Benny Hinn: A Heretic and a Fraud

I believe these are the appropriate words to describe Benny Hinn. A heretic. A fraud. If you think that the NKF controversy is bad, in which the former CEO TT Durai mismanged the charity funds of the National Kidney Foundation, wait till you watch the NBC Dateline video of Benny Hinn. This shocking video is a must-watch. By comparison, this video makes Durai look like a generous saint. The video can be viewed at this link, courtesy of Wittenburgdoor.com.

Wittenburgdoor.com, which bills itself as "The World's Pretty Much Only Religious Satire Magazine," has written an insightful article on Benny Hinn, naming it The Heretic. Here is a brief description of Benny Hinn in a nutshell, taken from the article:

He has no church. He belongs to no denomination. He's not even affiliated with any particular religion, although his buzz words indicate he tends to dwell on the freaky backwoods fringe of Pentecostalism. As recently as three centuries ago, he probably would have been burned as a heretic. (To give you some idea of his doctrinal strangeness, he once preached that the Trinity is actually nine persons, because each member of the Trinity – Father, Son, Holy Spirit – is also a Trinity. He also says that God and the Holy Spirit have real bodies, with eyes, hands, mouth, etc. Various theologians have trashed him, of course, for preaching "new revelations" directly from God that turn out to be, when examined, variations of thousand-year-old heresies.) He thinks of himself as a prophet (even when his prophecies don't come true) and, in one burst of grandeur, "a little messiah walking on the earth." He believes that the Biblical Adam flew into outer space, that when God parted the Red Sea He made it into a wall of ice, that God talks to him more frequently than he talked to, say, Moses, that a man has risen from the dead in his presence, that a man turned into a snake before his eyes, that angels come to his bedroom and talk to him, and that the only reason we're not all in perfect health, living forever, is that there are demons in the world, attacking us. He's expressed opinions normally heard only on schizophrenia wards, and he's done it in front of millions of people – and still they come. They come in such numbers that thousands have to be turned away, and even the ones turned away gladly give him their money.

The article has also cites a number of examples where they uncover, after investigations, the healings were faked.

No wonder Hinn needs bodyguards. Very few, if any, of these people are actually healed. And when they die, or their disease becomes worse, their relatives tend to become angry. For the past ten years this has been demonstrated over and over again by various investigative reports conducted with the resources of the Trinity Foundation, beginning with an Inside Edition show in 1993 hosted by Bill O'Reilly and reported by Steve Wilson.
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I could go on, but you get the idea. Even sadder than the people who think they're healed are the ones so sick that Hinn's employees never allow them to be seen on stage. People suffering from paralysis, brain damage, dementia and the like – people who couldn't possibly make any "demonstration" on stage – are rejected at a screening session held backstage.

Despite all these reports, it appears that City Harvest (Singapore) not only endorses Benny Hinn, but the organization featured him prominently in the front cover of Harvest Times Issue 25 (April - June 2005). The magazine was accompanied by articles such as Why Do We Believe In Divine Healing? and Jesus Heals.

City Harvest (Singapore) was also the organizer of Benny Hinn's "healing crusade" at the Singapore Indoor Stadium on March 2005.

Controversies do not just surround Benny Hinn alone. There is another shocking video of Benny Hinn's wife, Suzanne, where she said the following words:

If your engine is not revving up, you know what you need? You need a Holy Ghost enema right up your rear end. ... Be God-pleasers, don’t be people-pleasers. Because if you’re a people-pleaser, you’re a butt-kisser. If you’re a people-pleaser, you’re a butt-kisser. There’s no other word for it.

Following those words, she began babbling, and ran back and forth the stage a couple of times like a charging bull until she fell down. What astonishes me is not so much that she uttered blasphemeous words (maybe I expect this sort of thing from her), but the choir and congregation giving approval by clapping to her words and actions.

There are so many outright heresies in Benny Hinn's teachings that it makes me wonder how could any churches, pastors or Christians with basic Christian beliefs support Benny Hinn.

The denial of the doctrine of the Trinity. The heresy that Jesus Christ became one with Satan. The denial of the fact that Jesus was fully God and fully man. All these and many others. They are not mere non-essential doctrinal trivialities that one can write off, but full-blown blasphemies and heresies that set themselves against the fundamentals of the Christian faith.

For further reading, Dr. Kim Riddlebarger has written a good article The Theology of Benny Hinn, which examines the heretical teachings of Benny Hinn.

Links:
10 minutes of excerpts from Dateline's Benny Hinn investigation, Wittenburgdoor.com
The Heretic - Benny Hinn, Wittenburgdoor.com
Mrs. Benny Hinn's moment of zen, Beliefnet.com
The Theology of Benny Hinn, Modern Reformation Magazine