We Need A Revival
Let Your hand be upon the man of Your right hand, Upon the son of man whom You made strong for Yourself. Then we will not turn back from You; Revive us, and we will call upon Your name. Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; Cause Your face to shine, And we shall be saved! Psalm 80:17-19
Will You not revive us again, That Your people may rejoice in You? Show us Your mercy, LORD, And grant us Your salvation. I will hear what God the LORD will speak, For He will speak peace To His people and to His saints; But let them not turn back to folly. Surely His salvation is near to those who fear Him, That glory may dwell in our land. Psalm 85:6-9
To solve any problem in life we must first admit there is a problem. And then we must define the problem and work and pray for a solution to the problem. Brother T. Job Anbalagan of the Glory of His Cross Prophetic Ministries in his article “Revival Through Prophesy[i] ” has defined very well why we need a revival
An unsaved person is spiritually dead. He is a lost soul, as he has not been redeemed from the sin by the Blood of Jesus. He is to be born again in the Spirit of God. There are millions of souls in the world awaiting revival from their spiritual death, which came through Adam. On the contrary, a saved soul is spiritually alive. Nevertheless, he may be spiritually weak, dormant, dull, unconscious or oblivious. He has a name that he lives but is dead (Rev.3: 1). There are thousands of saved souls or born-again Christians in our midst, falling under this category. Though they are born again, yet they are spiritually dumb, deaf, and blind. They are dumb because they do not tell others about what Jesus has done for them or about the need for salvation through Jesus; they are shy of witnessing for Christ. They are deaf because they hardly discern the voice of Jesus through the word of God; they are hard of hearing either the footsteps of the coming Messiah from above or the heart-rending cries of lost souls down from the bottomless pit. They are blind because they do not perceive the suffering Christ in the garb of afflicted strangers who visit their houses for help or who remain sick or in prison (Matt.25: 35-40). There are many saved Christians who slumber spiritually. They have lost their first love for God. Once they were zealous for God actively engaged in soul-winning or helping the mission fields. The spirit of deep sleep has now come upon them (Is.29:10).
There are many believers who have fallen unconscious spiritually and lost their senses. They have become indifferent to lost souls and the work in the Lord’s vineyard. They do not have the agonizing mind of Christ. Neither do they feel the agonies of the other members of the Body of Christ. “…Whether one member suffers, all the members suffer with it…” (I Cor.12: 26). They have no concern for the suffering missionaries on the mission fields or the poor saints in the House of God.
There is yet another category of Christians who are oblivious of their duties and responsibilities in the vineyard of God in this darkest hour as they give preference to the mundane things.
All these kinds of the children of God are likened to the children of Israel who have become “the dry bones” in the prophetic book of Ezekiel (Ch.1). Their lives are not different from the lives of the unsaved persons. They are like the dry bones in the churches of God, whereas the unsaved persons are like the dry bones in the world. Prophetically speaking, all these children of God represent the last or the end-time Church of the Laodiceans who were lukewarm and were neither cold nor hot. They are spiritually complacent and say, “I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing”. However, the Holy Spirit points to them, “thou art wretched, and miserably, and poor, and blind, and naked”. The Holy Spirit who has been constantly grieved by the lives of such children of God is still standing at the door and knocking at their hearts, unwilling to desert them because of His long-suffering. “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Rev.3: 14-22). The bride of the Song of Solomon sleeps but her heart wakes and hears the voice of her Beloved “that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night” (Song 5:2).
Since all these children of God are the individual members of the invisible Body of Christ, the Church, they are to be revived first. God will send a might revival to this world only through the revived members of the Body of Christ.
There are many demonic inspired movements in Christendom today that talk about a revival but they are not real revival because they don’t involve the whole body of Christ and they don’t affect society and this includes especially the ones in the Third Wave and Rodney Howard Browne and Todd Bentley which are man centered and not Christ centered!
Todd Bentley [ii] is the tattooed former criminal who in July 2008 stepped down from his controversial revival in Florida over an affair with a woman. Bentley, raised in Gibsons, B.C., was known to be a heavy drinker. During his ecstatic services he would often punch or kick sick people in the name of healing them. 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-toknee tattoos, the biker-dude lifestyle. His followers could live with all that; it was part of the act.
