I recently ran across the child evangelist, Marjoe Gortner.
There are several videos about Marjoe Gortner, including the Academy Award winning documentary he produced about his ministry in the early 70s.
There are lots of similarities of Marjoe, a confessed fake miracles and signs and wonders minister, and those of the present revival.
Just food for thought.
Short 3 min Clip - - Wow.
Longer, better clip. - - Sad.
Hugh Marjoe Ross Gortner, generally known as Marjoe Gortner (born January 14, 1944 in Long Beach, California), is a former evangelical minister who first gained a certain fame in the late 1940s and early to mid 1950s when he became the youngest ordained preacher at the age of four, and then outright notoriety in the 1970s when he starred in an Oscar-winning, behind-the-scenes documentary about the lucrative business of Pentecostal preaching. The name "Marjoe" is a combination of the names "Mary" and "Joseph".
When Marjoe was three, his father, a second generation evangelical minister, noticed his son's talent for mimicry and overall fearlessness of strangers and public settings. His parents claimed Marjoe had received a vision from God during a bath and began training him to deliver sermons, complete with dramatic gestures and emphatic lunges. By the time Marjoe was four, his parents arranged for him to perform a marriage ceremony for a film crew from Paramount studios, referring to him as "the youngest ordained minister in history." Like much in Marjoe's early life it is hard to say for sure who exactly ordained him, if his father ordained him, or if he was even ordained at all.
Until the time he was a teenager, Marjoe and his parents traveled the rural United States, holding revival meetings. As well as teaching him scriptural passages, Marjoe's parents also taught him several money-making tactics, involving the sale of supposedly "holy" articles at revivals which promised to heal the sick and dying. By the time Marjoe was sixteen, he later estimated, his family had amassed maybe three million dollars; shortly after his sixteenth birthday, Marjoe's father absconded with the money, and a disillusioned Marjoe left his mother for San Francisco, where he was taken in by and became the lover of an older woman. Marjoe spent the remainder of his teenage years as an itinerant hippie until his early twenties, when, hard pressed for money, he decided to put his old skills to work and re-emerged on the evangelical circuit with a charismatic stage-show modeled after those of contemporary rockers, most notably Mick Jagger. Marjoe made enough to take six months off every year, during which he returned to California, surviving on the previous six months' earnings.
In the late 1960s, Marjoe suffered a crisis of conscience -- in particular about the threats of damnation he felt compelled to weave into his sermons -- and resolved to make one final tour, this time on film. Under the pretense of making a documentary on the evangelical and non-denominational faiths, Marjoe assembled a documentary film crew to follow him around the Southern United States during 1971; unbeknownst to everyone else involved -- including, at one point, his father -- Marjoe gave "backstage" interviews to the filmmakers in between sermons and revivals, explaining intimate details of how he and other ministers operated. After sermons, the filmmakers were invited back to Marjoe's hotel room to tape him counting the money he collected during the day. The resulting film, Marjoe, won the 1972 Academy Award for best documentary.
After leaving the revival circuit, Gortner then attempted to break into both Hollywood and the recording industry. He cut an LP with Columbia Records, entitled "Bad, but not Evil" (Gortner's description of himself in the documentary), which met with poor sales and reviews. Gortner began his acting career with a featured role in The Marcus-Nelson Murders, the 1973 pilot for the Kojak tv-series. The following year saw him featured in the disaster film Earthquake as a psychotic National Guardsman, and in the television movie Pray for the Wildcats.
During the late 1970s, Marjoe attempted to self-finance another film, this time a pseudo-fictional drama about an evangelist con-man and based in part on his real-life experiences. The film started shooting in New Orleans, Louisiana, but went bankrupt less than 6-weeks into production. The film was never completed.
Gortner was married briefly to Candy Clark, from 1978-1979.
Gortner's most memorable film performance was as the psychopathic, hostage-taking drug dealer in Milton Katselas's 1979 screen adaptation of Mark Medoff's play When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?, also starring Peter Firth, Lee Grant, and Hal Linden.
Gortner reappeared a few years later, starring in several B-movies such as Starcrash and hosting an early-1980s reality TV series called Speak Up America before ending his movie career in 1995. Today he sponsors charity golf tournaments and other events.
His most recent film appearance was in the 1995 feature Wild Bill, where he played, appropriately enough, a preacher.
Ezekiel 13:3 - "This is what the Sovereign Lord says: What sorrow awaits the false prophets who are following their own imaginations and have seen nothing at all."
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Anyone Ever Hear of Marjoe Gortner?
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
It's All About Todd's Imagination - That's How He Does It
It's interesting to read the older website writings of Todd Bentley.
