What is the Prosperity Gospel? - An interview with Costi Hinn - GotQuestions.org Podcast Episode 15

The Word-Faith Movement and the Prosperity Gospel

To the Got Questions podcast. On today's episode, I have Kosti Hinn, who's the pastor of discipleship at Redeemer Bible Church in Gilbert, Arizona. Today, we're going to be talking about the Word Faith Movement, also known as the Prosperity Gospel.

So, Kosti, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Shay.

So, Kosti, tell us a little bit about your background and why this issue is a passion of yours.

Well, I grew up in it, first of all. So, the Prosperity Gospel and the Word of Faith Movement were all circles that I ran in quite tightly and closely. My family, very tied into those theological views.

And my last name is Hinn, so relation to Benny Hinn, who's pretty widely known, I think still, even though he's getting a bit older. And so, faith healing is not something that's unfamiliar to our family.

My dad, as well, for years was in the Prosperity Gospel pastoring as a sort of faith healer as well, and then a couple other family members. And now, a next generation, even in my family, tied in closely with movements like Bethel and others who would be known for their healing ministries and attempts to heal people.

And other teachers and preachers I know people may be familiar with, like Todd White and Kenneth Copeland and some of the others, that would be our ministry circle for me growing up. Oral Roberts, who's another famous televangelist, was a mentor to my uncle.

And then a woman named Catherine Coleman, who's also known historically in the faith healing world. Those were all, to just give people a picture, the types of individuals that were heroes to us. And of course, my uncle, Benny Hinn, who was very central in the faith healing movement for decades.

So I grew up in that world and was attached to it, believed it, even though for the younger years of my life, I rode on the coattails of my family's ministry, eventually standing on my own two feet with it, very proud of it.

And I reaped a lot of the benefits of it as well. And it was some years later, shortly after college, actually, but some years after my teenage years and being involved in serving and working with my family, that the Lord did a work and opened my eyes and saved me out of it.

And it was an experience I'll never forget. It was through just reading the Bible. Wouldn't you know it? It works pretty good. And of course, people were used mightily by the Lord. He put cracks in the dam, if you will, of my theology, and eventually the whole thing just burst.

And He used people and of course used His Word and saved me out of it. So any chance I get, I tend to enjoy talking with people about it. I want to be as helpful as I can on the issue and share the true gospel and point people to Christ.

Amen. So for our listeners who may not be super familiar with what the Word Faith Movement is, so explain to us, you'll probably laugh when I say briefly because entire books have been written on this, but what is the Word Faith Movement and what is the Prosperity Gospel?

Yeah, the Word of Faith Movement and the Prosperity Gospel would actually, to be accurate, be separate in their specifics. But overall, you could put them in the same family. They'd be like cousins or relatives of each other.

But both would affirm that believing in Jesus leads to a package deal. The package is salvation and health, wealth, and prosperity. So you believe by faith, you receive Christ, Romans 10, 9, believe in your heart, confess with your mouth, and you get saved.

That's how salvation occurs. They would say that is very clear. Well, they would also say, just like you receive your salvation by faith, guess what else you can receive by faith? You can receive healing.

Jesus died for your sin. He also died for your sickness. And so what both of those movements do is they take the blessings of the atonement, which is Christ paying the penalty for our sin, and the promises of God to come, which are a glorified body, 1 Corinthians 15, eternal life, treasure in heaven, all the things that are to come fully, including no more sickness, including no more tears.

As the Bible says, Jesus is going to wipe away every tear. He's going to do away with pain and sickness and heartache and sorrow. Taking all those promises and saying, like one very well-known faith healer once said, you know, I know Jesus said I have treasure in heaven, but who says I can't access it now?

So they view God as a divine ATM. You swipe them right with a big enough offering, a positive confession, enough faith, and the faith that you have is like a force. It can make God do things. And so it turns God into a magic genie or an ATM.

You rub them right, you swipe them with your faith, and he dishes out the blessings. That is, sure, you're saved, but it's gospel plus. You're also guaranteed healing from sickness. And guess what else?

He doesn't want you to be poor. He wants you to be rich. And what these movements do with money and the pursuit of riches is they'll take a passage like 2 Corinthians 8, 9, and where Paul says that he became poor, that we might become rich, which he's saying there is that Jesus became poor.

