Dismayed--Steve Hill/John Kilpatrick/Todd Bentley

I've read this forum for some time now and enjoy especially the sermons that are posted here.

Somehow I got very interested in the Brownsville Revival and at first thought it could be genuine initially but not the later part after reading many posts here. Now I'm not so sure after I saw this youtube video where Steve Hill, John Kilpatrick were praying for Todd Bentley in the Florida Revival, basically endorsing Todd Bentley. I'm dismayed and feel that I need to alert you all to this especially since most of you here know that Todd Bentley is false but think that the Brownsville Revival, Steve and John are real. But how many of you have actually seen this clip? Maybe John and Steve have stumbled in their walk with God but their endorsement of Todd Bentley really leaves me wondering. For me, I rather follow those that I know are really with God such as Paul Washer, Leonard Ravenhill, John Wesley etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEIp11FnuSg

learn wrote:
Maybe John and Steve have stumbled in their walk with God but their endorsement of Todd Bentley really leaves me wondering.

Appears lots of good Christians are doing some stumbling in there walk because of folks like Bentley and also Matthew Stephens. We actually had one of our well respected long time members bring this Matthew Stephens "who used to be hooked up with Todd Bentley" to our Church Home a few weeks ago to speak words over our pastor, when I found out about this "through my daughter" I was just suddenly sick at my stomach all of a sudden. Folks I personally think some Christians are so full of God and his Word or just plain bored that they feel they need to step out into new waters without even testing the water or better yet testing the spirits. They better wake up and get back to the basics of bringing in the lost sheep, and quit worrying about folks like Todd Bentley and Matthew Stephens and his magic wand that thinks he is God’s man of the hour for destruction of America with God’s destructive judgments.

You can find something wrong with every single pastor, teacher and Christian. Even "the greats". Let me listen to enough sermons and I will find something that is out of line with scripture, whether it be blatant or not, overstated or understated. Or simply the manner in which the pastor or Christian is portraying God or the pastors attitude of arrogance or lack of love.

We are all human. We ALL get deceived. We all mess up and sin. None of us are fully perfected yet.

I think we need to stop naming names, pointing out other people failures and mistakes and start pointing to the Truth. If we are so concerned with truth and not being deceived, then let's get out there and start teaching Truth ourselves. It does no good to point out failure without offering a solution. And it certainly doesn't portray us as very Christlike when we are stripping and laying open and naked our brothers and sisters with the words that come out of our mouths.

DelightedInU wrote:
I think we need to stop naming names, pointing out other people failures and mistakes and start pointing to the Truth.

So if I just traveled down a path and there were poisonous snakes on both sides, I should just move on and not warn others? I am not sure but this appears to be what you are saying, could you please clarify?
Thanks
Mr. Bill

I'm saying - point out the false doctrine AND also point to the real Truth.

But as for the man in which the false doctrine comes forth from - "let he who is without sin cast the first stone".

DelightedInU wrote:

But as for the man in which the false doctrine comes forth from - "let he who is without sin cast the first stone".

Brother... how can you place the two in the same sentence? Sin is sin, but the bible teaches how to deal with both, and it is not the same.

Is there something you do not understand about dealing with false prophets? Is the Lord not clear in His teachings? Does the Lord command us to give quarter to false prophets...

God hates them and He will condemn them - not us.

DelightedInU wrote:

God hates them and He will condemn them - not us.

100% spot on except that God will judge them on that final day as well. That we cannot do.

But, you missed everything else in the bible that talks about how to deal with them while they are here on earth.

Other then that, we are not that far off. :-)

DelightedinU

You seem to have certain things confused.

Now if a person makes a mistake such as being rude to his spouse, talking bad about this or discussing it will be wrong. However, if there are false prophets or people who may be misleading others/endorsing false prophets, then we are to highlight and warn others.

Or are we going to say that we refuse to say this because we do not want to judge (and start quoting the Bible verse on it), or because we are nitpicking others etc. Then our behaviour is wrong.

Just as Paul Washer mentioned in 1 of his sermon and I will paraphrase it:

Now if you walk past 2 robbers who are raping my wife and refuse to help just because you say it will hurt/offend them, I will be extremely angry at you.

Same goes, if you have a loved one that follows a false prophet and I refuse to warn your loved one by quoting the reason that you quoted above, then will not you be angry at me. Will I not have done wrong in the eyes of God.

Many times we tend to judge/discuss more then we should. However, many times too people refuse to condemn/highlight things that they should have by giving the excuse that we should not judge and other reasons when they should have highlighted it.

