Right Wing Watch: Joel's Army, The Call, Todd Bentley are "Arming for Armageddon"

madfloridian

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Thu Aug-28-08 10:56 PM
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Right Wing Watch: Joel's Army, The Call, Todd Bentley are "Arming for Armageddon"

From Right Wing Watch:

Joel's Army and The Call

We wrote about The Call a few times before their before their rally on the National Mall earlier this month, but the Southern Poverty Law Center has released a fascinating new report entitled "Arming" for Armageddon that puts its activities in an entirely new light.

It turns out that The Call and its founder Lou Engle are closely aligned with a militant Christian dominionist movement called "Joel's Army" run by self-proclaimed prophet and faith-healer Todd Bentley:

Joel's Army believers are hard-core Christian dominionists, meaning they believe that America, along with the rest of the world, should be governed by conservative Christians and a conservative Christian interpretation of biblical law. There is no room in their doctrine for democracy or pluralism.

This part gets a little scary.

"I believe we're headed to an Elijah/Jezebel showdown on the Earth, not just in America but all over the globe, and the main warriors will be the prophets of Baal versus the prophets of God, and there will be no middle ground," said Engle. He was referring to the Baal of the Old Testament, a pagan idol whose followers were slaughtered under orders from the prophet Elijah.

"There's an Elijah generation that's going to be the forerunners for the coming of Jesus, a generation marked not by their niceness but by the intensity of their passion," Engle continued. "The kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force. Such force demands an equal response, and Jesus is going to make war on everything that hinders love, with his eyes blazing fire."

From the Southern Poverty Law Center. There is fear that there is really some arising militancy in Bentley's Joel's Army.

Arming for Armageddon

Tattooed across his sternum are military dog tags that read "Joel's Army." They're evidence of Bentley's generalship in a rapidly growing apocalyptic movement that's gone largely unnoticed by watchdogs of the theocratic right. According to Bentley and a handful of other "hyper-charismatic" preachers advancing the same agenda, Joel's Army is prophesied to become an Armageddon-ready military force of young people with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian "dominion" on non-believers.

Joel's Army followers, many of them teenagers and young adults who believe they're members of the final generation to come of age before the end of the world, are breaking away in droves from mainline Pentecostal churches. Numbering in the tens of thousands, they base their beliefs on an esoteric reading of the second chapter of the Old Testament Book of Joel, in which an avenging swarm of locusts attacks Israel. In their view, the locusts are a metaphor for Joel's Army.

Despite their overt militancy, there's no evidence Joel's Army followers have committed any acts of violence. But critics warn that actual bloodletting may only be a matter of time for a movement that casts itself as God's avenging army.

Todd Bentley had a Lakeland, Florida, revival for months...he attracted about 35,000 a week. Many of them were from overseas. We met two girls from Switzerland who came to see him. Oddly enough they were thrilled to get Obama bumper stickers we gave them.

Bentley is closing up shop here since his marital indiscretions were recently made public. But the movement is still going on in the area.

Evangelist's Florida revival making local Pentecostal leaders very nervous.

He is getting money they need instead, and drawing crowds away from their churches. The local preachers began speaking out publicly when Bentley started claiming to raise the dead.

Storms of another kind - doubts about claims of healings and criticism of his teachings and techniques - have not troubled Canadian evangelist Todd Bentley and the leaders of the Florida Outpouring revival, which continues on, now in its 82nd consecutive day. The revival seems set to meet in the tents at Sun 'n Fun for the indefinite future, even though some national and local Pentecostal leaders are wary of giving approval to it.

..."The Pentecostal revival, which began April 2 at Ignited Church in Lakeland, draws an average of 30,000 or more people each week, according to its leaders, with about 50 percent of those from outside the state. In fact, it has become an international phenomenon, and almost a third of the crowds come from outside the United States, leaders estimate. At this particular evening service, flags from eight nations waved above the crowd, which numbered at least 4,000.

..."While faith healing is a part of the Pentecostal tradition, the claims of resurrections have raised eyebrows. No dead bodies have been brought into the revival. Rather, reports of the recent death of a loved one - in some cases located long distances away - are relayed to the stage by e-mail or cell phone, and Bentley has led prayers for the person to be revived.

From an earlier post I made... this statement is telling.

Tonight, visiting evangelist Todd Bentley says he has been told by a prophet, Bob Jones, that 13 wise virgins would carry the revival forward. So Bentley calls teenagers up to the stage and "anoints" them, touching them and watching many fall backward, a practice Pentecostals call being "slain in the Spirit." It's just the beginning of an hours-long service.

The group named The Call "is a kind of youth-oriented spin-off of the Promise Keepers 1997�s rally on the National Mall that claims to be less about politics and more about �fasting and prayer for the benefit of the nation.� Of course, that claim is somewhat undermined by the fact that The Call first came to DC just before the presidential election in 2000 because, according to their own video, �the crisis was so real we knew that the nation was a stake and the only hope was massive fasting and prayer.� And wouldn�t you know it, eight years later, just before another presidential election, The Call is coming back to DC."