Quote from Hank Hanegraaff - Let's Discuss

[New_Wineskin]

So, he is quick to point out our warts and has extended his diatribes to any group outside his own—including P/C’s and WOF’ers.

... , although the Hankster is reluctant to turn the spotlight on his own group (sect) or to dig through their garbage. ​

The same as with most groups that I have heard . Which is interesting in that sooo many say that they are interested in only the truth and that christianity is about truth . But , when it is sooo improtant to believe the truth and have believed certain things for a looong time , I think people are afraid that , if they actually admit that certain things might be wrong , then *many* things that they believe have been wrong . They are afraid of what little has been true - if any . Better to be ignorant than find out all has been in vain .

Our immediate reaction to criticism, either of ourselves or our group, tends to send us into self-defense mode and we start rejecting every criticism that is made and justifying every flaw that is pointed out of us. And, in the process, we may miss the correction God is sending to us. Sometimes, when judgment does not begin at the house of God, He uses Philistines to bring correction to us.

So, maybe WOF needs to listen instead of going into immediate defensive posture. Seeing yourself through others’ eyes is not always a bad thing.​

~Jim

Good points !

 

[JimB]

So I guess you wouldn't mind if someone else aired your dirty laundry to make a point about what vineyard could learn from HH's criticism?

Nah, I don’t care what you say about the Vineyard. I’ve heard worse from worse than you. But I may ask you to document whatever you say so I can see it for myself—and whatever you may drag out of the dirty clothes hamper (if that’s where you like to dig) it will not reflect our local Vineyard and it does not reflect this particular Vineyard guy.

~Jim

Integrity has no need of rules.​

 

[Always in His Presence]

and whatever you may drag out of the dirty clothes hamper (if that’s where you like to dig) it will not reflect our local Vineyard and it does not reflect this particular Vineyard guy.

Good and valid words!

Please remember them the next time you paint with that big brush you have

and whatever you may drag out of the dirty clothes hamper (if that’s where you like to dig) it will not reflect our local Word of Faith and it does not reflect this particular Word of Faith guy.

Yeah, definitely good words to remember. Thankyou! As soon as I can get it to take - this is my new sig:

Please remember not all Word of Faith ministers are the same, and whatever you may drag out of the dirty clothes hamper (if that’s where you like to dig) it will not reflect our local Word of Faith and it does not reflect this particular Word of Faith guy.

 

[charityagape]

Nah, I don’t care what you say about the Vineyard. I’ve heard worse from worse than you. But I may ask you to document whatever you say so I can see it for myself—and whatever you may drag out of the dirty clothes hamper (if that’s where you like to dig) it will not reflect our local Vineyard and it does not reflect this particular Vineyard guy.


=======================

Oh no you misunderstand, I don't want to personally go digging in your dirty laundry, I don't want to dig in anybodies dirty laundry, but since you think its okay for HH to spout the nonsense he does and we should learn from the criticism, I wonder if you would feel the same way about the things he says about vineyard.

Except you've already said you don't want to talk about it or well you introduced the cliched dirty laundry bit.


Personally you're the only thing I know about vineyard and I've never said a single critical thing about the denomination or organization or whatever it is.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

What is the alternative, Oscarr—blindly accepting everything that is laid on our plate? I have a bit of a problem with this accept-everything-judge nothing approach to Christianity. That’s a formula for the gullible, not the discerning.

Aren’t we told: Test all things; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil (1 Thess.5.21-22).

To call obeying that clear instruction as “having a problem with knowing the will of God in his life and ministry” is a bit out of bounds, don’t you think?

~Jim

It is your disposition, not your position that makes you happy (or unhappy).​

Of course that is the other extreme. It is interesting how we swing from one extreme to the other. I think that as we fellowship with God more and more, we develop a sensitivity in the Spirit to pick the meat from the bones. Things are not black and white. If they were, would we need to ask God for wisdom? It's like the wheat and the tares. Whatever Christian system we consider, it has good and bad points. When we swing from one extreme to the other, we tend to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Perhaps the best way is somewhere in the middle.

There are a lot of ideas coming across my field of vision where I would poke them with a long sharp stick ready to run away. I think that a naive fool would accept everything as being correct without testing it first. But to be too cynical when something might be 75% good might be a mistake as well.

 

[Atlantians]

The most interesting thing about this thread:
Hypocricy.
Everyone against Hank on this thread are bitterly attacking him, insulting him, judging him, and criticizing him, for bitterly attacking, insulting, judging, and criticizing other people!

Half the point of me being in this thread was this post I am posting.

After letting all this go on, and trying to provoke discussion to see how people will react, I am now ready to show this.

All of you are doing exactly what you reject Hank for doing!

You are speaking against him in the same way you accuse him of speaking against others!

You have called him and criticized him and accused him of being: A spiritual has-been, a black cload, an accuser of the bretheren, ect. ect. ect.

Food for thought.

Well, this started off as a nice civil thread. All it took was one rabid anti-wofer to make it degenerate into a nasty attack. Thanks Atlantians and a few others for that. Oh, and thank YOU Jim for the usual hypocrasies.

