It's been a very interesting few days.

On Saturday I went to a conference with Reinhard Bonnke (German Evangelist) and Benny Hinn (something or other). The Reinhard Bonnke part was pretty good. He fairly pretty level-headed for a big-shot evangelist. Next came some worship with the band from a big church in Bradford. Their music was more of a deistic romance than Hillsong's. Most of the songs didn't mention Jesus, one didn't even mention God and could very easily just be a love song. And they tried to sell their CD in between two of the songs. That was edifying *caugh*.

And then came Benny Hinn. I entered with a mind completely open to him not being what I've seen him made out to be. But alas he proved me wrong. As he burst onto stage, all of the lights were thrown up and "How Great Thou Art" was played obnoxiously loud on a keyboard set to "we wish this was an organ in a cathedral". Though it was the most emotionally manipulative worship I've ever experienced, it was still more edifying than the worship before it.

Up until this point, I was okay with Benny Hinn. He was a little old school and self glorifying, but it was alright. Then came the moment when he dissolved all respect I might have had for him. A lady in the third row got up, presumedly to go to the toilet; or perhaps she just got a text message saying "your son is dying". We'll never know. Benny Hinn pointed at her and said "Nobody gets up while I'm ministering!" He proceeded to cross his arms and say that he wasn't going to continue "ministering" until she was completely out of the building, which caused 2000 people to stare at this poor woman as she slowly made her way throw the crowd with Benny Hinn telling her to "hurry up" so he could get back to "ministering". Basically, he publically humiliated her, potentially doing her immense emotional damage, because she interrupted his "ministry".

Aside from that, I had some minor theological complaints. Mainly the fact that the second half of his sermon didn't use the Bible at all because it was anti-Biblical. He perfectly reworded stoic philosophy, and tried to say that "the presence of God cancels out all emotion" because "emotion is of the flesh". Use your own discenment on that one.

Next he did his Benny Hinn thing, involving the spiritual knocking-over of many. It is my opinion that this was the Spirit of God working through him. I won't try to justify that here. However, I will leave you with a HILARIOUS movie someone made.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lvU-DislkI

When I said I'd "leave you", that was a bit of a lie. There is much more in the last few days to tell. Normally I wouldn't post the following bit of information on the internet, but it's pretty much public now anyway.

Last night one of the students here got really drunk, physically assaulted a couple students, and violently destroyed some school property (a window and a light, apparently with a fire extinguisher). The school called the police and they arrested her. They let her go at 3am because everyone refused to press charges, and now she's living on the streets of Mattersey. Lots of people want to take her into their homes, but no one really can because she's still drinking. Today she came to the church while I was there praying and we talked for about half an hour. She's determined to get over this and come back to school next year, which we're all really hoping happens. There's a lot more I could say on the issue, but I don't really need to. Most of the school is pretty shaken up at the moment. This kind of thing doesn't usually happen at nice little angel-filled Bible Colleges.

The thing that made my day today was when I was in a prayer group with the man she punched yesterday, and he was leading the prayer. He's about 50, and apparently she spat on him a few times before swinging at him. He said that she's about the age of his daughter, and if his daughter ever did that to him, he's still die for her. So he led the prayer for her. Most of us were crying when we prayed for her, and for the college. It's all really sudden and (for most of us who didn't know this had been developing) unexpected. At any rate, I'm praying for her and really hoping she's back next year. I'm also praying she'll go get help. We'll see.

There's a lot of other stuff going on my life right now as well. I'm coming home on June 18th for a wedding. I've learned that someone else graduated from here two years ago and made it onto the same Cambridge program I'm hoping to get into. I start exams next week. And... other stuff.

This blog is ended.