What is the Toronto Blessing?

The Lester B. Pearson Airport in Toronto, Canada is the place where people come to seek the Toronto Blessing.  The movement itself did not begin in Toronto though.  Randy Clark, a St. Louis Vineyard pastor, attended a conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was conducted by Rodney Howard-Browne, a South African Pentecostal minister. 

When Clark first heard Howard-Browne, his life and ministry were at a low point.  Similarly, John Kilpatrick, pastor of the Brownsville Assembly of God, describes the same experience prior to the start of the “revival” at his church.1  Clark claims that his life was changed at the conference, the result of the manifestations taking place during the service.

In January 1994, Clark was scheduled to speak at the Airport Vineyard in Toronto.  The services were scheduled for a few days, but turned into several weeks.  Since that time, the Airport Vineyard Church has become headquarters of the “blessing” resting in Toronto.  Many try to compare the “blessing” to the Azusa Street Revival in 1906.

John Arnott, pastor of the Airport Vineyard, would be the first to acknowledge the strange manifestations that take place at his church.  It is not uncommon to find church members and guests laughing uncontrollably, falling on the floor, people roaring like lions, loud weeping, and violent shaking.  None of these manifestations are new to the Vineyard Movement.  John Wimber, pastor of the Anaheim Vineyard and founder of the Vineyard Movement, has witnessed all the above manifestations as characteristic to the Vineyard churches.

Those involved do not see a problem with people falling down in a prolonged state of ecstasy, identical to Hindu worshippers who feel the power of kundalini energy.  Whether one attributes the source to God or the devil is not as important as the experience.  Those that would criticize the movement are called heresy hunters and likewise accused of not being a part of this move of God.

Holy Laughter is also commonplace.  The result of being “soaked in the spirit,” losing consciousness after being “slain in the spirit,” is uncontrollable laughter called “holy” because it is alleged to come from God.  In the Stormy Search for the Self, Christina and Stanislav Grof, foremost authorities on spiritual crises resulting from occult practice, state that one of the results of awakening kundalini energy is unmotivated and unnatural laughter or crying.2

If one questions the source of the Toronto Blessing, he should ask why there is no biblical precedence.  The identical, not similar, experiences are from the pagan world.  One need only watch the documentary film, Fear is the Master, and observe Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh produce the same effects as the Toronto Blessing by the power of the devil.  Furthermore, in his book, Dance your Way to God, he encourages his disciples to “just be joyful….God is not serious…this world cannot fit with a theological god…laugh your way to God.”3  In the similar manner as the “Holy Ghost Bartender” Rodney Howard-Browne, Rajneesh encourages his followers to be “drunk on the divine.”  The people involved in these experiences are not experiencing God, rather they are encountering mass delusion.

1 Kilpatrick, Feast, pp. 73-75.

2 Grof, Stormy Search, pp. 78-79.

3 Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Dance your Way to God (Los Angeles:  International SRM Publications, 1968), p. 229.