After the Toronto Blessing... gold fillings

By Simon Jenkins

Things are happening again at the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship – home of the Toronto Blessing, which brought laughter, stamping, kicking and a bewildering assortment of animal noises to pews worldwide in 1995.

It seems that God is filling his people once again, but this time it's molars and incisors which are getting the treatment, rather than hearts and lives. People have been leaving the prayer meetings in Toronto with shiny new gold fillings in their teeth; the work, they claim, of the Divine Dentist.

And they're quoting, with a straight face, Psalm 81:10 in support of the miracle: 'Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.'

The first report of this Midas miracle was at a Toronto Intercessors' Conference on 3rd March, where over 300 people claimed to have received new fillings, in some cases up to ten per mouth.

'I didn't personally receive this miracle,' says one believer, 'however I had the privilege of peering into many mouths...what a sight! One man had two beautiful, perfect, shiny, gold teeth and one of them had a cross engraved on it! I know this sounds impossible to believe, but I saw it with my own eyes! What an awesome God we serve!'

Three weeks later, several churches in Sacramento, California – an area famous for a gold rush of a different kind in the 19th century – were visited by the gold tooth phenomenon. Richard Oliver, a pastor of Orangevale, California, 'received a gold crown in the back of his mouth after prayer time', according to Remnant International magazine.

In an official statement, the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship says it has encouraged people to verify the miracle fillings with their dentists. 'In a few cases,' the fellowship admits, 'dentists were able to show from their records that the gold was put in their mouths previously by the dentist and not by God.' However, the statement insisted that most claims of supernatural dentistry were standing up to scrutiny.

One claim which failed spectacularly was made by the president of Canada's only Christian TV station, Dick Dewert. According to the Canadian Globe and Mail on 22nd March, Dewert had assured viewers during a fundraising telethon that after extensive prayer, 'I've got a gold tooth I never had before!'

The newspaper continues: 'Dewert's long-time dentist, Dr Jack Sherman, though a skilled practitioner, would hardly call himself a dental god. He informed his patient Thursday morning that there was nothing biblical about the appearance of the glittering filling. He had put it in about 10 years ago.'

Dr Andrew Walker, who has written extensively on the charismatic movement, says that the 'miracle' has happened before. He told Ship of Fools: 'This is the first time I've heard of teeth being filled miraculously since A.A. Allen, a maverick preacher from the American Healing Movement, claimed it back in the 1950s.'

Walker also sees parallels with a Hindu phenomenon from September 1995, when statues of Ganesh, the elephant god, were said to be drinking milk brought as offerings in Hindu temples. Within a month, the miracle simply dried up. He comments: 'This is what I believe will happen with this gold phenomenon. It will be very short-lived, it will spread rapidly – everyone will be getting teeth filled with gold – and then it will be quickly forgotten, and we'll be back to waiting for the next new thing.'

Reports have reached Ship of Fools that gold teeth are multiplying at Folly's End Christian Fellowship in Croydon, and the City Church in Bath, both of which have strong links with the Toronto Fellowship. Gold and silver fillings have been reported, and members of the congregations are already visiting their dentists seeking confirmation that their new teeth are not on their existing dental records.

Far from being spiritually significant, Andrew Walker sees the phenomenon as merely magical: 'It almost suggests that God has got nothing better to do. He doesn't seem to be able to stop the horrendous war in Kosovo, but he does know how to fill teeth with gold.'

Thanks to Dan Wooding, Rich Buhler and Donald Morris for sending information about this story.

© Ship of Fools 1999