Rodney Howard-Browne
"Nothing Jesus did was because He was the Son of God. The Bible says He laid aside His royal robes of deity and when He walked the earth He did so as a prophet under the Abrahamic Covenant."
(Rodney Howard-Browne, The Touch of God, 13-14.)
"We're at the close of a millennium and I believe we're about to see a great transference of wealth come into the hands of God's people."
(Rodney Howard-Browne, "Want More? Change Your Thinking!" Winners Way Magazine)
"I have good news for you today. God wants you free in the area of your finances. In fact, God wants to bring you to another realm—a whole new level where money is concerned."
(Rodney Howard-Browne, "Want More? Change Your Thinking!" Winners Way Magazine)
"God wants us to be Holy Ghost possessed—a state in which the Holy Spirit is influencing every area of our thought lives, giving us creative ideas, inventions, visions, and dreams. Recently the Lord said to me, "If you want to go to another level, you have to step up to the plate. I'm waiting on you."
(Rodney Howard-Browne, "Want More? Change Your Thinking!" Winners Way Magazine)
"Even while people are lined up waiting to receive his touch, Howard-Browne commands them not to pray: "Now people in the lines, wait for me to come and lay hands on you, and don’t pray, please don’t pray." He addresses those who insist on praying as "stubborn people," adding, "People come trying to be all serious and praying. No! This is not the time to pray. This is not a prayer meeting; get in the joy; you can pray on the way home."
At the age of seventeen, he says he gave God Almighty an ultimatum: "Either you come down here and touch me or I am going to come up there and touch You." He began to shout over and over again, "God, I want your power!
"In Tampa, TV preacher Rodney Howard-Browne went so far as to tell his flock that if they gave to the building fund for his River at Tampa Bay church, they could expect God to give them a house in return. "For whatever he sows, it is what he will reap," Howard-Browne said. "People stop reaping because they quit sowing."
"One night I was preaching on hell, and [laughter] just hit the whole place. The more I told people what hell was like, the more they laughed"
"Stop praying now and let the joy bubble out your belly. Joy. Joy. Joy. Don't pray! Laugh!"
(Citing Rodney Howard-Browne, Holy Laughter, Albert James Dager, 1996)
"I'm just the Holy Ghost bartender," he informed us. "I just serve the new wine and tell them to come drink." Howard-Browne then began pumping us up to do just that. He led us in a song with these words: "I am drunk, I am drunk. Every day of my life I am drunk. I've been drinking down at Joel's place every night and every day. I am drunk on the new wine." Then he asked us all to lift our hands and "let that river of joy come out of your belly."
("An Evening with Rodney Howard-Browne" Christian Research Journal, Winter 1995, page 43. Julia Duin)
"Those who criticize me are idiots. They are about to experience either riot or revival"
(Rodney Howard-Browne, 16 and 17 January 1995, meeting at Melodyland Christian Center, Anaheim, CA)
"The proof that this is a move of God is that when I leave, it doesn't stop" (Julia Duin, "Praise the Lord and pass the New Wine," 8/94, Charisma, p.22)
"Howard-Browne disparages those who try to apply a theological test to his methods. 'You can't understand what God is doing in these meetings with an analytical mind,' he says. 'The only way you're going to understand what God is doing is with your heart'"
"It's amazing how it's always the ones who are doing nothing for God who know how it should be done. There are ministries that start off exposing the cults but then turn on the Body of Christ like cannibals. They build their ministries off the fallings of God's servants"
(Rodney Howard-Browne, The Touch of God, p. 107)
Rodney Howard-Browne: "I'm telling your right now," he hissed, "you'll drop dead if you prohibit what God is doing!" Dramatically he gestured toward the crowd and warned them that those like me, who would dare to question that what he was doing was of God, had committed the unpardonable sin and would not be forgiven in this world or the next."
"The scene was surreal. It looked like a bomb had exploded. Bodies were strewn haphazardly throughout the auditorium. Some lay motionless on the ground. Others twitched spasmodically. Behind me a woman shrieked, "I’m hot! I’m hot!" In front of me a girl was shaking violently. A boy standing in the aisle chopped feverishly with his hands at some imaginary object. Next to him a man whirled round and round in a circle. All the while waves of sardonic laughter cascaded eerily throughout the sanctuary.
A boy staggered drunkenly across the platform and collapsed at the feet of a man who called himself the "Holy Ghost Bartender." The "Bartender," Rodney Howard-Browne, screamed, "Git him, Jesus! Git him! Git him! Git him!" Suddenly he spun around and commanded two muscle-bound men to rise. "These men," he said, "are my ‘guardian angels.’" Then, as if on cue, he moved deliberately in my direction. What happened next was best described by a charismatic pastor, who was an eyewitness: "I witnessed a stalking [by] a barroom bully."
