First things first, the article was a first-person account of how the prosperity gospel almost wrecked my young adult years. It seemed, though, some readers took offense at me for “attacking the man of God” or “touching the anointed.”
One wrote back.
Image: Cottonbro/Pexels
…”Eddie, For Benny Hinn to be invited, it’s a practice of association that allows anointing to flow akin to what happened to Elisha when he associated with Elijah. Otherwise, we wouldn’t need to host him…”
Maybe we start there. We know what they want to mean, but is there such a thing as not touching the “anointed” after the earthly ministry of Jesus coming? Quick answer: only the first twelve were called to a special, unrepeatable office.
In fact, when one of them fell short of the standard by betraying Jesus, a criterion in Acts 1:12-26 (they physically must have been with Jesus) was followed to replace him. Ever since, the church in history has not acknowledged such a thing as an “apostle,” “prophet,” and the like (Heb 1:1), except the self-proclaimed ones.
If you go to an “apostle” today, understand this matter some more. Generally, all believers in Christ are anointed by the Holy Spirit. On the Elijah-Elisha bit, it’s almost self-explanatory (good hermeneutics) that you don’t transport an Old Testament account into 2025 without asking how the New Testament writers, or anyone in church history, first understood it. No precedent!
This other one bordered on hilarious, a friend commented in a group I posted.
“(Eddie), you blamed Ps. Benny for somethings which I will harshly point out were your choices and faults of parents and guardians.”
Response
“Benny’s stage theatrics never helped my personal failings, but the true gospel later did. Which is the point of the article. If you missed it, sorry.”
So, Semakula,
What’s your stand on miracles generally?!
Response:
God still does miracles. when he chooses (that’s what it means to be God), not when we schedule him with stage lights and cameras. As noted, hospitals would be great venues for healing crusades if we stopped disbelieving this.
Nonetheless, the greatest miracle is our transfer from the kingdom of darkness to light. There is no miracle better than a changed heart, a heart from which all issues of life arise. (Matt 15:19)
There is no normative biblical warrant that physical miracles should be the normal practice of the church across history. (The first evidence is that even all apostles eventually died too.)
So any significance of the scripture of “we shall do greater things than Christ” in regard to this discussion…!!
My colleague Joseph Byamukama gave a more succinct answer than I ever would have.
“I suppose one would have to ask themselves what ‘greater’ means. Does it mean, for instance, that we would do better miracles (than, for example, Jesus raising himself from the dead)? And why does Jesus add that causal clause, ‘because I am going to the Father’?
What does his going to the Father have to do with our doing ‘greater things,’ especially when his disciples already cast out demons and healed the sick without Jesus needing to go to the Father (when he sent them out two by two, e.g., Luke 9 and 10)?
Jesus/John didn’t say ‘more than these works.’ Indeed, he could have said so if he meant that. Thus, ‘greater’ is not a quantitative signifier. But it means, indeed, more significant. But then the two questions I asked above come up.
The simple answer, contextually, is that ‘greater works’ would refer to the harvest into the kingdom that results from the forgiveness of sins premised on Jesus’s ascension.
Both the ending of Luke, the beginning of Acts, and John 14-16 connect Jesus’s departure to his sending the Spirit, through whom the Apostles would bear witness as to the messianic lordship of Jesus Christ and the repentance and forgiveness of sins through him.
The repentance of the nations is the ‘greater works,’ qualitatively greater than the miracles Jesus did.”
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On one “Christian” WhatsApp group, the general sentiment got summarized like this.
“…let’s use forums like this one to discuss those things that keep us together or unite us.”
Response
Longing for togetherness is not a bad thing, but if we consider the gospel as divisive and try to create “unity” on our own, we are idolizing a social, man-made project, not being the church of Christ.
In fact, Jesus expected division from people as close as family members based on belief in him. Who are we? (mere Whatsapp group-mates?)
Believers unite around biblical truth, not falsehood. Benny Hinn and company represent an aberrant wing of widespreading faith healing/health-and-wealth teaching that deifies the “self” and distracts masses from the gospel before it finally damns them to a hell-bound, Christ-less gospel.
Paul confronted Peter when he was out of step with the gospel, one apostle to another; by grace, they both ended up writing New Testament letters under the Spirit’s inspiration. If such “spiritual high-flyers” cared about gospel clarity, why mustn’t we?
My prayer is that we keep the “main thing the main thing,” so that even if it’s myself beginning to sound silly about central things on this blog, you too can call me out.
Lastly, I don’t intend (and I have no interest) in attacking preachers as people created the image of God, Benny Hinn or otherwise. They probably mean well in their “ministry” efforts, but that’s not the point. “Meaning well/sincerity” is not the point, creating community around things that “unite us” is not the point, and “special anointing/greater human works” are not the point. “Apostle/man of Gad today” is not, not even their “political connections.” Jesus and the gospel, rightly taught, is the point. God’s work calls for God’s methods too.
Note: By no means have I exhausted the reader feedback from everywhere. I’ve edited for precision some I considered significant for conversation-starter purposes and the building up of God’s people!
One other failure I generally noticed in these discourses was, if we are not willing to accept God’s sovereign and conforming designs/plans amidst our pains and sufferings, we will be gullible to the promises of health and wealth preachers.
That’s not to say suffering is good, but suffering—under God—is valuable. Envied by siblings, the man sold as a slave in Egypt was instrumental to the Exodus. Haunted by famine in her homeland, Naomi would wander off to exile only to be called Jesus’s great-grandmother. And scorned by his own, a Jew hanging naked on a tree, and later quiet in the grave, rose to rescue the world.
Nonetheless, I am eager to receive more feedback, especially as it relates to the abuses (or defense?) of the prosperity, health and wealth gospel. May God use such conversations to rescue his people in his time indeed!
For now, to start with, I’ll prayerfully leave some helpful resources below for your edification, if not liberation.
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American Gospel—In Christ Alone
God, Greed, and the Prosperity Gospel: How Truth Overwhelms a Life Built on Lies. Read Review
