it."

At last count, Mr. Bentley had been used by God to resurrect 20 people -- verifications still to come.

His claims have attracted plenty of skeptics, some of whom have carefully parsed his sermons, looking for what might be considered heresy, or simply false statements. Internet bloggers certainly found inconsistencies in his stories; for example, Mr. Bentley seems to confuse dates and events when describing his various visits with angels and his discussions with God.

His skeptics learned of a terrible incident. In 1991, Mr. Bentley, then 15, was convicted of sexual assaulting a seven-year-old B. C. boy. The case was outlined in The Report newsmagazine 10 years later; confronted with the facts, Mr. Bentley consented to a discussion of his conviction. "I was involved in a sexual assault ring," he told The Report, now defunct. "I turned around and did what had happened to me. I was assaulted too."

He said he considered the matter closed. "It's something that's dead and buried for me."

In June, FOX TV snoop Geraldo Rivera interviewed Mr. Bentley. The matter of his conviction did not come up; rather, Mr. Rivera asked for verification that he had helped heal the sick.

Again, Mr. Bentley waved a fistful of papers in the air but offered no names, no proof. ABC's Nightline examined Mr. Bentley's claims in July and was met with similar obfuscation.

But others have bought in. Several of Mr. Bentley's colleagues in the televangelism trade--including fellow Canadian Patricia King -- vouched for him, even after the unflattering FOX and ABC exposure.

"The healing of the sick, the casting out of devils, the raising of the dead, the cleansing of lepers, this was all taking place" at the Lakeland Outpouring, Ms. King insisted last weekend, during a sermon broadcast on her Extreme Prophetic Television program.

Ms. King, who is also based in the Abbotsford area, went on to describe in the barest of detail Mr. Bentley's latest transgression and fall from grace, and said that any form of sin is intolerable.

No one from Fresh Fire Ministries or its affiliate church organizations in Abbotsford responded to interview requests yesterday. Mr. Bentley is reportedly in California, staying with friends.

He will not offer any public ministry for at least a year, according to the latest Fresh Fire letter. He will not return to Florida for the rest of the Outpouring; it winds up on Saturday, after a 143-day run. A stadium tour across the United States has been cancelled. Gatherings in the U. K. have been "postponed."

There is no talk of resurrection, or revival. Just the hope of forgiveness.

This article was found at:

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=732617


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The Vancouver Sun - Canada   August 15, 2008

Abbotsford faith healer proves divisive for Christians

Followers of controversial B.C. preacher line up and pray for a miracle

by Douglas Todd | Vancouver Sun

With his full-body Jesus tattoos and facial piercings, Todd Bentley looks more like a bike-gang member or World Wrestling Federation fighter than an evangelical preacher.

But in the past few months, the burly B.C. bad boy has turned into the hottest, most divisive Christian faith healer in North America.

Bentley, 32, who preaches about once being a young criminal in Gibsons and who now bases his ministry in the Bible Belt city of Abbotsford, has drawn roughly 300,000 people since April to his wild revival meetings in southern Florida.

Up to 10,000 people a day have been flocking to a Florida baseball stadium to lose themselves in ecstatic music and appeal to Bentley for divine healing, which the T-shirted, bling-wearing redhead sometimes offers by kneeing the sick in the stomach or kicking them with his biker boots and shouting "Bam!"

Despite drawing tremendous crowds to his mesmerizing, rock-music-filled services, Bentley has sharply polarized North American evangelicals.

A number of rival conservative Christian radio hosts, apocalypticists and charismatics have attacked the Canadian preacher for, among other things, claiming to have gone to heaven and met and talked with angels, Jesus and the apostle Paul.

Those critics have called his ministry "demonic," "occult," "deceitful" and "plain silly."

Bentley's growing legions of defenders, however, say God often uses "flawed people" to perform miracles and heal the sick.

Bentley's controversial revival meetings, which have been running every day in Florida for more than 18 weeks -- replete with people writhing on floors in religious ecstasy -- have also taken a toll on Bentley's family.

His large Abbotsford office, called Fresh Fire Ministries, acknowledged Monday on its website that Bentley and his wife, Shonnah, who have three children, have separated.

His wife and children have returned to Canada.

Bentley also announced he will end his Florida revival, called The Outpouring, on Aug. 23.

The revival has been mostly running in Lakeland, Fla., east of Tampa Bay, both at Ignited Church (where it started) and on the spring training ground of baseball's Detroit Tigers.

Bentley's imminent departure from The Outpouring, so he can instead travel throughout North America and to Britain, has come in the midst of rising media coverage questioning the authenticity of his healings.

London's Express on Sunday started a campaign last month to keep the Canadian revivalist out of Great Britain and, as of this week, Fresh Fire Ministries "postponed" a planned gathering in Birmingham, England.

Bentley was not available for an interview Thursday with The Vancouver Sun. An official at Fresh Fire Ministries, Bruce Merz, avoided answering questions, directing The Sun to the ministry's website for information.

