A father and mother have come to America. They have a son but there's a problem: he's sick, very sick. The doctors tell the parents that their young son has not one but two tumors in his head. The desperate parents have agreed to go on television for a documentary and announce their certainty that God is going to heal their son.It's a visible, televised examaple of the great faith they have.
We see the parents sittnig on their couch in their den as the camera rolls and we see their son off to their left in a half sitting, half lying position with his eyes closed. He's unresponsive. As the interview progresses, these humble parents tell us the reason for their certainty of the miracle to come: they're going to take their boy to pastor Benny Hinn and there on stage, before a massive throng, they and everyone else will see "Pastor Hinn" perform a miracle. As the father says, "God can do anything."
Television transports us into the massive throng assembled to see a miracle or experience one in one of Hinn's mega meetings. There they are, the father and the mother, who, with assistance, are carrying their son who's lying limp on a stretcher unresponsive and unaware of what's going on around him up to Pastor Hinn waiting on the platform for the boy's arrival.
Hinn, the anointed healer, approaches the unconscious child, touches his face, says some words and pronounces him healed as the boy neither moves nor speaks nor opens his eyes.
Dad and mom take their son home. Within weeks, he's dead. The television camera and the documentarian return to the parents' home. They've granted another interview and they have an announcement to make. The interviewer asks, "What happened? Whom do you blame for this?"
Without batting an eye or missing a beat, the father says, "We blame ourselves."
The father says that their son died because, as pastor Hinn said, "We didn't have enought faith." The father doesn't stop with that, he tells the watching audience that he wrote pastor Hinn a check for $2,000 and was glad to do it.
For the rest of their lives, these two, unless they come to the truth, will go to their graves believing that their son died because of their deficient faith. They will live with the guilt because that's what Pastor Hinn teaches. They believe they failed their son.
What they don't know is that they've met a wolf in sheep's clothing. They've met a wolf who, like the wolves of Jesus' day, "like to walk around in long robes, and like personal greetings in the marketplaces, and seats of honor in the synagogues, and places of honor at banquets, who devour widows’ houses, and for appearance’s sake offer long prayers." The wolf in their case devoured their $2,000. There was no refund.
The wolves are on the prowl because they're ravenous for more. The Copelands, the Dollars, and the Osteens never devour enough; they always go after more.
They are the modern Tetzles who promise that if you give them your money (by buying their books, purchasing their CDs, by sending them "seed money"), God is just waiting to bless them with prosperity, all the while, it's the wolves who are prospering.
Why don't the wolves go to the hospitals and perform their "miracles?" Why don't the prosperity preachers go to Central America to the people who wash their clothes by beating them on a rock and sell them their books? Surely those in San Salvador who walk in shoes of cardboard need to hear that God will make them wealthy if they just have enough faith and give their money and buy the books. They need to know the secret to living their best life now, don't they?
The prosperity wolves have propagated an idol for people to worship; an idol whose goal is to make people happy and financially comfortable. They fill people's heads with delusions. The last verse of I John still applies today.
The wolves smile. All the way to the bank.
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