Televangelist Benny Hinn is accusing NBC of deception after the network's airing of an investigative report on the finances and spending practices of his ministry. The recent Dateline report featured former and current employees of Benny Hinn Ministries, who provided NBC with receipts and other documents detailing how ministry funds are spent.Dateline's report focused on the witnesses' accounts of Hinn's allegedly lavish lifestyle, as exemplified in such practices as staying in hotel rooms that cost several thousand dollars a night during layovers between ministry events, or frequently shopping at a posh Beverly Hill's store where his name happens to be on the window.The Dateline broadcast also featured Nathan Daniel, a former employee with Hinn's organization, who claims to have been fired after he raised questions about the number of orphans actually sponsored by the ministry. Daniel said he was deeply troubled at the idea of malfeasance on the part of Hinn or his ministry and remarked, "To me, this was a fraud and deception being put across the people that are his donors."Michael Horton is a professor of theology at Westminster Seminary in California. He has edited a book called The Agony of Deceit - What Some TV Preachers Are Really Teaching (Moody, 1990), in which writers from diverse theological backgrounds take a critical look at a number of popular televangelists and their theologies in light of what the Bible says.Horton feels many of those who faithfully watch TV ministers fail to exercise careful thought or spiritual discernment about what they see and hear. "A lot of people, I think, who watch Benny Hinn or watch the TV evangelists more generally, think that what they're saying is authoritative - after all they're on TV and they've written books," the editor of The Agony of Deceit says. "And we've lost the capacity to think critically and to weigh people in the light of what the scriptures teach."
