Todd Bentley prophesying and doing some bad cold reading
I came across a video clip of Todd Bentley some months ago, and was going to include a link to it in a much longer article about Todd Bentley. Unfortunately, I have lacked the time to write this proposed article up properly since, so in the meantime, until I can writer a longer article on Todd Bentley and his beliefs and his ministry and his prophecies, I will release this part, which says a lot about this man and his ministry in just a few minutes worth of video clip.
As background information, Todd Bentley is relatively new on the Christian scene and he’s young (much younger than he looks in the video), and seems to be flavour of the month in certain quarters. He is linked to Patricia King of Extreme Prophetic (who I understand helped bring him on in ministry), and so he is joined at the hip with aberrent Kansas City prophet Bob Jones, who Patricia King is influenced and mentored by. Todd Bentley is very Latter Rain influenced (Latter Rain is a heresy) and Bentley now even claims to have William Branham’s ministry angels helping him. (These angels seem to get about and often seem to be in two places at once, if we are to believe all the ministers who have encounters with Branham’s angels - an alleged encounter being a badge of honour to wear in the current movement, which opens a few doors into churches and gets a few more bottoms on pews.)
There are much longer videos on the web of this man, which I wish I knew how to cut (if anyone knows how…) so you can see the pertinent segments I wish to point to without having to sit through half an hour or more of bad teaching first. I’ve seen him on several occasions speaking tongues publicly - no interpretation of course, like most pentecostals. It is very odd hearing his type of tongue, even for someone like me, used to pentecostalism, charismaticalism and its excesses, and having heard what some of the counterfeit sounds like. It is clearly demonic in his case - go listen to it and you’ll see EXACTLY what I mean. Even on this few minutes worth of clip, there are some odd sounds coming from him while ‘ministering’ - ‘boom bah!’ etc.
Anyway, the reason why I want to highlight the clip in this article, is not because of false tongues, but because the first three minutes of this clip are classic ‘how not to prophesy’. Watch the first three minutes as that’s the section that I want to talk on. Todd Bentley is supposed to be ‘prophesying’ here. Many in the New Apostolic scene call him a ‘prophet’. But what he is actually doing is the worst ‘cold reading’ and fumbling around and backtracking I’ve ever seen. If he were a secular stage psychic he’d had been booed off stage and rightly so, as he is not slick in what he is doing. But as he is in the church, and many Christians are naive and trusting and will not discern and will accept almost anything (apart from criticism of their anointed ones), people will take it from him, and believe him to be anointed because they fall down backwards when he touches them. Even when he directly asks questions of his ministerees, he still manages to get it badly wrong! Look how much he fumbles around with the first lady for example, desperately searching for clues and going by what she gives him - you just know he would have changed his ‘prophecy’ to suit whatever she told him. It is some prophecy and some prophet! To do this lacks integrity, and of course betrays him as a false prophet - for I tell you the truth, if he had knowledge of the true gift he would not dare to do this! After lots of prophetic misses, on several different people, he seems to give up prophesying for a while and instead either asks people directly what’s wrong with them and then quickly ’slays them in the spirit’, or the people fall over themselves helping him out, by telling him what’s wrong.
The clips is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPdS77Z3MBY
Cold reading, by the way, is what fake psychics do - they go off the clues you give them - by your body language, facial expression, by what you say to them. (In the following section you can replace the word ’psychic’ with ‘Christian minister’ or ‘prophet’ or ‘apostle’ to see what I am saying in this case and how it applies to the modern day church). They then speak in broad and vague catch all terms that can be taken and interpreted in multiple ways. (A Christian cold reader can be even vaguer and make the false prophecy dependent on faith so the Christian blames himself when it does not come to pass.) Often when someone goes for a psychic reading, they do almost all the talking, the psychic just agrees with them, smiles, says a few things that can be taken to mean many things, and the person goes away thinking the psychic knew everything - they forget what they told the psychic first. If the psychic is clever and subtle, this can look very effective and the person will swear they did not tell the psychic anything first - as this is what they will truly remember of the incident. The mind filters out the rest - it’s human psychology. In a Christian setting, the one being ministered to is often so caught up in worship or spiritual rapture, or their own internal world or dialogue with God, or desparation, or striving, or in tongues or manifesting or whatever, that they are even more susceptible and even less likely to notice, let alone remember, what really went on during ‘ministry’. One wonders how these ladies in the clip later relayed the incident on this Todd Bentley clip. I bet it will not be ‘Todd had lots of misses and then said this… (the bit they remember)’. They will filter out the misses and fumbling and just remember the good, or what they wanted to hear, or what they thought he said - not what it actually said. The mind is a funny and selective thing. (I’ve had the same thing after a sermon where almost all the congregation will insist their pastor did not really say what he clearly did.)
I’ve known incidents of spiritualist mediums doing what seems to be an amazing reading about a woman’s dead fiance, giving really clear specific details about how he died, his looks, his foibles, his name etc….. it all seemed very impressive - except that this same medium had ’read’ this same woman about six months or so before, and was told all about him then. But the woman being read accepted it second time around as an amazing demonstration of the supernatural!
Spiritualist churches are often relatively small, where after a while almost everyone knows who the regulars are desparately trying to contact, and the same sad events happen week after week with usually fumbled cold (or warm) readings - ‘he’s sending you a rose, love, … love and light’ - with pieces of suitably banal information coming out over the weeks - so all the ‘church’ leader needs to do is prep a visiting speaker in beforehand with some of the regulars’ details and you then have a seemingly amazing demonstration and ‘proof of the spirit world’ by the visiting speaker. This could work just as well in a Christian setting as well, adding in some hallelujahs, worship music, and slaying in the spirit for even more of a ‘powerful’ demonstration of what is actually charlatanism. (Note I am not saying all spiritists or ministers do this, there are some who do not think themselves charlatans and genuinely have occultic encounters, but there are more quacks than occultists on the psychic/medium route, and it’s funny how most of the mediums have to sound camp too, with the same silly stage voice and mannerisms (when actually they are butch off stage. They’re more like Butlins entertainers than occultists - think Derek Acorah with the blonde highlights but a bit more camp.)
