In 1998, we assisted in an investigation of televangelist Benny Hinn by 60 Minutes of Australia. The report found Hinn to be a fake, dangerously out-of-control, fraudulently airing phony healings, a shameless salesman selling false hope. During the interview with Hinn, host Jeff Mullen challenged him to perform one of his "signs and wonders" on camera. Benny declined, saying he couldn't because "the anointing" was not there.
     Close observers of Hinn's crusades notice that the anointing usually shows up only after careful orchestration and professional mood-setting, not unlike a Rolling Stones concert, a Nuremberg rally or a National Football League game. The bigger the crowd, the greater the anointing. The lighting and music are specially selected to put the audience into a frenzied state of receptivity. They know what to expect and subconsciously what is expected of them. The "feelgoods" wash over the people. Then Benny (with his anointing in tow) makes a dramatic entrance with thousands of voices singing "How Great Thou Art." Many times he leads the crowd in a chant of "We are anointed! We are anointed!"
     Consider this observation on religious crowd manipulation:
     "A contagious anxiety passed from the preacher to the crowd and from the crowd to the preacher, and the flock stirred uneasily to the call of the pastor, undulating to his prompting and multiplied his marshalling will.
     "When the fusion was complete, when his being flowed through the multitude, when he forced it to feel with him, when he was at one with the many, then and only then he lived; then, in that enlarged and intensified existence, he knew the solace of a vast fellow-feeling and an intoxicating illusion of personal power that touched the very quick of life; and that sensation, once known, he could no longer forego. He craved it with a hungry and connubial ardor; he exerted all his powers to attain, maintain and repeat it; but it could only be sustained, as the great sensations staled, by more and more potent ones.
     "The necessity was inexorable, for there below, behind, about him was the pressure of an insatiable public, relentlessly urging him on. He became a creature of his own creation ... and it became a question whether his eloquence was the result of his convictions or his convictions of his eloquence. But there was only one way to prove his sincerity – to grow bolder."
     This reads like an apt critique of the underlying psychology of a Benny Hinn crusade, but it was written about the preaching of Girolamo Savonarola, a 15th century Italian reformer noted for his "bonfire of the vanities" who tried to turn Florence into a theocratic state. He eventually ended up on a bonfire of his own.
     For Benny, "growing bolder" has meant making statements like this in an exchange Nov. 13, 1999, with Jan and Paul Crouch on Trinity Broadcasting Network's PTL Club program:
     "You're going to have people raised from the dead watching TBN... I'm telling you ... People are going to be canceling funeral services and bringing their dead in their caskets, placing them – my God! I feel the anointing here – placing them before a television set, waiting on God's power to come through and touch them.... And I see children, with what looks like fire on their lips spreading – but I see these kids touching the TV set, receiving it and going out and spreading it."
     Old saints called Benny's kind of crowd synergism "soul power." It has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit or the anointing spoken of in Scripture. It is equally at home fueling one of Benny's "end time" revival meetings or sending anarchists into the streets of Seattle to smash windows at Starbucks.
     The anointing oil described in the consecration of the Jewish high priest or the king was different, and dangerous. On pain of death, it couldn't be applied to human flesh, other than the priest and king, who symbolically had given up their lives already for service to God. And it was forbidden to mix up your own recipe to try to imitate that oil.
     Most importantly, the oil represented prophetically the anointing by the Holy Spirit of Jesus, the only "Christ" or christened one.
     How can we discern the true anointing of the Holy Spirit?
— For starters, the Spirit never draws attention to himself, but points to the Christ, and his suffering and death on the Cross.
— The Spirit can't be kept, because all we receive from God must be instantly poured out or we pollute it. "And being found in fashion of a man, he humbled (emptied) himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross" (Philippians 2:8).
— His work is not dependent on external circumstances. He can be present even on a road to Damascus, in a prison cell or, well ... even during a television interview.
— The Holy Spirit always confirms the word of God. (While under his anointing, Benny Hinn has claimed that the godhead has nine persons, and that Eve gave birth out of her side.)
— The Spirit never violates our will. He can only occupy where we have emptied ourselves. If we're trying to gain something, there is "no room at the inn" for the Spirit to operate.
— The result of the Holy Spirit's actions is repentance.
     Luther said that God hides himself within suffering, specifically the sufferings of Christ. He reveals himself to people like Job, who was clothed with sufferings that eventually led him to a knowledge of God he did not have before, even though he was the most righteous man on earth.
     "I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes," Job said.
     Of course, later Job was healed "when he prayed for his friends." But the work of the true anointing had already occurred.
     I have a feeling Job could tell Benny Hinn a thing or two about the anointing. But like the embarrassing wheelchair-bound sufferers lining the back wall of every Benny Hinn meeting, poor Job would probably never make it past the strong-arm ushers to reach the podium.
     The real question is, would he be welcomed at your church?