World renowned televangelist, Pastor Benny Hinn, says he changed his mind about prosperity gospel, a message he devoted his time preaching for over 20 years, because according to him, “We all want to finish right.”
Pastor Hinn had on September 2, 2019 announced that he was dumping the message as he was no longer convinced that it was a correct message biblically.
“I am correcting my own theology and you need to all know it. Because when I read the Bible now, I don’t see the Bible in the same eyes I saw 20 years ago,” he told his studio audience and online viewers.
“I think it’s an offence to the Lord, it’s an offense to say give $1,000. I think it’s an offence to the Holy Spirit to place a price on the Gospel. I’m done with it,” he explained, vowing never again to ask believers for $1,000 or whatever amount because as he was convinced the Holy Ghost was fed up with it.
Preachers of prosperity gospel believe that what Christians receive from God in terms of wealth or the state of their wellbeing is proportional to the amount of money they give to the church in terms of offerings, seeds or tithes. Many church leaders have been known to announce to their congregations that they are poor just because they refuse to give to the work of God.
In the words of Pastor Hinn, “It’s not God’s word that is taught, and I think I’m as guilty as others,” he had said back in 2018 in a video released on Facebook on the same subject prior to his latest outburst.
“Sometimes you go a little farther than you really need to go, and then God brings you back to normality and reality,” he added, explaining further that what he understood prosperity to mean was not lavish lifestyle but rather absence of lack.
Prosperity gospel is known to have spread to many other parts of the world from the United States where it became popular, especially among the Pentecostal denomination in the 1980s.
The trend has also attracted hash criticisms from sections of the Church and the larger society, in the face of the ostentatious lifestyle which the proponents of the message have come to be identified with in different parts of the world, including Nigeria where a vast array of clerics, particularly among the new generation churches, now fly around the world in their own private jets.