F4F | Costi Hinn Interview on the Diga Hernandez Copying of Benny Hinn's False Healing

Fighting for the Faith

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:14

Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseboro, I am your servant in Jesus Christ.

00:20

This is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God. So David Diga Hernandez is a rising star within the charismatic

00:30

Pentecostal movement. And I've noticed that he's doing the exact same things

00:37

I saw Benny Hinn doing back in the 80s and the 90s. And as a result of it,

00:44

I decided that I would invite somebody on who knows a thing or two about Benny Hinn and how healing services and stuff work.

00:52

And so I've invited Kosti Hinn on to Fighting for the Faith. Kosti, thank you for taking some time out of your busy schedule to meet with us today.

01:02

In our conversation before we hit the record button, I didn't realize that you and David Diga Hernandez actually know each other.

01:12

And so there's a whole element to this that I had no idea about.

01:18

So this is going to be an interesting conversation. So let me ask you straight up, do you believe that God heals?

01:28

Oh, for sure. Yeah, God does heal. Okay, so you don't believe that God has stopped healing, that God has ceased healing or anything like that?

01:38

No, absolutely not. I think we can pray and ask Him to heal, and He'll do it according to His will.

01:44

But I would say we absolutely believe that God can heal. All right. The reason I have to say that is because so many in the

01:51

Pentecostal movement have made this about, you're a cessationist, and they're continuationists, and stuff like this.

01:58

I always point out that, you know, as a confessional Lutheran, we're not cessationists. We believe the

02:03

Holy Spirit has been active in the Church for the entire history of the Church. And, you know, that doesn't mean that people have gifts of healing today or prophecy or things like this.

02:13

But what we're going to do is we're going to watch a few videos together, and I want to get your reactions to them and your insights.

02:22

Because as I was scrolling through my media feed, David Diga -Hernandez, who has almost two million subscribers on YouTube, almost two million,

02:33

I'm seeing this going, this is Benny Hinn 2 .0,

02:38

and Benny Hinn was Catherine Kuhlman 2 .0. So there's some stuff here, and I haven't seen stuff like this for a while taking place, and I'm surprised to see it.

02:51

And these practices, I actually consider them to be dangerous. So let's whirl up the desktop for the two of us.

02:58

And we're going to start partway through.

03:03

They've got a healing line going, and people coming up and declaring that they're healed.

03:09

And I want you to watch this with me and see what you think. What happened here,

03:23

Sergio? This is Linda. Last week, she had a fractured knee due to tendonitis, and she said there was a crystal in the knee.

03:30

So she came in with the brace. She couldn't bend her knee because her knee was fractured. She said she felt warmth come over that knee.

03:37

She can bend the knee. She's supposed to see the specialist, but she believes she's healed. I have the knee brace in my hand. That's a pretty big crowd.

03:47

You are great. You do miracles so great. I mean, come on,

03:55

Kosti. It can't be just... Just admit it, man. This woman was just healed by Jesus.

04:01

Isn't that what happened? Man, I'm... Yeah, I'm sorry. I was trying to just get the songs out of my head.

04:08

I can sing all those songs. I could probably imitate everything he's doing right now, too. Listen, this is classic.

04:16

You said it. You had Kathryn Kuhlman, and if you pull up her services, I know we don't have it right now, but if someone would...

04:22

Maybe you'd be the first to do this. You pull up a three -part screen and give us Kathryn and her crusades, give us

04:28

Uncle Benny, and give us David, and run them in order, and you'll hear a lot of the same rhetoric, the same service order, the same songs, the same flow, and all of it is designed to manipulate the crowd.

04:43

Even the guy that he has doing the healing line, my blessed father, my dad, who no longer does any of that and works with my uncle at all, he used to be that guy, though.

04:57

The hype man, you're on the mic, and you got the story, and you're holding up a knee brace, and then the person stomps around, and then they're,

05:05

Jesus, we give you praise. Give him praise. People clap. The crowd pans. You've got even the different types of camera work that's going on there, the over -the -shoulder with a little bit of diga in the shot.

05:16

Right up close on the stage, you've got the wide shot. Looking at the stage, you've got the crowd shot showing you, look, look at all the people.

05:24

Look at how amazing this is. Look at how real this is. You get terms now that we didn't have back then, because Gen Z, but you've heard of FOMO, fear of missing out.

05:34

Oh, wow. FOMO is real. You're trying to give people

05:39

FOMO. You're showing them these shots and this pace and this action, and they're going, man, we're missing out.

05:45

We should be there. All of that is smoke and mirrors. It's a house of cards. It's the same thing.

05:51

We'll get in trouble for saying that, but literally, this will be nothing new under the sun. We're going to go through the same cycle.