He emptied himself. And so we could become rich. He was generous with his grace. That's what he was doing. And it wasn't a model for us to say, oh, now he became poor so we could be rich monetarily. Paul was explaining that generosity should be lavish because God has been generous with his grace.

So we should be using our resources to be a blessing to gospel work and to one another because Christ has been so generous with us. Well, the prosperity gospel would take that and say, look, Jesus came and died so you would be healed.

Jesus came and died and was poor so you could be rich. He doesn't want you to be sick. He doesn't want you to be poor. We need to be rich. And if you're not or you're sick, something's wrong with you, which immediately leads to, I think the final thing I'd love to say on this point is it leads to a lot of spiritual abuse because now people don't think, well, I'm going to trust the Lord in my situation.

No, they start thinking, what's wrong with me? I must have not given enough offering in the offering plate, or I must not have enough faith, or maybe I did something to make God angry and that's why I'm poor, or that's why I'm sick.

And it removes the sovereignty of God or that he is ruling over everything. And it removes him from being the ruler of all things. And it turns him sort of into a puppet and we're the puppet master. We with enough faith can control God.

But if we're not getting what we want, we must be doing something wrong. Instead of saying, God is allowing this trial and James 1, 2 through 4, counting it all joy, my beloved brethren, when you encounter various trials, or like Paul says in Romans five, that suffering is something we can rejoice in.

Not because we love the pain, not because we love cancer and love to be hurting. No, but he says, because that suffering is going to produce character. And then that character development is going to produce hope.

And we're going to realize this world's not our home. But what the prosperity gospel does is it sells the best life now as life on earth. And it really short circuits our eternal perspective and looking forward to life on heaven, turning Jesus into more of a commodity.

And he's a means to our end and not the end of all things for us.

Suffering, Sovereignty, and the Limits of Faith Healing

Kosti, I love how you explain it. And that's the main reason why I wanted to interview you on this topic. We get a lot of questions about word, faith, movement, prosperity gospel. And a lot of the questions revolve around, I've been giving faithfully to the Lord and he hasn't blessed me.

Or I've been praying in faith that God would heal my loved one and he hasn't. And you're exactly right. It results in this belief that if we just do certain things or say certain things, God is obligated to then do certain things, destroys the faith of a lot of people.

Because that's not what the picture that the Bible gives us of God and how he responds to our prayers and how he sovereignly decides how things end up. And to me, I mean, for our listeners, I was led to faith in Christ by a prosperity gospel minister.

And I've had some close family members who were at one time very involved in this movement. So as a baby Christian, as a teenager, I was very confused by these things. And for me, I mean, ultimately, similar to you, it came down to a study of scripture that convinced me that this doesn't match.

What I'm hearing from these prosperity gospel teachers doesn't match the word of God, but it also really didn't match what I observed in reality. So those were the kind of two things that came together as a package that led me away from the prosperity gospel mindset.

But it's just frustrating when we get these questions over and over again from people who are struggling with these things. They've been taught it, they've listened to some of the famous teachers, and some of them have sent obscene amounts of money in hopes that they would be blessed or their loved one would be healed and come away completely disappointed.

And then often either abandon the Christian faith or live a life of a lack of love for God, a lack of trust in God as a result of their very negative experience with the prosperity gospel movement. So I imagine you've experienced.

And observed a lot of that as well. Yeah, I have. And it's both troubling and then at the same time encouraging because obviously we have the Bible and we have answers to these things. And it's always a comfort when people are very desperate, very hurt, even disillusioned.

And there's a lot of talk today about deconstruction, people deconstructing their faith for all sorts of reasons. People do that after coming out of these movements. I think it's encouraging because we have the answers.

We can go to God's Word and everything can make sense. It's what I treasure greatly about gotquestions .org is you can find answers. I think that's certainly got to be a motivator for you every day as you and the team wake up and do what you do.

We can find answers in God's Word. But yeah, the confusion often is linked to, well, I think God did something. I mean, I believe the gospel. I got saved. Some people even tell me they got healed at one of my uncle's meetings.

