Faith healer Benny Hinn seems to never run out of ways to induce and excite his followers and keep them dangling. When recently confronted about bringing pressure on a local county sheriff for police favors (see accompanying News Update item “Loyalty to Hinn Cost Deputies Their Jobs” in this issue of The Quarterly Journal), Hinn responded to television news reporter Jane Watrel’s question regarding his possible move to California: “I don’t know the future. I can only see so far.” Yet, he wants his flock of enthusiasts to think he knows the future. Words of knowledge and prophecies are the stock and trade of Hinn’s repertoire (see “Prophecy or Presumption? – Time is Running Out on the Spurious Oracles of Benny Hinn” from The Quarterly Journal, Vol. 16, No. 4).
In fact, in late December and into early January, Hinn was announcing on his daily broadcast, This Is Your Day, that on Jan. 31 he was going to pray for household salvations.
Hinn was so bold to say that 1997 is the year of household salvations and people were to mail a picture of their loved ones in anticipation of Jan. 31 when he would pray for and presumably God would then deliver all these household salvations. It was a crafted illusion to actually make people think it would happen. Jan. 31 came and passed and who was the wiser?
To back up his claim, Hinn quoted the Apostle Paul’s words to the Philippian jailer recorded in Acts 16:31, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household.”
Is Hinn intentionally misleading his followers for effect? Even if household salvation were true, and it is not, what makes Hinn believe he can just call it into being? If household salvation were true, every household would be saved any time anyone in the household got saved. We would not need Hinn. Of course, his followers blindly believe and follow.
The Apostle Paul was not telling the Philippian jailer if he got saved his family would automatically get saved. Verse 32 says clearly: “Then they spoke the Word to all who were in the house.” It was necessary for all the family members to hear the Gospel and to respond. All in the house heard the message. People need to hear individually, even if they are in a group, and respond individually.
Reading on in Acts 16 we find that the household responded to the Gospel turned to Christ and were willing to be baptized to demonstrate their belief. Verses 33-34 are so clear: “He and all his family were baptized [after they all had heard and responded] ... He rejoiced having believed in God with all his household.”
The Church continues to lose ground in biblical understanding when someone like Hinn, who does not have an inkling of a systemic theology or a grasp of proper hermeneutics, can lead and influence thousands of mesmerized followers. No doubt, some of them actually believed that on Jan. 31 their whole household would become Christian. And then as Hinn perpetuates the illusion by reporting testimonies of complete families coming to Christ, disappointment will be left behind for the vast majority of his devotees whose families did not convert to Christianity. Somehow, like the healing facade he creates, these untold thousands will each individually feel like they are the only one who did not realize Hinn’s promise of salvation. Could it be some sin in their life? A lack of faith on their part? Or perhaps, Satan was able to “steal” their family’s opportunity for salvation?
Yes, God could sovereignly deliver household salvation if He so wished. However, with Hinn’s track record of gimmicks and ploys, PFO is not convinced that God has given Hinn that prerogative.
If the healing evangelist could just claim by faith that all one’s relatives would get saved, why did Paul write to the Corinthian Christians, who had unsaved spouses: “How do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know O husband, whether you will save your wife?” (1 Corinthians 7:16). Does Hinn know more than the Apostle Paul?
If Hinn, or anyone for that matter, can claim the salvation of all their household why would Jesus have told us: “A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household” (Matthew 10:36, also Luke 12:51-53)?
We can and should witness to our household, not only by our words but by our actions. We should also pray that God would send others to share the Gospel with them. We are in a spiritual battle for the minds and hearts of the lost. Sending a photograph of our family, along with an offering to Hinn, so he can pray a ritualistic prayer over them for salvation, just won’t do it. Quite simply, we cannot claim by faith the salvation of relatives and that is obvious from the Scriptures.
Hinn should devote some time and energy to himself and his own family in an effort to get some things in order. His attempted influence into a sheriff’s department along with his younger brother Christopher having to voluntarily resign as a reserve deputy with the Orange County sheriff’s department in December 1996 for misrepresenting his status, improper actions, rules violations, and other infractions is a good place to start. Hinn’s additional comments to Watrel, in response to his brother’s wrongdoings, that “Chris has a good heart,” is an attempt to exonerate some serious malfeasance. Tell that to the people of Orlando, especially those whose civil rights were violated by the younger Hinn because he didn’t like them expressing their conviction that his preacher brother’s prosperity gospel message is greed.
—GRF
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For more information on the doctrine and
practice of this controversial faith healer, see:
The Confusing World of Benny Hinn