05:58

You'll only get grayer, and I will, too, but the same thing's going to happen, and now a whole new generation of guys are here.

06:06

I want to name a few names and then keep going, but you've got David Diga Hernandez is sort of the new

06:12

Benny Hinn, but also Jesus Image, which is Michael Cugliano, said Jessica Cugliano.

06:17

Jessica's my cousin, Uncle Benny's daughter, married Michael, and Michael's brother

06:23

Theo married my sister, and so all of this is very tied in. Michael and Jessica have

06:28

Jesus Image. They have massive services, massive school of ministry down there in Florida near the

06:35

Orlando area, and they have inherited a ton of the momentum, the money, the donors, all that, and then you've got

06:42

David Diga, who we can talk more about how I know him and how we go way back, but he got under my uncle in a very learning, kind of Methodist disciple type of way, and then you've got

06:54

Vladimir Savchuk, who is hitting people in mass. He just released a book on the

06:59

Holy Spirit literally like days within when I released a book.

07:04

I had no idea that any of them were releasing a book. I was like, oh, I've got a book coming out on the Holy Spirit.

07:09

Hopefully, it helps people, and then just boom, Vladimir has one come out, and they I think sold, they're selling like hundreds of thousands of books.

07:17

It's called Hosting the Holy Ghost, and you've got Isaiah Saldivar, who's your new school deliverance guy.

07:25

The new wave is here, and that's what people need to understand is it's not going to be really helpful at this point to go after.

07:34

You can, but like Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn, TD Jakes is sort of an old lineup, and I'm going, yeah, literally no one really cares that much.

07:44

It's Vladimir Savchuk, Isaiah Saldivar, David DeGioia Hernandez, Michael Todd. It's this new wave of guys, and this is super helpful, though, that you're bringing attention to this because it's nothing new, but if people aren't taught sound doctrine, and they're not reached a new generation all over again, they're going to get sucked into it, and we're all going to be going, are you serious?

08:06

How do you not see, and they just don't know. Yeah. A lot of people do not remember how controversial

08:13

Benny Hinn was back in the 90s regarding his healing line practices, and that there were several notable behind -the -scenes documentaries done to show that the people that were being claimed to have been healed were, in fact, not healed, and even the

08:34

Dateline expose that was done did a really good job of setting up how all of this was really purposely manipulated, and that the people who were brought up and claimed that they were being healed, no doctor had actually confirmed that they had been healed, and nobody followed up with them afterwards to get documentation that they were healed, and that many of the people who, especially those who came up with terminal illnesses, that they died shortly after they had been declared to be healed.

09:12

And so, coming back to this then, boy, I'm sorry for the PTSD, so when this woman's marching around and everyone's praising

09:22

Jesus, there's been no legitimate medical validation or verification that she has been healed.

09:30

No, and if you look at the little brace thing, it's a flimsy thing you can get from a

09:36

CVS or a Walgreens. People wear those all the time. I think I wore one for a little while in college when

09:42

I tweaked my knee from squats. I can still walk, run, jump, it's just a preventative thing that a lot of people do.

09:52

The ability for them to put on the show is remarkably easy.

09:58

I'm not trying to be cheeky or cocky or prideful when

10:03

I say, I could go do that right now. I'm being dead serious. I want people to understand that documentary by that guy, he's not even a believer, he's a pagan, but Miracles for Sale, if people remember that one.

10:16

You could teach anyone to do this. I just grew up in it, so we used to have fun imitating my uncle and pretending. But this stuff is easy, and look at his jacket, look at his outfit, look at the stage, look at the camera movement, look at the whole setup.

10:27

This is a show, and he's learned how to hone his craft. He did it in small -time churches.

10:34

David Diga Hernandez is an old buddy of mine. He was in the Praise Chapel movement up and down the

10:41

California coast. He would preach in all those churches, a lot of Spanish churches. I went to some of those.

10:48

I was with him. I preached in some youth groups for him. I went to one off of Paramount, I'll never forget it.

10:53

David and I used to hang. I went to Harbor House Cafe and hung out with him in Dana Point.

10:59

We were always around everyone. My brother -in -law loves him. He was a very humble, simple, sweet guy, seemed to love the

11:09

Lord, just wanted to really get it going in ministry. But he was itinerant, big time. The Praise Chapel denomination would have him preach at all their churches.

11:20

He was the golden boy. And as he honed that in, my uncle was in Orange County, so he got under my uncle's teaching.

11:29

In fact, when my uncle is repenting, the last repentance when he's in his studio and there's like gold everywhere and he's like, the

11:35

Holy Spirit is, I think he says something like, he is sick, he's really sick of it, or he's had enough, something like that.

