Pentecost: Christmas for the Holy Spirit (I)

As I think about this year’s holy day, two things keep coming to mind.  One was a television programme I happened to catch late one Friday night.

There wasn’t much on that I wanted to see, so I started channel hopping, and I ended up on one of the religious channels.  The programme was called “This is Your Day”, and featured a televangelist called Benny Hinn.

    I’m not sure who’s familiar with Benn Hinn, but he’s got quite a following in America, and across the world actually — he claims to have reached over a billion people through his Holy Spirit Miracle Crusades.

    This particular programme was one part sermon and one part healing service, and it was one of those hugely charismatic affairs where Benny got the congregation (or perhaps audience is a better term) jumping out of their seats, weeping and wailing and falling over as they were ‘slain by the Spirit’.

    There were thousands of people, literally thousands, so that the ones at the back had to watch Benny on a TV screen. A bit like I was doing, except they weren’t in their pyjamas, and they didn’t have a cup of tea handy.

I’ll be honest, I was a bit uncomfortable watching the whole thing; and one of the most discomforting things was the supernatural healings. Not the healing itself: I am totally into healing. I know that it can and does happen. What troubled me was the way Benny Hinn went about it.

He has a staff team and they bring people up out of the audience on to the stage; they announce what the person’s affliction is; Benny puts his hand on their head and throws them backwards, no, not throws, hurls, he hurls them backwards.  There are two staff members standing by to catch the person; they do so and then lift them back up so that Benny can hurl them back down again.

    “Praise Jesus”, he says as the staff lay the person on the ground and leaves them there twitching and thrashing like a dying fish.

    The staff will sometimes pick them up again for a final head slap accompanied by “Alleluia!”, “Praise Jesus” or “Shazam!” or whatever.

    And the whole time that this is going on, Benny and his staff are having a conversation about the person, talking about them as if they weren’t there, or as if they were a piece of meat.

    The thing that really jarred was when Benny’s sidekick announces a woman getting up on stage.

    “Benny, this woman says she has been cured of Coeliacs’ Disease.”

And I was like, “What?”

    “Coeliacs’ Disease?” asks Benny.

    “Yes,” says the sidekick, “As you were talking she felt a warm sensation in her stomach and the Coeliacs’ Disease was gone.” (Pause for dramatic effect) “She had been in constant pain for ten years, and the pain is gone.”

    “Is this true?” asks Benny (he’s good at asking questions).

    “Yes,” says the woman and then Bang! He slaps her on the forehead and she goes down like a sack of spuds.

I had two thoughts at this point:

1.       If she had been in constant pain for ten years, this woman hadn’t been following a gluten-free diet.

2.       She said she felt healed while Benny was giving his sermon, so what were they bringing her up on stage for, and what was the slap on the head for?

Let me be clear. I believe in miracles. I believe that God can do anything.  I believe that God can use us to work miracles. But that doesn’t mean that people can do miracles in their own time to their own agenda: it takes the Holy Spirit according to his timescale. 

This Pentecost, I think it's worth remembering who the real power is, and recognising that we are blessed that we can tap into that power, but let's not get carried away. We aren't the source of the power. The I AM is.