From the beginning the Church needed to give answers to those outside its walls, the unsaved, those who didn’t believe they were sinners. So they were in need of the Gospel. The church was to fulfill the great commission. this is called apologetics

But there were also challenges from within that needed to be addressed and weeded out this is called polemics . The modalists and the Gnostics came first inside the church. The word Gnostic is derived from the Greek, word "gnostikos.' or "gnosis a inner mystic knowledge revealed to the adherent. The Gnostics believe that 'gnosis', is a subjective knowledge of the divine.

One of the fundamental tenets ' of gnosticism declares that God is unknowable by man and can only communicate to him indirectly, through ' intermediaries. Today we can find examples of this in the evangelical Church through men who claim greater revelations as they are specially 'anointed' having a deeper ,a greater measure of the Spirit and understanding of the Bible. The Gnostics also placed a high value on Personal experiences as they were  mystically inclined.

These are only a few of the instances mentioned there are many more...

Hinn still operates his ministry from this basis, "Please, please, please, don't think [we're] here to repeat something you've heard for the last 50 years. ...If we quit giving you new revelations, we're dead" (TBN, December 9th 1990). Actually the stories get more bizarre along with the anointing getting more violent.

Several years before Benny Hinn said, "I could almost visibly see the Lord, and I could tell you what He was wearing." This has now escalated where he can see him…

When I talk to the Lord, He comes, … most times, I see Him wearing a blue, beautiful, almost like a - like a silkish looking garment. And under it would be a white garment. Sometimes I'd see Him wear white and a scarlet garment… You say, "Where do you see Him?" I don't know. I just see Him." "I've had individuals appear to me in my room. Not only angels."

Where does the bible ever say anyone saw the Lord when they pray except for special events such as Stevens stoning. Hinn describes God as if he has a changing wardrobe.

In 1989 the Lord told Hinn to ask for a healing ministry that would fill stadiums in America. "I can’t do it until you ask me. I said Lord if its in your plan why don’t you do it without me asking." Gods answer "Because my law is I can’t give till you ask, he bound himself to his word and promises." When he asks 7 months later the glory of God came. Besides the wrong theology in this conversation with God there is something we need to bring our attention to. He has at least two different stories about his launching of his healing ministry. Hinn seems to have duplicate and triplicate stories for just about everything in his life. And like the many other stories there are numerous contradictions.

He goes on to prove all this is true by saying," Jesus saw Moses and Elijah who came to talk to Him about His passion on the cross! Ladies and gentlemen, there's way more than you know about God! And the reason I'm telling you all this? The Lord said to me only a few days ago, He said, "You're - you're about to come into a new level. Get ready!" And I'm already feeling the rumblings in the heavenlies. Somebody is about to talk to me again." (Benny Hinn, Honolulu Crusade, February 28, 1997). So we can see Hinn depends on contact from the spiritual realm which is God forbids to be trafficked in.  To justify this by taking Jesus the Son of Gods encounter with the prophets on the mount of transfiguration is ludicrous. For it was Jesus along with the Father who had them appear to approve of his ministry and reveal who he was to his closest disciples. there really is no comparison.

 When I was a little boy, I saw the Lord in this dream. It was really so real, it was really a vision because when - when He appeared to me my body became electric just like electricity went through me and when I awoke that electricity was still on my body." (Benny Hinn, This Is Your Day, June 11, 1997)

Here Hinn shows the origin of his electric anointing from his visitations of this certain Jesus that he has seen before he was a Christian. I'm sorry but something is not kosher here!

Biblically visions had a purpose to give revelation that would be written in scripture, not to transfer power.

The word "vision" appears mostly in OT passages and  few in comparison in the New Testament.  The majority of these have to do with God giving direct revelation of Himself, of His plans and  prophecy. These visions were rare . These were written down for us in the Bible. A genuine vision from God is never associated with the occult or the dead.  A vision is not a message from the realm of the dead. Our God who is the Living God sends messages from heaven.  Hinn is again using a Biblical activity to prove the genius of its content. He is trying to influence his followers that his extra-biblical revelation is from God and they can experience this as well. This is too similar to Joseph Smith (who started the Mormons) and his Angel of light experiences and should make anyone who has the Holy Spirit and knows the word very uncomfortable.

Hinn relates another vision he had "I saw myself walk into a room and there stood Kathryn Kuhlman. And I've not seen Kathryn in a dream or a vision [in] years. I knew she had died and it was on the news that same morning. … And there she was standing in this room… And she said, 'Follow me.' … And I followed her to a second room. In that second room stood the lord. When the lord, uh-when-when I saw the lord, Kathryn disappeared. She was just gone ... And now the lord looked at me and said, 'Follow me.' And I followed him to a third room." (Ibid.)