I love the personal attack and being called a diseased animal.
We were not the ones who brought up the issue, and I have been civil.
I ask you to show one example otherwise.


Now, about Hank, I generally find his answers and views reasoned and thought out, as well as well argued.

I have rarely heard him really criticize anyone. On occassion he will go after certain persons or groups, his reasons being bad theology in his eyes or bad doctrine.

Well what is his job? To answer questions in his researched oppinion. They are opipnions though.

He has been an equiping point in my life to stand in faith,
so he is doing his job.

Now, how he may go after people in the faith is not great at least in manner.

But ultimately: Is he right? Are these doctrines wrong?
These are questions he should be raising in those who adhere to these doctrines.

Now, I want to seee quotes of his, evidence of all the horrible things he has said about WoF.
And why they are so terrible.

Thank you.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

There is no such thing as the perfect church. All churches and organisations have warts and pimples on it. We must remember that the purpose of the church was to be a place of fellowship for Christians, and to serve as a witness for Christ to unbelievers. The early church functioned best when it was in people's homes and had no special buildings or organised clergy.

Trouble is that the church has now become formalised, and people have set up temples for 'worship' as some sort of replica of the Jewish Temple. Even the Pentecostal/ Charismatic movement have formalised the faith and have their own temples. There is a great little book called 'The Gospel Blimp'. The blimp started as a good idea for spreading the gospel, but after a while it became the focus for everything and every had to serve the blimp which took centre stage. Of course, the ministry failed utterly. This is what has happened to the church. The church is a means to an end. Trouble is, in so many areas, the church has become the end, and people believe that God lives in it.

They forget that the temple has changed from being a building, to being the believer in Christ who is now the temple of the Holy Spirit.

I discovered the presence of God in the most real way in the middle of a golf course, away from any man made church. I discovered that He does not care much about our denominations or churches. He cares about us as individuals.

My toilet has been a place where I have received some great insights as I have meditated there on things spiritual. It is a great place to get alone with God, especially in a busy household. I find that God is just as much present there as anywhere else. Actually the toilet is the great leveller of proud people who think they are somebody. We all have to go there, and when someone gets all uppity with me, I imagine them sitting on the 'throne' and this brings things into their proper perspective for me.

It is interesting that when Paul talked about people staying away from other Christians, he concentrated on the fellowship side of things. He saw the Christian meeting as a place of informal fellowship where every believer had something in the Spirit to share with the others.

So any formal structure is flawed right from the start. The Scripture says that believers will worship God in spirit and in truth. This is worship from the heart. I have had wonderful times of worship in the middle of the golf course in the dead of night, and on a lonely beach. Some of my deepest revelations of God's love have been given to me there - far deeper than in any church I have ever been to.

My view is that a great earthquake could come and destroy every church building in town, and it would not make one jot of difference to God and how Christians can worship Him. Actually, having something like that happening would do us all a great favour spiritually. It would make us realise where true worship comes from.

The same goes for ministries. Paul challenged believers on this point - he said, "Who is Paul? Who is Peter? Who is Apollos? merely men who have enhanced your faith in God." This is the point of Christian ministry. It's purpose is to increase the faith of believers. If it achieves that in believers then it is successful. I don't recall any hard and fast manual for Christian preachers to achieve the purpose of ministry. There are all sorts of ways to increase the believers' faith.

Therefore, I say, "Who is Benny Hinn, Oral Roberts, Derek Prince, Hank Gadooereywhatsitgraaf, Your favourite preacher, the preacher you most dislike? Merely men who have been called of God to increase the faith of believers. If groups of believers have their faith enhanced by listening to the ministry of any of these preachers then they have achieved the purpose for which the Holy Spirit set them up. We might not agree with them or their methods, but so what? Ok, our faith might not be inspired by them, but if another group of believers are inspired, then who are we to criticise them?

I think that we put big name preachers up on a pedestal and then have unrealistic expectations of them. Then we debunk them when they do not measure up to our expectations. But who is there who will measure up? Every man or woman is imperfect. Perfection is not the most important qualification for a ministry that inspires faith in believers. The Scripture says that we have the treasure in earthen vessels.

Even the preacher you most admire, or idolise, if you imagine him making love to his wife, or sitting on the toilet, then you will realise that no one is any different to you or me. It is not the manner of the person, whether he or she be as attractive as a Greek god, or is old, fat and bald like me; it is the Holy Spirit speaking the Word of God through the person who inspires faith. The person may frame the words, but it is God who does the real speaking through a successful ministry.

 

[Simon_Templar]

so many things to respond to.

In general, I think much of protestant doctrine and theology is damaged by having a deficient understanding of what the Church is (ecclesiology for those who like fancy terminology)

There is a tendancy, which I realized in myself and I think it is common among protestants and thus among pentecostals and WoF, to interpet everything in scripture that refers to the church as a reference to individual believers, OR to simply ignore (subconciously) what is said about the church.

As I've been reading through the scriptures more recently I've begun to notice alot of things I just skipped over before.

