Pastor Benny Hinn: Charlatan or Man of God? [$100M/Year Charlatan!]

FoxNews ^ | October 10th 2009

[Steelfish]

Pastor Benny Hinn: Charlatan or Man of God?

October 09, 2009

Lauren Green.

Pastor Benny Hinn is being investigated by the Senate Finance Committee and was recently denied entry into the United Kingdom. The press has been bad, he says, because the media doesn't understand him.

But the Texas-based faith healer, whose "Holy Spirit Miracle Crusades" pack sports arenas across the United States, is fielding questions about his controversies nonetheless. He says he needs to voice his concerns over the land of his birth, Israel, and the threat to it posed by a nuclear Iran — which he talks about in his new book “Blood in the Sand.”

“[The media] are never going to paint me as I want to be painted," Hinn said in an exclusive interview. "But, really, it doesn’t matter as long as people give me the chance to talk.”

And talking he is … about the finance probe, his lavish lifestyle and accusations that his faith healings are fake because he offers no documentation or verification that he has, in fact, helped the blind see and the crippled walk.

“They question me on why I don’t verify,” Hinn says. "I answer, ‘God never called me to verify. I’m not a doctor.'”

He says that after a tabloid news show aired an exposé on his worldwide Benny Hinn Ministries, he tried to make changes. The exposé reported that though thousands of people attending Hinn's religious gatherings said they were healed, the ministry couldn't prove they suffered from any infirmities in the first place, or that they actually had been miraculously healed.

So, Hinn says, his ministry created a department to handle verifications and follow up on the "miracles."

[Laissez-faire capitalist]

NOW it goes through, right after I gave up on it and reposted.

/Sigh

[swmobuffalo]

my vote-Charlatan.

[Laissez-faire capitalist]

Benny Hinn Curses His Enemies (VIDEO)

http://www.tangle.com/view_video?viewkey=2406e6a8f449af946d61

[boatbums]

A sham, a flim-flam, a ham and a charlatam(n)!

His “curses” bounce off of truth believer’s shields of faith!

[boatbums]

IF Hinn has the gift of speaking in tongues, why does he need interpreters for his crusades? Hmmmm???

[Steelfish]

Possibly even a felon in taking monies under false pretenses.

[ikka]

So what were *you* doing there?

I was attending a wedding reception.

I stayed there 2 nights... but I am not claiming to do the Lord's work and asking people to send me money to continue my ministry. About 2 blocks away is the New World Renaissance hotel, run by Marriott, also a nice place, about $110 a night.

BTW Hinn would have been staying in the large suite rooms, $2500 per night and up...

[gunsofaugust]

Benny Hinn makes made me ill just by watching him for a very few minutes. His circus act one of the worst I have ever seen; far worse than a exceptionally poorly done B movie.

[ikka]

I have traveled plenty in the Philippines, have spent over 6 months there over the last 5 years. Like I said, Shangri-La is THE MOST expensive place in the country ... Hinn would have been staying in one of the large suites, $2500 a night and up; the Presidential is about $12,000 a night, I don't know which room he stayed in.

The New World Renaissance hotel is run by Marriott, very nice but not ostentatious, about half the price.

When a missionary/preacher goes to NYC, should he only stay at the Waldorf? Not when he is asking people to give him money. He has plenty of people, surely one of them could go online and see what other hotels are in the area... FWIW the place that he held his event in the Philippines was miles and miles away from the Shangri-La, so it wasn't an issue of convenience .

[Humbug]

IF Hinn has the gift of speaking in tongues, why does he need interpreters for his crusades? Hmmmm???

Maybe he has a very bad, very hard to understand accent when speaking in tongues? Reminds me of the old Mark Twain quote that goes something like: "when i was in France, i never could get those idiots to understand their own language!" Of course the real answer to your question is that Hinn is the sort of man who wants to spread the wealth around, wants to pay people to interpret for him even though he hardly needs their help.