Bentley, a 32-year-old former drug addict from the 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: cheating on his wife. Todd Bentley, disgraced, went into hiding for six months and then resurfaced.
In 2009 after the revival failed and Todd Bentley [iii] divorced his wife, Rick Joyner led the restoration team which included leaders who had vouched for Bentley’s good character in the past even as he was deceiving us all, and has posted a letter on his web page. We are informed that ‘Even so, they are married now and are resolved to make the most of their marriage, their lives, and to continue to serve the Lord in the best way that they can. ‘
Their being married far from making it right has in my view made matters even worse and totally disqualified Todd Bentley from any reinstatement in ministry in the foreseeable future. It means there is no repentance. He has simply gone into outright rebellion by marrying his mistress. Even if his wife had chosen to divorce him, which does not seem to be the case, a more judicious, moral and righteous course of action would have been to break off this adulterous relationship and stay celibate before God Instead, he remarries quickly. And we are put before the fait accompli. Is there a recent translation of the New Testament that decrees that the solution to adultery is to quickly divorce the offended party and marry the mistress?
Canadian Revivalist Todd Bentley preached on seven fold restoration including the restoration of marriage [iv] and had a mistress during the Lakeland demonic revival and-was drunk most of the time - He stated:
If your marriage needs to be restored then stir up your faith and ask: "My God, please, I want You to restore my marriage, and I want it to be better than it was in the first place. I want there to be double the intimacy." Get aggressive. Don't just settle for an "okay, restore my marriage" attitude. "Restore my marriage and give it to me double!"
So why did Todd divorce his wife and not practice what he preached? Because he is a hypocrite, a false one, a son of hell just like all the preachers in the Third Wave!
Rick Joyner and Bill Johnson being both caught up in the realm of deceiving spirits, could only reinforce TB’s behavior. TB’s declaration of “opening up the stargate portals to the third heaven” had absolutely nothing to do with God or His heavenly realms…it is based on previous declarations by high level occultist. His “angel” connections were not God’s angels, they are familiar spirits and demonic forces. What he does and declares is UTTERLY SATANIC…not “just a little eccentric.” The opening up of these “portals” that TB is engaged in is activated by his own soul power/soul energy called kundalini in Hinduism. There is much material on the web about it as it is practiced by those in the occult/new age especially http://newchristian.org.uk/kundalini.html
Rodney Howard Browne [v] made his ministry known in the USA by playing to a large audience at the Charismatic Carpenter's Home Church in 1993 and 1994. Through approval by Benny Hinn, who launched him at his own meeting, and Kenneth Copeland’s church meeting along with airplay by TBN He brought the new thing to naïve and silly Christians who were open for just about anything to happen and call it God. And so the new latter rain movement got a shot in the arm with laughing hysterically and being inebriated on the floor.
Rodney who believes in nepotism in his meetings taught that not only it was the pastor’s job to fleece the sheep but only God was to judge pastors, not the (dumb) sheep! He also taught that it was more important to give than to receive and spend a lot of time receiving offerings that he spent on himself and family members.
Rodney also taught that thieves were to be blessed and rewarded, not judged for this is what Jesus would want them to do! So he blessed thieving Karl Strader with a new Lincoln town car with money raised from the dumb sheep when Karl robbed him but refused to help any of Dan Strader's victims [vi].
James Jacob Prasch of Moriel Ministries writes in his article The Delusional World Of Mark Stibbe & St Andrews Chorleywood [vii]:
From Kansas City to the religious fiasco in Toronto, to the failed revival at Brownsville resulting in a major church split and public financial scandal, and on to the infamous heresy and abuse of Lakeland. The same odious characters at the core attracting like-minded charlatans including the Strader brothers, Daniel imprisoned until 2036 for defrauding elderly Christians out of $3 million and Stephen who was thought by the judge to be just as guilty.
After Bentley’s exposure in the USA on ABC Nightline he was swiftly removed from ministry to prevent further scrutiny. Not only was he unable to provide evidence of a single healing, many who were pronounced healed have since died. Furthermore the Arnold Palmer Hospital has stated that claims of resurrections were bogus
For those that don’t know, in 2008 (April to July) there was a revival in Lakeland Florida where people were thrown around by some invisible force (which they, Charisma Magazine insisted was the Holy Spirit). People shook violently on stage claiming the most bizarre manifestations, visions and visitations by angles. Todd Bentley punched and kicked people to heal them, spoke of visiting people in dreams and also told of countless trips to heaven where he once stuffed his pockets with gold from a treasury room. He blasphemously baptised people in the name of the father, the son and the bam. But who could forget the 39 people claimed risen from the dead.
