By Peter Smith
The Courier-Journal
July 18, 2008
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080718/NEWS01/807180458
After more than two hours of hard-driving worship music and preaching at Evangel World Prayer Center, evangelist Todd Bentley began laying his hands on people in wheelchairs, disabled children held limp in their parents' arms and others with serious ailments.
Deloris Halstead was waiting.
She and two friends had driven more than 500 miles from Missouri to experience in person what they had been seeing on TV and video.
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| Preacher Todd Bentley put his hand on the head of DeWayne Striecker during a faith healing after a revival service at the Evangel World Prayer Center's east campus on Billtown Road yesterday afternoon. Photo by Matt Stone |
"We believed that we would be helped," said Halstead, 75, who said her lungs had been scarred by blood clots and she needed oxygen to breathe.
Bentley, 32, was in Louisville for a one-day series of services at Louisville's largest Pentecostal church, aiming to spread the spirit of a revival he's been leading for three months.
The revival, which began in Lakeland, Fla., and has continued in other cities across the country, has been drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors, a worldwide viewership on TV and the Internet and claims of healing miracles.
But it's also drawn controversy over Bentley's claims and practices, which he has said include hitting or smacking people to heal them. Bentley also has acknowledged a sordid past as a drug user and criminal, including a conviction when he was a juvenile for sexual abuse.
The service yesterday was held at Evangel's eastern Jefferson County campus on Billtown Road and was followed by simultaneous evening services at the eastern campus and Evangel's southern campus on Minors Lane.
Each campus has an indoor capacity of about 2,000, while hundreds gathered in an outdoor overflow area of the eastern campus to watch on a large screen.
Bentley laid hands on one person after another, who then left, still in their wheelchairs. As Bentley reached Halstead, he asked, "How are you doing?"
"I could be doing a lot better," she said.
She asked for prayer for her lungs.
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| Polio sufferer Terri Hall waited to be touched by preacher Todd Bentley yesterday as Cynthia Schubert, right, wept after being touched. Photo by Matt Stone |
"Holy Spirit, blow in those lungs," Bentley said, leaning over and blowing puffs of air toward her.
After he finished, he said he felt a "jolt," and Halstead said she felt a warmth. She took the tubes from her nose that connected to her oxygen tanks and began taking breaths on her own.
"It's the first time in five years I've gone without my oxygen," she said afterward.
During the midday service, Bentley — who sported faded jeans, a black T-shirt, ear and lip studs and arms full of tattoos featuring lions, doves and other biblical images — told the audience: "I don't want to play religion, I don't want to play politics. I just want Jesus!"
"Break in!" he prayed as the electric guitar and drums began a crescendo. "Break in! Break in! Break in!"
He went on to pray for numerous people, and several he laid hands on fell backward and lay still for minutes at a time, or quietly mouthed praises.
During his prayers for healing, Bentley repeatedly said that God told him someone in the crowd had a particular malady and was being healed. People touched the parts of their bodies in which they needed healing.
"Somebody's receiving a new back," he said. "... A woman is going to receive a new colon. ... You're going to receive a new heart ... I command you in the name of Jesus Christ, devil, take your hands off them right now!"
Jim Stead, of Salvisa, Ky., said he had been in a wheelchair for 41 years because of injuries he suffered in Vietnam.
He got on stage, saying he felt an explosion of power during the service, and walked and got down and rolled over.
Before the service, "I could walk short distances, then fall down," he said afterward. "My spine had a catch.
"God has put me back where I was 41 years ago," he said as his wife and daughter agreed. "I feel like dancing with my wife. I want to go jump rope, I want to ride a horse, I want to do things I haven't done in 50 years."
Stead then walked out, pushing his wheelchair as those around him cheered.
Afterward, Bentley acknowledged that many did not have such dramatic experiences.
He said there are many reasons people are or are not healed, saying God has different plans for different people even though "God loves everybody the same."
"Some people don't receive a healing, they recover," he said. "It might be two days from now they're up walking around. I've seen that all the time. The Bible says they will recover. It never promises instantaneous, pop out of the wheelchair."
Burnie Coons and other participants from a church in Clarksville, Ind., remained confident of a divine healing for their pastor, who was severely disabled by an accident and medical complications earlier this year.
Although they saw no dramatic change after Bentley prayed for her, "We're expecting her to improve," Coons said.
Bentley insisted that his ministry has compiled documentation of miracles. A recent Associated Press report said it was unable to verify any of a dozen miracles Bentley's ministry said were confirmed.
"People can get carried away" with some claims, Bentley said, "but that still doesn't take away from the fact that people still are being genuinely healed."
On his background, he said the apostle Paul and others had violent or disreputable pasts, and "God saved them and made them saints."
The early service included two offerings, one for the expenses of yesterday's services, which Evangel pastor Bob Rodgers said totaled $51,000, and the other for Bentley's ministry.
At the second offering, Bentley asked people to raise their offering money in the air for a blessing, saying God would return their giving with prosperity.
Reporter Peter Smith can be reached at (502) 582-4469.
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