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| A Visit to Orlando Christian Center The Benny Hinn Adventure We had the dubious honor of attending services at the Orlando Christian Center when Benny Hinn was still pastor and actually present for services. Amazing! For the most part the services were extraordinarily quiet. No miracles, no healings, no pray for the sick, no blowing on people with subsequent falling out. The message is best described as a typical Word of Faith message. My focus is not on the message but rather on what happened toward the end of the service. First however I would like to digress for a moment to explain something observed two years prior to this visit that will give possibly better insight into what happened, or at least a possible explanation. Our family had been in California two years prior to our trip to Orlando. While there we had the opportunity to spend several hours at Disneyland. Our children had wanted to see the place and as I prayed about it, I found out God wanted us to see it also. While we were there we were impressed with the technology to make fantasy into real appearing life. Not the use of animatronics but the more advanced technology of computer enhanced projected interactive imagery. There was certainly some very remarkable technology used and I had the thought “I wonder if any of this technology will be used by the beast or the false prophet, specifically making the image of the beast come to life.” The next thing that happened is something that is hard to explain even today. We prayed as to where to go next in the park and decided upon the monorail. As we sat in the monorail, three young men joined us. The one who did the talking introduced themselves as witnesses recently come from Las Vegas. He said that is where they had been congregated. He also said, “It’s very cold in the desert this time of year.” He then said he had noticed us walking around the park carrying our Bible and that you don’t see that very often. The young man asked if he could see my Bible. I handed it to him. He opened my Bible, flipped right to a specific spot and said, “Did you know you have a printing error in this Bible?” I had just recently been given this Bible and I had not yet found the error. When the Bible had been bound a section of New Testament had been inadvertently bound into a section of the Old Testament. It was at this point that I stopped thinking about the possibility of receiving some kind of religious pitch by some strange California group and started taking a good look at these men. Their eyes, face and mannerisms were as pure as anything I had ever seen. I almost had the feeling that they were without sin but couldn’t quite figure out why I had that thought. Again the young man turned the Bible to an Old Testament scripture in Psalms on judgment that talked about “blowing them away like the chaff before the wind.” The young man said this was his favorite scripture. With that he handed the Bible back just as the monorail stopped. The three men arose and quickly disappeared. The other two never did speak and the young man Michael had been the only one to talk. As we rose to leave, a very strong wind began blowing out of a calm day. Praying as we walked we felt it was time to leave. As we reviewed our day’s events, what stood out to everyone were the advances in technology in the field of deception and pondering why anyone’s favorite scripture would be one of judgment. With that background information, I now return to what we saw take place at Benny Hinn’s church. Benny had been standing in the pulpit talking. When he finished, he suddenly disappeared from the pulpit and was then immediately in the aisle next to us in the back of the church but he appeared as a spirit might appear. It was like a hologram but the image was not sharp. It was see through and it was not three-dimensional. This frightened our children greatly. We knew there were some people there who worked at Disneyworld. We don’t know if any of those people were technicians and had the skills to produce such an image. Thanks to our California trip, we knew that such deception was indeed possible. Since this time all kinds of things have been seen in his church, including an image of Christ on the wall right back by where we had been originally seated. Lately Hinn has been talking about Jesus going to physically appear on the platform with him at his meetings. As my eldest son remarked upon leaving Disneyland and reminded us at Orlando, today’s technology could be used to deceive even the very elect. |
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