You know, what did all that mean? I go to the Bible every time. John 10, Jesus says, I have more sheep. I must bring them, which tells me this. He's going to save more people. How he saves them, you know, I wish that they would all just be saved at a normal Bible teaching church and everything would be clean and tidy.

But guess what? He saves them how he wants. He's a sovereign savior. So he's going to draw them to himself. Actually, a good friend of mine, very devout, conservative theologian once said to me, I've heard your uncle preach a better gospel than some Baptist preachers.

The problem is what he goes to after that and what he goes to in other ways. You know, even a broken clock is right twice a day, right? So we're going to hear the gospel the right way in some of the wrong places.

And God can use that because it's his gospel. It doesn't belong to anyone. It's his, and he's going to save people. Now, a true believer, we know is going to grow in their faith and they're going to be drawn to the Lord, and they're not going to be able to stay and stand in what is false.

So we can trust the Lord that they'll come out. The other question that we'll often get, and I'm sure you do as well, is, well, what is all that then? Are you sure the Lord isn't in it? Or it sure looks like something is happening.

Maybe it's God, and maybe it's not as bad as you're saying, you know, Kosti or Shea, and maybe it's not a false gospel, or it's just they're a little bit in error. I would go to Matthew 7, and I would go to the words of Christ himself, who says in Matthew 7, 22 and 23, many will say on that day, Lord, Lord, I did this in your name, that in your name, this prophesy, a cast out, and he'll say, depart from me.

I never knew you, you who practice lawlessness. So there is clearly something that's going to happen one day when people meet Christ in which he'll acknowledge, sure, you did all these things, but I didn't know you.

That to me is very humbling. It's also enough to strike the fear of the Lord in me to realize, yeah, I don't know all that's going on in these movements, and I don't know why some of it actually helps people.

I do know this though. True believers don't stay there, and many of these false teachers one day are going to meet the Lord, and it doesn't matter how many supposedly or what appeared to be great things happened.

If he doesn't know them, and they didn't hold fast to the word of truth and preach the true gospel, that's what matters most. And so those are sobering passages, again, that we go back to in God's word, knowing that he's going to save people, okay, and also that there's going to be teachers one day and people who say, look at all that I did, and Jesus didn't know them.

So I want to make sure, not that I say I know Jesus, but that one day he says he knows me. So does my life, does your life, does my ministry, your ministry, do our churches and our resume of faith look like someone who the Lord actually knows?

That would be kind of my encouragement to people as they process through all of the rubble when things crumble. Yeah. So you mentioned earlier, people.

Say, so Che, have you ever received the question before they even continue? I say, yes, we have. So over 20 years, approaching 700 ,000 questions that have been submitted to us and millions of people visiting the website, every question I could ever imagine, a whole bunch of questions I wish I never had to imagine we'd been asked, but prosperity gospel stuff is, as you said, it's frustrating, but it also presents an opportunity to point people back to here's the true gospel and the prosperity, the health that you're seeking is part of the gospel, but it's in the world to come.

It's in when we experienced heaven, read Revelation chapters 21 and 22, and those are the mansions we'll be living in that we're not to be seeking those things. And yes, we will eventually be healed and there is healing in the atonement, but that healing is not promised in this life.

It is a promise for next and the eternal bodies will receive first Corinthians 15 for more of that. Interesting thing that happened to me when God led me out of the prosperity gospel was kind of went a little too far the other direction in the sense of basically denying that God ever performs miracles.

And that was a struggle for me too, because so many things in the Christian life, there's extremes, and it seems like most Christians want to go to one or the other extremes. You have the God does miracles all the time to the point they're not even really miracles.

They're normals in a sense. And then the other side that reacts so strongly against that, they're like, well, God really doesn't heal today. They don't pray for healing. They don't expect God to do amazing things.

What have you found is the best way to find the balance on an issue like this?

Miracles, Healing, and the Suffering of the Saints

I'm very passionate about this particular topic as well, because I have an all or nothing personality and I tend to, when I go all in, it's like all in. And so there was a season where I needed to sift through the extremes and where I found again, great promise and great hope is in the scriptures and in the balance of what things really are biblically.

