Firsthand testimony from a Todd Bentley Fresh Fire Ministries Conference

This post is by someone else.

“I went to a “Texas Ablaze” conference in Austin, TX. It was put on by Stand Firm World Ministries, Fresh Fire Ministries, and Streams Ministries. Some of the speakers were Keith Miller (SFWM), Todd Bentley (FFM), and Barbie Breathitt (Streams Ministries). It was hosted at one of the local Austin churches (I forget the name of the church). It was three days long beginning on a Friday, in February.

One of my friends had recently become engaged, and his girlfriend was visiting San Antonio to go to this Todd Bentley conference. They had been to one before somewhere else in the USA. I had never heard of Todd Bentley or Fresh Fire Ministries before. She compared going to a Todd Bentley conference to having “An ice cream sundae treat in the Spirit.” Well, my friends and I were up for that, so we registered and paid the fee and booked a hotel for the weekend. I believe the registration fee was 35 dollars, but more if you paid at the door. It felt weird to have to pay to go to church like you would a concert or sports game. I attended the conference with several people from the single’s group at the church I was going to (Vineyard Church of San Antonio.). Many other families from the Vineyard also attended, but us singles carpooled and shared hotel rooms because we were cheap, and some of us did not have much money to pay for our own hotel rooms, so it helped defer the cost. We were all excited about this conference and prayed that God would do great things while we were there. I went expecting a move of God.

“I hope he does the ‘ring of fire’!!” one of my friends commented. Ring of fire? Apparently a thing where he makes a ring of fire in the air and you walk through it, and supposedly this is some anointing or blessing or something. You walk through the ‘ring of fire’, and he prays for you and you fall down. It’s awesome, they said. That it was a rush to get the Spirit like that. They way they talked about it made me feel a little apprehensive about it. I hadn’t read anything about a ‘ring of fire’ in the bible. (He didn’t do this signature ‘ring of fire’ at the conference I went to after all.)

The first night it was jam-packed with everyone trying to get in. Because we had paid our fee in advance, we went to the pre-registered table. They required us to get these purple wrist-bands that we had to wear for three days (we could not take them off, not even to shower, or we could not get back in.). I am lucky my wrist is very small and I could slip mine on and off because they did not put it tight enough. It would have been obnoxious to have to sleep/shower with that thing on. They did not want anyone who had not paid to get in. They had ushers (guards?) at the doors to the sanctuary to make sure you had your wristband. They would check your wrist after you went to use the bathroom too, before they let you back in. I guess they were afraid of people getting the Holy Spirit or getting healed without paying for it first?

Around the registration tables were tables piled full of things you can buy from the ministries, or outrageous prices, too. 25 dollars for a CD, or 30 bucks for a book. They had sets to teach you how to have experiences like Todd Bentley has (going up to the third heaven, meeting angels, etc, etc.) From Todd Bentley’s ministry you could also buy hankies and get Todd to pray over them, and transfer the anointing to them, so your sick relative or friend might be healed, or if they were healthy, just get an “explosion” of an anointing of the Holy Spirit. (based on people getting healed from Pauls’ hankies in Acts. I don’t think Paul made people pay for hankies though). Streams Ministries had cards that excited everyone, because our church was involved with Streams Ministries, and was doing Dream Interpretation. They had laminated cards that you could buy for $10-25 that were ‘cheat sheets’ on things like 1) What causes what illnesses, or 2) What numbers, colors, letters, and various animals mean in dreams. My friends bought the illnesses card and the dream card, and I looked at them on the way home. The Illnesses card had things like “Obesity is caused by low-self esteem.” “Low back pain is caused by familiar spirits.” Etc. It was a chart with the illnesses on the left and the demons/spiritual conditions on the top , with X’s to show you what caused what. Some things were caused by multiple things. They also had other material for sale that of course, showed you how to cast out whatever demons you had so you could get well, or how to get better self esteem so you wouldn’t be obese. The dreams card was your basic run of the mill dream interpretation stuff, like the color red means danger, purple means royalty, etc.

One thing I noticed is they interrupted the service a lot to advertise products at the pulpit. They would talk for a minute about a book or CD, and then remind us that we could buy it in the foyer for a “low, low” price. I did not see how this is doing anything but turning a house of prayer into a house of merchandise. They did this between speakers. They encouraged people during the breaks to go out and shop at the tables.

