Heretic hunters

[Mike McK]

Originally posted by Titus2_1:
I was a heretic myself for a couple of years, attending a few alphabet soup churches. I was in the wrong spot at the wrong time after a service one night and ended up taking one catch myself. I remember the lady looking behind her before falling to make sure there was someone there. Now I think I should have just walked off and let her go for it. If the thing is from the Lord, surely the landing is from Him too?

Pete, I was involved in the Word of Faith cult as a new Christian and I've often wondered the same thing.

One of the most interesting things I've found about the "slain in the spirit" hoax is that these people always seem to fall on their backs, yet in the Bible, it's the enemies of God who fall on their backs while His followers always fall on their faces.

In the Bible God worked through his people to heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons. These men spoke God's truth. However Benny Hinn and Co sprout false teachings and false prophecies (more than enough documentation at sites listed in posts above, including audio/video files) like it is a competition to see who can do the most, what does that make their 'healing'?

Like I pointed out before, if Hinn really were healing people, then (a) why does he place actors (for lack of a better word) in the audience to pose as sick people and (b) why can't any of these healings be verified by physicians.

Hank Hanegraaf once challenged Benny to submit his "three best healings" for review by an independant panel of physicians.

Reluctantly, he agreed and all three of them were exposed as fakes.

I have never heard of the man myself.[/qb]

Don't worry. You didn't miss much.

He's the head of Family Radio here in the States, which is extremely conservative, even by fundementalist standards and hosts a nightly call in "question and answer" show in which you call in with a Bible question and he tells you you're going to Hell.

Is he a big a heretic as Mr Hinn et al?

I don't think so. I would place his teaching in the "questionable" category rather than outrught "false", if you can make that kind of distinction (at least as far as his teachings that I'm familiar with).

As an aside, one of the things that I think turns most people off to callers is that he is unbelievably rude to his callers and can be downright abusive at times.

Mike

 

[Pete]

Originally posted by Smoke_Eater:
One of the most interesting things I've found about the "slain in the spirit" hoax is that these people always seem to fall on their backs, yet in the Bible, it's the enemies of God who fall on their backs while His followers always fall on their faces.

G'day Mike. Yeah mate, add to that the little fact of the there being no mention of it in Bible as it is practiced today. There was laying on of hands, lifting hands, healings, visions, but slain in the spirit, uh-uh. And as I mentioned in other post, God did the preceding through those who spoke His truth, not through those who claimed there were 9 members of the Trinity...(Sorry, that one still gets me...)

Why can't any of these healings be verified by physicians.

Maybe because Benny refuses to pay them what they want to do it NO NO! WAIT! Because unlike Hinn, they have credibility they don't want to lose

He's (Harold Camping) the head of Family Radio here in the States, which is extremely conservative, even by fundementalist standards and hosts a nightly call in "question and answer" show in which you call in with a Bible question and he tells you you're going to Hell.

I COULD DO THAT JOB

I'M IN THE WRONG GAME

I don't think so. I would place his teaching in the "questionable" category rather than outrught "false", if you can make that kind of distinction (at least as far as his teachings that I'm familiar with). As an aside, one of the things that I think turns most people off to callers is that he is unbelievably rude to his callers and can be downright abusive at times.

I have been wondering of late how much of a line there is between "questionable" & "false"

hmmmmmm so he's a "Christian" "Shock-Jock"??? Curiouser and curiouser and curiouser and...

Pete

 

[Ray Berrian]

Titus 2__1,

So if you are a Christian and God moves on you try to fall front. Do sinners always fall backward? Maybe we better ask the Apostle Paul which direction he fell, just to make sure he was really saved.

Pilate of Biblical times-- wore sandels and in the summer I wear them too. Does that make me a sinner? Maybe the apostles wore a certain color. Just kidding.

 

[Ray Berrian]

Mr. Camping's false teaching about the church being dissolved is heresy. Christ died on the Cross for the church, the people of God. [Matt. 16:18-19] To suggest that the doors of all churches should be closed is heresy. The man does not even take the counsel of his own Reformed teachers and brothers in the faith. This makes him a man with a ‘private interpretation' as Christ warns us about. [II Peter 1:20] Almost every day one can hear some new error that he claims is true and Biblical.

For someone to claim that his teachings are merely ‘questionable' is unconscionable. It is interesting that when someone is a Calvinist, Mr. Camping is pointed to as only someone with ‘questionable' ideas. But when a pastor is more Arminian he is pound down as a heretic.

Without too much doubt they both are brethren in the faith. When men and women of God call people toward Christ and His saving grace this is most important. Those who deny that Christ is God are the ones we really have to point to as being not brethren in the Christian faith.

