By Rick Hiebert. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.
Todd Bentley could try a career in magic. Now you see the lady on his website, now you don’t. Is it prestidigitation…or sweeping something under the rug?
Earlier this week, the evangelist had an announcement and video link in an e-mail to his e-list, titled “Medical doctors verify woman’s stage four cancer gone”
If you look at the link in the archived e-mail, you will see a screencapture of Todd with a woman, presumably the woman who was healed.
The video, I was told by someone who saw it, seemed a little fishy. For example, I was told, the paperwork from the doctors seemed unclear, and the woman in the video gave no indentifying details about herself that would allow people to check into her story.
Okay, I thought to myself, I’ll need to check out the video when I have a moment later this week…but I just tried the link and the video has disappeared!
Taa-daa!
Todd Bentley put an explanation up yesterday on Twitter:
IamToddBentley: For those wondering about the cancer video. She is healed still The young lady requested we remove video for privacy reasons 1 day ago from Twitterrific
Mmm hmmm…
A woman who wanted to tell an entire church about her healing, now is shy about publicity. Not the kind of thing that the people who were healed by Jesus did in the Bible, but if she wants to be private about her healing, that’s her right. Not a great witness, though.
If pulling the video leads people to wonder how valid the healing was, and whether Bentley knew that the “healing” would not pan out, I guess that is too bad for the evangelist. Perhaps “verify twice, share the video once” might be an idea to consider.
And now for Todd’s next magical trick…
Rick:
I watched the video in question. The woman claimed to have a mass in her chest that was too close to her heart to operate on.
While she was on stage, Todd Bentley wrapped his arms around her (in a full-frontal bear hug), lifted her off the floor, and prayed for a healing.
Later, when the woman produced before-and-after paperwork to “verify” her healing, the camera zoomed in for a close up on both pages. The name at the top of the paperwork read, “Touch of Life Ministries Registration Report” which, according to the woman, was an outfit in Utah.
During the video, the woman said she had not sought treatment from the medical community, but was being treated through natural remedies.
While we may never know the reason(s) why the video was removed, keep in mind that it is common for articles and videos to suddenly and mysteriously disappear from websites and blogs–especially if there is stuff in the article or video that could return to haunt the author.
And, because it is important to “remind” people of what they said and did in the past, it is extremely important to save stuff to an external hard-drive, which I learned the hard way through the school of, “I Should Have Saved That!”
God bless,
Bud Press
Marlene R Geiser Touch Of Life Ministries
This could be the woman. You can google her organization. There’s only two people that work there.