A little over two years ago, Pentecostal healing evangelist Benny Hinn said he was correcting his theology. “I’m sorry to say that prosperity has gone a little crazy and I’m correcting my own theology and you need to all know it. Because when I read the Bible now, I don’t see the Bible in the same eyes I saw 20 years ago. I think it’s an offense to the Lord, it’s an offense to say give $1,000. I think it’s an offense to the Holy Spirit to place a price on the Gospel. I’m done with it. I will never again ask you to give $1,000 or whatever amount, because I think the Holy Ghost is just fed up with it” (Sept. 2, 2019). The prosperity gospel made Hinn and his family millions, as documented in his nephew’s book God, Greed, and the Prosperity Gospel. If Hinn were truly repentant, he would follow Zacchaeus’ example. “And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold” (Lu. 19:8). Millions have attended Hinn’s crusades, watched his television programs, and read his books, and the prosperity gospel is only one of his many heresies. The man is a lying false prophet. He allegedly had his first vision of Jesus at age 11 and had an eight-hour private conversation with the Holy Spirit (Hinn, Rise and Be Healed, pp. 1, 22). Hinn tosses the “anointing of the Holy Spirit” like a baseball and “slays people in the spirit” by blowing on them. He teaches the heresy that healing is promised in Christ’s atonement. “God is not going to heal you now–he healed you 2,000 years ago. All you have to do today is receive your healing by faith” (Hinn, Rise and Be Healed, p. 44). He said, “We must never say, ‘If it be thy will, Lord.’” Though Hinn claimed that one thousand people were healed at each of his “miracle services,” researchers were unable to verify any healings (Florida Magazine, Nov. 24, 1991). Hinn’s ministry sent Hank Hanegraaff three prime examples of the supposed thousands of healings that have occurred through his ministry, including the case of the healing of colon cancer, but when Dr. Preston Simpson investigated he found that the colon tumor had been surgically removed rather than miraculously healed and that the other two cases were also bogus (Hank Hanegraaff, What’s Wrong with the Faith Movement, Part 1, http://www.equip.org/free/DC755-1.htm). Anthony Thomas followed up on five of Hinn’s best healing cases for a year and concluded, “In my experience, there was nothing that we saw that in any way could qualify as a miracle” (“Documentary Questions Healing Miracles,” Christian News, April 30, 2001, p. 19). NBC television’s Dateline program asked Hinn’s ministry to provide confirmation of the 56 cases of healing that were claimed at one of his crusades. Hinn’s people could only come up with five cases of what they called “irrefutable and medically proven miracles,” but when Dateline researched these cases they found that only one of the people could provide medical records, and her doctor suspected that the woman never had the Lou Gehrig’s disease she claimed to have been healed of (Charisma Online, Feb. 20, 2003). On Sunday, April 30, 2000, four people died in Nairobi, Kenya, during a Benny Hinn “Miracle Crusade” (Reuters News Service, “Four Die Waiting for ‘Miracle’ Cures,” May 4, 2000). They had been released from a hospital to be cured at Hinn’s meeting.
(Friday Church News Notes, May 6, 2022, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)