In the sanctuary, they had special areas roped off for ‘VIP’ people. Churches that were partners with the ministries, or groups that had paid extra money, got to sit in these special areas up front. Everyone else that had just paid the regular price had to sit in the back. Sometimes we could not all sit together because there wasn’t enough room in one area, and we had not reserved an area for our group. Apparently paying extra money for your group got your group mentioned up front, because the first day they were like “And we’ve got guests from such-and-such church over here” and then that church would clap to show everyone where they were. They did not mention any groups that were not seated in the VIP sections.

At the beginning of the conference Keith Miller talked about how he felt there were going to be “open heavens” during this conference and people were going to get new anointings and stuff like that. I don’t remember much about Keith Miller, except that when he was ‘invoking’ the Holy Spirit, he kept saying “psssshhh, pssssh” into the microphone. Like, “Come down Holy Spirit, psssh ,psssh, psssh. The Holy Spirit’s coming tonight, psssh, pssh. Psssh. Psssh.” It was very weird, and I did not know that making hissing noises into the microphone like that got the Holy Spirit to come down. It actually made me a little uncomfortable, the way he was doing it. But I had not experienced something like that before, so I did not pay much attention to it, but it did not seem much like praying to me. He talked a lot about angels appearing to him and such, and how there were angels in the room. He talked a lot about ‘mantles’. How God was going to rip off a tiny piece of His robe and float it on down to you to cover you, and you would get a new mantle that would give you some kind of power. That prophetic mantles, and healing mantles, etc, would be given out today, straight from God. (They tie this in with Elisha taking Elijah’s mantle).

So Barbie from Streams Ministries also spoke. She spoke about “heavenly orbs” that people would be seeing at conferences, and how they would capture them on camera. How these ‘heavenly orbs’ were God’s glory and angels and things like that. How they had pictures of one that when you looked close, you would see a figure with her hands held out. That these orbs (Angels) were here to minister to us. They showed pictures on the projector of orbs at other conferences, some of the pictures had more orbs than others. How many orbs were there was supposed to be in proportion to how much glory of God had come down. I was extremely skeptical about the whole orbs thing, because it just did not sound right to me. One of my friends caught ‘orbs’ on her digital camera ,but when we showed them to our photographer friend back in San Antonio who could not come to the conference, she told us that those orbs were nothing but ‘lens flare’. Also while Barbie was talking, she interpreted some dreams from pastors. She would only do it for pastors and not anyone else. The reason she gave for this was that they work hard and we need to give something back, etc. Strangely, all the pastor’s dreams, while each one very different, all seemed to mean that God would be blessing expanding their ministry and bringing them rich people to their church to help. (One guy had some dream about diving into a well with a big fish ,and she took this to mean a ‘big fish’ businessman who would be able to finance ministries.)

When Todd Bentley finally spoke (I believe it was the 2nd day), the atmosphere in the room was like “Finally! The guy we have been waiting for!” And you could feel the room get excited in anticipation. He started out really energetic. There wasn’t any prayer beforehand. He was sweating within like 3 minutes. Not that there is anything wrong with sweat, but you could see the perspiration on his brow from the back of the room. What was weird, was that he said he was going to preach on a psalm. So we all got out our bibles. But every time he went to try to read the verse, he would begin to laugh, and stagger, and make weird noises. This made me EXTREMELY uncomfortable. It seemed as though he was mocking the scripture, by laughing at it when he began to read it. Everyone admired him for this, though, saying he was so “drunk in the Spirit” that he could not read his bible! He would calm down, but as soon as he went over to the pulpit where his bible was, he would immediately become so “drunk” that he could not read nor preach, but just would stagger around laughing and snorting for a few minutes. Still acting rather drunk, he began to preach about all the great things he’s done (with God’s help, of course.) About how he went from having no money to having a multi-million dollar ministry, and healings, etc, and how great it all was. Everyone thought this was a fantastic testimony on his part, but I wondered why God would have him set aside whatever he was going to preach on to brag about his accomplishments. He laughed, snorted, and chortled through his entire speech. Whenever he would begin to mention something a scripture said, he would become incoherent. Why could he not read nor recite the scriptures without breaking into a fit? But was able to maintain enough composure to brag about all the great stuff God’s done with him. And people ate it up! It was seriously disturbing to me. He talked a lot about how he would go to the third heaven, and how many times he’s met angels, etc. And how you, too, can get into a Holy-Spirit induced trance whenever you want and go to heaven, and how he’s got teachings on how to do it. (apparently we can force the Holy Spirit to take us to heaven and have out-of-body experiences whenever we want.) He related one tale, of a witch doctor. Who had come to a conference of his. That night God took him out-of-body, supposedly, and into the witch doctor’s dreams, and witnessed to him while he was dreaming. The witch doctor came back the next day saved because of being witnessed to while he was dreaming. He also talked about one time, he got taken up into the third heaven, and angels were running around saying “The books of destiny, the books of destiny!” and stuffed a page from one of those books which had a map of this one African country into his mouth, and then 3 days later the ruler of that country called his ministry.