11:42

And the initial response you're thinking is like, now the Holy Spirit's had enough? Like he didn't have enough 10 years ago?

11:47

But in the background of that video, Diga's there. He's in the background cheering.

11:54

And so he's in that whole circle and has done a great job copying my uncle exactly.

12:04

Very similar to how my uncle never met Kathryn Kuhlman, but got close to her ministry and then copied it.

12:10

Diga, he actually knows my uncle very well. He's interviewed him. He's had him on his program. But he's looked at him, similar to my uncle, looking at Kathryn Kuhlman and said,

12:19

I'm going to take this and mimic it. And that's what he's done.

12:25

He's killing the game. It's getting big. And I think he's getting on a lot of people's radar. But for the longest time, he's just Diga, this baby face guy who just was up and coming in the

12:36

Praise Chapel movement and now global. But you look at his YouTube channel at your own peril, potentially, and you'll see the names of the videos and the graphics and the way that he's doing it.

12:49

The anointing, the Holy Spirit, he's playing up that whole audience again. The people that are getting sucked into it are no different than the people who are largely untaught and very ignorant getting sucked into when my uncle used to say,

13:03

I've got this new video or new resource on the blood or on the anointing or on the

13:10

Holy Spirit. And these guys are absolutely swooning people, potentially bigger, faster than my uncle because of the

13:23

Internet. Yeah, I agree. So I wanted to kind of go back in time.

13:29

So the Messed Up Church, just a few days ago, as of the recording of this episode, released a video called

13:38

The Benny Hinn Documentary Archive They Don't Want You to Watch. And not that I think that Benny Hinn is like an ongoing major threat to the body of Christ because I'll be blunt, your uncle looks horrible.

13:53

He looks like he's not gonna be here in seven years. Same with Kenneth Copeland. I don't think he's gonna make it more than two or three himself.

14:01

And so the old guard is long of tooth, clearly aging. And it would be like me talking about the

14:09

Dodger team that I grew up with, Ron Say and Davey Lopes and Steve Garvey.

14:15

I could talk about these guys forever, but however, they're not the current lineup. So we have to kind of think about the current lineup.

14:23

But the reason I wanted to go back is because I wanted to show that if you watch this video, you can see that Diga is basically using the exact same template that was masterfully copied and put together by Benny Hinn, and he's not doing anything different.

14:45

I've seen all this stuff before. It's been a while since I've seen anyone audacious enough to try to pull things like this off.

14:55

But back in the 80s and 90s, this was all the rage. So I want to watch part of this with you.

15:01

And here we go. According to Pastor Benny, that power will soon lead to miracles.

15:08

I'm moving those links that have been crippled for all those years. So as part of each and every

15:13

Benny Hinn healing conference back in the day, he would actually kind of create the expectation by talking about Christ's healing power.

15:20

This is from a highlights tape we bought from the ministry's website. You're tired of all the pills you've taken and all the needles they put on your body and all the pain you've felt.

15:28

Well, I'm here to tell you, you will be healed tonight. After the preaching, there's the passing of the collection buttons.

15:35

And then comes the moment when Benny Hinn. I can't imagine how much money that came in on every night. That had to be huge.

15:42

Crazy amounts. OK. Makes his much anticipated announcement. God is speaking to him, he says, revealing a multitude of miracles, actual healings now taking place throughout the arena.

15:53

Some of them very specific. There's a young man named George. George has HIV. But my brother

15:59

George from Lagos is building it out for everybody. At all of the evening crusades we attended, it was about 10 p .m.

16:06

when he announced God was speaking to him. Wow. Benny Hinn's ministry says that in order to verify the miraculous healings that have taken place.

16:16

Yeah, that guy in the wheelchair doesn't look like he's been healed. I'm just saying, you know. Nope. Screens those who claim they've been healed before they get up on stage.

16:26

First, Hinn staff members talk to the people who get in line. This screener is even a doctor, and he evidently thinks this woman is a good candidate.

16:33

That's Dr. Colbert. That's Don Colbert. And he. So I grew up with his son. We know him really well. He went to Oral Roberts University, like the kind of guy on the payroll.

16:43

He's Uncle Benny's actually personal doctor for a long time. And yeah, if he's verifying healings, you're you're like my my best friend verifying whatever

16:55

I want him to. Don't you need like medical equipment and stuff like that to verify certain healings?

17:02

I'm just saying, you know, OK, no, in those days it was an O .R .U.

17:07

education and a nice jacket. Oh, wow. That's her healing up on the platform with Pastor Benny. The people selected by the screeners are then introduced to Benny Hinn and the capacity crowd.

