Really angry. You see, it all started when a buddy and I started talking about Benny Hinn. I told him about my favorite Benny Hinn quote. It goes like this.
“Somebody’s attacking me because of something I’m teaching. Let me tell you something, brother: You watch it! You know, I’ve looked for one verse in the Bible; I just can’t seem to find it. One verse that said ‘If you don’t like them, kill them.’ I really wish I could find it! Sometimes I wish God would give me a Holy Ghost machine gun; I’ll blow your head off!”
Isn’t that cute. I think the part about the Holy Ghost machine gun is especially charming. No, I’m not making this up. You don’t know how much I wish I was. You can see just below. Well, I was looking for a video clip I saw once of Benny smoking a hookah. I went to Google Video and searched Benny’s name. Soon I was watching the clip I just embedded below. I looked at what else was there. Soon I was watching a whole documentary. Check it out if you like. It’s in seven parts, each a few minutes long.
What I saw made me furious. The audience at his events is full of suffering and hopeless people. Folks come from around the nation with children in pain, dying. Convention centers and stadiums are filled with people in unspeakable agony. He literally extorts money from them in the midst of their suffering, convincing them that God will heal them if their donations and their faith are sufficient. As the documentary told the story of one particular boy who suffered from cancer I became especially hot.
The boy’s parents, not wealthy, brought him at much expense to every Hinn “crusade.” Under Hinn’s teaching that one must give to get these poor parents committed to give $100 a month. At the event they donated $2000! The boy slowly died of cancer. After his death an interviewer for the documentary asked the parents if Hinn had let them down. They quickly and confidently said no. He asked if God had let them down. They slowly and uncertainly responded. He asked if they ever thought their boy died because they had done something wrong. The father promptly said he feared that very thing.
Hinn has elicited a greater confidence in himself than in God. He took money from these suffering parents with the promise of healing for their child and left them blaming themselves for his death. In the mean time Benny continues to hold crusades where he promises folks that God will give to them if they give to Benny. His aides walk the aisles not with offering plates but with buckets. They carry hundreds of buckets of cash backstage during each of several offerings. Benny flies around in his $36 million Gulfstream and reclines in his $8.5 million home while leaving behind a trail of pain and agony, broken hopes and self-condemnation in his followers.
This is one of those things that makes me long for justice. If the doctrine of Hell ever presented me with a moral dilemma, folks like Benny Hinn solve it. Justice isn’t just about punishment of evildoers either. I can’t wait until those whom he is exploiting are granted relief.
Here’s a final juicy Hinn quote to chew on. "God multiplies the seed you sow, the supernatural power of God hits after you sow, not before, after."
(Benny Hinn, This Is Your Day, August 19, 1996). Imagine how a family with a child dying of cancer hears that when Hinn says it and cash-buckets are being passed.
May God have mercy on His church and deliver it from wicked men.