So for example, what is a miracle? Well, a miracle is something that defies the laws of nature. When God intervenes, you look at the Old Testament and axe heads float, bodies of water split, babies are born to women who can't have babies.

And they are, you know, people are dead and they rise. These are miracles, moments where God does something that cannot be explained, except that he broke the laws seemingly of nature. He is the lawmaker of nature.

So we ought to remember that a miracle is directly from God. He stops the rain. He sends the rain. He devours something with fire from heaven. A cloud by day, fire by night. These are miracles. A staff, Moses' staff turning into a serpent.

These are miracles. Does God do miracles today? Well, nowhere in the Bible are we told that he doesn't do miracles. And everywhere in the Bible, we're told that his nature is unchanging. So he is the God of the impossible.

You can say that he's a God of miracles. Does God do miracles? Can God do miracles? Of course God can do miracles. Are we going to name and claim or demand that miracles be done and have them be done?

No, I don't know anyone. In fact, there really isn't anyone that we've seen ever in our modern era who walks the planet and, you know, throws down their staff and it turns into a serpent. There are some odd things that you'll see happen, and people that are involved in witchcraft can concoct various different things and make arguments for that.

But it's never attached to the true gospel and the true God of the Bible. But we could, I have found, at least personally in study through the scriptures, that I don't necessarily align with, though historically he's a wonderful, wonderful theologian, B .B. Warfield, who had a classic position on the cessation of miracles.

In a sense saying, God doesn't do miracles anymore, and so don't bother looking for them, don't worry, it's sort of stay here, let's preach the word, and wait for heaven. So there's that, that God does nothing, and that he doesn't even heal, so we ought to not really pray for healing.

It just is what it is, sit around, suffer, which again there's some truths of course to some of this, and wait for Jesus to return. The other extreme, as you alluded to, is that God always does that, and when everything's a miracle, nothing's a miracle.

And when, you know, healing is guaranteed, well what do you do with like a Johnny Erickson Tada, who has had an incredible ministry on earth as a paraplegic, and or quadriplegic, and is faithful, and suffering, and enduring, and the healing hasn't come, but she has prayed and asked, and is a woman of great faith.

What do you do in the Bible when God heals people who don't have faith, and then heals people that do have faith, then tells Paul regarding the thorn in the flesh, which again historically some have said it was a heckler, and it wasn't necessarily a physical ailment.

Some have made the argument for it being a physical ailment, but let's just say this, Paul the apostle himself asked God to remove something, and God said no, my grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness.

So God shows himself through suffering, and trials, and through weakness. So we certainly can't say, well healing's always guaranteed, and if it doesn't happen something's wrong with you. What was wrong then with Timothy, who Paul said to take wine for his stomach?

What was wrong with a trophimus, who Paul left sick at Miletus? What was wrong with Paul in Galatians, when he tells the church at Galatia, I preached you in bodily illness. He was going through physical issues.

So we don't want to swing to the other extreme then, and say, well if you're not healed, you have a problem, and everything's a miracle, and now we have people pulling out their cell phones, and filming the fog in their sanctuaries, and churches, and saying it's the glory of God, and it's sort of a miracle hunt.

Reminds me of the Pharisees, when Jesus said, you remember when he said this to them, it's an evil generation that seeks after signs. It's sign chasing. We don't want to chase signs and wonders. We also don't want to discredit God's work.

So where I've landed is what the Bible clearly teaches. Healing looks like this. Miracles look like this. This is what the gifts of the Spirit will look like in proper operation. If that is happening, well, it matches the Bible.

Praise God. If it's not what's happening, well, that is not the gift of the Spirit that he has given. That is some other counterfeit, or some other thing. We have a son. He is three years old, and he was diagnosed at three months old with cancer.

And I remember asking the Lord to heal him. We prayed for healing. His name is Timothy, and he's doing great right now. But there was a season where he wasn't doing great. And we were at the children's hospital each month, and we were trusting the Lord no matter what.

And I remember even our belief system after the prosperity gospel, and coming out in the true gospel being what we live for, being put to the test. And I said to my wife the night that we found out about the diagnosis is we're going to live now what we preach, that God is sovereign, that he is a healer, but he's more than a healer.