Eventually he quit talking about his accomplishments and moved right into the “Awesome Signs and Wonders” part of his talk (so there was no sermon or teaching. Just Todd saying how awesome he is, and now I guess proving it.) So he starts blowing people down in the spirit and such. And calling people out based on sicknesses, and they would fall down and be “healed”. But mostly of stuff you can’t see. Actually, all stuff you can’t see. Like one lady supposedly had chronic elbow pain, and she said it was gone after she had fallen down under the power. He had everyone who had a “metabolism” problem stand up because He felt the Lord was going to “reverse metabolisms” and that everyone would be free from struggling with their weight, if they would just stand up and get this blessing. TONS of people (fat, and those who thought they were fat), stood up as he spoke ‘words of healing’ over them.

He prophesied over one lady, that she was going to get the “Esther anointing.” Apparently in the prophetic world, women can only have one of two things, 1. A Jezebel Spirit or 2. An Esther Anointing. Apparently the Esther anointing means God gives you favor with people to get where you want to. (like the King had favor with Esther.) Like if you want to get promoted at a job, having the Esther anointing with give you favor with your employer to get promoted. Things like that. So he prophesied that this anointing would fall on her, and many good things would come her way because of it. Getting the Esther anointing is a sure way to get ahead in the world, apparently.

He also called a boy that had been helping collect offerings, who looked to be about 8 years old. He prophesied over him that he would have many ministries and bring many people to God. Then he threw the Spirit into the boy, and the boy shook as if having a seizure, and then fell over. When the boy got up and went off the stage, Todd called the boy back up and did it again, so the boy shook and fell down, twice. Todd also prophesied over a very young girl (about six or seven), all good things of course, and then did the shake/fall thing with her, only he made her come back two more times, for a total of three. Each time the girl got up crying, and was on her way to her mother, but since Todd called her back, someone would take her hand and guide her back to Todd. When she finally did get to her mother she hugged her very tightly. I could not tell if she was crying because she was frightened or not. Todd eventually went through the aisles blowing down aisles of people. He skipped my aisle. When Todd Bentley took up the offerings (on top of the other offerings that were already taken, and the entrance fee ,and whatever ridiculous amount of money they were profiting off their books and prayer hankies), he began to talk about how God had given him a word that somebody in the congregation was going to feel led by the Lord to write a check for twenty thousand dollars, and God was going to bless them for that. And that if you felt that that word was for you, and you are the one with twenty thousand dollars in the bank, you should get out your checkbook, because God was going to bless you by multiplying your offering 100x. He talked about seed offerings a little, too, saying that if you gave a seed offering, your checkbook would be bulging because God was going to bless you, and you would be able to get a new house, and a new car, and whatever else you needed. He was really intent on getting somebody out there to write a twenty thousand dollar check, because he went back to it a few times during this offering speech.

