Todd Bentley and Fresh Fire Ministry have been on a 100 day supernatural mission in Lakeland Florida to heal and resurrect the faithful. Bentley, an unlikely messiah, with his shaved head and multiple tattoos, not to mention his rather unorthodox faith healing methods, like kicking old ladies in the head, is none the less, a hyper charismatic leader with a dedicated following.
Tattooed across Bentley’s chest are military dog tags that read “Joel’s Army.” Evidence that Bentley leads troops in an army which apologetics believe is foretold in the teachings of the bible “… that in the last days, a “new breed” of Christians will arise – the “Manifest Sons of God” – who will have super-natural spiritual power and be instrumental in subduing the earth.” This movement is also referred to as “Joel’s Army.”
The Joel’s Army concept is a Neo-Pentecostal belief concocted from 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 convoluted view, the locusts are a metaphor for the minions of Joel’s Army.
Bentley and a handful of other charismatic preachers, who are advancing the same agenda, creepily insist that 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.
On the Fresh Fire Ministry web site, internships are offered for young people who want to join Joel’s army and learn to combat sin “with militant love and the raw power of God.” The goal of the Fresh Fire Ministry Road School is to gather an “army of millions of radical soldiers that God is training to aggressively take ground for the Kingdom of God under the authority of Jesus Christ.”
Sadly, a majority of Joel’s Army followers are teenagers and young adults who believe they are members of the last generation to come of age before the end of the world. These young believers are breaking away from mainline Pentecostal churches in droves for the opportunity to be part of Joel’s Army.
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 ruled by a conservative Christian interpretation of biblical law. There is no room for democracy or pluralism in the doctrine of Joel’s Army dogma.
The military nature of Bentley’s movement has some people worried about the escalation of physical violence. “The pitch and intensity of the military rhetoric of this branch of the global Dominionist movement has substantially increased.” writes The Discernment Research Group, a Christian watchdog group. “One can only wonder how long before this transforms into real warfare with actual warriors.”Those concerns do not seem so far fetched when one considers the fact that Fresh Fire Ministry is notorious for endorsing the public execution, by stoning, of homosexuals and adulterers.
The Dominionist movement evolved from the Christian Reconstructionist movement, which is better known in America than Joel’s Army, largely because Reconstructionists like Pat Robertson, have made several serious runs at mainstream politics. Joel’s Army, on the other hand, eschews the political system, believing the path to world domination lies in taking over churches, not election to public office.
Todd Bentley and Fresh Fire Ministries are no less extreme than radical Muslims, the only difference being they haven’t blown anything up yet. Dominionists will force us to convert to their religion, and unlike other more democratic minded theists, they mean to overthrow the world’s governments one church at a time, rather than via the political process.
With 70 percent of Americans reporting that they regularly attend church, the Dominionists may be in power sooner than we think.
Sources: Casey Sanchez, Southern Poverty Law Center: Fresh Fire Ministries