It's a passion that got me fired up to write a book coming out in September. It's titled More Than a Healer, because Jesus is a healer, but he's so much more. And often we tend to overlook the healer chasing the healing.

And so for us, it became a lot like the cadence of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Remember when they tell Nebuchadnezzar, oh, go ahead and throw us in the fire. Our God will save us. He'll rescue us.

He'll come through. But even if not, the whole driving point they made was he's still good. God is still good even when my circumstances are not. Jesus is still a healer even if I don't get the healing.

He is sovereign in that. We see that in John 5 when he heals this man at the pool of Bethesda for no reason. In fact, if based on word of faith teachings, the man wouldn't have and shouldn't have gotten healed because he complained.

Remember he whines to Jesus, well, every time the angel stirs the water, everybody beats me there. Yeah, that would be negativity. Jesus heals him anyway. The man doesn't even know who Jesus was. And then you have the woman with the issue of blood crawling through the streets, basically pulling on the hem of his garment.

Great faith. If I just get to him, I'll be healed. What a beautiful picture. Jesus's healing is not a formula that we can create to create sort of an earthly ministry and give guarantees. We got to teach what the Bible says.

Can God do miracles? Yes. Is everything a miracle? And are miracles always going to happen because you name it and claim it? No. Is Jesus a healer? Yes. Does he always heal? No. Is your faith or your offering going to get you healing?

No. What accesses healing? Well, he's in charge of that. So we submit and we pray the prayer like Jesus did in Luke 22, 42, not my will, but yours be done. God wants our hearts. We often are chasing the healing.

And what I always encourage people to do is no matter what they're going through, does God have your heart? If the healing doesn't come, will you still say he is good? And when you still say your will be done looking forward to our true hope, the blessed hope of heaven and eternal healing.

Kosti, thank you. Again, I love how you explain these things. Let's kind of close with one question I really wanted us to cover today. So if we know someone who's in the WordFaith movement or considering it or considering coming out of it, what would you say are the, in your experience, the best way to lead someone out of or away from that movement?

And what scriptures, I mean, I know you've already talked a lot about this so far in the interview, but what scriptures do you think are most poignant to pointing people away from the.

Prosperity gospel? Yeah, I definitely think getting 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 clear on giving and receiving in generosity. And there's some great principles there about giving and the blessing. Explain those and look at what 2 Corinthians 8 verse 9 mean.

Looking at the life and ministry of Jesus and his healing ministry and what he came to do. Looking at the life of Paul and then looking at the suffering of the saints in the early church. All of these are helpful things that debunk the idea that God is always just going to give us an easy life if we're Christians.

The other thing though that I would say is evangelistically, and I'll do this very quickly, is you turn to Jude verses 17 to 23, but honing really in on verses 22 and 23. Jude gives us some helpful categories.

He says, have mercy on some who are doubting. I think people really need to be merciful and keep the relational doors open with people who are wavering and doubting. That's what that idea is. And walk with people who are struggling.

I think it's helpful to be told, be merciful because those are sometimes the people that we get the most frustrated with because we're like, why aren't you getting it? Don't you understand? Look at your Bible.

Well, be patient. Be merciful. Walk with the doubting. Call those people the doubters. So who are the doubters in your life? Be merciful and walk with them. And then there's another category he gives us.

I call these the deceived. He says, save others. So pretty aggressive. Save others to rescue operation. Snatching them out of the fire. There are some people who did that in my life. There was a moment where they came and said, listen, uh, you need to walk away from this.

This is dangerous. Some people in our lives, we need to go in like the coast guard, drop the rope and say, Hey, you're drowning. I'm telling you, I love you, but you're caught up in heresy. This is false teaching.

I'm with you all the way, but we got to get you out of here and trusting the Lord. Now they might not like you after that, but try to keep the relational bridge there so you can continue to try to rescue them.

But you're coming on a little stronger with those who are completely deceived. Finally, another category, the last one, the dangerous, I call it. He says on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.

Some people ask how my relationship is with my uncle. Now I often explain this is the category that I have him in still. Um, I have mercy on him with fear, meaning fear of the Lord. I am scared for his soul.

I'm scared for the soul of any false teacher. I want them to repent and walk in righteousness. And yet I hate not him, not the person, but the garment polluted by the flesh. There's a staining or a pollution that can come if we get too close to the dangerous thinking that it's not a big deal.

