My senior six high school vacation was the equivalent of what it means to be a Ugandan adolescent with TikTok in your hands.

Pimples wrecked my face (to the extent that one older woman once loudly wondered whether “there was something else ailing me”—ouch, I still remember how that comment hurt!).

Internet Photo: Benny Hinn Crusade 2025

Yet looking back (except through the lens of God’s providence), nothing hurts more than the fact that I wasted a lot of time as a teenager;even more hurtful is the fact that I spent a lot of it gazing at television, mesmerized by TBN televangelists, to be specific.

See, our 2003 high school TV menu buzzed with a lot of all-day “Bongo Flavour” Tanzanian and Kenyan music that I often juggled with a lineup of televised preachers. The latter was probably out of the need to “cleanse” myself from the first. Never did I foresee I would, at some point, need “cleansing” from, namely, both my worldly and spiritualized nonsense.

Yes, spiritual bubblegum represented by Creflo Dollar, Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn, Duplantis, TD Jakes, Womack TV, and the like.

Yet one guy on that screen always made me place the remote control down: white suit, near-Spanish accent, hymn-reciting, sharp-shoed, hyper-punctuated speech, his miracle crusades always featured multitudes from Barbados to Benin, claiming they had been healed; TV cameras zoomed in to many waving clutches. I leaned forward more, almost touching the television screen to “tap the anointing.”

Wasn’t “God’s power moving right now,” granting healings and prophecies, yet doing nothing in liberating this slack Ugandan teenager from his screen-induced worldliness? Somehow my ordinary days remained hooked on sensuality and lust, yet my supernatural appetite kept in awe of so-called “cancer-healing” testimonies. I wasn’t alarmed by my corrupted desires? But was wowed by a white-haired man miles away, gold dove logo on his chest, swinging his arm to the left as crowds stumbled in the same direction.

Until I began to read my Bible right. (or unlearned to read it with prosperity/self-help eyes only)

Thanks to some missionary friends, they helped me biblically realize that actually, modern “word of faith” healers are a sham! They cherry-pick scriptures out of context to suit their charm and incite euphoria too fast, sounding “deep.”

Why don’t they walk into entire hospitals to “heal?” (they’ll blame your “lack of faith” for those who don’t get healed.) Where were they during the pandemic? (Benny, 2020 lockdown!) Were they only convinced about the supernatural God and not a God capable of transforming my foolish and carnal adolescent self, let alone their equally scandal-littered lives?

I began to see them for who they really are and the scriptures in context too. Miracles were never prescribed to the church as normative (ongoing) practice; sound doctrine, sound faith, eldership, holiness, sanctification, obedience, and character were.

In fact, speaking of body sufferings, Paul advised his protégé Timothy to take a little wine for his stomach. Jesus himself had nowhere to lay his head, and God asked Hezekiah to apply leaves to his ailments. At this point, I discovered I had been sold the snake oil of the health and wealth gospel. Christianity wasn’t mere life or hell insurance; it’s treasuring Christ above all, whether you have crutches or cancer, or none!

So to see Benny Hinn boldly walk back into my country last week, after 20 years, and toss around dignified yet spiritually nostalgic Ugandans under the guise of unverified healings and “God’s power” all got me longing for his departure flight. I was deeply delighted that God rescued me from both my adolescent folly and the euphoria-driven miracle merchants!

Farewell, Benny!

Thanks be to God, by grace alone, there is no chance of us returning to that bubble gum spirituality, except for a few destined, as the scriptures warn. Yet even for those, just like yourself, we pray, are liberated from the visual showmanship we are all often prone to in this fallen world, instead of the blessed believing that comes without sight. (John 20:29)

Benny Hinn, we pray you into the reality of the biblical God who calls us to walk by faith and not by sight, believing in a crucified Savior we never saw with our eyes yet love, a promised Messiah we adore for granting us ordinary, Spirit-filled days, glorious days that require us to stand up and walk in obedience. (not merely fall backwards)

Christ, whose love keeps us confident that neither sword nor famine (nor ordinary living) can separate us from the love of God.

Farewell Benny Hinn and your mates, for a while, your generation of showmen manipulated television broadcasting, departing from the true faith of generations of faithful believers across history who were “sawn into two…destitute, afflicted” (Heb 11:37). Faithful believers who eventually endured cancer, wheelchairs, and other sufferings, for this world was not their home.

Heroes who first “all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar… acknowledging that they were strangers and exiles on the earth…because they desired a better country, that is, a heavenly one.” (Heb 11:13-16)