Front Burner - Miracles and money: A look inside televangelist Benny Hinn’s ministry

Episode Date: January 20, 2020

For decades, televangelist Benny Hinn has travelled the world, reportedly performed miracles on stage and raked in cash. In that time, CBC’s Bob McKeown has done several investigations into the controversial pastor’s so-called miracle healing as well as his finances. In The Insider: Tales from Inside the Benny Hinn Ministries, a new documentary for The Fifth Estate, McKeown spoke with Benny Hinn’s nephew, Costi, who’s left the ministry. Today on Front Burner, McKeown discusses what he learned about Benny Hinn’s ministries from his former followers.

This is a CBC Podcast. And I thank you from the depth of my being, wonderful Lord, for what you're going to do in this crusade. Remember Benny Hinn. And we've come tonight in Jesus' name. We've come believing for miracles. He started his ministry in Toronto, but went on to become one of the world's best-known televangelists.

You've probably seen his show before, or at least snippets of it. It's called This Is Your Day, and I remember it being on TV all the time when I was younger. It's probably most memorable for its dramatic supposed miracle healings. He'd lay his hands on someone, they'd fall to the ground, seemingly seized by some unseen force. Pastor, he had a growth on the side of his neck and it's gone. The anointing is very strong in this man. Here, take it in the name of the Lord. Ooh!

Pastor Benny also achieved this level of notoriety for his money. He'd collect buckets of it at these miracle crusades held in stadiums all over the world, including in Canada, and he'd ask for it in exchange for God's blessings. If God is speaking to you to sow $1,000 seeds tonight, I want to lay hands on your envelope as you bring it forward. I'm going to ask the Lord to do something miraculous tonight, to release a harvest in the next 90 days, because the anointing of God is on me right now.

If you put it in my hand, you're going to gain something from heaven tonight. The Fifth Estates, Bob McEwen has investigated Benny Hinn several times over the last few decades. And now he's spoken to a former member of the televangelist's inner circle. The way that the prosperity gospel works is that if you believe in Jesus and you follow Jesus, that he is going to make you happy, healthy, and wealthy. The problem is it's just like a Ponzi scheme. The only guy getting rich is the guy at the top. I'm Jamie Poisson, and today, what we can learn about Pastor Benny's miracles and finances from his own family and former followers. This is From Perner.

Hi, Bob. Hi, Jamie. It is a pleasure to have you here. It's nice to be here. First time on the podcast. It is. So look, we described Benny Hinn a little bit off the top here, but tell me a little bit more about him for people who might not be familiar. Yeah. He was born in Israel, actually, but he grew up, was raised in Toronto. And it's where, as you said, he established his ministry. Obviously, the evangelistic world is stronger in the U.S. So he would go down to watch the televangelists there and, I think, go and see them in person. Because it was like he was a hockey fan and he came across the border north to see the Leafs play. Well, that's what he did in reverse

to watch Catherine Kuhlman and Rex Humbard and people like that. He'll give to you absolutely everything that he's given to me. You'll pay the price. You outside of here that have prayed with me, write for this piece of literature, God's plan for your life. I'll see that you get it. All right, Danny. And, you know, just how big was he in his heyday? I know he's still around, but when he was huge,

like, what kind of numbers are we talking about here? Well, arguably, he still is. Yeah. There's a lot more competition these days. Using his own figures, and he doesn't have to release them because this is a religious organization based in the U.S.,

so it's not taxable. But from his own fundraising figures, it's estimated that he has made $100 million a year. Wow. And he's been in the business now for three, going on four decades. That's wild.

So do the math. And at these events that he would have, what kind of numbers are we talking about? Well, it ranges from maybe a few hundred at a church in Scarborough, as he was last fall. What was wrong with you? My liver is on last-age fatty liver.

Go! We give him glory. To four million and then by? What's happening? She could not walk for ten years! My Lord! She's walking tonight! Four million people.