And speaking of speaking in tongues, this post was written with tongue firmly planted in cheek, just in case there was any doubt. : d

[boatbums]

me like u! ;)

[aruanan]

Pastor Benny Hinn: Charlatan or Man of God? [$100M/Year Charlatan!]

His hair screams charlatan.

[stuartcr]

I agree.

[aruanan]

Hinn 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 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 Hinn, 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 new 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.

[aruanan]

IT HAPPENED AT THE AGE OF 11, WHEN Jesus first appeared to either him or his mother while he was living in Jaffa, Israel. Or maybe it happened at 18, when he had a conversion experience at a high school in Toronto. That's when Benny Hinn says he was "anointed." Or maybe it was shortly after that, when he took a bus trip to Pittsburgh to see the faith healer Kathryn Kuhlman. It's difficult to say exactly when it happened, or what form it took, because Hinn parcels out little bits and pieces of his background as it suits him, then embellishes the stories so that isolating any one event in his life is like puzzling through a 30-year-old KGB file.

[aruanan]

From the same article I quoted above:

But there's an even darker side to Hinn and his organization. In 1998, two members of his inner circle died of heroin overdoses. In 1999, after one of his many vows of reform, he fired several board members and hired an ex-cop named Mario C. Licciardello to do an internal investigation of his ministry. Licciardello was the brother of Carman, who is sort of the Engelbert Humperdinck of Christian singers, so many think Hinn considered him "safe." But Licciardello did such a good job—taking hundreds of depositions and getting to the bottom of the heroin use—that Hinn then sued him. While Licciardello was still his head of security, the ministry filed a lawsuit demanding that all his files be turned over and sealed, because their public release could result in the end of the ministry. Licciardello was a police investigator with 25 years of experience, and he felt like his whole career was being smeared, so he fought back with his own lawyers. His counsel continually tried to take Hinn's deposition, but Hinn fought him at every step. The judge, however, ruled against him and said that, if Hinn intended to enjoin Licciardello, he would have to make himself available for questioning.

On the very day that Hinn was supposed to give his deposition in the case, Licciardello had a heart attack and died. The Hinn organization made an out-of-court settlement with Licciardello's widow, which included sealing the court papers.

[Humbug]

To respond a little more seriously this time, i think people like Hinn have done more to harm Christianity (and religion in general) than many a militant atheist. Or at least have given the militant atheists plenty of ammunition, allowing them to point to the follows of Hinn as typical of religious types, people who will believe anything that some charismatic person tells them.

Also it is interesting to learn Hinn is originally from Israel. It reminded me of someone else but i couldn’t think who until just now: Uri Geller, the charlatan who claimed to be able to bend spoons through psychic power but was exposed as a fraud on the Tonight Show (back in the Johnny Carson days). He also was from Israel and i wonder if Hinn was inspired by him. Their recipes seem somewhat similar. Throw in a large dose of showmanship together with some new-age/space-age babble in order to add an extra layer of mystique to the mix and then act like you really really believe in what you’re doing so the folks in the audience will want to believe right along with you....and won’t look at what you’re doing with too critical an eye.

[BikerJoe]

Pastor Benny Hinn: Charlatan or Man of God? [$100M/Year Charlatan!] His hair screams charlatan.

I wonder how much he practices his "healing" moves? Not that I've watched very much, but half the time it looks like he's "healing" people by caving in their foreheads.

Personally, I always enjoyed the unapologetic message of Reverend Ike "it's not money that's the root of all evil, it's the LACK of money that's the root of all evil. Send me all yours, and God will make you RICH!"

[aruanan]

Yes, I remember the hubbub that was Uri Geller. Poor boob. I loved the way James Randi deboned him. Even though James Randi and his bunch believe they’re being successful in attacking Christianity by unmasking frauds, I think they’re really performing a public service.

[Humbug]

I agree, James Randi has done a lot of good work exposing frauds and superstitious hokum (such as astrology). Plus he has always been a class act, at least as far as i’m aware, especially in comparison to guys like Penn & Teller.