benny_hinn

He stands in front of an enormous multi-media complex in southern California, gleefully pointing out to his worldwide television audience the equally impressive building directly opposite that the Lord had directed him to buy in the shower that very morning.

These impressive purchases have led to what Benny Hinn describes as a "cash crunch" inhibiting the effectiveness of his global ministry and so impeding the march of the gospel of Jesus Christ. On this basis he then proceeds to make an extended appeal for donations of all sizes, "perhaps you can give fifty dollars... perhaps one-thousand". This is Benny Hinn, an American ‘evangelist’ ordained into the ministry by Kenneth Hagin’s Rhema school of ministry, on Melbourne television in the early hours of December 3rd, 1996.

Apart from the materialistic indulgence that leads Hinn to brashly ask his viewers for cash whilst standing in front of just two of his ministry’s enormous building assets, a more serious underlying principle is at stake here; that the advance of the gospel should be dependent, not on the enpowerment of the Holy Spirit and willingness of God’s people to take up their cross and follow Jesus, but on the ability of Hinn (and the many others like him) to procure cash from their congregations and viewers.

On the same program Hinn preaches to a filled stadium in Singapore, an event that will be similar to the crusade he will conduct at the Myer music bowl in January. Hinn’s editing team gives us several snippets of the healing miracles wrought on this occasion; the platform is lined with empty wheelchairs, although their owners are nowhere to be seen; a small boy is paraded constantly up and down the stage, his feet obviously disfigured. The miracle proclaimed here is that the boy (no older than ten) can walk without braces, although it is apparent that the Holy Spirit has been unable to correct the actual physical deformity causing the condition. The most appalling incident comes last; two young women are presented to the ecstatic audience, declaring themselves to be ‘healed’ of breast cancer and liver cirrhosis respectively because "the pain has gone".

Miracles of healing embrace an exceptionally broad criteria under Hinn’s ministry, a fact verified by the above example, which could only be accepted as genuine by the most naive and easily led, and documented by the Christian Research Institute’s Hank Hannegraaf who continually pressed Hinn’s office for medical verification of the ‘healings’ proclaimed at his many crusades. The best Hinn’s staff could muster were three dubious case studies that lead CRI’s medical consultant to report "there is no credible evidence that he [Hinn] has ever been involved in a bona fide healing" (Hanegraaf, Hank. 1993. Christianity in crisis. Dallas: Word, p.341).

No doubt thousands of predominately Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians will attend Hinn’s crusades in Melbourne. No doubt thousands will respond emotionally to the heightened worship, euphoric cheer-leading, and respond in faith to the extended calls for cash donations, having been promised a ten-fold return for their benevolence. Hinn will depart for the next venue, the next stadium, and the next concert hall, like a Christian rock star. The question that remains is, Will those who attend Hinn’s crusade at the Myer music bowl in January be witnessing an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, or a manifestation of Western needs meeting consumerism, baptized with Christian epithets, skillfully packaged for individual consumption, and pitched at a pre-converted market?