It was a lot of people. Wow. I know that you two have a bit of a history, right? I know you started looking into him quite a few years ago. Yeah, I was working at the time for Dateline NBC. And it really was the heyday, I think, of TV evangelism. And one of the three top stars, unquestionably, was Benny Hinn. And one of the things Hinn says at the beginning of his live crusades, his stadium shows, his arena shows, is...

Tonight, you've wondered, is this man for real? ...wondering at himself. And that's exactly what we set out to do at Dateline. Right, is this guy for real? We asked the question, is this guy for real? out to do a dateline. Right. Is this guy for real? We asked the question, is this guy for real? Which meant looking at his so-called miracle healings, which are the centerpiece of his live shows, and looking at the money he makes. Right. The $100 million a year. And so what did he find? Well, in terms of the healings, at any show, there are dozens, dozens. He interacts with people.

They fall over ostensibly from the power of God that he is transferring to them. Touch the people, Lord, in the stands. Touch! Touch! Touch! My God, look at this! Touch! Sometimes the stage is full of bodies. It looks like there's been an IED that's recently exploded. People are everywhere. And then there's the more serious part,

when he brings up people who are really terribly ill, he says, with cancer or heart condition or whatever. And basically he lays hands on them and pronounces them cured. I can feel the cancer. And God is burning it out of your body. You feel that? You feel that too right there, huh? Look at her laughing at me. So we, at a couple of the crusades in Canada,

one in Calgary and one in Toronto, we followed up with as many of the people who had been declared healed as possible. We could not, in either of those cases, find any of them. And we got in touch with a number of their doctors. We couldn't find any of them who had, in fact, been cured. Either they still had the condition or they hadn't had it in the first place. And you mentioned the second half of your investigation was about the money. Tell me about that. Yes. Well, they're inextricably tied.

You know, you go to a crusade and Pastor Benny asks for money in order to facilitate miracles. Right. It's this concept of the prosperity gospel, right? Yeah. He has another phrase for it. It's biblically approved giving. Okay. Whether 1,500 or 100, do it now.

God is speaking to you. I'm asking for those amounts because I want to see your faith released tonight. When you sow larger amounts, you release faith. And when faith is released, God Almighty will release the harvest. That's just the way it works, people. And basically he says that it's explicit in the Bible in a number of places, and he quotes them obviously, that God is saying, in a number of places, and he quotes them obviously, that God is saying, I will reward those who support me,

who do my work, who support my work. And now all these years later, you've spoken with someone who is in his inner circle, right? His own nephew, Kosti Hinn. Yes. Kosti Hinn was the heir apparent. Traveled the world with his Uncle Benny. So that's me right there. Oh, right. There you are. The responsibility, if I'm speaking just frankly, is to look really good, look really blessed,

sell the narrative, make all the money and say, look at my life. If you give to this, if you follow it, if you obey it, and if you do what I say, God will do it for you too. And then he fell in love with a woman who was not as enthusiastic a Christian as he was. She was a Christian. But the problem seemed to be that when he introduced her to the rest of the family, first of all, she was a skeptic. And secondly, she couldn't speak in tongues. So that seemed to be the beginning, the first crack in the relationship between Kosti Hinn and the Hinn family. He, in his book, likens the Hinns to a cross between the royal family, the House of Windsor, and the mob, the Cosa Nostra. We had the wealth and the lavish platform of the royal family, the aura, if you will,

and then the enforced loyalty of the mafia. You don't turn your back on family. You don't turn your back on the family business. And if you do, you're out. So he got out. He's out. He got out. He became a pastor.

He's got a congregation now in Arizona. And he wrote a book called God, Greed, and the Prosperity Gospel. Okay. And what did he tell you about this world? Basically, he says it's all a scam. It's utter deception. There's no place for it in the church. No pastor should ever do that.