God judges everything, our thoughts and not just our actions. Leonard Ravenhill shared what A W Tozer said. Tozer was more worried about what he could have done but didn't do (more than what he had done) when it was time to give an accounting to God

DelightedinU

By highlighting this, we are warning others to be careful of who they follow. And always try to follow the 'best pastors' ie those that we really know are from God and avoid the dubious ones. This has nothing to do with 'judging them' in the context that you seem to imply

I agree with you learn and feel that your hear is aligned with what I am emphasizing. I do think we need to point out false doctrine and warn people, but my stress point is that so many times we point things out on these sites and totally "bash" and ridicule just for the sake of doing so. It does no good to point out some "false prophets" failure and then to offer no solution or no right teaching. If you go back and read my posts, this is what I've been saying all along. Because the original poster (was it you?) seemed like they were just saying, paraphrased, "hey, here's two more guys that are wrong, guess they can't be trusted anymore". My response was, don't judge so quickly cause they endorse Bentley. because like I said in the first post, you can find doctrinal error in every teachers sermons and many good Christians can be deceived. Don't just automatically discredit them so quickly.

Paul continued his cries of warning to the day of his death,see Titus and Timothy until they are silent, our obligation is to warn and exhort unto Godliness all who have an Ear, as we fear and obey the Lord unto holiness.

DelightedinU

Thanks for your reply.

I was the orignal poster of this thread. Let me elaborate. I did not just discredit them so easily just because of the youtube tape.

I did not mention in my earlir posts that I found quite a few articles mentioning the dubiousness of the Brownsville Revival (that I think are not mentioned in this forum), John Kilpatrick etc. I also did not mention that quite early on after seeing some of the Brownsville revival tape, I did not have that good a feeling of this Brownsville Revival (that doesn't meant that its not genuine). I dug further and felt that 1 way to reconcile the disturbing fact of some of the disturbing articles etc and the views of people in this forum and elsewhere were that it could be genuine in the beginning but not later on. As I did not plan on posting anything on this topic, I was satisfied to leave it as that.

[Now, bear in mind that I'm well aware that there could be genuine conversions there. This does not necessarily mean that it was a true revival. After all, there are many that preach a watered down gospel elsewhere and there are still genuine conversions there (ie in spite of the watered down gospel). However, if it was really true, the Holy Spirit would have moved so many more than a false/watered down message would bring]

I was going to end it all there, however I believe I was led to see the youtube tape that I've posted there and another tape that I did not post. So my decision was just not made on 1 youtube tape.

After all the above, now, my 'bad self' wanted to just not warn anybody as it would save me a lot of time --not having to reply posts and also not anger anybody. However, I also know that is selfish plus 'I would have to face God at the Judgement seat and how was I going to honestly answer God on not warning others'. Being Christian is going to cost us. We can't go cruising through. This is not the way to mold us to be more Christlike and this is not what God would have wanted.
So I posted here.

Now, I am more inclined to believe that people would do better if they can go to people who are really true to God's words. There are times when I've said to myself, "Now, if this preacher would just not care getting the audience angry and just let the Holy Spirit use him completely, I would have gotten at least 25% more out of his sermon. (And these are reasonably good preachers too that care about their members). His sermon was still useful, its just that it lost a fair bit of its potency when he did not let God really 'use' him.

So, when there's great dubiouness such as endorsing a clearly false prophet ie Todd Bentley, I rather prefer others be warned of these 2 people, then not at all, so at least if they ever felt that something is wrong, they will not simpley dismiss it. And I suspect that this tape was never posted here before (I could be wrong as I did not read every post on this subject here)

Also, its not always possible to find out everything about somebody before warning others. Just like the earlier case of walking by 2 people who were raping a woman, well the passerby could say that he had only a few seconds to see and maybe they were just quarrelling, so he could not possibly know they were really raping her. This does not excuse the passerby from guilt as the right thing then would be stopping to really determine or intervening to ensure that its not a rape.

When we feel that we have reasonable grounds or are convinced that something may not be all fine or we need some feedback/opinions to determine what we are thinking, then its good to sound the warning, even if we can't pinpoint the exact thing or offer a solution. A genuine warning without solution is better than no warning at all.

In my case, my solution (as mentioned in my 1st post) is to avoid these people and direct people to better pastors to ensure that they get the maximum benefit out of a preacher and that they may not be misled by false or more dubious prophets/preachers.

Do I really know whether John Kilpatrick, Steve Hill are saved, false or did they stumble etc? I don't know nor am I going to judge on that. However, I will sound the warning for others to go to better and safer preachers as there's less likely to be any misleading (if any) and to get more bang for the buck (ie more understanding of the gospel for every minute that we hear of the gospel). Plus I rather the people tithe to churches that are more true to God's words than dubious ones. ( since people tithe to churches which they attend)

Also, I did not feel the need to attach more articles that were dubious from the Brownsville Revival. Why not? Well, there are many posts on this revival and even if I were to attach some of these articles, people will come out and disagree etc.

