The following is a commentary on a previous visit to the United Kingdom by Benny Hinn and Morris Cerullo.
Prosperity Gospel, yes - and Popery, certainly!
"The kingdom of heaven: yours for Β£25"
By Mary Wakefield (Telegraph.co.uk; 23/07/2006)
There were only a few empty seats in Earls Court arena on Thursday night, almost all 10,000 places were taken. Afro-Caribbean women sat next to young blondes in vest tops, and middle-aged men with curious comb-overs with their wives.
On the stage in front of them was a short, orange-looking man with a fat tie and a big grin. "Hallelujah," said Dr Morris Cerullo, prosperity preacher and "harvester of souls". "Oh Hallelujah. I'm just so glad to be here."
On the stage behind Cerullo stood several other of America's most determined money-raising evangelists, nodding their heads in approval: Pastor Benny Hinn, an Israeli, who heals believers by blowing on them; Dr Mike Murdock, a crooner, who sings amongst other things about the beauty of money. All of them with their own trademark way of persuading a congregation to part with cash, and all over here on a hunch that bewildered, binge-drinking Britain might finally have become as open to their message as the American Midwest.
"God has told me that he has a special financial anointing for you tonight," shouted Cerullo, bobbing on the balls of his feet. "He wants to make you RICH! But he can't do it unless he knows you believe." An electric organ began a sinister, rippling crescendo. "God says you must show your faith by sowing a Β£25 'seed' into this ministry tonight. Give me Β£25 and he'll repay you 100-fold. Do you believe? Do you believe?"
Men and women to my left and right began to moan and sway, "Yes, Lord, yes, Lord," then to speak in tongues: "Oh-so-ba-ba-ba-so-ro-ka-sa."
"Oh-ba-ba-ba-ba" said Morris, looking at his watch as his congregation wrote out their cheques and credit card details: up to Β£250,000. It could have been funny, and on television, in another country, it sometimes is. But close up, the hybrid of Christianity and investment banking seemed to me less of a joke than a threat: if you don't give, Cerullo implied, God won't love you, and if he doesn't love you, he'll keep you poor. Worldly success is a measure of divine approval; after all, he points out, look at me.
I left Earls Court on a wave of gospel, past tables-full of books on "the leadership secrets of Jesus", re-remembering the time the "health and wealth" gospel first struck me as hurtful - in Texas, at the Dallas stadium, watching Benny Hinn work the crowd.
Benny was in a silver suit, I think, and at his eccentric showbiz best: he claimed that there were nine persons in the Trinity, said: "I don't need gold in heaven. I gotta have it now!" Then he blew on the front row, who fainted clean away, out cold. All very jolly. Towards the end of the event, I went exploring at the back of the arena and found a cordoned-off area in the semi-dark, which, on closer inspection was for the seriously ill. There were children on hospital trolleys and in wheelchairs, with lolling heads and oxygen masks.
Up ahead of us, on the now-distant stage, little Benny Hinn had worked himself into a frenzy. "God wants to heal tonight!" he yelled. "So if you're not healed, it's not his fault, it's yours! If you have enough faith, you WILL be healed so don't go until you receive a miracle!"
So the white-faced parents and their relatives began to pray. They were still praying long after Benny left the stage; still praying as everybody else filed out, and still praying, desperately, as the attendants walked up and chivvied them and their children out of the stadium.
β Mary Wakefield is assistant editor of The Spectator.
A Comment on this Report:
As a Christian in the US this stuff aggravates me. These guys teach people to give so they can get something in return. The Biblical attitude of giving is to be a joyful giver and delight in what your giving does for others. I put my money into God's kingdom where it actually reaches people instead of making people rich - local and foreign missions. We need Christians who are not afraid to stand against the Benny Hinns, Mike Murdocks, Morris Cerullos and Creflo Dollars.
Here's part of a song I wrote that you can find at www.soundclick.com/crayzeejoe:
You wanna get 'em hype/or teach em how to prosper/like Hinn, Murdock, Osteen,/Tilton and Dollar/But when they're dead and gone/They gonna leave it behind/They should have stacked up them riches/That outlast time...
Posted by Joe Wright on July 25, 2006 6:37 PM |
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