17:24

No pain. No pain. How long did you have the pain for? Those who've been healed and others who attend the service are given a special.

17:32

I want to talk about that. What is that? And so he touches people.

17:38

They just fall over. What is that? Well, they claim that it's falling under the power of God or being slain in the spirit.

17:45

We never even use the phrase slaying in the spirit. We always said falling under the power. And what we meant was you're falling under the power of God.

17:53

And he's touching them like a point of contact, similar to what people will twist, you know, with the

17:59

Apostle Paul and the handkerchiefs or laying hands. One of the biggest misunderstood things in that whole movement is laying on of hands.

18:08

And so, like we would say in the pastoral epistles, when Paul tells to lay hands on no man suddenly, he's basically saying, don't endorse someone for ministry.

18:18

Don't endorse them and don't lay hands on them as an act of endorsement. We would say, you know, all of the laying on of hands was related to what's happening right there.

18:27

And you'd lay hands on people and they'd fall. They're just falling under the power of God. He's touching them. He's filling them, refreshing them.

18:34

And so every single person is falling for some reason. Some people I've talked to after they've been saved say they felt darkness.

18:43

They felt like something pushed them down and held them down, which is definitely a demonic experience.

18:48

Other people have said, you know, they fell because they thought they needed to fall. That's what you're supposed to do. They just thought that's what you do and that's part of it.

18:55

Other people fell because they wanted to experience God. They thought, I need to fall in order to get it.

19:00

And I think other people totally caught up in the euphoria of it, overwhelmed with emotion.

19:06

I experienced that before, where your hands are raised and you're waiting in the healing line.

19:11

He would say, young people, get up here if you want the anointing. Sometimes at the end of crusades, not just healing, but he's going to say, the

19:18

Holy Spirit's going to fill you. David Diga was in many of those. I was.

19:24

It's all next generation guys who are coming down to get filled and to become like him and to have greater anointing.

19:29

And so you're waiting for him to pray for you and you're crying, you're getting all worked up and you can sense he's getting closer. Your eyes are closed.

19:35

He lays hands on him, go fire on you and you just collapse and you're, you're bawling your eyes out. It's just like Bethel.

19:41

You've seen right? How they, they'll have kids. They have, they have some of these videos on YouTube where kids are just bawling their eyes out for no reason and they're, they're laying hands on them and speaking in tongues over them.

19:54

It is the dark side to all of this. And it's either like a sensationalistic kind of hypnotism or it's certainly possible that a lot of it's demonic as people are under a diluting influence.

20:10

Yeah. Because I've noticed that Benny doesn't do a good job of rightly handling scripture and he seems to be a greedy, greedy money grubber who twists up biblical texts with the purpose of getting lots of seed offerings.

20:22

And I'm noticing something similar about Diga is that he's not capable of rightly handling biblical texts himself.

20:30

So here's the question I have for you. I know you're a pastor now, Kosti. At your church, do you have healing lines and do you touch people and do they fall over at your church?

20:42

No, they don't. I preach the word and so the Bible's out like in these places, but you know,

20:47

I'll pray for, pray for people. If we have a, we have a prayer team. You can come up and talk to someone and get prayed for and people will counsel you.

20:56

And like, like most churches, I'm available right there to encourage folks after if they have questions.

21:01

But no, there's no, no formal healing line or any type of, I don't even know what,

21:07

I don't even know what that would do. People would, my church would empty in a week.

21:12

They expect, they expect the truth. Right. So this, this kind of leads to my next thing is that you'll note that you've got an entire stadium of people with some kind of spiritual phenomena taking place and they are making no effort to test, to see with a source of what this phenomena is.

21:32

You know, in first John chapter four, we have an actual command of the Holy Spirit that says, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.

21:43

For many false prophets have gone out into the world. That's what it says in first John four one.

21:48

And so I look at something like this and I see Benny Hinn touching people and them falling over and Diga does the same thing.

21:57

And I immediately say, man, who is this pointing to? Is this pointing to Jesus or is this pointing to Hinn or is it pointing to Diga?

22:05

Because this creates some kind of a, of a question that now comes up.

22:10

Number one, is this real? Two, is this from God? And why would God be giving this particular power to this particular person who can't seem to rightly handle a biblical text?

22:21

It doesn't make any sense. Yeah. It's, they're just one generation after another, just taking the baton and in a similar way, just so people, not to oversimplify all of the complexities, because there are some, but in general, in a similar way to where we all want to follow in the footsteps of faithful men who rightly deliver the truth to people through the word of God.

22:47

And that, that has a ripple effect generation to generation. In the same way, Satan is smart.