The Fresh Fire website said the intense "worldwide awakening" started by Bentley in Florida has created "pressures and burdens ... which have helped to create an atmosphere of fatigue and stress that has exacerbated existing issues in [the Bentleys'] relationship. We want to affirm that there has been no sexual immorality on the part of either Todd or Shonnah."

- - -

How did this once-troubled young man from B.C. become the most dramatic Canadian faith-healer to hit the United States since Ontario's Aimee Semple MacPherson first stormed Los Angeles in the early 20th century with a mixture of Hollywood show biz and Christian revivalism?

Bentley preaches in public about his rough-and-tumble early days, including near-fatal drug overdoses, criminal burglaries and stints in prison.

Bentley has acknowledged in the conservative Christian publication, Charisma, that at age 14 he was arrested for sexually assaulting children in B.C.

In addition, Fresh Fire Ministries' website says: "In his late teens, Todd had a dramatic encounter with the saving and delivering power of God. This experience brought Todd out of a lifestyle of drug and alcohol addiction without cravings or withdrawal symptoms. He was also delivered from a lifestyle involving criminal activity, youth prisons, drugs, sex, satanic music and bondage."

Charisma magazine (which serves so-called charismatic Christians, including those who speak "in tongues" -- indecipherable utterances that are considered God-given) reported in an earlier article that Bentley was making a name for himself as a faith healer in B.C. almost 10 years ago, particularly in Kelowna and Abbotsford.

Internet videos of Bentley's faith healing in Florida reveal the intense emotion and theatricality of his revival meetings. The videos, available online through YouTube and other sources, show Bentley running toward a man with colon cancer and kneeing him in the stomach. The man buckles, wavers, smiles wanly and finally falls on the stage.

Bentley then tells the man, in front of the cheering congregation: "I had to be obedient to the Lord, sir. Why did the preacher just knee you in the gut? I tell you the Lord is working in you. You felt a quivering."

Several videos show people falling on the stage after Bentley heals them in a variety of ways, including by apparently punching one and kicking another.

Another video, which compares Bentley's events to a "rave," shows a thin woman dancing to pounding drum music while in an apparent trance. She repeatedly mimics shooting at the congregation with a gun.

In one of many Bentley books, CDs and DVDs that are available on the Fresh Fire website, the B.C. evangelist amusingly describes meeting the apostle Paul in heaven.

"As unbelievable as it may sound, I actually saw the apostle Paul come walking toward me onto the bridge," Bentley says.

"You might be wondering how I knew immediately that it was Paul. I just perceived it by divine knowledge and revelation. People have asked me what he looked like, and so I will attempt to describe his appearance. He was short, not more than 5'1" or 5'2" (I'm 5'6").... Looking very Jewish with a short, trimmed, white beard, my first thought was of a monk in a monastery! He actually had jolly cheeks and I thought: Paul, you've got a little weight on you! I mean he wasn't fat but he looked a little pudgy!"

Bob Burkinshaw, of Trinity Western University in Langley, an evangelical independent school, says he is aware of people who are "quite excited" about Bentley, who has drawn thousands to his revival meetings at a Pentecostal church in Abbotsford.

"But I suppose I'm one of those who is moderately skeptical. These things are rarely black and white," said Burkinshaw, a specialist in Canadian church history at the private evangelical university.

Evangelical Christians believe God does heal the sick, but "the issue is one of method," Burkinshaw said. "Many say, 'God doesn't do command performances.'"

Bentley's on-the-edge faith-healing appeals to "people on the margins of respectable society," a U.S. subculture Burkinshaw says was drawn to revivalism during much of the early 20th century, before evangelicalism expanded into the middle- and upper-classes.

Rather than thinking of Bentley's followers as gullible, passive sheep, Burkinshaw suggested understanding them as people who come to the events planning to build on the mesmerizing music and passionate preaching so they can "experience God's presence."

Told about Bentley's marriage breakdown and plans to end the four-month long revival in Florida, Burkinshaw said, "I'm sure the demands of that kind of life can be extreme, putting pressures on families."

Bentley's most recent posting on the Fresh Fire website makes it clear that, although his plans are changing, he's nowhere near giving up his mission.

Bentley will be conducting faith healing events in Spokane, Wash., and then Abbotsford on Sept 17. He also expects to lead revivals at dozens of other North American, and possible British, venues in the coming months.

Sounding as enthusiastic as ever, Bentley reassures his followers and asks for their continued support. "Pray for us as we walk the land, carrying the precious ark of His healing presence for His glory into those fields white and ripe for harvest. More details will be forthcoming!"

He signs off his message:

"BAM!"

dtodd@vancouversun.com

To read Douglas Todd's blog, go to www.vancouversun.com/thesearch

This article was found at:

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=d598a543-4156-4d31-907b-0f0b4d840ab9


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