Todd Bentley said that, the next night, to pack in the sick people because there would be a healing angel there. I did not know how they planned to pack in the sick people since you had to have a wristband to get in. He also said that he had seen a giant angel straddling the church to protect us from evil spirits. Also he promised that he and Keith Miller would touch and bless every single person there, no matter how long it took. And man, people were seriously anticipating that. They looked forward to it, hoping that God would give Todd Bentley a word just for them. I wanted a word from God, too, of course. I prayed to God that if this was really of Him, He would knock me down and give me a word so I would know if it was. But that if it was not, I did not want to fall down just because I was emotional or because somebody pushed me, or because I felt I had to. I have not been baptized in the Holy Spirit, so my friend suggested that I pray for that, and pray for my “prayer language” (tongues), to come. So I prayed that if the Holy Spirit was there, that something would happen. I did not pray for tongues specifically, but just ‘something’ from the Holy Spirit so I would know that it was Him. (I was extremely uncomfortable with a lot of what was going on, but my friends kept saying it was because I was not used to it, and that I just needed to let the Holy Spirit flow.) I prayed for most of the third day through the conference, and decided to not be so skeptical. At lunch break, one of my friends was so “drunk in the spirit” we wondered if it was safe for him to drive. He drove, but we watched him in the mirror and he was definitely having jerky limb movements while driving. We were glad he did not get into an accident the way he was driving.

There was a quadriplegic boy that was deformed in a wheelchair. His mother was spoon-feeding him in the hallway. They had come to the conference every day. You could tell by the hopeful expression on his face he wanted to get healed, and that was why he was here. I prayed that God might grant their request, and if it was God speaking to Todd Bentley, that He would give him a word and heal the boy. But all of Todd Bentley’s words from the Lord were to heal people of being fat, or tennis elbow, or having chronic bowel trouble. The quadriplegic boy left the service in the same physical state that he had come. So did all the other people that were wearing leg braces, or using crutches, or canes. I wondered why God wouldn’t heal them, but heal all these other people of much more minor ailments.

Todd Bentley spoke about the “kingly anointing”. He took some obscure passage from the old testament and talked about how the kingly anointing allows us to hand out judgment and serve justice in the world by decreeing righteousness. And how, when we have it, we can proclaim things and then justice will supernaturally happen. But if we don’t decree it, then the injustice is allowed to stay. Like if someone does something wrong, we have to set forth a heavenly decree saying “That isn’t right! It’s not right, and I will not tolerate it!” and then something will happen to serve justice, because you put forth your decree of judgment under your kingly anointing. Like if somebody beats you up, you can be like “It isn’t righteous! It’s wrong! I will not stand it any longer, Lord!” , and then watch them get run over by a car. Wham, Bam, Justice served. (Ok, I exaggerate with the car running over people. But that was the main jist of it, was that people would get their just deserves. ) Then he led the congregation in prayer over their bellies, saying that water would come from our bellies and bring life. Then he led a prayer for the kingly anointing to fall on everybody so everybody could go out decreeing righteousness.

That preaching didn’t last long; pretty soon it was all about the healing. Todd Bentley asked people to get out their cell phones and call a sick person, because he was going to speak the healing words through all these cell phones, and so everyone would be healed all at once. That seemed weird to me, but I was game, because my mom was really sick at the time. But I found I could not call her because I had not brought my cell phone with me that night (which is odd because I had brought it the other two nights, in my purse, but had not put it in my purse that day. I had left it in the hotel room.) After he spoke the “healing words” my friend lent me her cell phone, after she had called her mom (who was also ill) but it was too late because he’d already spoken the ‘healing words’. I was devastated; because my mom was super sick at the time (this was around the time of her surgery on her neck, and being diagnosed with Lyme disease.) I cried a lot, and wondered why God would have let me forget my cell phone, and miss a chance to have my mother healed. My friend was very comforting to me during this. People began to share testimonies over the cell phones of people getting healed. The people my friends called did not seem to get healed over the phone.

Todd Bentley supposedly cast out a demon that was causing a woman chronic lower back pain. (if you have lower back pain, it is always a demon lodged in your sciatic nerve, he said. This was supported by the illnesses card that was being sold by Streams Ministries that I mentioned earlier.). She writhed on the floor screaming for quite a few minutes while he was casting out the demon, then hopped up all happy and thrilled, saying her back pain was gone. It was seriously disturbing watching this woman writhe on the floor. I suppose that makes sense though, since if it was a demon it is natural to be disturbed at it manifesting. But why would a Born-Again Christian woman have a demon possession problem with a demon being stuck in her sciatic nerve?

