(OPINION) Nearly five years after he claimed to renounce the prosperity gospel, declaring that the “Holy Ghost is just fed up with it,” controversial televangelist Benny Hinn said the world is on a collision course with its darkest days ever, and only those who give money to the Lord’s work will be protected financially.
“Well, listen, I want you to give to the Lord’s work. I want you to sow seed in the Lord’s work. We are facing days of such darkness and such danger unseen in the history of man.
Unseen since Adam, worse than anything that has happened in the past what’s coming on the way,” Hinn said in a livestream broadcast on YouTube Tuesday titled “Shameless Begging,” in which viewers were prompted to donate to Hinn’s ministry.
“And only those who’ve been faithful in giving to God’s work will be protected financially in those days,” Hinn claimed.
“A faithful man will abound … with blessings, so this is not just for now. This is for the future,” Hinn insisted while suggesting that even though people can lose money, what they give to the Lord’s work as a seed cannot be lost.
“A faithful man will abound with blessing. You can’t lose your seed; any farmer will tell you that. You can’t lose your seed because seed goes into your tomorrow. Seed goes into your future. Seed produces a harvest that has seed in it. You can’t lose a seed; yes, you can lose money, but not a seed — that’s powerful.”
Hinn urged viewers to “give today” to his ministry and told them “God will bless you over and over and over.”
“So, you can give on the platform you’re watching me on, you can give to go our website BennyHinn.org or text” to donate, he added.
The prosperity gospel teaches, among other things, that believers have a right to the blessings of health and wealth, and they can obtain these blessings through positive confessions of faith and the “sowing of seeds” through the faithful payments of tithes and offerings.
Many, like the Lausanne Movement, have said such teachings are “false and gravely distorting of the Bible,” and “unethical and unChristlike.”
Speaking to his followers during a Facebook Live broadcast in 2019, Hinn, who had long been criticized for teaching the prosperity gospel, declared the Gospel “is not for sale.”
“I’m sorry to say that prosperity has gone a little crazy, and I’m correcting my own theology, and you need to all know it. Because when I read the Bible now, I don’t see the Bible in the same eyes I saw 20 years ago,” Hinn claimed at the time.
“I think it’s an offense to the Lord; it’s an offense to say give $1,000. I think it’s an offense to the Holy Spirit to place a price on the Gospel. I’m done with it. I will never again ask you to give $1,000 or whatever amount, because I think the Holy Ghost is just fed up with it.
“Did you hear me?” Hinn asked as his audience responded affirmatively in high spirits. “I think it hurts the Gospel. So, I’m making this statement for the first time in my life. And frankly, I don’t care what people think about me anymore,” he continued.
Hinn’s purported rejection of the prosperity gospel in 2019 came just two months after his nephew, Costi Hinn, revealed in his book, God, Greed, and the (Prosperity) Gospel: How Truth Overwhelms a Life Built on Lies, how his family exploited millions around the world with the prosperity gospel and often traded so-called miracles for money.