There is no model for, hey, give all your money to my thing. He says much of the money is spent on these worldly luxuries and cars and houses and private planes. Now, he didn't go so far as to say that he doesn't believe Benny Hinn believes what he says, but he says it's a matter of convenience, that he knows that he has to keep doing what he's doing and saying what he's saying. If you want to keep the house and the cars and the power and the money and the system going, if you want to keep the system going, you don't at all concede. Did Costi get to benefit from this money as well?

He certainly got to see the world in style. What he shared with us, which he didn't have to, and I took to be a sign of his credibility, is that he described being at one of the counting sessions after a crusade. So they have 20,000 people at the Saddle Dome or at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto. And the buckets get passed around. And the white buckets get passed around. And then they're counted. Apparently, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars. So that's a lot of money in cash. Yeah. And he, Costi Hinn, acknowledged that he participated in splitting up the spoils and pocketed a share. Now, he didn't say Benny Hinn knew this, but the implication was this was a regular occurrence.

Okay. You mentioned that Costi was around when you came knocking all those years ago. Yes. If I may say so, sir, you make a great deal of money on the basis of what you say. Well, let's talk on camera. I'll answer your questions. Well, actually, we've been on camera, sir. You should know that. What did he tell you about the reaction to you, you know, asking questions? Yeah, I asked him that.

I said, what did, in that case, what did he say to you? And he said, it triggered a kind of pep talk that there was a lot of. He said, Benny Hinn would say, You guys are agents of the devil sent to thwart and bring down and tear down our anointed ministry. You're evil, we're good. Showing us why what we do is so important. Pointing. Yeah, Bob McEwen, agent of Satan.

What does Benny Hinn say about Costi and the allegations that he's made in his book and to you? We have received a letter from their lawyer. We did before the broadcast. He said that Costi Hinn has been shamelessly trying to profit on his family's name, that he either exaggerated or misrepresented or totally made up many of the things that he says in the books. And Benny has said that he lives like a life of modesty, right? He's responded to these accusations. Well, famously, some years ago, he said, where in the Bible does it say I have to drive a Honda?

As I say, he likes to live and travel well. But recently his lawyers have said to us in a letter that he now travels commercially. Okay. That he's given up the lease on the private jet and that he pays for his own hotel rooms and that he stays in modest hotels. And he's also apparently recently given up the concept of the prosperity gospel. This triggered a huge debate and controversy in Christian evangelistic circles. 2019, Benny Hinn announced in his daily show that God had spoken to him and God said it's wrong to ask for money.

It's wrong to ask for pay to pray effectively. Because when I read the Bible now, I don't see the Bible in the same eyes I saw the Bible 20 years ago. I'm done with it. I will never again ask you to give a thousand or whatever amounts because I think the Holy Ghost is just fed up with it. That lasted about a day. We looked at the broadcast that he put on the day after and it was effectively what it had always been. People being healed, supposedly, and money being collected, And money being collected, requested and collected. So in the letter from his lawyer, the lawyer say that he only does what they consider biblically approved giving. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections.

I want to talk to you a little bit about the consequences here besides the money, right? Besides people giving their money. We're talking about the promise of healing too. And one thing that really struck me in your conversation with Kosti had to do with the healing side of things. And Kosti said as well, like you were not able to find anyone who was healed.

He said he had never also seen anyone who had been healed by Pastor Benny. He'd never seen anyone have Pastor Benny touch them and pronounce them miraculously healed, said that God has told him they'll be healed, and he believed it. I saw the testimony of healing, and I saw the stories about healing, but I never once saw a real healing. I never once saw my uncle, or anyone else for that matter,

go and lay hands on someone and say, in Jesus' name, rise and walk. And speaking of that, it brings me to this woman that you interviewed, a woman that you interviewed back in 2004 as well when she was a child. And can you tell me about Grace? Yeah. Grace Berlotte is now in her early 20s. She lives in Fernie, B.C. She was born with a disease that has degenerated since, a curvature of the joints, essentially. She can't walk and hasn't been able

to walk for all of her life and we met grace and her mother janet at the uh crusade benihin miracle crusade in in calgary at the saddle dome back in 2004 so grace was eight years old if you could have a miracle what would you want it to be? That I can walk. Just walk? Just to walk. Her mother was carrying her because that was the only way that she could get her up on stage. She had come to be healed in the presence of Benny Hinn, to have the divine power channeled through Hinn to her. This is what she was hoping for. This is all she wanted, she says. But when she was eight, she came with that one thought. She'd been watching him on television.