22:53

He will use false teachers to produce more false teachers, to produce more false teachers. And in the line of, of, of heresy and blasphemy, you'll have this whole new wave and they will use the same mediums.

23:06

They'll use media. That's why I'm so glad you do what you do. We do a lot of that for the gospel.

23:12

We have a media, we put out videos. It's not, you know, we're not kind of playing checkers.

23:19

It's chess. The false teachers are everywhere online. They're using media, they're using high quality media, they're using a lot of marketing tactics.

23:27

And so, yeah, what we're seeing is a whole new generation, but the same old deception.

23:33

Okay. Let's keep going here because I think this is important. Blessing by Pastor Benny, with his own personal touch, and whether he blows, flicks, or waves his hand, the faithful are strewn across the floor like bowling pins.

23:53

So what exactly is at work here? He would pray for them. They'd fall down. They'd fall backwards. He'd blow on them. They'd fall over. All right.

23:58

I'm going to jump ahead a little bit. I'm going to focus more on the healing at the moment here. Let's, let's jump ahead just a little bit.

24:04

But surely as God is God, your legs will work again, and your body will be healed again, and your lungs will breathe again, and your eyes will see again.

24:13

At all of his live crusades, Benny Hinn proclaims a breathtaking litany of miraculous healing. Pastor Benny has said that everyone who gets up on his...

24:21

Look at that. A woman raising her legs and marching around, claiming that she's been healed. That looks familiar.

24:28

Okay. The platform has been checked by a doctor. His ministry also claims it has a follow -up process with people afterwards that it describes as exhaustive and thorough, and that medical information it collects is reviewed first by a nurse, then by a physician.

24:40

So we want to find out how that process works and which of those claims of miracles actually can be verified.

24:47

We thought a good place to start would be with the ministry itself. Last year, we asked Benny Hinn to help us confirm the 56 healings we counted at just one of his crusades, the one in Las Vegas.

24:57

That little boy is, that's a famous thing, because he wasn't healed.

25:03

And as soon as God healed me, I could see better. This is a pretty famous clip. Now, Kozar does a good job here, pointing out that this kid was not healed.

25:12

Because this boy went on to admit that he wasn't really healed at all, and as an adult he's spoken out against Benny Hinn. Here's a much more recent news program where he was featured.

25:19

Jesus. You can see VandenGulk's story posted on a publicly available YouTube video. When he was just nine years old, he was supposedly healed by Hinn during a service in Las Vegas.

25:29

VandenGulk is legally blind. As soon as God healed me, I could see better. He told me that everything was going to be fine, that my vision would be 20 -20, if not better.

25:40

So I was just like, I'm cured. And then, like I said, a couple hours later, it was just like, now I can't see the TV. What's wrong?

25:45

Not only was VandenGulk not healed. Let your hands keep praying to the Holy Ghost. The family says the church raised money for William, which they never saw.

25:52

They gave us the runaround of, we're not the people that handled that. Call this number. Oh, sorry, let me transfer you to this department.

25:59

This is the second time the IRS has looked into Hinn, who's built a multi -million dollar empire in his healing ministries.

26:05

VandenGulk tells us from his home in Nevada what he went through upset him for years. He abused people's faiths.

26:10

We'll now wait to learn why Hinn is under the federal scope this time. By the time we asked, many of those miracles had already been broadcast around the world on his

26:18

TV show, including the woman who Benny Hinn said had grown a new lung, right there on stage. It feels like there was something in there, like somebody was reaching in, in my heart, in my lung.

26:30

I want you to go back to your earthly doctor. I'm going to give you an x -ray. I want to hear about it.

26:37

I want a full story. But if Hinn knows the full story about who was healed in Las Vegas, he's not sharing it with us.

26:44

In a letter from its lawyer, the ministry refused to provide proof of any of those healings to dateline. So since the ministry wouldn't give us any information, we did some checking of our own, about Las Vegas and other reported healings.

26:56

Remember this woman we met in Las Vegas, who said she'd been cured of lung cancer? She had cancer. The lung. Oh, she don't have it now.

27:03

With our hidden camera, we were able to go backstage to her follow -up interview. Now, what happened tonight that makes you feel like that's true?

27:10

She did speak to a Hinn staff member, but it's hard to know how, from this conversation alone, he could have known whether she was cured of cancer, or even if she'd had it in the first place.

27:18

Our primary tumor can be one cell. She was asked a few questions, but it didn't appear to us that there was any medical examination.

27:24

Keep trusting God. Followed up with your physician. Thank you so much. Thank you. The Lord bless you all.

27:29

Unfortunately, there is one thing we were able to determine about this woman without the ministry's help. She died two and a half months after the crusade.

