Has Benny Hinn Really Repented of the 9 Member Godhead?

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Justin Peters. I hope that this finds you and your family doing well today. I want to thank you so much for joining me for this podcast. Benny Hinn, the world's most famous faith healer.

Benny Hinn’s History and the Claim of Repentance

Benny Hinn is no stranger to controversy. I have done a lot of research on Benny Hinn. I wrote my master's thesis on Benny Hinn. In fact, for this video, I pulled out this thing that I wrote now 20 years ago, hard to believe, time flies.

But I've been to a lot of Benny Hinn crusades. I think I've been to 18 of them now. And there's a lot of people out there that may not necessarily be fans of Benny Hinn, but they still try to defend him, at least to a degree, saying that he no longer teaches the things he used to teach.

He's repented of some of the prosperity preaching that he used to do and so well known for. That is emphatically not true. He has not repented of anything to say that he has makes a mockery of true biblical repentance.

In fact, I'll go ahead and link while I'm thinking about, if you want to see some of my videos on Benny Hinn's supposed repentance and would like to see definitive proof that he has not repented of anything, you can watch those videos linked down below in the description.

But one of the more infamous teachings for which Benny Hinn is known is his nine-member Godhead. And yes, if you're not familiar with this, you heard it right, Benny Hinn has taught in the past that there are actually nine members of the Godhead.

So this was in a sermon entitled, A New Spirit that he preached on October 13th, 1990. So 32 years ago when he was the pastor of Orlando Christian Center. And this made a lot of news and a lot of people were rightly accusing him of teaching heresy for this.

And so he was asked about this in an interview with Charisma Magazine back in 1993. And I want to go ahead and read this to you, what he said, because I see some people who try to defend Benny Hinn. They may not necessarily be fans of Benny Hinn, but they're defending him and say, oh, he's repentant of this, he no longer teaches it.

He repudiated that teaching and so he should let it go because he's owned up to it and repentant of it. So let me read this to you, exactly what he said in the interview with Charisma Magazine. And this was back in, again, 1993.

So he was asked about it, about his teaching and nine member got hit and Hinn responded, quote, at one time or another, all preachers repeat something they've read, even though they didn't take time to study it carefully.

That was my mistake. In Phineas Dake's book, God's Plan for Man, he teaches that each member of the Trinity has his own spirit, soul, and body. One Sunday when I was speaking on the Trinity, I repeated that teaching.

As soon as I, now watch this, as soon as I did, I could feel tension in the congregation because the people sense when you say things that aren't right, so I tried to clear the air. Jokingly, I said, there must be nine of them.

Well, the people laughed and I thought, boy, that was a dumb thing to say. Then I forgot about it. Okay, so he says that he repeated something that he read in Phineas Dake's book, God's Plan for Man, and he kind of, as he was teaching, kind of realized that what he was saying wasn't right, and then he just jokingly said, there must be nine of them.

Everybody laughed, and he went on and forgot about it. No big deal, you know, just kind of a comical thing. Everybody laughed, didn't think anything of it. That was his apology. That was his, that's his supposed repentance.

Well, I just happened to have the video of that October 13th, 1990 sermon in which Benny Hinn taught the nine-member Godhead, so I'm going to play a portion of that, and I, at one time, had the entire video.

When I was writing my master's thesis for Benny Hinn and what he teaches, I had the entire video. Still got it somewhere, but it's in a box, so I don't have the entire video. I did find about a 90-second portion of it, so, but anyway, I want you to watch this 90-second portion, then I'll have a few comments after we watch it.

The Nine-Member Godhead Teaching in the 1990 Sermon

God the Father, ladies and gentlemen, is a person, and he is a triune being by himself, separate from the Son and the Holy Ghost. So what did you say?

Hear it, hear it.

See, God the Father is a person, God the Son is a person, God the Holy Ghost is a person, but each one of them is a triune being by himself. If I can shock you, and maybe I should, there's nine of them.

What did you say?

Let me explain. God the Father, ladies and gentlemen, is a person with his own personal spirit, with his own personal soul, and his own personal spirit body. You say, oh, I never heard that. Well, you think you're in the church to hear things you heard for the last 50 years?

Do you know that the Holy Spirit has a soul and a body separate from that of Jesus and the Father?

Now I ask you, does that sound like a joke to you? Does that sound like to you, he just kind of said something off the cuff, oh, there must be nine of them, and people laughed, and he moved on, and he forgot about it?

