Last week (July 13), Benny Hinn Ministries posted a video on Facebook of Hinn interviewing controversial pastor Greg Locke. The post soon went viral, racking up over 155,000 views.
The interview took place a day after Locke reached out to Hinn asking if he’d be willing to have a face-to-face conversation so that Locke could apologize for mischaracterizing Hinn throughout his years in ministry.
Many who follow Locke’s ministry were surprised to hear of his apology, especially since Locke’s 2005 book, “Blinded by Benny,” accused Hinn of being a “false prophet,” “a deceiver,” and “a heretic.”
“Pastor Greg Locke at one time did not like me,” Hinn said to begin the interview. “In fact, he wrote a book against me. And today we’re friends, so only God can can do that.”
Locke shared that he now realizes he wrote the book “for all the wrong reasons,” because of all “the out of context clips in those days.” Locke said he “literally had no affinity whatsoever for anybody in healing ministry [or] deliverance ministry.”
“I was Baptist amongst Baptists. I was an absolute Cessationist,” Locke continued. “I was taught that the apostles had power, and when they died, the power died with them. So when I would see you on TV, I would immediately have this bitterness that would well up in me towards anybody that was on, you know, TBN or CBN or the 700 Club.”
Locke told Hinn that he had an “absolute aversion to anything that was supernatural.” But after he read the Bible more, he began to recognize the ministry of the Holy Spirit. “I tell people,” Locke said, “the theology of God’s Word ruined my man-made theology, because I was always taught, ‘Well, you know, they just believe in experience over theology.’”
“But what I found out is that’s not the truth,” Locke said. “You believe in experiential theology. You believe your theology.” Locke credits God using his wife’s unfiltered view of the Bible to show him the power God grants his followers through the Holy Spirit.
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“[My wife and I] would lay in bed at night and she would read the Bible and she would be like, ‘Honey, do you realize we have power to cast out devils? We have power to lay hands on the sick. We have power to speak in unknown tongues,'” Locke said he was always careful in his responses, because he didn’t want to “take her fire away from her, because she was just so passionate. She was so innocent in what she was learning from the Holy Spirit.”
Locke shared that he put the “Jake brake” on his wife’s passion for displays of the Holy Spirit in their worship services, because he didn’t want the “invitation to go too long. If anybody falls out, somebody’s gonna see it on the live stream and think I’m Benny Hinn, right? So I just had such a scarcity and an aversion to anything supernatural in our church.”