27:36

The cause was lung cancer. I mean, these are common stories.

27:44

And Katherine Kuhlman had a doctor follow her around, actually wrote a book about it. And he documented the same things.

27:52

People claiming in the euphoria of the moment that they were healed, when in fact they weren't. Which leads to the question then, is it ethical to parade these people on stage during kind of an emotional euphoric service with music designed to kind of create the moment and the feeling of the atmosphere and all this kind of stuff.

28:15

And for them to be paraded up and told that they've been healed, is that ethical?

28:22

No, they should just, if you want to pray for people to be healed, just pray for them like a normal elder.

28:30

Pray for your people and ask the Lord to heal them and trust him with his will.

28:35

And if someone gets healed, they get healed. If they don't, they don't. But you can't make a show of this stuff.

28:41

I think that would be the appeal I would make to that whole movement that would accuse us of believing

28:49

God doesn't heal and grieving the Holy Spirit and we're quenching him and all of these just very bad kind of straw man arguments is great.

28:59

You want to pray for the sick? You know, I've had one family member, younger, told me, Kosti, I'm going to believe

29:05

God. No one can stop me. I'm going to believe God for healing and I want to have faith that can move mountains.

29:10

I'm like, yeah, high five, fist bump, right on, me too. I do. Stop making a show of your healing parade and just preach the word, pray for the people, love them well, shepherd their souls, do good evangelism.

29:26

Let's go. I mean, yeah, and get on with it. But to make a show of it, they don't see it that way.

29:33

They see this as we are like Jesus. We are preaching and healing and casting out devils, you know, and then we're going to show people that and none of it is legitimate and if it was, it'd be undeniable.

29:47

Even Jesus's ministry, one of the most fascinating things to think about, the Pharisees never really denied the authenticity of the healings, did they?

29:58

They actually just got mad that he did it on the Sabbath. And they got angry that he would forgive sins.

30:06

Who does this guy think he is? They never said, oh, that's a fake limb, that's a fake dead person, that's a fake cure of leprosy.

30:14

Come on. It was real. They even went so far as to not only not deny Jesus performed the miracles, but attribute the miracles to be alizable.

30:23

Yes, the devil's doing it. The devil's healing them. All right. But they're real. And that's the whole thing with this, is it's not real.

30:31

And then the accusation comes just as quick, oh, so typical guys, you know,

30:37

God does nothing. Nobody said that at all. But people just aren't discerning.

30:43

Many are, I should say, many are not discerning. But if you have heaven's view on this,

30:51

I think you would see mass amounts of the Lord's sheep coming home, being brought to truth through your ministry,

30:59

Steve Kozar, Justin Peters, faithful churches. It's not just the online ministries, just faithful pastors getting after it, preaching the word, evangelizing the lost.

31:09

I think that if you saw heaven's view, the right side is winning.

31:16

But unfortunately, this is noisy and wide is the way that leads to destruction. We're seeing that.

31:22

Yep. So I wanted to show you earlier in the video, and I wanted to kind of show you, give an example first.

31:29

Earlier in the video, you have Diga just legitimately preparing what to expect.

31:39

And I would note, this is actually part of how hypnosis works. You prep people ahead of time by telling them what to expect.

31:47

Listen to this. This is earlier in the video before the healing line begins. Jesus, we look to you now.

31:54

Glorious one, great eye. It's like the same synth playing from Benny Hinn's. Playing the same chord.

32:03

Chris, I can't hear it without laughing because right now it's bad acting, but it's getting better.

32:13

That's what concerns me. It's bad acting that keeps getting better. All right, keep going.

32:19

I am, I am, Prince of Peace, Alpha and Omega. We turn our eyes to you, we turn our hearts to you.

32:32

See him now, Church, seated at the right hand of the Father in power and glory.

32:39

That was a Kathryn Kuhlman move. I am not making that up. It's a mixture. Yeah. So my quick, quick side note,

32:47

I used to drive for my uncle as well when I assisted him and I would drive. Mondays, like a day like today, it's

32:52

Monday when we record this, Monday was Beverly Hills Day. We'd go shopping and I would drive his G -Wagon

32:57

Benz, you know, down to Wilshire and Beverly and all that in Rodeo.

33:03

And we would listen. He had his media team take old Kathryn Kuhlman sermons, all of them, and put them on—it was

33:10

MP3 back then—put them on MP3 in his Benz. And we would listen to Kathryn Kuhlman the whole way from Dana Point in Orange County all the way to Beverly Hills, which some days was just a solid hour.