No, no, that was deliberate teaching. He exegeted, if you will, this nine-member Godhead thing. In fact, I want to read from my own master's thesis here. This is on page, what is it, 47? And so, Benny Hinn, in the same sermon, by the way, in the same sermon, he taught that God the Father walks around in a spirit body with hair, eyes, mouth, and hands, that God walks around in a spirit body with hair, mouth, eyes, and hands, and he taught that the Holy Spirit also has a body.

This is very similar, by the way, to what Kenneth Copeland has taught before, that God is a being that stands about six-two, six-three, weighs a couple hundred pounds, a little better. I've heard it before, that's memorized.

So this was not a joke, this was not a joke. In fact, here in my footnotes, in my documentation, Benny Hinn, I say, this writer, referring to me, this writer is in possession of the tape. Back in those days, VHS.

Hinn was clearly not joking, and the congregation did not laugh. In fact, after making the nine of them statement, Hinn continued teaching the nine-member Godhead for another solid seven minutes. I have the full VHS tape somewhere, but we've moved since then, and it's in a box.

So anyway, but trust me, I do have it, and I've watched it. This was not an off-the-cuff comment. This was not a joke, nobody laughed. This was deliberate, intentional, in-depth teaching on the nine-member Godhead.

So, and by the way, this nine-member Godhead revelation, he actually says, in this teaching, he says, quote, "'Man, I feel revelation knowledge already coming on me.'". So in other words, he claims the source in his sermon, not in the interview with Charisma Magazine, in the interview with Charisma Magazine, he claims that the source was Phineas Dake's book, "'God's Plan for Man,' but in his sermon at Orlando Christian Center on October 13th, 1990, he claimed divine revelation.

"'I feel revelation knowledge already coming on me.'". So this was being downloaded to him by God himself. That's a false prophecy. That is putting words in God's mouth that he emphatically did not say, that did not come from God.

But as some of you have heard me say before, quite honestly, it's just not a big deal in the charismatic movement to put words in God's mouth he didn't say. That's the bread and butter of the charismatic movement.

That is one of their distinctives in their practice. I mean, that's standard fare in the charismatic movement, putting words in God's mouth that he did not say. God did not give him this revelation knowledge of a nightmare where God hid.

And when Benny Hinn says, I joked about it, that's a lie. That's a lie. So I've seen some people trying to defend Benny Hinn. Oh, yeah, he said that, but he repented of it. He's acknowledged it was wrong and he doesn't teach it.

Well, maybe he doesn't teach it anymore because it's so patently absurd. But dear friends, even in his apology, he lied. He lied. That's not repentance. All he did was compound the sin. And to this day, he has not been honest about what he actually taught.

In fact, he's lied about it. So he's just added another sin on top of the sin of putting words in God's mouth that he didn't say in heresy. That's not repentance. That's not what repentance looks like.

Godly Sorrow, Worldly Sorrow, and True Biblical Repentance

The Bible speaks of two different kinds of sorrow over sin. And it's found in 2 Corinthians chapter seven. Paul says that a worldly sorrow leads to death, but a godly sorrow leads to repentance unto salvation.

A worldly sorrow is nothing more than a guilty conscience. A worldly sorrow is the kind of sorrow that says, what would happen to me if my sin were exposed? What would be the consequences to me? And so we try to cover up our sin, not because we grieve over it, but simply because we don't want the consequences of it.

That's a worldly sorrow and a worldly sorrow leads to death. But a godly sorrow, a godly sorrow that leads to repentance unto salvation, a godly sorrow is that sorrow that is vertically oriented when we grieve over our sin because we understand that our sin grieves God and we do not want to grieve him.

We do not want to grieve his person. That is a hallmark of a true Christian, someone who has a godly sorrow over sin. What we saw from Benny Hinn in his supposed apology and repentance in that interview with Charisma Magazine, that's not a godly sorrow.

That's not true repentance. In fact, I want to read to you a verse, 2 Corinthians chapter seven, verse 11. This text is the most detailed account of what true biblical repentance looks like. And I want to focus in on just one verse, verse 11.

The apostle Paul writes this to the Corinthians. He says, for behold, what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow, has brought about in you, what vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong.

Now, for time's sake, I'm not gonna fully exegete this text or expound upon this text, but suffice it to say that contextually, the Corinthians that were part of this church in Corinth, obviously, part of this church that Paul had started himself on a second missionary journey.