Um, so I would encourage people if you have family that are very, um, manipulative and very elusive and they're very dangerous, you can have mercy on them with fear. These are the people that potentially you don't have a real close relationship with anymore, but you pray for them, but you have to keep some distance lest you get too close and begin to get sucked into that.

Um, one of the main reasons why I pray for my uncle often, I'd be there in a heartbeat if he truly repented, but I'm not getting, you know, steak dinners on the weekend with them kind of just jaw jacking about whatever I'm really focused on what is spiritual.

And for him, I pray that he repents. I pray that all false teachers do, but I would encourage people figure out what category someone is in your grandmother or your cousin who, you know, follows a ministry, but isn't really flying the flag.

We don't need to yell at them that they're a heretic and go crazy on them and say, you know, they're, they're hell bound. And we, maybe they're doubting. Maybe they've just never been taught walk with them, but then other people who may mean to come on a.

Little stronger. That's good. That's very wise. And what you just shared applies to a lot of people in a lot, a lot of different areas of false doctrine. So thank you for that. So Kosti, in conclusion, tell us a little bit about your two most recent books.

The first one that came out a couple of years ago, God, greed, and the prosperity gospel. And then the new one coming out here in a couple of months, more than a healer. And just to let our listeners know, we'll have links to where you can learn more about Kosti and his ministry and the books that he's published, both in the description on the YouTube video and also at podcast .gotquestions .org.

So.

Kosti, tell us a little bit about these two books. Yeah. God, greed and the prosperity gospel. Subtitle is how truth overwhelms a life built on lies. That's going to be my testimony in the fullest sense, every detail where I've been, where the Lord has brought me all for his glory and my good and my joy.

And then some chapters devoted to debunking prosperity theology. And then a final chapter called reaching those caught in deception. And it is an evangelistic chapter that will empower people to reach people caught in this movement.

So story, testimony, theology, it'll help set some teaching straight on money as well, and then help people empower them to be evangelistic and not just sit around and be self-righteous. Like I know we all can do sometimes when we know the truth, but to live the truth and go after people.

The next book, which comes out in September, a book that I'm even more passionate about because it's not really about my story. Again, I use my testimony to point people to Christ, but I wrote a book that is just all about Jesus.

It's called more than a healer, not the Jesus you want, but the Jesus you need. I wrote it during this past year while everybody was locked down. And I just started thinking, what are some of the things that I would want to tell people now about the Lord if they're interested in coming out of these movements is he's more than a healer.

And so chapter one is he is a healer. And then all the other chapters, he is sovereign. He is comfort. He is peace. He is hope. He is justice. All of the other chapters are designed to help people grow closer to Jesus if the healing doesn't come.

So if you've been hit by trial, or if you know someone who's suffering, or if you yourself are suffering, this book will grow you in your faith. And then it'll also, my prayer is draw people closer to not the magic genie Jesus that everybody wants, but the Lord, the Savior, our comfort, our peace, and our hope, the one we need.

And so there's some good hard truths in there, but I think there's a lot of comforting ones as well. And so that book comes out September 28th, but it's available for pre-order now. And so people can pre-order that they'll get it the day it comes out.

And then we're going to be releasing some bonus content for those who pre-order and some teaching as well. And then all of that information can be found online. And then we lead for the gospel as well as a ministry online where we provide people with videos and teachings and some resources, just trying to help and point people to Christ.

Fantastic. Thank you. And God, Greed, and the Prosperity Gospel is an excellent book. I strongly recommend it to our listeners and look forward to More Than a Healer as well. Sounds a much needed message.

So Kosti, thank you for joining me on the show today. It's been great. And I know a lot of people interview about this topic. And for me, the fact that you're Benny Hinn's nephew has very little to do with why I wanted to interview you.

I've heard you explain this and I just love the passion and the grace in which you speak the truth in love. And so that's why I wanted to have you on the show. So thank you. And again, we'll have more information about Kosti's ministry, both on the YouTube description and also at podcast .gotquestions .org.

So this has been the Got Questions podcast. Got questions? Bible has answers. We'll help you find them.