LAKELAND, Fla. — Todd Bentley believes God acts through him to cure cancer, heal the deaf and raise the dead. So do hundreds of thousands of people who have visited his raucous revival meeting, now in its third month and broadcast nightly from a huge tent in the middle of Florida.
The 32-year-old Canadian, tattooed to the fingers and neck, puts a palm to the forehead of the sick, desperate and faithful. Bentley yells "Bam!" they collapse and he proclaims them cured. Attendees dance in the aisles, shout to Heaven, laugh, shake violently and cry.
He claims to have medical proof of mass healings, but has not produced widely convincing evidence.
His tactics, sometimes violent, have made skeptics even of Pentecostals who believe in concepts that aren't accepted by all branches of Christianity such as speaking in tongues, miraculous healing and spontaneous twitching from the Holy Spirit.
But the ease of Internet communication cuts both ways for Bentley. Critics circulate a YouTube video from Lakeland of him kneeing a supposed terminal stomach cancer patient in the abdomen, saying God told him to. In another clip, Bentley explains how he kicked an elderly lady in the face, choked a man, banged a crippled woman's legs on a platform, "leg-dropped" a pastor and hit a man so hard it dislodged a tooth.
"People just can't understand why God would tell me something like, 'Kick that woman in the face,' who was not injured and hundreds were healed," Bentley said. "Or the incident where I did hit a guy so hard one time that he did hit the ground and his tooth popped out.
"Miracles and healings are evidence," Bentley said. "They are signs of the Kingdom, and if we don't have signs then all we have is a bunch of theology. How one individual wants to interpret Scripture and how another individual wants to interpret Scripture."
You Tube Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUTCWLoD4-4
