Andrew Strom in his latest letter asks the hard questions:

OPEN LETTER to WAGNER, JOYNER…
-by Andrew Strom.

I write this as a tongues-speaking, Spirit-filled, prophesying
believer.

Dear Rick Joyner and C. Peter Wagner,

I will do my utmost to avoid disrespect in this letter. But I cannot
avoid the hard questions which must be asked.

I hope my comments here are not construed as “arrogant”. This
is certainly not my intent. But I’m sure you have heard the news
by now that the tide has turned in what you call your “Civil War”.
I’m sure you have heard that the Lakeland meetings have dwindled,
and the “big tent” has been abandoned in favor of the 700-seat
Ignite church once again. I’m sure you have heard that your man
Todd Bentley’s meetings in England have been cancelled, and
that respected leaders even within your own movements have
found vast evidence of falsehoods, fraudulent claims, manipulation
and hype of the most blatant kind. The news of it is worldwide. It
is not just ABC Nightline. It is your own people saying these things.

I’m sure you have heard the news that has even shocked and
saddened me – that the British press is calling Bentley “A US
child sex offender turned church minister who tries to cure cancer
victims by kicking them” – and that 79% of Britons polled want to
keep him out of the country. Where is the glory to Jesus in this?
How could Todd even set foot in England under such a cloud?

Sirs, if this really were a ‘Civil War’, aren’t you living in Gettysburg?

Mr Wagner, I am sure you are aware that because of your open
endorsement of Todd Bentley, numbers of your own ICA ‘apostles’
(some very well-known) are already planning an “alternative”
network without all your ‘Dominionist’ trappings or NAR hierarchies.
Sir, they are leaving. Are you sure you were right to endorse the
Lakeland movement in the very face of your own apostles like that?
Wasn’t this one of the most crucial tests of your leadership? Sir,
if your discernment is such that you could get on a stage and
openly endorse one of the most deceptive movements in the history
of the church, then – with all due respect – should you really be
heading up the apostles of the entire Charismatic world? Are you
aware that you have greatly endangered God’s precious sheep all
around the globe?

And Mr Joyner, are you conscious of how terribly the Prophetic
movement has deteriorated on your watch, sir? As the most
influential ‘father’ in that movement, why have you stood by while
the “New Mystics” have taken over – with their gold dust, their
portals, their ‘orbs’, their drunken jerking, their strange “angel”
encounters and ‘visualization’ techniques, etc? In fact, why have
you actively encouraged and participated in these very things yourself?

Isn’t it true that Bob Jones has been a big mentor for you in these
things, just like he was for Todd Bentley? Wasn’t it Bob Jones
who taught you how to “visualize” your way into the ‘Third Heaven’,
Mr Joyner? Isn’t Bob Jones one of the major hidden influences
behind your ministry? Where do you get your visions? How do you
write your books? How can we ever again trust the “angels” that
you see? Sir, what were you thinking – to openly endorse the
“New Mystics” as you did with Todd Bentley? Did you not see
that it could end so badly?

We all know what Bob Jones said when he stood on the stage with
Todd Bentley in front of the whole world:

BOB: “I released my angels to him… this man from Canada asked
for my angels; this Wind of Change is most powerful. Except for
the arch angels, this ‘Winds of Change’, this is the most powerful
angel…”

BOB TO TODD BENTLEY: “As I watch you, you VIBRATE. You
know there are two portals, clockwise and counter-clockwise.
When you vibrate you close demonic vibration. Counter-clockwise
vibration is demonic. The vibration is healing. Does it seem peculiar?”
[He waves his hands]… “I’m releasing it to you.”

A very basic question here: Is there anything even remotely biblical
about any of this?

Mr Joyner, since Bob Jones is your major mentor, and since you
stood on the stage and openly endorsed that whole movement, I
guess we have to assume that this is the kind of “Prophetic” that
you now represent? Isn’t that fair to say, sir?

And now I need to ask some questions of my colleagues overseas:
Isn’t it true, my friends, that almost every deceptive fad or heresy
of the last 25 years has come out of North America? (ie. The USA
and Canada)? And hasn’t it been growing worse and worse?

When I travel to Africa I find deadly “Prosperity” teaching rampant
in the most poverty-stricken of nations. When I travel to Europe
I find them bombarded with flakey ‘prophets’ from the States.
When I travel to Australia I find them enthralled with ‘Mega-church-
Itis’ imported from the USA. In every way, North America has
become a source of utter pollution, sickness and compromise -
both in the church and the world. And I believe God wants to put
an end to it.