Link to Article
Tasting Supernatural Honey
...Revelation supernaturally transforms your imagination and understanding.
...If you imagine with your "spirit eye" then you'll have your revelation....
...5. Sanctified Imagination: If we want to see in the spirit, we must use the powerful key of sanctified imagination....You can read the stuff for yourself, HERE.
...We have to begin to see with our “third eye”—the eye on the inside, in our imagination....
...I believe (This is Todd Bentley Speaking) that 90 percent or more of all visions and revelations happen in the eye of our hearts, in our imagination....
Folks, Todd wants your imagination to become your "God" experience/revelation.
Look at the article.
Use common sense and what's in the Scripture. Re-read the whole thing in the light of Truth.
Listen to him say basically here it is and here's how God brings revelation---IMAGINATION.
And then he says, here's some Scripture that says something remotely similar, if you take a leap of faith, that to seem to agree, totally out of context of course, with what he's saying.
BTW, this is just one of the articles about how Todd does it. Just google it to see that this isn't just a one time article, that it's a core teaching on how to receive revelation, through imagination.
The Video - Todd Predicts The Second Coming of Christ
What more has to be said or witnessed than this?
Please watch this video.
I recently ran across this video, and for some reason, didn't post it. I've watched it a dozen times or so, trying to wrap my mind around that axle and figure out how it could be up and up and not heretical.
I've had people say it's like the Book of Revelation, figurative not literal. And that you have to understand that and take it that way...
I had people say that Todd didn't say that, and that He was just saying Jesus would be there.
I also had people say He corrected what was in the prophecy.
Personally, I think the transcript from the video says it all:
Quote:By Todd Bentley
Let me tell you...
I believe...
People can receive impartations.
Now let me tell you the prophetic word Wendy gave me.
To those watching. This is why I believe tomorrow night's meeting
if you live in
if you're watching on the internet and you're local
you need to be here Sunday night.
***>>>Watch for yourself<<<***
LISTEN TO THIS
(reading from a letter/email)
The 'lord' just spoke to me and said
This is what will happen tomorrow night.
The king and the king's anointing falls...
(pointing to the audience) tomorrow night.
The Eighth of June, the anointing of the 'king of glory' falls.
Jesus said, "I am coming in person."
[55sec] ***>>>Please, Watch for yourself<<<***
The king is coming in person.
I sense so strongly that there will be a personal, divine visitation of the Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, to the revival tomorrow night.
[1min 23 sec] ***>>>Please, Watch for yourself<<<***
He will come in the clouds in his chariot surrounded by a great angelic host
because the great honoring of the Lamb of God
The king of glory is coming to visit Lakeland
To visit the revival to visit the outpouring.
The devil trembles with that knowledge.
[1min 40 sec] ***>>>Please, Watch for yourself<<<***
For tomorrow, the king of glory sets foot upon the stage.
In
Divine
Personal
One to One
Visitation
Lead balloon hits.
Then Todd goes into his backpedaling and the you gotta understand the "prophetic" talk, and then changes the subject to how awesome worship has been the last few nights.
***>>>Please, Watch for yourself<<<***
It's all there in a easy to follow, 3 minute video.
What more has to be said or witnessed than this?
NOTE: I EDITED THIS POST TODAY 7/27/10 AS I NOTICED TODD HAD HIS VIDEO REMOVED AND UPDATED THE LINK. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNGPjFYdgJw
Monday, July 14, 2008
A Forum Post
Sagebrush, this Robert Brownell of that “Civil War” link you gave me says he interviewed 25 people were miraculously healed (at Lakeland via Todd Bentley), and these healings were “confirmed by multiple sources” He did not include doctors in that list, but medical records would be impossible to get without express permission of the person due to privacy laws. The Bentley camp themselves would have to work with people to get medical proof, and multiple sources say that Bentley is using delay tactics of making promises without producing any evidence. Multiple sources also say that there are no healings of people in wheelchairs or other obvious physical infirmities at the Bentley meetings.One of the many things that disturbs me is how Bentley is enough of a false healing evangelist to not only fail to preach the Word (which is also being consistently reported), but to say that people who are supposedly resurrected are giving praise to God and Todd Bentley too. Here’s the video:
Raised From the Dead Shouting Praises to God AND Todd Bentley
There, Todd Bentley reads an unconfirmed ‘claim’ of a dead man coming back to life in a funeral home and claiming his voice pulled the dead man’s spirit out of heaven. The man is alleged to have woken up shouting praises to God AND Todd Bentley. He doesn't bat an eye while saying this type of blasphemy.Eye witnesses are also saying Bentley is pronouncing people healed when they are not. At this website: Miracles That Never Happened in Lakeland , there is a video of Bentley reading out a false prophecy about a personal visitation of Jesus “in person” at Lakeland, coming “in a clouds in the clouds in His chariot, surrounded by a great angelic host,” no less. Jesus is supposed to step on stage. Then Bentley tries to backtrack on what he just said. He doesn't say, "Oh oops- that's obviously a false prophecy"... he tries to backtrack instead.