33:22

Yeah. And we would listen to her. And I kid you not, looking back now,

33:28

I think he, like a baseball player or an athlete like Steph Curry still working on his three, a preacher like we all are, we're always honing the craft.

33:40

Yeah. I think he was constantly honing the craft, listening to Kathryn Kuhlman, picking up those cues.

33:48

David, no different. Same thing. Just honing the craft. I mean, I've seen this move.

33:54

I'll just back this up just a little bit. This move. I've seen Kathryn Kuhlman do this several times. See it at the right hand of the

34:00

Father. Look at that. Look at that. Totally. And the swing in the theater.

34:06

Hey, if I shaved my face and put on one of those Nero collars, I bet you I could give you some of the best footage you've ever had doing that.

34:14

So could a whole generation of guys that grew up in this. It is easy to copy, but it's hard to spot.

34:21

This is straight up manipulation. This is straight up. Power and glory. Eyes of fire.

34:31

Piercing your very soul with the love of God. When he speaks, it's as the sound of many waters.

34:40

Lightning flashes before him. And through his hands you feel...

34:46

What was that? Did you see the spin? Yes. Like, who is that?

34:53

That's my uncle TNT. Watch the spin one more time. And only needs a choir.

35:01

That's all you need. He's not quite that big yet. Almost. He's almost there. It will be.

35:07

Through his hands you feel currents of power flowing. He's the very same

35:13

Jesus who walked the shores of Galilee. Through his hands you feel currents of power flowing. Not familiar with that biblical text.

35:20

So he's setting the expectation here. Yeah, that's the suggestive. Yep. He's the very same

35:27

Jesus who opened the eyes of the blind. He's the very same Jesus who opened the ears of the deaf.

35:35

Yeah, those are Benny Hinn moves there for sure. Yeah, and you know the song in the background, obviously you've done this long enough, and it's just the same minor keys and hitting it.

35:46

He's got the pad and the whole deal. Yep. He cleansed the leper.

35:52

He healed the lame. He raised the dead. He delivered the captive. And he stands before you now.

35:59

He stands before you now. Look at that. Oh, look at that shot though. Look at the camera shot. Yeah.

36:04

It's got light that's hitting him just right. It's theatrical, but then just enough you look, you're in awe, like wow, and then quick fade now, full crowd.

36:13

He's not rejecting you. He's accepting you. If you'll only reach back in faith now, only believe.

36:20

All things are possible, only believe. All things are possible, only believe.

36:31

All right, so that's the big setup. And then we saw the beginning of This Miracle, and I want to walk you through at least one more.

36:42

So here this woman, there it is, pushes her back.

36:48

It's the same thing. It is Benny Hinn 2 .0.

36:55

And the song too. For you are great. You do miracles so great. It's the same lineup of songs.

37:02

The only thing he's done, and I'll give Diga credit, you see the girl behind him, is she in a jersey playing the saxophone?

37:10

Yeah, yeah. She's in a jersey. Yeah. Yeah. We've just got the cool factor now so that Gen Z is super swooped into it.

37:19

People are like, this is awesome. It's just the rebrand of, this is the good version.

37:25

But when John MacArthur, when they just renovated the burgundy carpet, and now it's dark. They went from 1975 to 2025.

37:35

It's a renovation. All they've done is take the old sort of vibe.

37:41

And by the way, these venues, like this one, I don't know where he is. You could find out. But this is in California.

37:49

These will be anywhere from the Anaheim Convention Center or the Disneyland Hotel. Whatever, the

37:57

California. It'll be large ballrooms that can fit maybe 2 ,000, 3 ,000 people.

38:04

This is going to get big. Just wait. Yeah. He's going to be doing stadiums soon.

38:10

All right. One more healing. One more healing. He said in April, five months ago, he was riding his e -bike to work and he got hit by a car.

38:17

He said his knees have been in tremendous pain. He's been seeing specialists, going to therapy, trying to get his knees back.

38:22

He's had constant inflammation, constant pain. He said that during the worship in the prayer, he felt the power of the

38:28

Holy Spirit come upon him, a warmth go through him. And he said the pain is completely gone. Five months ago, though, is when he got hit by the e -bike.

38:39

Five months. So did we just witness a miracle here?

38:46

Or is this guy being, has he been validated as truly being healed?

38:53

You know, Uncle Benny did all of this stuff for decades. It sounds awesome though, because he got hit by an e -bike.

39:01

It's very modern. The pain's gone. He's going to jump up and down. And then they're doing, just before you even have time to try to criticize or think, they're going to go up a key.

39:10

And I heard it just barely start, but it'll be the song where they go, holy, holy.