And Paul spent about a year and a half with them, trying to disciple them, grow them up, mature them, so that they could carry on this church in his absence. Well, at the end of a year and a half, Paul left Corinth, went to other destinations to preach the gospel, do gospel work, and sin crept into the church in Corinth, gross sin.

And there were some self-appointed false apostles in that church. Aren't you glad we don't have to worry anymore today about people just appointing themselves as apostles, calling themselves apostles when they're not really true apostles?

I'm glad that's a thing of the past.

Wink, wink.

So some of these false apostles were trying to turn the church of Corinth against the apostle Paul. And many of them went along with their slander, with their lies, with their false teaching. And so Paul began to write a series of letters, whoops, back and forth between himself and the church of Corinth.

And so Paul wrote a letter that he describes as the painful letter, the tearful letter, the sorrowful letter, depending upon which translation you have. We don't have this letter, it's been lost. But this letter was a letter of rebuke, a letter confronting the Corinthians and their sin.

And Paul wrote this, gave it to Titus, and Titus took this letter from Paul in Ephesus and delivered that letter to Corinth. Paul just couldn't bring himself to go back. He had already been back once and was rejected.

And so I'm summarizing a whole lot here. But Titus took this letter, this painful, tearful letter that we no longer have. We don't have a copy of it. But it was a letter of rebuke and confrontation of their sin.

And Titus read it to the Corinthians. And by God's grace, the Holy Spirit of God used that letter from the Apostle Paul to rebuke the Corinthians and bring them to a place of genuine repentance and godly sorrow.

And so Titus, after that time in Corinth, left Corinth and went back and met up with the Apostle Paul. And Titus brought Paul the good news that the Corinthians had repented. And that strong letter, that painful letter, brought them to a place of genuine repentance.

And the Apostle Paul is now writing 2 Corinthians. And he says, for behold, what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow, has produced and brought about in you, what vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong.

Now I want us to look at a couple of these phrases. I'm going to have them highlighted here in blue and red, and then I'll have the Greek words corresponding, blue and red, and we'll talk about these a little bit.

When Paul says, what vindication, the word here in the Greek is hapologion. It's the same word that we get our word apologetics from. It means a defense, a rational defense or a vindication. Now, contextually, the meaning here, as Paul is using it, is that the Corinthians were wanting to vindicate themselves not in the sense of defending themselves or making excuses.

No, actually quite the opposite of that. Paul was saying that the Corinthians, whereas before the reception of this tearful, painful letter, before they had been known for their unfaithfulness, they had been known for their treachery, they had been known for following after and believing the false apostles, they had been known for their sin.

Now, however, they wanted to be known, not for their sin, they wanted to be known for their repentance. It was a clean break. They left the old sinful patterns behind. Now they are walking in truth. Anytime you hear someone say, yeah, I'm really sorry I did such and such, but let me tell you why I did it.

Well, whatever follows the but negates the I'm sorry. True biblical repentance has no buts. Yeah, I committed the sin, but let me tell you why. No, it is a complete owning of and confession of and repentance from that sin, making no excuses.

You own it, you repent, and you move forward. That is what the Corinthians were doing. They wanted now to be known for their repentance. And also Paul says, what indignation. That word in the Greek, agonaktason, that is a righteous indignation.

That is an anger, an anger against what? The Corinthians were angry, but what were they angry about? The Corinthians were angry at their own sin. They went to war with their own sin. That is what they were indignant about.

Their old sinful pattern, and they went to war against it. They repented of it. And dear friends, that is one of the hallmarks of the new birth. As Christians, we are to love what God loves, and we are to hate what God hates.

And there's nothing that God hates more than sin. So as Christians, one of the hallmarks of a genuine believer someone who's truly indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God is that we go to war against our own sin.

It's not that as Christians, we never sin, we do, but a true Christian stumbles into sin, he doesn't swim in it. As Christians, we don't look for opportunities to sin. We don't plan out our sin. We don't relish our sin.

When we do sin, it grieves us. It grieves us because we understand that our sin grieves God, and we do not want to grieve Him. And so one of the things that we do as Christians is what we, as Paul said in Romans 8, 13, we are to put to death the deeds of the body.

And we are to be at war with our flesh. We are to be at war and angry at our sin. That's what real repentance looks like. It's not a full exposition, but for our context here dealing with Benny Hinn, we've seen now that what Benny Hinn said, that is not repentance.

That is not a godly sorrow. Literally in his supposed repentance and apology, he lied about it. He made excuses for it, and he lied. That's not repentance. So has Benny Hinn repented of the nine-member Godhead?