 

[Mike McK]

Originally posted by Ray Berrian:
This makes him a man with a ‘private interpretation' as Christ warns us about. [II Peter 1:20] Almost every day one can hear some new error that he claims is true and Biblical.

Funny, the same thing can be said of Benny Hinn, who you defend. In fact, from what I know about the two men, I've found Hinn to be much more guilty of that than Camping.

For someone to claim that his teachings are merely ‘questionable' is unconscionable.

Admittedly, I'm not an expert on Camping's teachings, so there may be some teaching of his that I'm not aware of, but none of the teachings I am aware of would mark him as a full blown heretic.

It is interesting that when someone is a Calvinist, Mr. Camping is pointed to as only someone with ‘questionable' ideas. But when a pastor is more Arminian he is pound down as a heretic.

Actually, you're the only one to have made this distinction so far. I haven't done it and I haven't seen anyone else do it.

Those who deny that Christ is God are the ones we really have to point to as being not brethren in the Christian faith.

No doubt, but I would expand that to include people who deny Christ as the unblemished Lamb of God and who claim that his death on the cross was insuffucient for the remissions of our sins, instead teaching that He had to suffer in Hell to earn His own salvation before He could earn ours, both of which Hinn teaches.

I would also have serious doubts about someone who diefies himself and his followers, as Hinn has done, as evidenced in the links previously provided.

Hinn clearly preaches another Gospel and looks suspiciously like the teacher mentioned in Gal 1:7-9.

Mike

 

[rsr]

I pass along, without comment, "The Door."

One woman who formerly had been a generous donor to Hinn happened to be parked at the rear of the stadium before one of his crusades. She watched as a large truck backed up to the service door, and a crew unloaded 30 or 40 wheelchairs. “Put them up around the stage,” she heard a Hinn supervisor say.

It shattered the spell forever.

http://www.thedoormagazine.com/archives/bennyhinn.html

 

[rsr]

A wicked, and possibly ill-tempered, evaluation of TBN:

A letter from God:

But perhaps the most offensive display was from Jan and Paul Crouch of Trinity Broadcasting Network and their son Matthew. For a teaser commercial promoting their new End-Times film Megiddo, scenes from the World Trade Center attack were spliced in to give it more relevance. Matthew Crouch, producer of the movie, mentioned how he was “giddy” over the timing of the release of the film.

I watched in horror (OK, you caught Me. I watch religious television for entertainment up here) as Paul Crouch read a critical letter from a pastor in Modesto, Calif., who thought it was a “disgrace when people take something that is still this fresh in the minds of the public and use it for their own gain. I pray for you ... for the pain you are causing these families.” Crouch didn’t even flinch.

http://www.thedoormagazine.com/archives/paulcrouch.html

 

[Mike McK]

Cool. Somebody else here knows who the Door is. Excellent magazine.

For those who don't know, in addition to their gut-bustingly funny satire, they also do first rate investigative reporting and the story you mention, rsr, along with others, are compiled in an excellent book called "The Confusing World of Benny Hinn".

Mike

 

[Ray Berrian]

Christ was and is sinless and never had to suffer in Hell for His own sins. To suggest this is blasphemous. It is only because He was sinless that He was able to make atonement for sinners. I very, seriously, doubt that Pastor Hinn believes that He had to make an atonement for His own sins and provide salvation for Himself before He could die for our sure hope.

 

[Mike McK]

Originally posted by Ray Berrian:
I very, seriously, doubt that Pastor Hinn believes that He had to make an atonement for His own sins and provide salvation for Himself before He could die for our sure hope.

Well, he did and it's very well documented that he and most of the "leaders" of the WoF cult do, as well.

 

[Mike McK]

Ladies and gentlemen, the theological genius that is Benny Hinn:

Ladies and gentlemen, the serpent is a symbol of Satan. Jesus Christ knew the only way He could stop Satan was to become one in nature with him.
You say, "What did you say? What blasphemy is this?"

No! You hear this. He did not take my sin, He became my sin. Sin is the nature of Hell. Sin is what made Satan.

Jesus said, "I'll be sin. I'll go to the lowest place. I'll go to the origen of it. I won't just take part in it [sin], I'll be the totality of it."

...He became one with the nature of Satan, so all those that had the nature of Satan can partake of the nature of God. - TBN Praise-a-Thon, 12/15/90

Sadly, there's more.

My...you know...whoosh. The Holy Spirit is just showing me some stuff. I'm getting dizzy. I'm telling you the truth...He's [Jesus] in the underworld now.

God isn't there. The Holy Ghost isn't there and the Bible says He was begotten.

