God Told Me to Kick You in the Face

Isn’t Gluttony a sin? 

I do not understand. Is this some kind of weird Poe? The audience seems to think it’s some kind of comedy routine, but then it becomes a church service? I don’t get it. Is this nervous laughter because they know this is wrong? Are these supposed to be true stories? Do these people believe that God directly speaks to this guy and tells him to perform acts of extreme violence? I mean what the hell is going on here?

I have MS, I can no longer work. A woman told me that she had healed hundreds of people, and she could heal me.  I told her I do not believe in God, but if she could heal me, I would instantly convert to Christianity.  So she started saying, “Out demon!” while putting her hands on my body.  I thought, “Demon?  Seriously, you think MS is caused by demons?”  She said I needed to “walk it out,” just start believing in God, and that the cure would come months down the road after I had been a believer for a while.  Because belief in fairy tales is something you can just choose to switch on.

No surprise, I still have MS and I still am permanently disabled. 

Todd:  “Now, Judge, uh Your Honor, I plead innocent.  I did no wrong.  Sure I kicked her in the face.  I probably broke her nose and knocked out a few teeth.  Ok, ok. When she fell, she got a concussion, broke her hip and detached both retinas.  Ok, I fractured her skull and she has CNS fluid leaking into her sinus cavity.  But you’re ignoring the bigger picture.  I did it for her own good.  Don’t you see.  She was sick.  She needed the healing power of God.  And the voice of Jesus himself, told me.  He said, in a manly man’s voice. ‘Todd, kick that bitch in the face.’  I ain’t going to argue with God, are you.  And I know what you are saying to yourself, how is a kick to the face going to cure a ninety-five year old suffering from osteoporosis?  Well, I don’t know.  But God works in mysterious ways, right.  I’m mean Jesus spit in the eyes of a blind man, and he could see?  And now that she is no longer able to walk or bath herself, she doesn’t have to worry about falling in the bath tub?  I was just doing God’s work.”

Judge: “Guilty.”

Or, given the degree to which religious organizations are increasingly being allowed to flaunt the law, “Not Guilty”.

 Same here: the shots of people laughing leads me to wonder if this is some sort of cargo-cult comedy routine.

The UK authorities already have details.  They just need to make up their mind.  Ultimately it is a political decsison. 

I have to agree with a few others here. I don’t get the sense that he’s actually advocating doing those things to people. It sounds to me like he’s lampooning faith healing a bit by taking things down a rather extreme, bombastic, and exaggerated route, which is what comedians do often. It sounds like a bit to me, and we just don’t have enough content in this video to say he’s actually saying he would or has done these things.

Now if we have video of this guy fulfilling his words with action, then by all means, there must be some legal recourse. My guess, though, is that even if he acts as he seems to indicate here, that there is little to no video because he locks each event down like a vault so he can’t be caught in the act, and so that it’s someone’s word against his if someone wants to sue.

But based on this, I don’t see an immediate need for alarm. The video cuts too often, and it’s so over the top that it really sounds like a line of joke, especially with all the audience laughter.

This doesn’t sound too far off the track in comparison to some of the speakers I’ve heard when I used to attend church. I can recall watching a young girl writhe on the floor making moaning noises and laughing hysterically and an evangelist telling the congregations not to worry about her, she was just ‘makin’ love to the Lord’. Ew. sermon. Another evangelist team, two women, claimed the God made their vehicle fly in order to prevent them from being late to a Then there was the time the preacher, who was coming under fire about the church’s finances, preaching about how Old Testament judgements would be coming back (because of the scripture saying in the end times, things would be as in the days of Noah). He preached that we shouldn’t surprised if dissenters start’ dropping like flies’ from God’s judgement. Another time, the past0r preached from the pulpit to our mixed race congregation that he would only perform a mixed race marriage if the couple would ‘get sterilized’ first so that they couldn’t have children.
Of course, it was ridiculous claims and incidents as these that set me on my way to atheism because, try as I might, I just couldn’t buy into the load of crap that was being sold. 

With everything that’s wrong with this guy and with this video, you go after him for being overweight? Stay classy.

I thought for sure this video was some kind of satire piece and that Todd Bentley was a comedian. I googled his name and am shocked to find that he is 100% for real in the ministry business. As awful as his speech was, I am more disturbed at his large audience. We expect dangerous people to be shunned by the greater community, not applauded with hand clapping and laughter. When are people going to wise up and realize that just because someone is religious, that doesn’t mean he or she is a person worth following.

USA: dumbest country in the wooooooooooooooooooorld

He certainly presents a danger to others… only a Christian could get away with hearing voices and jumping on people. I’ve seen individuals committed to the psych hospital for less bizarre religious behaviors. This guy is mentally ill and should be hospitalized due to dangerous delusions and voices that tell him to hurt people.

Sure, faith healing is a scam, but at least it’s better than a kick in the… uh… Hm. I guess it’s not.

Heres all anyone needs to know about todd bentley:  http://www.thevoicemagazine.com/blog/uncategorized/todd-bentley-excessive-drinking-involved-in-florida-revival-demise/

Pretty sure atheism hasn’t got people who claim to get messages from gods….

For the hundredth time, atheism is not a faith, as such it does not require capitalization. 
Atheism is either A. Not in any way a faith but simply a statement of a lack of belief with no organizing principles whatsoever that anyone can belong to simply by not believing or B. A somewhat organized movement that is largely based on skeptical ideals and is characterized by the notion that leaders are judged on a regular basis on the quality of their ideas and arguments, not on their general popularity.  In either case is completely unfair and inaccurate to lump atheism in with actual religious faiths the way you have.

For concrete examples go to any post on this blog about Bill Maher or Penn Jillette and read the comments and see if they reflect people uniformly and blindly following a dogmatic leader, or a group of people arguing about whether these people even deserve to be members of the group based on their ideas and how they’re articulated. See also recent discussions of sexism in the atheist and skeptical communities where both sides supposed sacred cows are routinely gored. You’ll find precious little of what you are claiming here, even if some people in those discussions are claiming it as well.

Disgusting, yes, but it claims to be a compilation of his violence, and yet again we don’t actually see him perform any violence. The only thing close is a very clearly staged knee to the chest that obviously doesn’t actually make contact. I think this guy is screwed up, I think he’s clearly a disgusting fraud and he’s hurting people in ways that may be far more lasting than physical violence, but at this point, especially after seeing the staged knee in that video, all the evidence I’ve seen suggests that the claims of violence are all part of his act, anything he does that actually looks violent is probably, like that knee and everything else he does, faked. I think he wants these rumors that he really knocked someone’s tooth out floating around out there, he wants people believing he uses violence because it’s a part of his schtick, but absent any actual evidence, I’m highly doubtful he ever actually commits physical violence on his patsies.

that was never my point

Ok… how about “pretty sure atheism hasn’t got people who latch on to the concept of a faith”? 

I’m not sure what your point was, to be honest.

In this case a lower case g is required as in; “,you don’t need a god or…”  because you are not referring to a specific supreme being named “God” just a god or any gods

Again, its not a joke at all. A few years ago, his “revivals” were all the rage in Charismatic circles.