Personally I love Americans. I lived there for four years, and I have
many dear friends in that part of the world. But I do not believe that
God is going to allow this pollution to spread any longer.

Why do leaders in Australia or Europe think that their movements
must be led by Americans? What nation is most of this pollution
coming from? Why do African leaders allow sick money-grubbing
telecasts from the USA to be beamed to their people via satellite?
Why are any of us allowing any of this garbage? When are we
going to stand up and cry, “ENOUGH”? When are we going to
cut off this pollution – not just for ourselves – but for the sake of
God’s precious sheep? Why should we be led by America if they
are leading us into deception?

Should North America even be allowed to lead the worldwide church
any more?

And finally, let me return to Mr Joyner – who once intimated that it
is time to “drive” out those who want to “test the spirits” in the
church. Sir, let me say to you that indeed the time has come to
drive a particular spirit out. It is the spirit of rampant “Charis-mania”.
And sir, I have to say with all due respect, that your very own
movement strikes me as the primest of prime places in which to start.

Discuss this on our Forum at- http://www.revivalschool.com

Send feedback to- prophetic@revivalschool.com

FEEL FREE TO FORWARD or POST THIS on BLOGS, etc.

God bless you all.

Andrew Strom.

–
YES! – You have permission to post these emails
to friends or other groups, blogs, boards, etc. Go for it!

These are hard questions to ask. The letter needed to be written and is an excellent documentary of what happened in Lakeland.

Will they directly answer Andrew? Probably not because they see Andrew as either the ‘rebellious’ one concerning this article or they see him in the mentality of ‘How dare you question us?, you’re a peon in our eyes”

When the UK states that they do not want Bentley and his scheduled meetings are cancelled, isn’t this a sign???? The big tent is down three weeks earlier than the original announce date and we discover via this charisma magazine forums post that Bentley’s ministry has purchased a lot in a upscale subdivision in Polk County, Florida.

We need to be asking another very hard question?

Where did all the money go?

To pay the bills for products and services rendered, to provide outreach for sinners to see Jesus and repent of sins, or did it really go towards the purchase of lot 29 in the Oak Landing subdivision?

I really believe (in my personal OPINION) we will find out later on that whoever provided products and services to the revival probably agreed to some type of ‘net 60 day’ payment plan (because it was ‘the church’ and the church can always be trusted…) and will more than likely not receive payment for their products and services because the financiers of the revival (in my personal OPINION) probably never intended to pay knowing they could find another business to provide the same products and services and repeat the cycle with another business when the business that provided products and services started asking when they were going to get paid?

Why do I say that? Because I have seen similar things happen in my part of the country and it has usually been the ministries with a pentecostal / charismatic slant that pulled such tactics knowing they would never intend to pay and when the question of money came up, find the next vendor who saw promises of increased revenue creating a cycle that would continue until there were no vendors left to provide products and services or the word on the street got around about the reputation while the mainline denominations paid for products procured and services rendered.

Maybe ABC Nightline and Fox’s Geraldo show need to re-investigate the Lakeland Revival to both push harder the proof of the alleged healings and raising of the dead while at the same time find out how monies coming in were spent and find / interview vendors who did provide products and services who may have never got paid for their provision of products and services.

The other hard question we need to ask is

What will be the attitude of Todd’s supporters since this ‘revival’ has now closed up shop?

What will we see them do? Of course, they will go back to their own Todd-friendly forums trying to justify their support for this sham of a revival by believing that either “The revival is in phaze two with the Ignited Church meetings and the Todd world tour”, “America was not ready for another revival and we need to repent for disagreeing with Todd”, “America Christianity was not ready to let ‘foolishness confound the wise”, “America has lost it’s opportunity for revival for the next hundred years (while someone on the Elijah List will proclaim revival next week)”, “God will unleash his wrath and fury on us now”, or “The enemy shut it down”…

Some will repent. Some will be thrown for a loop that will take years to recover from (and some will never recover). Some will feel a Charismatic guilt trip and believe they failed God by not praying hard enough for the ‘eternal revival’ to survive. Some will claim in their ‘believer’s authority’ that they can ask God to smite those who stood up against the revival (aka Touching the Anointed) by asking God to do the following to those who disagreed…

Miss the rapture
Take away salvation
Send down weird and incurable diseases to kill
Send down cancer
Send a natural disaster to demolish homes and property
Take jobs away causing homelessness and poverty
Make minds reprobate
Place birth defects on the next four generations of descendants
Turn Christian daughters into impregnated out-of-wedlock crack-whores
Turn Christian sons into drug dealers who go to prison to do hard time
Break up marriages and families

Trust me, there are probably some Christians out there that are doing this as we speak….