Below that video on the same webpage, there is the radio interviews: “Todd Friel and Justin Peters (Way of the Masters Radio) on Todd Bentley pt.1”, and “Todd Friel and Justin Peters (Way of the Masters Radio) on Todd Bentley pt.2”
This is an interview with Justin Peters who did his thesis on the Word of Faith movement. Justin walks on crutches or uses a wheelchair himself because of a relatively mild case of CP (Cerebral Palsey). He was at the Lakeland revival for a couple of days and he said he tried to go there with an open mind. However he found Bentley flippant about God and an “exceedingly arrogant person, constantly claiming experiences with angels and trips to heaven etc. He said there was no preaching of God’s Word and they described the anointed as “walking in the sauce” was “their word for the ‘anointing of God’”He said that he made it a point to get the names and phone #’s of 7 people who went up on stage, who said they were touched by God, were ‘slain’ in the Spirit and Todd Bentley proclaimed them healed, but when he called them and contacted them later, they all admitted they were no better. One man by the name of Larry Reed died of cancer 8 days after Bentley proclaimed him healed. In part 2, Justin said he was in a wheelchair with others in wheelchair (May 19th) and he described a heart-breaking scene after Todd Bentley encouraged people in wheelchairs to physically move around and do what they could to “exercise their faith”. One of the wheelchair victims fell out of their chair and laid there for about ½ hour until people finally got him up and put him back in their wheel chair.
Here is one of the written accounts from Justin Peter, with the Larry there obviously being the same person who is now deceased.I’m sure lots of people have heard about this already, but this is the same Larry Reed that Andrew Strom has recently spoken about. There are accounts of this all over too. Here is one of them:
Quote: I just read the saddest testimony on Strom’s website http://www.revivalschool.com/modules.php?name=Forums&...&start=390. A Pastor Larry Reed from Washington State had terminal bone cancer. He went to Lakeland last week, and Mr. Bentley “Bammed” him. He struggled out of his wheelchair and cheered with the crowd as Mr. Bentley proclaimed him healed. He died yesterday. “…a dear friend of mine who passed away this morning at 5:20 AM. His name is Pastor Larry Reed, Pastor of Olympic View Assembly of God in Silverdale, Washington. Pastor Larry has been suffering for the past 18 months of terminal bone cancer. He was given only a year to live, but PRAISE THE LORD out lived the doctors findings. He (Pastor Larry) told me last year at breakfast one morning that he wanted more for Jesus and was going to do whatever it took to accomplish that. He invited speakers from all over the country from evangelists to prophetic speakers so that he and his congregation could catch the fire and maybe just maybe a revival would break out in his church.
He really took a turn for the worst this year, and lost most of his weight, he looked like a skeleton, was on oxygen and needed care all of the time. He couldn’t even preach anymore. Pastor Larry was a man who dearly loved Jesus, and was very strong in his faith and very strong in stature physically. So to see him so frail was shocking to say the least.
Last week on 5/18/08 he was in the sanctuary there in Lakeland trying to find the healing he soo much wanted, sitting in his wheel chair in front of Mr. Bentley, he was deemed as “healed” when Pastor Larry stood up and cheered in victory. During the course of last week when he returned, he got worse and so this morning he died.
So that’s by the mouths of more than one witness. And of course, there are also all the videos of Todd Bentley such as the videos above where Todd testifies against himself. Of course I would expect no apologies from any of these N.A.R. people or KC prophets for anything they do or say—I’ve never seen it-, but it is very distressing to see desperate people get hurt like this and I’m glad people are exposing these practices and these duplicities, for their sake.
-Teri
Video Interview/Commentary About Lakeland - "AN INSIDER's WARNING" - Lakeland Revival
Here are some good, short videos, an interview, about revival, the prophetic movement, and Lakeland.
They are entitled, "AN INSIDER's WARNING" - Lakeland Revival
Pt. 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-Y5R_raf6M Why I Left The Prophetic Movement
Pt. 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyW1UFzS2LY My Main Concern About Lakeland
Pt. 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaNiuRWHZrY The Holy Spirit and Angels -OR- Demons and Kundalini
Pt. 4 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyqA7vr-4p8 Is Impartation Found In The Bible?
Pt. 5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fjRv1AcgiQ Manifestations Found In Past Revivals