So at the end of the conference, we were supposed to move our chairs out of the way and stand in line to get the anointing from Todd Bentley and Keith Miller. The “prophets” went in the back room to pray while everyone stacked their chairs along the walls. Then we all lined up in semi-circles with space in-between, and waited for them to come back out. They came back out and you were supposed to hold out your hands, and wait for them to touch you. They had men to walk behind the lines to ‘catch’ you so you would not hurt yourself as you fell. So they were touching people’s hands, and people would fall over. So lots of people were falling. They got to one guy, and he would go into a seizure-like state, as he was falling, sortof crazy dancing and squealing. They thought this was great, and it made them laugh, so they had the catchers lift him back up so they could touch him again and laugh as he did this weird dancing/seizure thing as he fell backwards. They did that a few times. They did not spend a lot of time with most of the people, just touched them and moved on. I was praying during all of this, that God would show me if it was of Him or not. I was a little frightened at the prospect of it NOT being of Him, and possibly opening myself up to the influence of evil spirits. So I was a little scared too, I did not want a bad spirit to make me fall over. I had considered opting out of being touched, but then I thought what if it IS of God and I miss my chance to get a word from God? So when they finally got to me, Todd Bentley said “FIRE OF GOD!” as he touched my hands. But I felt nothing. Certainly not any fire. The other guy touched my hands as they passed by. I just had a very heavy feeling, and I began to cry. One of the prayer ladies that were following them to pray stopped by me because she had seen that I had not fallen, and she put her hand on my forehead to pray for me. She did not seem to understand that I wasn’t falling, because she kept praying for the Spirit to come over me, and pushed her hand harder on my forehead. Her pushing made me plant my feet even more firmly on the ground. She was not going to knock me over. She gave up when she realized I was not going to going to fall over, and was just going to keep crying, so she moved on.

I was not the only one who did not fall over. I noticed that a few others did not either. I went and sat by the wall to pray, and was crying a lot because I just felt horrible at this whole experience, and was wondering where God was in all of this. The prayer pastor from my vineyard came over to talk to me, but I did not have much to say. I could not express what I was feeling about this whole event, and everyone just assumed that the holy spirit had touched me through the prophets and that was why I was crying, they did not know I was crying because God did NOT touch me through those prophets, and I did not know how to tell them that I didn’t think that God was here. I felt uncomfortable about the whole conference, and it just reached a climax at that point, as I saw people shaking with seizure-like things, and laughing uncontrollably, and rolling around on the floor. I cried a lot, also, because nobody seemed to really be praying to God. In fact not a whole lot of prayer seemed to go on during this conference, for as long as it lasted, there were only a few times that any of the speakers prayed. The only ‘prayer’ was to call down the Holy Spirit, or ask for angels to heal or give anointings. They talked about the Holy Spirit a lot, and not so much about Jesus or the Gospel. There wasn’t hardly any talk about sin, or repentance either. Just anointings and mantles and prophecy.

Anyway, it was getting late, and people were still lying around under the influence of the Spirit, or dancing around, etc. Because they wanted to get home and close up the church, they kicked everybody out. Some people had to be carried out. And that was the end of that. We drove back to San Antonio that night. For my birthday (we had a birthday party for me and one of my friends while in Austin because our birthdays were that week), my friends had bought me Todd Bentley’s Autobiography and his cd, “marinating”. Listening to the CD disturbed my spirit. It seemed like trance-inducing music with Todd Bentley popping in once in awhile to try to hypnotize you. His autobiography said some interesting things as well, but I cannot remember all of them now, but he talks a lot about all the supernatural experiences he’s had after being saved (some of them are really weird.). I was very disappointed leaving the conference, I did not feel ‘refreshed’ or ‘renewed’ like everybody else was saying they did. I didn’t “fall under the power” or receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, or anything that I had gone there expecting. I did feel like He showed me where NOT to look for Him, though, because I felt like the whole thing grieved God very much. I did not know what all of made me feel horrible, but I know that my uncomfortableness was not just because it was unfamiliar to me. Many times during the services it seemed like they were mocking God, though nobody took notice of it. I could not explain to everyone why I felt so disturbed, so I mostly kept my mouth shut. Later, after God led me to leave my church (I was having issues with my church as well), I began to realize what was wrong with the conference, and why God did not like it, and I would remember things I had previously forgotten about the conference that disturbed me. There were many other things that happened at the conference that I have not mentioned here, but I cannot remember all the details of them all.”

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