Hopefully they are on their knees repenting for partaking of this ‘MESSYanic monstrocity’ and repenting for cursing the critics and calling the critics such words as ‘cessationalist’, ‘Pharisee’, ‘hate’, ‘the devil’, Spiritual (expletive) / (expletive) in the Spirit, and other words

This wasn’t revival. This was a summer theme park, freak show, “Revivalmania / Summer Slam”, county carnival three-ring circus act minus the agricultural exhibits, duck shooting games, house of mirrors, carnival rides (even though Todd Bentley looked like he could be more than qualified to be the the ferris wheel operator), the gypsy with the acoustic guitar (even though Georgian Banov showed up one night next to the ‘Charismatic Charo’ named Stacey Campbell), four legged wolf boy, and the bearded pygmy lady with five arms… strategically planned from the very beginning to last from April and end in early August to take advantage of the Summer time Charismatic Christian vacation crowd who saved up money in their old five gallon blue-tint bottled water jugs just to have a summer vacation.

What we see here is not the ‘great last days end time revival’. What we saw here was Todd Bentley being used as a ‘guinea pig for God’ to make alot of money, to try to re-establish Bob Jones and Paul Cain back into being seen as credible because the entire theology base of the ‘revival’ was based on words they spoke some twenty to thirty years ago, to see if America Christianity was ready to accept Latter Rain / Manifested Sons of God / Manchild Company / Kingdom Now / Dominionalism doctrines, and to test the waters to see if American Christianity was ready to accept the revival alliance / NAR and C. Peter Wagner as the Protestant Pope along with seeing if the extreme prophets and worship leaders of Elijah List / Toronto Blessing fame (Patricia King, Bill Johnson, John Arnott, Heather Clark, Bobby Conner, Keith Miller, Jim Goll, Che Ahn, and others) could now become mainstream within the confines of traditional pentecostalism and charismatic movements.

I believe that American Christianity has spoken. Half of it was ready to hand over control while the other half said ‘NO!’ to these people and the half who said ‘NO!’ won out by the power of God.

I also believe that maybe (in my OPINION) the Assemblies of God took Stephen Strader aside and said…

(1): Break from ‘Todd and the Revival’ to keep Assembly of God recognition

(2): Break from Todd, but keep the revival to keep Assembly of God recognition

(3): Stay with Todd and the Assemblies of God will disfellowship you.

But I hold the Assemblies of God responsible for this fiasco also. It seems that the Assemblies of God has decided that not only did it want the cake of the Florida Outpouring and eat of it’s monetary and numbers ‘blessings’ (go look at their video where they made a ‘stand’ while refusing to take a stand), but want to once again play the role of ‘protecting the flock’ like they tried to do by defrocking Bakker and Swaggart and pulled their credentials while all along knowing what was going on behind the scenes. Just like they did in the 1980’s when they put up with the sin because the numbers and money was increasing until exposed by the national “sheckuler-nuuus-medierrrr” and forced to do something to save face. Where they publically acted like the hero in publically defrocking Swaggart and Bakker, they may in my personal opinion decided to be the ‘hero’ behind the scenes when the the national “sheckuler-nuuus-medierrrr” in the form of Geraldo and Nightline exposed Bentley.

We will find out the truth one day. It took seven years to find out the real truth as to exactly why John Wimber disfellowshipped the Toronto Blessing. It took almost twenty years to find out the real truth behind the Vineyard’s severing the Kansas City Prophets / IHOP. And when we do find out the truth, then maybe we will find out the answer to the hard questions.

---

Related Posts

1. Call It Like You See It
2. Controversy Is Normal In Revival
3. Lakeland Revival Postings 08-01-08
4. Robert Ricciardelli Responds Part II
5. A Hindsight Prophet Speaks Out

Tags: Andrew Strom, Bill Johnson, Bob Jones, C. Peter Wagner, charismatic witchcraft, Chuck Pierce, Florida Healing Outpouring, Florida Outpouring, God TV, Heresy, Lakeland healing revival, Lakeland revival, Leviticus 19:28, living sacrifice, Paul Cain, portals, Rick Joyner, Robert Ricciardelli, sheekah-boom-ba!, The International Coalition of Apostles, Todd Bentley, william branham