Today we think that the Gospel is only the very limited message of personal salvation through Jesus Christ. Scripturally the Gospel is often referred to as the Gospel of the Kingdom, and so on. It is about more and what the Church is, is a part of that. The building of the Church is part of what the Gospel is.

One of the problems I have with Word of Faith teaching is that it TENDS (not necessarily) to present an image that once you say the sinners prayer, you have everything, you just need to realize it.
This in turn, appears to me, to drastically reduce the scope of what people think christianity is, and what they expect. The fact is that there is virtually no end of the growth we can experience, the depths of wisdom we can gain, the abundance of life we can recieve, and to believe that you simply recieve it all in a moment by somehow successfully wrapping your mind around it defies the depth and breadth of what we have to discover.
This, I think, is probably related to the common protestant idea that all of salvation occurs in a single moment when you are born again. The biblical model, according to what I read simply doesn't fit into that mold.
There is a moment of salvation when you are born again, but there is also a process of conversion which goes on and on stretching forward from that moment. You can't get to the second one without the first, but without the second, the first is but an empty shell.

Thus, I don't really think there is much, if any difference between Jesus and Paul's teaching. More often I think people just tend to misread Paul.

In addition to that, I believe, from my experience that our church services are full of people who are spiritually dead, or they are just barely alive. They may have stepped into the river, but they're just far enough in to wet their toes.

In that sense, looking at how EW Kenyon presents the difference between Jesus and Paul, I think alot of people have ignored Jesus because they want to get right to Paul, if you know what I mean.

I have been a christian my entire life. There has never been a time when I didn't believe. I don't think there is any time in my life when, had I died, I would have been condemned.
Yet, also in a very real way, my life was not abundant or overflowing. It is only in the last few years that I have begun to truly have abundant life, or to truly know God. The two, really, are inseperable, one might even say they are the same thing.
I think alot of christians are saved, but they barely know God, they barely have any life... and the truth is that just telling them to have lots of faith in their saved identity isn't going to change that.
The only thing that ever really changes that is pursuing God like a deer pants for water, or like a young lover pursues love.

 

[sonofkorah]

I don't care what anybody says, I still think that Christianity in Crisis was a perfectly timed work that did much to reign in the excesses that were going on in what is loosly called the Word of Faith movement.

Collectively, the more prominent preachers in that section of the body of Christ are much better grounded in scripture than they were before. And that's a very good thing.

 

[Atlantians]

Even the preacher you most admire, or idolise, if you imagine him making love to his wife, or sitting on the toilet, then you will realise that no one is any different to you or me.

Ok, the toilet thing I can understand... but in context, you imply there is something carnal, or less good, or unholy, or unsacred about being with one's wife?!

 

[sonofkorah]

Oye Vey!

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Ok, the toilet thing I can understand... but in context, you imply there is something carnal, or less good, or unholy, or unsacred about being with one's wife?!

Not at all. The point I am making is that both activities invoke images that do not correspond with the 'holy' image that we place upon those prominent people that we admire. We would juxtasuppose the same images with President Bush, or the Queen of England, for example. Somehow, these people fall from their pedestals when we try to imagine them taking part on some of the more undignified activities of life.

 

[JimB]

Of course that is the other extreme. It is interesting how we swing from one extreme to the other. *****

But, then, this is a rather “extreme” forum, Oscarr. I hear more weird stuff here than on TBN.

~Jim

Integrity has no need of rules.​

 

[geetrue]

Reply to Jimbeaux about dirty laundry:
=======================

Oh no you misunderstand, I don't want to personally go digging in your dirty laundry, I don't want to dig in anybodies dirty laundry, but since you think its okay for HH to spout the nonsense he does and we should learn from the criticism, I wonder if you would feel the same way about the things he says about vineyard.

Except you've already said you don't want to talk about it or well you introduced the cliched dirty laundry bit.


Personally you're the only thing I know about vineyard and I've never said a single critical thing about the denomination or organization or whatever it is.

I think some of us have missed charityagape's point. It's not just about the Vineyard church is it?

I too only know of one person that goes to Vineyard and that is Jimbeaux. We are all in this simple statement she has made.

The only Christian some people might know is you ... Your bumper sticker may say Jesus on it and your driving errors reflect what people think of Christians as a whole.

Were all born again christians in here, but she has a good point. The only thing she knows about Vineyard is Jimbeaux.

I personally like Jimbeaux and look forward to his post and off beat thread's lol, but I will continue to stay away from Vineyard for other reasons not disclosed, due to the new rules.

Speaking of the new rules: "Where does this thread about HH put us?"

In the past we could voice our opinions in one thread on a topic like Benny Hinn or HH, but now if we disagree we have to start a counter thread, much like QC has already been doing I suspect.

In other words if I don't like HH ... I can't say so in this thread? Is that how it works now?

 

[Atlantians]

Not at all. The point I am making is that both activities invoke images that do not correspond with the 'holy' image that we place upon those prominent people that we admire. We would juxtasuppose the same images with President Bush, or the Queen of England, for example. Somehow, these people fall from their pedestals when we try to imagine them taking part on some of the more undignified activities of life.

So being together with your wife is undignified?!

I find the marriage bed to be quite dignified and indeed entirely holy.