Well, no. No, he hasn't. Is he still teaching it? No, he's not teaching it anymore, but has he repented from it? No, because he made excuses for it, and he lied about it. So that's not repentance. And to say that he has repented is to cheapen biblical repentance.

Benny Hinn’s Prosperity Gospel Still Promises Seed-Faith Giving

And by the way, as a little freebie, people say, oh, Benny Hinn doesn't teach the prosperity gospel anymore. He doesn't teach give to get theology, you know, send me money and God will bless you. Oh, no.

And now Lord, as you people give into your kingdom, into your work, you said you'll give seed to the soul. And Lord, that seed, I pray you'll give them great ideas right now, great ideas. And open many, many doors before them to be blessed financially.

And I can tell you, if you want to be secure tomorrow, there's only one way to do it. And I just told you how. The hand of the diligent makes rich. Be diligent with your giving. Be diligent with your sowing.

And if you do that, God will bless you financially. God will bless you, not only with money, but with ideas to make money. And he'll protect your investments.

Be diligent with your giving. Be diligent with your sowing, sowing seed, sowing seed in his ministry so you can reap a harvest. And if you do that, God will bless you financially and he will protect all of your investments.

Okay, it's time to give. So as you sow, praise him and thank him. So let's do it right now. The information is on the screen for you right now. And you can obey the Lord and do it with all your heart, cheerfully.

Now, you can sow your seed on the platform you're watching me on. You can go to our website, benehem .org. Or you can text your seed, BHM45777. And I believe this year, 2022, will be your year of restoration financially, stability financially, abundance financially, in Jesus' holy name.

Bye-bye.

Sow seed, give me money. God will bless you. God will protect you in these difficult times. Sow seed to reap a harvest. Same old, same old. But at least, you know, at least he doesn't do this all the time, right?

I mean, that was live streamed on September the 9th, 2022. Oh, wait, let me show you what he said, literally the next day, September 10th, 2022.

Benny Hinn’s Ongoing Seed-Faith Appeals and Demand for Immediate Giving

And today, as you are listening to me right now, some of you who are in trouble financially, who don't know what to do.

You may not know what to do, but Benny Hinn knows what you ought to do. You guessed it, sow seed.

Well, I'll tell you what,.

The minute you and I will pray, I want you to sow a seed in honor of the Lord and watch what God will do. Father, come on, prosperity is not an accident. We obey, God moves. All right, now it's time to sow because prosperity is not an accident.

Prosperity is an act of faith. It's a decision we make. I'm gonna believe, I'm gonna sow because by works, faith is made real, you know? It's not just believing, you gotta do it. All right, now, sow that seed.

Sow seed, sow seed, sow seed. But at least he doesn't anymore ask you to sow seed if you're in a bind, or he would never ask you to sow seed if it would hurt you any.

Sow that seed even if it hurts a little bit.

Sow that seed.

And frankly, sometimes pain is good because it shows the Lord, we trust him. A faithful man will abound with blessings no matter what happens. Let's believe God right now. And you sow that seed right now.

So even if you're hurting, even if you're hurting financially, sow that seed anyway. Give him your money anyway. It doesn't really matter if you're hurting. Give your money to Benny Hinn. Because even if you're hurting, there's one person who isn't hurting, and his name is Benny Hinn.

All right, you can sow right there on the platform you're watching me on while that anointing is flowing. Do it right now.

Not only do you need to give even if it hurts, but you need to give right now. Why right now? Because you see the anointing is flowing. The anointing is flowing right now. Do you have any idea how many times I have heard Benny Hinn exploit people for money, the poor, the sick, the desperate, and the widows for their money to enrich himself, to buy his jets, to buy his fancy homes, to buy his fancy cars, to buy his fancy suits, ministry logo stitched with 24 karat gold thread.

Yeah, that's a thing. That's actually true. Do you have any idea how many times I've heard this? And it's not a thing of the past. He continues to do it, but you've got to do it right now. Do it right now with, ooh, the anointing.

I've never felt the anointing so strongly as I do right now. Ooh, the anointing, the anointing. No, that's not the anointing, but you got to do it right now while the anointing is flowing, you see. Because if you actually, you know why he does this?

Because he knows if you actually stop and think a little bit, you might not sow that seed. You might not give your money, even if it hurts. Because the last thing false teachers want you to do is to think.