Hinn is so infatuated with this woman of who he models his preaching and mannerisms after that he is seeing her along with Jesus. He conducts his meetings almost exactly like hers. Why change such an effective model if it works.

Hinn is practicing and promoting spiritism at best and at worst necromancy, secret knowledge communicated by someone who has died.  Direction is sought from the other side. However, the Bible reveals that the real source of the information can be demonic entities or evil spirits who impersonate the dead, not the dead themselves. Why? Because the dead are not allowed nor able to communicate with us.  It doesn't matter whether we are believers or not their is no advantage.

Jeremiah had the very same issues going on in his time 14:14 and 23:16: "And the lord said to me, the prophets prophesy lies in my name. 1 have not sent them, commanded them, nor spoken to them; they prophesy to you a false vision, divination, a worthless thing, and the deceit of their own heart."

"Thus says the Lord of hosts: Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They make you worthless; They speak a vision of their own heart, not from the mouth of the lord."

Aimee S. Mcpherson and Kathryn Kuhlmans bodies are dead and buried but they have reserved power, at least according to Hinn. He even frequents their graves. This is a Grave Deception.

He said, "One of the strangest experiences I had a few years ago [was] visiting Aimee's tomb in California... Friday I am gonna go and visit Kathryn Kuhlman's tomb. It's close by Aimee's ... I've been there once already and every so often 1 like to go and pay my respects 'cause this great woman of God has touched my life. And that grave, uh, where she's buried is closed, they built walls around it. You can't get in without a key and I'm one of the very few people who can get in. But I'll never forget when 1 saw Aimee's tomb. It's incredibly dramatic. She was such a lady that her tomb has seven-foot angels bowing on each side of her tomb … I felt a terrific anointing when 1 was there. 1 actually, hear this,' I trembled when I visited Aimee's tomb. I was shaking all over. God's power came all over me. ... I believe the anointing has lingered over Aimee's body.

Someone asked me how is it you can feel the anointing around a tomb? I have no idea man, but I sure felt it. Your gonna feel the anointing...I’ve heard of people healed when they visited their tomb... (  Double Portion Anointing, Part #3, Orlando Christian Center, April 7, 1991. From the series, Holy Ghost Invasion. TV# 309,)

Again Hinn's fascination with the dead influences his imagination. This is in reference to Elishas bones and a double portion .But scripture mentions nothing in  2 Kings 13 about some lingering power that can be touched "anointing." The real difference is the biblical story is about the resurrection from the dead  not some subjective feeling "anointing" that was transferred to someone.  Hinn has not raised the dead and neither are the corpses of Kuhlman or McPherson . Hinn knows enough to go to scripture to try and validate his wild imagination but it all fails when looked at carefully.

Do we get the anointing and healing from dead people? Let me ask you, who goes to cemeteries? If what he is saying is true, maybe we should all move to their cemetery and have church! The problem is, this is not an anointing from Jesus. Friend, you can’t even get the anointing from another person when they are alive, so how in the world would you receive it from them when they are dead? This is necromancy plain and simple.

Only those who are opposed to God and his word can promote their followers to spiritism and spiritualistic practices. Hinn has entered into a dangerous practice called necromancy which is divination  one divines by  consulting the dead. Lev. 19:31 'Give no regard to mediums and familiar spirits; do not seek after them, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God.

Deut 18:11 " one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead."  He calls all of these an abomination. Mediums, spiritists, necromancers are those who receive messages from the dead from visiting their graves touching dead bodies by either visions, signs or by any communication.

When King Saul's anointing was taken away he became desperate to hear from God, he received the death penalty from God for the practice of seeking information from a witch who called up the dead. Those who do not hear from God will always seek the occult as a ways to do so.  Those who are not word based will always seek the supernatural and most often mix it with occult techniques believing it is from God. those who follow after others who mislead them into spiritism will share in their punishment.

The "miracles" we can expect to see in greater numbers today from those whose ministries are devoted this are found as a warning in: 2 Thess. 2:9-10 "Even him who is coming after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved." The word is the truth, but unless you read it and understand it correctly, your not in the truth and you will be deceived by such dreamers as Hinn. There are numerous warnings in scripture about the climate in the last times.  I believe in the miraculous and the gifts of the Spirit, we shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bath water but neither do we drink the dirty bath water.