So I thought and I still believe that I made the right decision by attaching the youtube tape because it showed 'real proof' that cannot be disagreed upon, that there are some doubts about John Kilpatrick/Steve Hill/Brownsville Revival and that it would be better if others especially the newer ones go to 'safer pastors'.

That short 1 youtube tape would do so much more than the 'many articles' that I could have attached.

People make mistakes all the time, however when a major 'mistake' is made especially by a 'preacher' who has the task of caring for God's sheep, then we have to be so much more aware and question whether God will allow such a big stumble to have been made and if so why was it not corrected soon thereafter or will it be used by God much later on to show something (such as ex-Catholic priests who now come to tell the real story about Catholics). We need to test everything as the bible says.

Even when something/somebody is discrediting God, God can and do still use it for His benefit. I've obtained some good information that only strengthened my faith in God from websites that are against God and sought to discredit him (although these were certainly not the intention of these websites :D but God is greater)

learn, I love your heart on this matter. Others would do good to "learn" from you.

learn wrote: I've obtained some good information that only strengthened my faith in God from websites that are against God and sought to discredit him (although these were certainly not the intention of these websites :D but God is greater)

And although you could be right I personally cannot use that analogy because I don't visit sites that are against God not on purpose
anyway, but I will take your word for it. :-)

I am not totally against the mentioning of names!

Depends on the context at the time and how it is handled and done. The difference between us and paul is - he wrote his epistles( letters) by divine Authority and divine inspiration. Apostles were set in the church [first]... and for the better part were divinely appointed into that OFFICE. By God, and not by men (a divine appointment from above) and not by graduating from some bible college and working your way up through some ecclesiastical order and finally getting to "the top" Divine intervention placed them there in the first instance i.e road to damascus. Even matthais was appointed by those already in the office of apostle. You don't study your way into the office of prophet or apostle!

He was an apostle! And the letters he wrote weren't just opinions or "what i think"! When it was "i think"... he clarified this and said he spoke by permission and not commandment!

We don't have the [same authority] of the man who named up to ten names in the 2 epistles of timothy. An apostle had tremendous authority to write commandments and GIVE ordinances to the church. Letters that had the seal of divine authority upon them. Not just opinion!

The differences are...

Paul stood in the office of apostle ( we don't )
paul wrote by divine inspiration ( we don't )
Paul gave ordinances to the church ( we don't )

The differences...

Ezekiel was a prophet on the wall ( most are not )
Ezekiel was watchman on the wall ( most are not)
Ezekiel was the divine mouthpiece of God and oracle of God ( not many fit into this category )

The differences...

John named diotrephes in third john for his exclusionary attiudes, his prating, his malicious words, for his not recieving of the brethren. Question? can hostility be justified? ugly words and bad attidues justified? animosity or exclusion

John's company were ostricised by this man however
John replies with sharpness and says i will deal with it! Did john say he would deal with it? or did those of his company say no leave it up to us?
And we will deal with him? who had the authority?

We should be alert, yes! But When Jesus warned of false prophets in Matthew 7 and matt 24:24 He still managed to do so without so much as naming a single name (in the process). And his care and concern for the church is a "millionfold" in measure regarding false prophets leading astray the sheep. In fact the worse thing he ever said or called someone was that of (Herod) being a fox.

So say nothing? people who name names are guity of ugly attidues? be quiet then and say nothing? allow error to go unchecked and to flourish? No one is suggesting such a thing from what ive read so far in this thread, nor telling others what to do... be guided by your own conscience and led by the spirit of God. Suffice to say i point out the differences between Paul, John, and Ezekiel as opposed to us! a slight difference in both office and spiritual authority.... I'd say!

sonfofthunder,

I very much appreciate your post and the spirit you wrote it in.

I try to be very careful about what I say about someone else. I believe all judgment belongs to God.

I don't feel I have to cast judgment on someone I don't agree with concerning their teaching/preaching.

I know my salvation is of the Lord only and if someone is doing something that doesn't line up with the Word and I'm not sure about them then I do not have to believe them or listen to them.

I believe God gives us liberty to tune someone out who we are not sure about because we don't want to be deceived by listening to false teaching.

I don't believe we have to cast judgment on them nor should we be speaking evil of others.

I would caution and warn others about false teaching and the scriptures that reproves them but I believe casting judgment on them is God's place.