That's the last thing they want you to do. So they cloak all of this stuff in this hyper-spiritual lingo, and God will say, oh, the anointing is flowing. So if you want a real harvest for that seed you're going to sow, then you need to do it right now when the anointing is flowing.

Because later, the anointing might not be flowing. And later, you might actually stop and think and think, you know, maybe I should keep my money because things are hard right now. Maybe I should give my money to my local church.

Oh no, no, no, don't do that, because the anointing isn't flowing yet right now at your local church. It's flowing with Benny Hinn. The only thing that's flowing is people's money straight into Benny Hinn's coffers.

You can go to our website, BennyHinn .org. You can text it right on your phone, BHM45777, and then expect the miracle. Expect it to happen because God will not fail you.

Expect a miracle because God will not fail you. He promises people miracles in exchange for money. And I am getting weary of seeing even some charismatics who should know better to continue to defend Benny Hinn and to continue to say that he's not a false prophet.

Dear friends, if Benny Hinn is not a false prophet, then the term has no meaning. He's still teaching the same thing he's always taught. He lied about what he taught about the nine-member Godhead. He lied about that.

He said it was no big deal. He just laughed it off. Everybody laughed, no big deal, forgot about it. That's a lie. And as far as him repenting of the prosperity gospel, he's still teaching the same thing.

The only thing he's changed is that he no longer gives, as best I can tell, a specific dollar amount. In other words, he doesn't say, give me 1 ,000 US dollars and God will heal you of cancer. But he still says, sow seed.

Even if it hurts, sow seed into my ministry. Give me money, God will give you a harvest.

Whatever you need.

If you're in debt, give Benny Hinn money. If you need healing, give Benny Hinn money. And he says that. He says this all the time. And to say that Benny Hinn has repented is to cheapen biblical repentance.

What True Repentance Would Require from Benny Hinn and Other False Teachers

If Benny Hinn was truly repentant, this is what it would look like. Benny Hinn, and fill in the blank with any other false teacher, Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyer, Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar, Jesse Duplantis, any of them, Joseph Prince, any of them.

They would come out and they would say,.

I've been lying to you. I've been lying to you.

All those thousands of times that I have told you what God has supposedly told me, God didn't tell me anything. I've been putting words in God's mouth that he did not say. I have been giving false prophecies.

All of the people that I've proclaimed to be healed on my healing crusade and my platforms, on my platforms and my healing crusade, they weren't healed. And I know they weren't healed. I've been lying to you.

I've been telling you to send me your money so God will give you a harvest. If you're poor, give me money. God will get you out of debt. God will fatten your bank account. God will heal you of cancer.

God will heal your sick children. God will give your children protection if you give me your money. This is standard fare amongst these people, dear ones. But if they were truly repentant, they would come out and they would admit all of that.

They would admit all of that. And then they would say this. And I now realize that because of my decades of deceiving people, teaching heresy, bringing reproach upon the name of Christ, because of my decades of this, I now realize that I am not biblically qualified to be in the ministry.

So I'm shutting my ministry down. I've brought enough reproach upon the name of Christ. I'm shutting it down. And I'm going to give every dime that the ministry has in liquid assets, hard assets. I'm going to sell those.

I'm going to give every dime the ministry has to doctrinally sound ministries and the doctrinally sound churches. And I'm going to find a good doctrinally sound church led by biblically qualified men.

And I'm no longer going to be behind the pulpit. I'm going to be in front of the pulpit, sitting in a pew and learning. Then, then we would be getting somewhere. That is what true repentance would look like.

Real repentance bears real tangible fruit. And anything short of what I just described is not repentance, is not repentance. Okay, dear ones, hope this has been helpful for you. And I hope not only has it shown that Benny Hinn is not repentant, which he obviously has not, but I also hope that it shows you that what true godly sorrow looks like and what biblical repentance truly looks like.

There's so much more I could have said, but that's, I suppose, enough for this video. And Benny Hinn, if by some chance you happen to be watching this video. I've said this before to you in other videos.

I don't hate you. I do hate what you're doing. I hate what you're doing because you have been exploiting people and lying to people for 40 years now. I hate what you're doing, but I don't hate you. And I want you, truly, genuinely want you to come to a place of true biblical repentance.

And I want you to embrace the true Christ. And I want you to be saved because right now you're not. There's no way you could possibly be saved. There's no way you could be indwelt by the Holy Spirit and continue to do the things that you're doing.

So come to Christ, trust the true Christ, truly repent. That's what I want for you. Okay, dear ones, thank you so much. Until our next time together, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all.