Confessing Evangelical

Bunnie Diehl has an interesting post on Benny Hinn and his ("allegedly") fraudulent claims to heal people. There is also follow-up to the expose on the White Horse Inn site, as Mike Horton was apparently one of the contributors to the programme mentioned by Bunnie.

One of my theological heroes, the Anglican conservative evangelical Dick Lucas (see past posts here and here), has a simple answer to the claims of people like Hinn, though Lucas tends to reserve his particular ire for Morris Cerullo, following the latter's high-profile events in London in the early 1990s.

Lucas directs people to Mark 1:29-34:

And immediately he left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon's mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told him about her. And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

That evening at sundown they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. And the whole city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

As Lucas goes on to point out (I paraphrase): "That's what true healing looks like. Jesus heals Peter's mother, and before you know it the whole town has gathered at the door. Just imagine if these people [like Cerullo] really were healing people. They wouldn't need expensive advertising campaigns. We'd see the same thing happening now as happened with Jesus."