DAWN Fridayfax 2002 #37

Canada

Do you know Todd Bentley?

Almost drunk with excitement, he raced down the stairs to his cellar apartment, turned on the light and threw himself to the ground, lifting his hands to heaven to pray. He had no time for a shower or to eat. Something had happened to 18-year-old Todd Bentley - he now prayed and read the Bible between four and twelve hours each day. "To be honest, I never thought that Todd would survive his teenage years," says David Bentley, Todd's father. Todd is now 26 years old. After only four years of preaching, he became one of the world's best-known prophetic evangelists, and the list of confirmed healings and other miracles is impressive. One woman who had been disabled for 14 years and was close to death jumped out of the wheelbarrow in which she had been brought, completely healed. "That is amazing," says Art Beckwith, a pastor in Pharr, Texas. "I've never seen things like this."

Saved from death from drugs

Bentley, his parents' only child, was born near Vancouver in 1976. When he was three years old, his parents divorced, and he grew up with his mother, who lost her hearing soon after the divorce. His father vanished without a trace. At the age of eleven, Todd drank himself unconcious on his mother's rum, and was later expelled from school for violence, ending up in prison for fourteen months. Following his release, he moved from one care home to another until he finally ended up homeless. He finally found his father again on the streets of Vancouver. At 17, he again landed unconcious in hospital, after swallowing a bag full of amphetamines and hallucinogenic pills. After pumping out his stomach, the doctors believed him to be only minutes from death.

"Listen now"

Bentley's life as a Christian began with a loud hammering on the back door of his dilapidated apartment on the British Columbian coast. He first thought it was a drug raid, but instead of the police, a large man with a huge white Bible stormed in. The man was an ex-drug addict and friend of Bentley's dealer. He immediatley started preaching. "It was the firiest sermon about heaven and hell that you could imagine," Bentley remembers. "Eventually, I shouted 'Stop! That's enough!' - but he just kept preaching." The man just threw his Bible into Todd's lap, telling him to close his eyes, open the Bible and point with his finger, then read what he had pointed to. Curious, and wanting to get rid of the man as soon as possible, Bentley did what he was told. The words under his finger: "listen now". He froze. "Something like the fear of God gripped me. That was the day I was reborn." His desire for drugs and alcohol ceased on the spot. In the following months, he prayed for hours, weeping. "Jesus says 'those who seek me shall find me.' That made me hungry..."

Prophetic evangelisation on the streets

After his salvation at 17, Todd Bentley was on the street every Friday, telling drug addicts about his life-changing experience with Jesus. Not only that, but he began giving the people prophetic insights into their own lives, with the result that many were saved. After a short time, he wanted to start preaching, but said to himself "Stop - that's probably just my ego. Who am I? An ex-drug addict!" Today, after only 4 years in a public preaching ministry, he preaches between 30 and 50 times each month in Bible study groups, in houses or in stadia with an audience of 100,000. He speaks in Lutheran and Catholic churches, as well as Pentecostal churches - and most invite him to return.

The prodigal father

Eventually, his father said "I want what Todd has," and was saved through his son's ministry. He too now sees people healed through prayer: "I prayed for a woman in a wheelchair, and she could walk!" "For all of my life, I wanted to be part of a New Testament church," says Drown, a businessman from Atlanta now on Bentley's staff. "I had been a Christian for 30 years, but had lost my faith in the church - it was all just words. Todd taught me the importance of a hunger for seeking God."

God can use nobodies

Bentley, wearing jeans and earrings, doesn't fit everyone's expectations. "Todd's success has also brought ridicule, mainly from those who are irritated by his style. Others treat him like a star. Neither impresses Todd much - he is humble, and not overly impressed by his own success," says Ken Greter, Todd's pastor in Abbotsford, British Columbia, where Bentley lives in an average house with his wife Shoonah and his 5-, 3- and 1-year-old children.
Source: Charisma Magazine; Todd Bentley (www.thearc.bc.ca , todd@freshfire.ca), tel. (+1) 866-853-9041; Pastor Ken Greter, tel. (+1) 604-853-8684

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