When the Holy Ghost Bartender (who also refers to himself as the Holy Ghost Hitman) arrived at my seat, he began threatening to have me thrown out of the sanctuary. "I’m telling you right now," he hissed, "you’ll drop dead if you prohibit what God is doing!" Dramatically he gestured toward the crowd and warned them that those like me, who would dare question that what he was doing was of God, had committed the unpardonable sin and would not be forgiven in this world or the next.
The following day he crowed, "The last time I had a confrontation like that...was...with a bunch of Mormons... you could see their spirit, y’know...just a really religious, pharisaical spirit, that’s what it is. Amen?...And I smelt it — y’know, I can smell them religious devils from about a hundred yards —- I could smell them blindfolded, man....You could see, last night we meant business." He labeled his critics "idiots" and warned that they were about to experience either "riot or revival."
"Although Rodney experienced a few subsequent manifestations of divine power, it was not until 1990 that this anointing returned to stay. By this time Rodney had moved from South Africa to America, and by his own admission had a ministry that was nothing to write home about. Despite that fact, when the unusual manifestations resurfaced, Rodney became indignant. Speaking to the Almighty, he said, "God, You’re ruining my meetings!" God retorted, "Son, the way your meetings are going, they’re worth ruining."
And ruin them He did! As the story goes, in Albany, New York, two people were merely walking down a church aisle when God enveloped them in a "thick fog or mist" and they "fell out under the power." In a meeting in New Jersey people began to "jump out of wheelchairs without anyone touching them." At times the anointing of the Holy Spirit would blow into buildings so powerfully that Rodney had to hold onto the podium, "because it nearly blew me flat on the floor." One time the power of God hit a whole row of people, causing them to fall on their backs "before the ushers could catch them."
Rodney says that even he was "amazed" at what happened when he prayed for people. At times they would be "picked up and thrown over three rows of chairs like a piece of rag." On one occasion, while Rodney was praying for a man, the power of God allegedly came over his shoulder like a whirlwind. The man saw it coming and tried to duck, but it was too late. The whirlwind "picked him up off the ground, level with my waist," said Rodney, and "then it struck him to the ground....I was shocked. As the power hit him, the first couple of rows all went out. It was like a Holy Ghost tornado came in there."
"One of Rodney’s books has a section titled "Holy Ghost Glue." In it he recounts the story of a wealthy woman who got "stuck" in the Spirit. As Rodney tells it: "She was lying there from noon until 1:30....At 1:30, she tried to get up. She wanted to get up. She couldn’t. All she could do was flap her hands. So she was lying there flapping away — flap, flap, flap, flap....2:30, 3:30, 4:30....At 4:30 the woman was still saying, ‘I can’t get up. I’m stuck to the floor.’"
She flapped so long that, as Rodney put it, he ended up "walking out on the Holy Spirit":
I turned to the pastor and said, "Look, I haven’t had either breakfast or lunch. It’s 4:30. I’m not stuck and you’re not stuck. These people are going to stay here with her, so let’s go have a meal before the night service." The ushers told us later that at 6 o’clock the woman finally peeled herself off the carpet. Then it took her an hour to crawl from the center of the church auditorium to the side wall. She had been stuck to the floor for six hours! By 7 o’clock she couldn’t talk in English anymore. She tried to talk, but only tongues came out of her mouth. She couldn’t help it. She was totally filled — and totally inebriated, saturated, and drunk in the Holy Ghost! The ushers put her in the back row thinking that she wouldn’t disturb anyone, but she interfered with everyone who came through the door.
I’ve never seen anything like it. Five women were sitting around her, were struck dumb — they couldn’t talk — Their husbands were rejoicing."
"John Wesley correctly stated, "It is a fundamental principle that to renounce reason is to renounce religion, that religion and reason go hand in hand; all irrational religion is false religion." While he recognized physical manifestations as a natural response to an encounter with the gospel, he also attributed enthusiasms such as falling, laughing, and jumping to the "simplicity" of people and to the ploys of Satan. Wesley recounted the story of a meeting that took place in 1773. A hymn was sung over and over some 30 or 40 times, resulting in bodily agitations on the part of some of the people present. In response to this phenomenon, he wrote, "Satan serves himself of their simplicity, in order...to bring a discredit on the work of God."
Years earlier, in 1740, an epidemic of laughter had broken out during a gathering in Bristol. Wesley said, "I was surprised at some, who were buffeted of Satan in an unusual manner, by such a spirit of laughter as they could in no wise resist." A short time later the "spirit of laughter" returned. One lady present was "so violently and variously torn of the evil one" that "she laughed till almost strangled; then broke out into cussing and blaspheming; then stamped and struggled with incredible strength, so that four or five could scarcely hold her."
