A Christian leader who cannot be consistently honest in his words surely does not deserve to be followed or trusted. As Jesus said, "Let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No.' (Matt. 5:37)
A couple example where I have found Todd Bentley was dishonest in his statements.
1) Overstating the Number of Healings
While I am convinced that God can heal people miraculously, it seems Todd overstated the number of healings that actually took place. Some people refuse to accept that anyone was healed at Lakeland, but I find that a difficult position to defend as one would have to follow up with every single person who claimed to have been healed. Proving an apparent healing did not occur miraculously as a result of prayer is just as difficult as proving that one did. Healing can be a subjective measure ("I feel less pain than before"), but even for healings that can be clinically confirmed ("The tumour has shrunk in size by 50%") it is still virtually impossible to determine what caused the healing. Was it last week's chemotherapy or this week's prayer that did it?
When ABC Nightline did their investigative report on Lakeland on July 9, 2008 (see Part 1, Part 2), they asked for contact information for just 3 people who claimed to be healed. Todd promised to do so, but could not. ABC could not confirm a single case of verifiable miraculous healing. Sometimes getting confirmation can be difficult because people (or their doctors) do not want to be thrown into the public eye, but surely 3 out of the alleged thousands of healed people would have been willing to come forward.
The most remarkable claims that Todd made was regarding resurrections -- dead people who were miraculously being raised to life. The counts kept increasing -- then decreasing -- then increasing. One supposed resurrection that Charisma magazine (which was largely supportive of the revival) mentioned in their article on May 22, 2008 was about a brain dead girl who came to life on the operating table just before having her organs harvested. The article concludes with the sentence, "The hospital denied the report." Why publicize it as a resurrection when there is clear evidence from the hospital contradicting that claim? Apparently a few days later, Todd publicly stated that the little girl had "died again" although if no resurrection ever took place, it would appear she had in fact only died once.
Robert Ricciardelli, a (now former) member of Peter Wagner's apostolic network and a contributor to Charisma magazine, began investigating these claims of healing as one who supported the revival. He started raising warning flags in July 2008. Andrew Strom has collected some of Robert's internet postings, a couple of which are presented below:
"Charisma reporters and a few others like myself have tried to get these [healing claims] verified and cannot... We actually had offered to help, because any news of a resurrection in my opinion is world news if it can be validated. But then when the totals continued to mount which led to hype and embellishment, they began to ask us to stop asking questions.""We have investigated the 20 plus 'raised from the dead' claims as we want to report them to the media, and they cannot be verified, but were only called in, or sent in from an email. This is not responsible reporting, and leaves many questions, which also adds to the claims of hype and embellishment."
One email report of a resurrection that Todd read on live TV was admitted to be false by its author as an attempt to test the screening process for healing claims. It obviously proved to be a very good test of a very poor screening process! To my knowledge, the mistaken resurrection claim was never retracted by Todd.
2) Lying About When He Got His Tatoos
Todd's tatoos obviously attract a lot of attention to him, and I suspect that's why Todd has them in the first place. While I don't find tatoos attractive, I don't have a particular problem with them per se. What I do find disturbing is Todd's lies about when he got them.
In an article published by The Charlotte Observer, we get one version of the story: "He [Todd Bentley] said most of his tatoos are from his pre-Christian days, but he makes no apologies for them."
However, it is clear from photos taken only a few years ago (one example here) that there were no tatoos visible on his neck. Further, most of his tatoos have overt Christian themes. Why would a non-Christian teenager get tatoos like that?
On May 8, 2008, Todd wore a T-shirt on stage with the words, "Jesus Gave Me My Tatoos."
Lastly, Rick Joyner admitted that Todd had an unhealthy obsession with tatoos over the past few years.
It is clear that Todd got most of his tatoos recently but lied about it to the newspaper reporter.
There are other examples of Todd Bentley's mistruths, but they aren't necessary to make the point.
To my knowledge, Todd Bentley never corrected any of these lies nor repented of his lying, neither during the revival nor since he has begun his restoration process. Which begs the question: Why is an unrepentant liar being restored to Christian leadership?