She prevailed upon her mother to take her from Fernie to Calgary so Benny Hinn could heal her and she could walk. I said, you know, honey, we could stay up here because you know what? I said, Jesus is up here. And she said, no, mommy. she said, I'd like to go down and see if Benny Hinn can pray for me. I said, are you sure? She said, yes, mommy. Well, what happens when you're truly sick and recognizably sick or disabled, and you try to get on stage at these events, is Benny Hinn's screeners are there when people are coming up on stage to make sure that no one who is sacred, disabled, gets anywhere close to Pastor Benny.

Because that's simply the way they do things. So Grace and her mother were diverted. They had to take the detour away from the stage. Grace and I moved over to the side. We sat and waited. And Grace asked me if I could help her to try and walk and that was kind of her faith in action and that was kind of a hard moment. And by the time we caught up with them Grace was in tears. Her mother was in tears.

She just kept saying as she healed, as she healed killed. And there was such a big rush. What can I say? She just wanted to be a great person. And it seemed that the hope of healing, or even just a prayer from Pastor Benny, was gone. Her dream was shattered. That must have been hard for her. We met her again just a few months ago. In her 20s. She said for the first 18 or 19 years of her life, that's all she could think about, how she needed to be healed and Benny Hinn wouldn't do

it. There must be something wrong with her. If God wouldn't make her healthy again so that she could do what she only wanted to do, walk, that must be a reflection on her. He promises that today's the day for your healing, for your miracle, and it doesn't happen. You blame yourself. Yes. First and foremost. Yes.

And I think he takes advantage of people who are vulnerable. In our piece, she walks. She taught herself to do what Benny Hinn couldn't do for her, and that is to walk in a swimming pool. And that was my first steps taken at 19 or 20. And it kind of hit me that way, that I didn't have to be physically healed in order to get that experience. That's wonderful to hear.

But she also has some perspective now on all of this. She believes her faith in Benny Hinn ruined, in a way, the first part of her life because all she could think of was being physically healed. And she said, just think about what you are physically. It doesn't allow you to enjoy so much else that is there in your life. Exactly. When you want something so bad, when you want to be made well because you don't want to be in pain anymore, you kind of ignore all of the signs that maybe this isn't right.

What was her message for Benny Hinn? She said what she wanted Benny Hinn to know is what she's learned through all of this, and that is that a physical act of healing, true or not, isn't all that it's cracked up to be, isn't all that Benny Hinn and those around him would make it up to be at one of those miracle healings? She said her life has been so much better, she thinks, because she learned to give up that physical side and enjoying her life in other ways. And when you think of life that way, it just, it becomes so much more rich. I said to her, it sounds, it becomes so much more rich. I said to her, it sounds like Benny Hinn could learn something from you.

And she looked at me and said, you might. Bob McKeown, thank you so much. Thanks, Jimmy. All right, so before we go, I want to turn to Newfoundland. The province is still digging out from under a record-setting snowstorm that hit on Friday and left thousands of people without power in St. John's in a state of emergency. Over the weekend, the military was called in to help with the cleanup and according to Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan two Cormorant helicopters at least one Griffin helicopter and two Hercules aircrafts have been deployed to the province. Probably by the end of today you'll have about 150 to 200 personnel on the ground ready to provide support. This could surge up to anywhere between

250 to 300 by tomorrow and the coming days. Along with snow removal, the armed forces will be helping residents get to warming centers and stepping in to help the elderly and people with health problems. For more on the story, you can check out our coverage at cbc.ca. That's all for now though. Newfoundland, we're thinking of you. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner, and see you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.