Revival stuff....

For those of you wanting to know more about the events at Lakeland and Dudley and what the blogosphere is saying then this post by Dave W at 42 has some round ups as does this post by Peter Kirk. By the way can I recommend that anyone interested read closely what is on the respective websites (here for Todd Bentley's group and here for Trevor Baker's group) because you'll learn a lot.

Here are some positives that I see about Fresh Fire Ministries

1. They're concerned about salvation
2. They're concerned about the poor
3. They want to see God's power demonstrated through healings
4. Todd has a genuine story of conversion to Christ.
   
5. He spends lots of time in prayer

Here are key principles that Fresh Fire claim to follow:

"It is important, first that we long for intimacy with the Lord and His Holy Spirit. Next, we need to believe and pray for prophetic revelation and miraculous healing power; we need these gifts from God to fulfill the commission to reach the world. Without His power, we will be ineffective. In addition, like Todd, we all need to walk through a season of repentance and purification and then begin to walk out a lifestyle of purity. God's life and power is hindered or even stopped when His people are not walking in holiness. Next, we need to take radical steps of faith, completely depending on God to honor us with signs following, just like His word has promised He would do. God longs for us to take the good news of Jesus Christ outside the church and begin to share the message as well as His loving, healing power with the lost."

Here are some interesting points to note (could be positive or otherwise depending on your views):

1. Todd became a Christian in Canada at the time of the Toronto Blessing.
2. Early influence was Benny Hinn

Warning: I'm about to quibble and nitpick. I know it, now you do too.

"Throughout North America FFM is sparking revival fires and equipping the body in power evangelism and healing Ministry" - Hmm isn't sparking revival only something God can do?

"In the past God has used Todd to spark many revivals where meetings have been extended to last from one to two months, continuing on even after he has left." - OK, what do we mean by revival? I may blog on that, I think.

"In our meetings, the Holy Spirit would powerfully touch youth and various manifestations began to break out including being "slain in the Spirit", drunkenness in the Spirit, shaking, laughing etc." - OK there's another post coming on the manifestations of the Spirit

"Compound that with the greater reality of the countless angelic hosts who are being released and deployed in this hour to ensure victories." ??????

That'll do for now...so again, just to be clear. I'm not knocking this, I've not experienced it first hand. And I'm sure there's plenty to find fault with in my own theology and descriptions of ministry. But investigate we must, so we must do our research, read what we need to and think about what we read so we can learn and receive without losing our way.