Do you know what "begotten" means? It means reborn. Do you want another shocker? have you been begotten? So was He.

Don't let anyone decive you. Jesus was reborn.

You say "What are you talking about?" He was reborn. He had to be reborn. If He was not reborn, I would not be reborn. I would never be reborn.

How can I face Jesus and say, "Jesus, You went through everything I went through except the new birth?" - "Our Position in Christ" (videotape #TV-254)

I could go on, but you get the idea.

[ October 29, 2002, 06:25 PM: Message edited by: Smoke_Eater ]

 

[Ray Berrian]

Smoke Eater,

What does WOF cult stand for . . . By this I mean what is WOF?

Ray

 

[rsr]

Word of Faith. Think Kenneth Copeland.

When you are walking in the Word of God, you will prosper and be in health. It is His will for us to be made whole - spirit, soul and body - and to be kept that way until the return of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thess. 5:23). Praise God!

 

[Mike McK]

Originally posted by Ray Berrian:
So if you are a Christian and God moves on you try to fall front. Do sinners always fall backward? Maybe we better ask the Apostle Paul which direction he fell, just to make sure he was really saved.

Not trying to be funny or anything but I was thinking about this earlier.

Paul was on horseback at the time and if you think about the way you sit on a horse, I think it's probably reaonable to assume that he fell sideways.

Ray, the Word of Faith movement, or WoF, is a heretical movement within the charismatic movement that was founded largely on the teachings of Essek W. Kenyon and William Branham.

Although the movement is commonly credited to Kenneth Hagin, most of Hagin's writings were plagerized from Kenyon.

Common teachings in the WoF cult are:

(a)the divinity of mankind
(b)The insufficiency of Christ's atonement on the cross and the fact that He had to be born again in Hell to redeem Himself before He could redeem us
(c)God the Father having a physical, corporeal body
(d)in the words of Kenneth Copeland, that "faith is a force and our words are comtainers of that force" and we can create or alter reality by the use of our words

Popular teachers in the WoF include:

Benny Hinn
Kenneth Copeland
Gloria Copeland
Marilyn Hickey
Jesse Duplantis
Joyce Meyer
Robert Tilton
Creflo Dollar
Frederick K.C. Price
Paul Crouch

[ October 30, 2002, 11:15 PM: Message edited by: Smoke_Eater ]

 

[rsr]

Looks like it's pretty much the TBN line-up.

 

[Bro. Curtis]

Yup. There all there. Kinda like the Keystone Cops of Christianity.

But they really pack them in, don't they ?

 

[Bro. Curtis]

Originally posted by Smoke_Eater:
One of the most interesting things I've found about the "slain in the spirit" hoax is that these people always seem to fall on their backs, yet in the Bible, it's the enemies of God who fall on their backs while His followers always fall on their faces.

Excellent point. If you are on your back, biblically, your in big trouble.

Like I pointed out before, if Hinn really were healing people, then (a) why does he place actors (for lack of a better word) in the audience to pose as sick people and (b) why can't any of these healings be verified by physicians.

Why doesn't he visit children's lukemia centers, why doesn't he go to hospitals, AIDS centers, homeless shelters.....

 

[Mike McK]

Originally posted by rsr:
Looks like it's pretty much the TBN line-up.

Pretty much.

Paul Crouch and Steven Strang never met a false teacher they didn't like.

 

[Ray Berrian]

Smoke Eater,

Thanks for the explanation.

Heretic hunters may want to look at Harold Camping by looking up in a SEARCH --Mr. Harold Camping. Then it will give you options like: B P Resolution H.C. Opposition Church. The Presbyterians are very upset with Mr. Camping because he teaches that the church has come to an end. I never have heard of any other Bible teacher teaching this heretical idea.

Actually, Christ loves the church and ' . . . the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.' Sadly, Mr. Camping, the self taught Bible teacher, has joined league with those who are against Christ and His guiding Light in the world, namely the church. Oh, by the way he is a Five Point Calvinist which may have contributed to his coming up with this 'private interpretation.'

He also teaches that much of the Book of Revelation is symbolic rather than literal, like the 1,000 year reign of Christ called in theology, the Millinimum.

He needs our prayers.

 

[Ray Berrian]

Jesus didn't run to all the centers of ill health; He waited until people came to him and recognized Him as able to cure their needs. Why should someone who is used by God as a Divine healer, like Benny Hinn, do other than what His Lord did while on the earth? He waits until they come to one of his meetings. We must always keep in mind that God is the Agent who heals the body and soul. [James 5:15; Exodus 15:26h; Exodus 23:25d]