I think it was the medium Sylvia Browne who disgracefully used the bereaved, by researching the newspapers for tragedies in a town she was about to visit, contacting a grieving mother beforehand offering to help her contact her daughter, meeting up with her and getting all sorts of specific information, and then asking the Mum to sit in a certain spot in the audience on the night with a bright red dress on, so she could spot her if she got a message from the departed one. On the night, on cue, Sylvia did get a message for the woman in the red dress (making out they had never met and this was all coming to her directly in spirit), and then proceeded to tell her all the Mum had told her a couple of days before about her daughter- nothing more. The mum was disgusted. She saw through it - other grieving parents are unfortunately so desperate they would not see through this, or they would choose not to see through this. Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies. It comforts me. And the rest of the audience, not party to this ploy, thought Sylivia was amazing for knowing all this and their faith in the psychic increased! They were taken as mugs.
Television or stage psychics also have producers and researchers to help them who ask detailed questions before the show is aired. It’s only a matter of trust on the part of the public that this information is not passed onto the psychic by the researcher. Doris Stokes, the world-famous medium, was well known for either planting stooges in her audience, or researching up some of her audience beforehand. Peter Popoff, tv evangelist and charlatan extraordinaire, was caught out by sceptic James Randi, with a hidden ear-piece feeding him audience information that he pretended was prophetic words of knowledge given him direct from the Holy Spirit. Have you ever seen the ‘prayer requests’ you write and fill in at huge pentecostal healing rallies, that you add into the bucket with your financial offering (inferring the more money you give to THEM, the more likely you will be healed or the more likely God will hear your prayer - all major credit cards accepted) containing your specific and often detailed information? This is passed around before the actual ministry starts, often several times. Sometimes, when you have to register for charismatic/pentecostal/prophetic conferences, similarly specific information is asked, often weeks or months in advance that people long have forgotten about writing by the time the conference starts. Can you see how this information could be used to be read back in ministry time to you as a pretend word of knowledge/prophecy? If you don’t believe me, do what James Randi did and fill in some far fetched bogus information on one of these slips and see if it comes back to you as a word of knowledge by your revered minister! (’But the minister had no way of knowing that’! Really?!)
In a smaller setting, as mentioned, visiting ministers can be prepped by talkative pastors or church gossips. And there are very big name evangelists (not just Peter Popoff) who have been shown to use stooges - that is plants in the audience - who pretend to be healed or respond to an amazingly accurate pretend word of knowledge. But most Christians would never ever even suspect such a thing (I did not) - as they are so naive, sweet and trusting - that is gullible - (I was) - thinking everyone in Christiandom plays fair, and everyone who is spirit-filled loves and honours God as much as they do. Many are so desperate to believe and be healed or get a word or whatever, they will overlook the obvious - but there are so-called ’Christian’ ministers who do do it deliberately and systematically! They lie, cheat, and don’t play fair. The church is easy game. Whose fault is it? Well theirs, and the church’s, if they continue to tolerate them! Peter Popoff was caught out in the act, but many more have not been caught - yet - or if they have, no one really cares, look how many still support Popoff!
Other examples of cold reading include people like medium John Edwards, saying to a large audience very all encompassing things, and general names and initials, and going with the flow, changing the reading as it goes along depending on the audience cues. if you have a large enough audience, any information you make up, even seemingly specific and detailed, is bound to have a hit, so if your information misses with the person you are reading, it will fit someone else who claims the reading. The same can be said for words of knowledge, walk around any crowd, whether they be at a ball game, a burger restaurant or a church conference, with a medical dictionary of common medical complaints, read them out at random, and you’ll get the same percentage of hits. More on cold reading is here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading and here http://skepdic.com/coldread.html
Example of a cold reading where the psychic can’t be wrong:
Psychic asks: Did she like dogs…
Answer: yes she loved them - this is a HIT
Response, affirming statement - yes I see lots of dogs around her in spirit, she is with some dogs in spirit
Or
Answer: no she hated them, was scared of them
Quick Response/backtrack - yes, you’re right she hated them, telling me how much (laughs), but you know she says she’s ok with them now…. - this miss becomes a HIT and a confirming/comforting statement
Example 2;-
‘I’m getting a name….a M initial….’
(almost everyone knows someone with an M initial dead or alive, but if they don’t, then ‘look for someone coming with a M initial who will be very important to you in your life…’) Again its either a HIT or a psychic prophetic statement that has a good chance of coming to pass as it is so broad.
An example of a broad catch all statement:
Psychic: I see marriage around you….
Answer: I am married. - HIT Psychic responds to how the response is made, happy or sad facial expression, to say something suitably banal about marriage
Answer: I’m not married. - Miss becomes a HIT, Psychic responds to how the response is made, giggly happy, bitter, or sad ,to say something like ‘you will be’, or ‘your past hurts weighing you down and your divorce is keeping you back…’ or ‘you will minister to the married’ or whatever.
This is exactly what Todd Bentley was doing when he was talking about children with the first lady. He’ll make a way for it to fit somehow. Who cares if what he prophesies is actually true or not?
All Todd Bentley and Lakeland articles here