39:17

And everyone will sing. And no one's really thinking like discernment. They're all just like singing the song that Judy Jacobs used to sing for my uncle with, you know,

39:24

Donnie McClurkin and Alvin Slaughter and the choir. So you've got just a great show.

39:31

There's no time to think about what's real or not. Yeah. In fact, I think it's like, everything's designed to make it so you can't think.

39:38

You know, it's too quick. Watch the switch. Even as a catcher.

39:48

Wow. So yeah, you got to be ready. So is there any reason why we should believe that Diga is operating under the power of the

39:59

Holy Spirit and that he has a healing anointing? And that God wants us to be listening to guys like this and praising

40:06

God for these miracles? Or are these people just being taken advantage of for huge amounts of money?

40:12

The latter. And he's an actor, really, and a opportunist who did a good job coming up and under and honing his craft.

40:22

He was itinerant already with the Praise Chapel denomination. He was itinerant, trying to be up and coming, trying to be somebody, trying to get bigger, trying to do more.

40:32

And he literally saw an opportunity to copy, and he did. And he has killed it.

40:38

And his teaching, you'll just see, it'll continue to be remakes over and over and over of my uncle's stuff,

40:45

Catherine Coleman, and that whole world. David's also very smart. I'll give him credit here, too.

40:51

He has really avoided the Bethel orbit and some of that, not completely, but in the sense that he's doing his own thing.

41:00

He is very, very much like my uncle in that way. He's individualistic. He's creating his own empire, and he's not worried about a lot of...

41:14

I guess I should say he's found his niche, and he's gone Benny Hinn, whereas other guys have tried to be cool and more relevant, get in the

41:24

Bethel circles and try to play the both worlds. You've got your Michael Tods that really have found his...

41:29

He's got... It's T .D. Jakes on steroids. I don't know. Pick your biggest prosperity preacher.

41:35

He went Tulsa, Oklahoma, too. So you just have a Word of Faith hub and people ripe for the picking that are two, three generations deep in the

41:43

Word of Faith movement. But the new wave is here. I want to put some time into this.

41:51

I want to do some videos. I want to do some podcasts on it, for sure. But man, Chris, I pastor a church.

41:59

There's things going on. I'm writing a book on God's will. I'm so glad that you're doing what you do, and I'm glad that hopefully, it sounds like you and Steve and some of the other guys are getting on this first and sort of being a tip of the spear, as you have been,

42:15

I think, for years. I remember when I was first saved. I looked up stuff online, and there you were.

42:22

There Steve was. It was like the pirate Christian stuff. It was fighting for the faith. It was the Messed Up Church blog.

42:28

I was like, who are these guys? And where has this always been? And Justin Peters and all of that. So I think it's time to turn the page and also go to battle again.

42:40

It's time to deal with some of this. And it's Bethel 2 .0, and it's the new wave.

42:47

I think it's Benny or Catherine 3 .0. I don't even know what to call it, but it's here. Indeed.

42:53

Thank you for taking your time to come on and give us your insights and kind of deconstruct what it is that we're watching there.

43:01

I consider Diga to be one of the most dangerous fellows on the planet at the moment, and he's only going to get more dangerous.

43:08

I think it's just a matter of time before he gets his own private jets and is jetting around the world and doing his own thing.

43:15

And before long, there'll be a Dateline expose about the people who haven't been healed at his services, because he's clearly following that template and is hellbent on making a show out of healing rather than actually praying for people that God would heal them.

43:36

Keep up the great work, brother. We need you. I'm grateful for you. Thank you, Kosti. All right, let me sign off, and we'll chat for a few more minutes.

43:44

So if you found this episode of Fighting for the Faith to be helpful, all the information on how you can share the video is down below in the description.

43:52

And until next time, may God bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and his vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.

43:59

Amen. So nice to see that you've made it to the end. Before you inevitably click on another video to continue binging our glorious content, you should know about some of our other offerings.

44:12

First off, some of you may know that our pirate captain is also the pastor of Kongsvinger Lutheran Church out in Oslo, Minnesota.

44:19

The editor that I totally don't have locked in my basement produces audio and video versions of Kongsvinger sermons and Sunday schools weekly.

44:27

So go check out Kongsvingerchurch .org to see all of our offerings. Now to address some of the frequently asked questions we get in the comments.

44:36

One, the Bible and video editing software we use are named and linked in the description down below.

44:44

Two, if you wish to donate to us directly so we can keep the lights on, go check out www .piratechristian

44:51

.com and hit the crew tab. We don't promise miraculous healings or a double increase in your finances, but what we do promise is more quality discernment from our studio into your ear holes.

45:06

And three, how do you tie up with boxing gloves? Okay, who's the wiseacre who put this in here?