Florida-based group kicks off local 3-day revival Friday night

A Florida-based eve-of-Judgment Day religious revival drawing national attention is bringing its promises of miraculous healing to Hampton Roads this weekend.

Curing cancer and reviving the dead are among the claims coming out of the Lakeland Outpouring of Healings and Salvations. It starts its local visit on Friday night at the Chesapeake Conference Center.

The three-day event will be "a mighty, end-times movement of God," says the Web site of Ignite Virginia (ignitevirginia.org), an ad hoc group of local churches sponsoring the local appearance.

"We've got a lot of people who are coming. They'll be in wheelchairs; some are blind," said Ray Boetcher, a local organizer who said the first-night audience was already fully reserved.

One person not coming is Todd Bentley, the tattoo-mottled Canadian preacher and driving personality behind the nightly revival in Lakeland, Fla.

"He is the most unlikely evangelist - he dresses like a hippy, he's short, bald-headed, obese, not Billy-Graham suave and sophisticated," said Vinson Synan, a church historian and expert on Pentecostalism at Regent University.

Mainstream media have chronicled and questioned the claims of dramatic cures surging out of the revival since Bentley began preaching in Lakeland in the spring.

Skeptics were particularly dubious about what Boetcher called "pretty believable" claims that Bentley's ministry has raised at least 20 people from the dead.

Synan, himself a Pentecostalist, said the death-defying claims "stretch the bounds of credibility, absolutely."

The Rev. Jerry Qualls, pastor of Glad Tidings Church in Norfolk, visited the Lakeland revival earlier this summer.

"It was reported there were healings that evening; I couldn't vouch either way," said Qualls, who is not a co-sponsor of the revival. He saw a loud, excited throng, an emphasis on miracles and speaking in tongues - considered evidence of God's spirit and presence - and heard Bentley preach.

"About 95 percent of the message I heard was just right on," Qualls, said, adding, "I didn't have a lot of trouble with even the other 5 percent."

The Rev. Miguel Dabul of Rock Church of Norfolk called the revival identical to the spirit-filled worship experience of the earliest Christians.

"This type of thing shouldn't be the exception; sadly, it is," said Dabul, a co-sponsor.

Supporters like Dabul expect that people blessed by God with power to heal will pass that "anointing" to others at the local revival. "What they're sharing is transferable."

The revival and anointings are a sign that the world is not far from Judgment Day, he said. "We are in the end times."

According to the Web site of Bentley's Fresh Fire Ministries, the Outpouring's last day in Lakeland is Aug. 23. He will continue it in other locations.

Steven G. Vegh, (757) 446-2417, steven.vegh@pilotonline.com