Onward, Forward, Toward…

is coming out about the Lakeland Revival…

A link sent to me via e-mail (thanks Triple-P) is revealing more about some of the deep roots behind the Lakeland Revival via this Charisma Magazine archive article.

In fact, Andrew Strom has sent out a second warning last week about the revival. Also, let’s look at something that is documented via video.

The video below is a YouTube clip where Todd Bentley is preaching in early 2004 at the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship:

The next video is a Youtube video of Bentley now at the Lakeland meetings:

Compare Todd Bentley in 2004 to the Todd Bentley of today. Pay very close attention to his arms and neck and notice the differences.

Something very ‘dark’ has happened to this man in the past couple of years. I can not for the life of me figure out why someone who professes to be a Christian would go out and allow themselves to be tattooed and pierced multiple times especially in light of what Leviticus 19:28 states:

You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks on you: I am the LORD.

The original Hebrew word for tattoo used here is the word qa`aqa` (pronounced kah-ak-ah) which literally means “mark and inprintment”. The modern word, tattoo, comes from the Tahitian word tattau, which means “to permanently mark” and has it’s origin traced to the Imperalist explorer James Cook.

The Lord specifically told Moses this commandment and others within the same chapter in order to purify and purge his chosen people from the lifestyles they experienced as slaves in Egypt. In fact, do a word study on the word Egypt and you will discover that this word actually means “the world, strongholds”. This process of getting the mentalities, lifestyles, abominations, etc of Egypt out of his chosen people continued throughout the Old Testament and was dealt with by Jesus via his death at the cross and his resurrection three days later.

In fact, tattoos have been discovered on the preserved bodies of the Egyptian and Nubian mummies that are dated as far back as 2000 BC. Therefore, the tattoo was a mainstay in Egyptian culture that was used as skin decoration, determination of social status, completion of religious rituals to the idols, and the displaying of certain rites of passage into manhood, marriage, and warfare.

Tattoos was discovered both by the Pilgrims on the American Indians where tattooing was done along with the building of totem poles to celebrate the spirits of the dead and discovered by the Imperialistic explorers (James Cook) when they first set foot on what is now Polynesia, Fiji, and Tahiti.

Therefore, based on the stories of the Bible, there may be reasons to believe that the concept of tattooing may have existed at the time man tried to reach the heavens by building the Tower of Babel and this concept was scattered throughout the earth when God scattered the people to all corners of the earth and changed the dialects of their languages.

Let’s look in Revelation 14:16-18 where the scriptures talk about another mark known as the mark of the beast. In these scriptures, the future is foretold where anyone who does not receive this mark will not be able to buy or sell without this mark.

We see in Chapter fourteen, verses nine through eleven that whosoever takes the mark of the beast will drink the wine of God’s wrath and be tormented in fire and burning sulfur with no permanent relief. The Greek word used in these verses is “Charagma (pronounced khar-ag-ma)” which literally means “imprint, stamping, tattooing, carved images, graven images, and idoltry”. Like the Hebrew word qa`aqa` (pronounced kah-ak-ah) mentioned earlier in this article, the Greek word has a very similar meaning with a very similar application.

The art of tattooing shows in essence the idolatry and humanistic nature of one allowing themselves to be physically marked to in tribute to the ways, thinkings, and strongholds of the worldly system and it’s pathway to sin/death in order to be like the world. In the scriptures, we see that God never marked people physically with ink, He sealed them spiritually while setting them apart from the world. Whether it was Abraham’s covenant, Jacob’s wrestling match, circumcision, the blood on the doorposts at Passover, washing of the blood of Jesus at Calvary, or the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within us, the sealing showed the authenticity of the covenant we have with Jesus, our Advocate with our heavenly father.

I have to further question what type of ’spirit’ has Todd Bentley come into contact with that would lead him into making a choice to start marking, piercing, and mutilating himself in the fashion that he has done? In fact, I have been extremely curious as to what type of artwork is on his body? I have not been able to see either a YouTube video or a photography still shot that gives me any type of idea of what his tattoos consist of. Either the camera can not scan in close detail or he moves so fast that I can not focus in and see what the tattoos consist of. Even worse is if he has tattoos that are covered up by his clothing that we would never be able to see.

In the lives of most people, the tattoo is a open book to something about the individual. Whether it is the memory of a ‘life altering event’ (seen on many military men in reference to military service), something about their personality, hobbies, likes, or dislikes, or the fact that there are some people that love to re-experience certain types of pain over and over again, we see something about that individual via the tattoos.

I am really beginning to believe that we are seeing a man who has come into contact not with the Holy Spirit, but with ‘familiar and demonic spirits’ and that the tattoos are becoming an open book revealing a deeply troubled and deceived soul that is going around ‘in God’s name’ and calling it ‘the last-days revival’. I am concerned now that the people coming up and claiming healing are possibly receiving something that may be New Age / demonic in nature?

But what is really appalling now is that Charisma Magazine, who allowed J. Lee Grady to warn us about Charismatic ‘hucksters’, the Whites, Earl Paulk, and Weeks-Bynum now fall head over heels over this revival that is so obvious is disturbing. Knowing now what I do know, if I had children, I would never allow them to be alone with Todd Bentley because you would never know what he would do. A good friend of mine pointed out in an e-mail to me that since it appears that this man is deeply troubled and appears to have taken a turn towards the bizarre and demonic, how would one know that the sick and perverted spirit(s) of pedophilia that were at work within him in his teenage years would not re-manifest again?…

Or is this ‘revival’ a form of ’spiritualized pedophilia’ where instead of sexually assaulting and molesting teenagers, Bentley is ’spiritually molesting’ the ‘children of God’ out of their Christian spirituality that brought ‘purity and innocence’ to the lives of God’s children by ’seducing’ them with ’signs and wonders’ similar to the way some pedophiles have admitted that they used candy to lure children in order to perform their heineous and sick crimes on them?