The jerking in Toronto, Brownsville, Lakeland or any other revival place is not a sign of the Holy Spirit but of a Kundalini demon which infiltrated Christianity mainly in North America through Rodney Howard Browne! The fact is the bible never talks about “jerking” being an attribute of the Holy Spirit but rather it states but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control THE KEY WORD HERE IS SELF-CONTROL AND WHEN YOU ARE POSSESSED BY A DEMONIC KUNDALINI SPIRIT THERE IS NO CONTROL AND THAT IS TOTALLY WRONG AND AGAINST SCRIPTURE!
Pastor/Evangelist Gordon Williams [viii] in his posting "Todd Bentley Is Not A Christian" states:
Jesus heals, I must disagree with you when you wrote, “Miracles and gifts of the spirit don’t validate a Christian. The fruit of the spirit validates a Christian. peace, love, patience, hope, joy, faith.” First, you did not mention all of the fruit of the Spirit but I know what you mean (Gal. 5: 22 -23). The reason why I disagree with you is because you continuously mis-identify people, like Todd Bentley as a Christian. He is not a Christian nor are those who go chasing after the counterfeit signs and so-called miracles that he and others misrepresent as being from the Holy Spirit. Real Christian Believers do not get deceived and offer counterfeits because they draw attention to themselves and they cannot tell the difference between the work of the Holy Spirit and the work of the devil and demons. They do not do the things that the New Testament tells us clearly are the work and character of authentic Christian believers. They glory in their sin and make excuses for their adulterous work, drunkenness and love of money to say nothing of all the works of the flesh which they seem to think are the fruit of the Holy Spirit. As a man once told me: “If it doesn’t look like a sheep, and eat like a sheep and talk like a sheep and do sheep things, it isn’t a sheep”. Well, just stop and look at all the un-Scriptural things these people are doing. They do not look like Christians, they don’t eat as Christians, they do not talk like Christians and they do not do Christian things. So, they are not Christians.
Jesus tells us that the “signs” following confirm the preaching of the Word and prove who are authentic believers. This is very clear when you examine the Greek definition of “signs”. They were the reason why Nicodemus said to Jesus, “Rabbi, we know that you are a man sent from God; for no man could do these signs that you do, unless God is with him” (Jn. 3: 2). The legitimate 15 Gifts of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 12: 6 – 8; 1 Cor. 12: 8 – 10)prove that we are authentic believers. The fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5: 22 – 23) describes the Character of Jesus which the Holy Spirit develops us so that we can use the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Because the real or authentic Gifts of the Holy Spirit are not being used and encouraged with these counterfeit Christians who demonstrate counterfeit gifts, we have to be very careful in choosing our words as I think you have done in your letter. I learned a long time ago that there are “Christians” and there are “christians” (religious people) who are not believers. People, like the person you mentioned who received healing and made the mistake of attributing it to Todd Bentley has not learned that whoever calls on Jesus will catch Jesus’ attention, even while watching a deceptive person pretending to be a believer, and answer their prayer and heal them. When I examine these counterfeit Christians, according to Scripture, they are not believers according to Jesus Christ. Because most pastors and churches do not encourage the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and use the 15 Gifts of the Holy Spirit, they are easy victims when the counterfeits are demonstrated. This is an important ministry that we have in the churches that I am invited to preach and do ministry. As you know it is “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ” (Eph. 4: 12). So, I suggest that you do not look upon such people as Christians because they are not
EXTRACT FROM Let God Arise
http://walthope.tripod.com/arise.htm
http://walthope.wordpress.com
https://plus.google.com/u/0/100302133262254344211/posts
WARNING BILL JOHNSON AND BETHEL
CHURCH http://moriel.org/MorielArchive/index.php/discernment/church-issues/warning-bill-johnson-and-bethel-church
The dangers within the Latter
Rain Revival Movement, Mystics, and Apostolic and Prophetic Movement.
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