Question: A “repentance” by Benny Hinn of having taught error in the past and a ...

February 1, 1994

TBC Staff

Question: A “repentance” by Benny Hinn of having taught error in the past and a “renunciation” thereof has been published in Charisma magazine and elsewhere. What do you make of it?

Response: I cannot judge Benny Hinn’s heart, but we are required to judge his words and deeds. He has “repented” now at least three times, but each time goes back to that from which he repented. He says he no longer believes the “positive confession” he once taught. If that were true, he would oppose its teachings and teachers. Had he really repented, Hinn would actively work to deliver his many thousands of followers from these false doctrines, but he has not done so. In fact, he is still in full fellowship with the positive confession leaders and adherents.

If Hinn were seriously concerned for truth, as he now claims to be, he would recall his tapes and books that presented false teachings he says he no longer believes. Instead they are still being sold. In fact, his “repentance” is deficient because it fails to admit the gravity of his error. “I never taught heresy,” Hinn insists. “I admit I taught some things that were aberrant…but I think heresy is too strong a word.”

Actually, he has taught much heresy. Hinn literally rewrote Job:1:21, changing “the Lord taketh away” to “the Lord never taketh away.” There are many examples, but here are a few of his other heretical teachings: “Never, ever, ever go to the Lord and say, ‘If it be thy will’; no Christian should ever be sick; we Christians possess ‘power in our mouths’ to heal or kill just as witches possess it; Job tapped into the negative side of the faith force by a negative confession; Christ ‘became one with the nature of Satan’ and was ‘born again’ in hell; Christ would have sinned without the Holy Spirit and would have remained in the grave ‘if the Holy Ghost had changed His mind about raising Him from the dead’ [Jesus said, “I have power to lay down my life and I have power to take it again” (Jn:10:18) for He is God]; we are ‘little gods’ and even part of God with all the power of God; we are ‘little messiahs,’ everything that Jesus ever was,” etc.

Some of his statements, such as that a woman was originally designed to give birth from her side, or that Adam and Eve were super beings who could fly to the moon, are not heresy but ludicrous blunders. Yet Hinn claimed that most of them as well as the heresies above came as direct revelation from God under the anointing of the Holy Spirit. To attribute such errors to the Holy Spirit is blasphemy of which he has not repented. That Hinn’s alleged “Holy Spirit” teaches error and folly should be enough to discredit his book about “the anointing of the Holy Spirit,” yet it has been a runaway best seller. So while we don’t judge Hinn’s heart, his repentance and renunciations have to date fallen far short of truth.

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