Most of my personal jury is still out on Benny.
God has historically used very strange people and often in very strange ways.
God is interested in focusing the glory on his power. The strangeness attracts a certain measure of attention.
Benny's excesses are easily seen as at least that.
The fact remains . . . quite a number of people do get healed and certainly a number get blessed by an intensified contact with God's Spirit. Compared to that, all the rest is chaff.
Personally, if I'd been God, I'd have kept interviewing. But who am I to say that. I'm a bird of rare plumage myself. Lots of folks think I'm at least in the direction of being about as off the wall as Benny.
I've tended to find it wise to "let" God be God. He will do things His way anyway.
AND HE WILL NEVER FIT IN ANY OF OUR TIDY LITTLE BOXES.
To God be the glory is the bottom line.
imho.
And, with Benny, lots of folks go seeking something from God. Lots of folks receive substantively from God. The rest is chaff.
A dear FREEPER soul tried earnestly to exhort me against supporting the likes of Benny, Rick Warren . . .
My reply was as follows:
Rick Warren's stuff is quite Biblical and I've used it to great effect for The Kingdom.
I'm less charitable toward Benny but I don't believe he's the deliberate charlatan many folks make him out to be.
I believe God has used him and does use him and has disciplined him quite sternly on occasion.
I'm not about to tell God who he cannot use.
God is bigger than all our tidy little boxes.
People are led astray by pastors of every stripe in pulpits all across the the planet every Sunday. The stranger and more dramatic, the easier to point fingers. I think the less dramatic and more conventional ['pastoral' distortions, leading astray, hero worship, private interpretations, 'corners on righteousness and truth' etc.]
do MUCH MORE damage numerically, by far.
I think the Scriptures about the foolishness of God confounding the wisdom of men are likely the pertinent ones when it comes to folks like Benny.
What Benny says is quite Biblical most of the time. What he writes and is flip about can be off the wall . . . but when he's remotely flowing in Holy Spirit--he's pretty orthodox. He points people to Jesus and encourages folks to focus on God and the Giver vs the gifts etc.
Personally, on occasion, there can be too many bones to spit out for my taste. And, his style is not at all my taste. But I'm not his boss. And I really, really, really do not want to presume to tell God who HE canNOT use.
I just want to make myself as available, God focused, humble and useable by God as I can manage.