There was an immediate response from Benny Hinn as TBN founder, Paul Crouch, expanded his half hour Behind the Scenes program to an entire hour the following Tuesday to let Hinn air his objections. "When I saw what they did, I got sick to my tomach," Hinn lamented to his hosts Paul and Jan Crouch. "Boy, I was sitting there and I was fuming. I talked for two hours and they only used about less than five minutes of what I said."

A source close to Reinhold Bonnke's ministry said that "he was very disappointed by it since Bonnke gave them full access to his staff, meetings, finances, etc. only for HBO to put a negative spin put on it--like blaming them for accidents" in which people were killed in the crush of the crowd. "They didn't view that as fair," said the source.

The April 15, 2001 HBO program opened with Benny Hinn making his grand entrance onto the platform at one of his 1999 crusades as he usually does to the song, "How Great Thou Art." The camera then panned onto horribly deformed and helpless sick people in the crowd.. The unseen announcer says, "But what is the message that Benny Hinn delivers to the crowd?" While the camera panned on the offering buckets being passed through the rows, Hinn's voice is heard warning the people to give
generously in order to survive the coming disasters of the year 2000 (a false prophecy that we reported on earlier) and telling people how to fill out the forms to give by credit card.

The program captured the desperation and frustration of those desperately seeking a miracle and turning to faith healers as their last ditch effort. In particular, they followed the case of a family, recently converted out of Hinduism, who had faith that God would heal their ten-year-old son, who was in a vegetative state, dying of inoperable brain tumors.

The family attended every one of Hinn's meetings at his Portland, Oregon crusade, pushing their son in his wheelchair. They came each time expecting a miracle. HBO was able to persuade Hinn to allow the parents to bring the boy up to the platform for him to pray over him, which goes against Hinn's policy to only bring up people who can testify to a healing. "I do not lay hands very often on those who have not been healed. I lay hands after they have been healed," Hinn told HBO. As he laid hands on him, he said, "The Lord's gonna touch you, young boy." The boy died a week later.

The focus then shifted to the behavior of the huge crowds that attend both the Hinn and Bonnke crusades around the world. They gave particular attention to the 1/2 million to a million people crowds in Africa. The camera panned over the throng showing people singing and swaying and praising the Lord.

They zoomed in on individuals having ecstatic manifestations which frequently is seen at such gatherings -- people shaking violently or appearing to be drunk or rocking uncontrollably and wildly babbling forth gibberish.

Coming from a secular viewpoint, HBO turned to the theory of evolution for answers for the animalistic behaviors. They followed a progression from the social analysis of groups of apes into their theory of the development of religion in the evolution of the species. And they turned to their "wise" experts to elaborate on the psychology behind their summations.

Overlooking the biblical understanding of demonic activity, HBO passed off the strange behavior as primitive African superstitious practices. Of course, that does factor in, but the root cause is demonic, not evolutionary. As presented by HBO, one would get the impression they were trying to argue that Africans are closer to being animals than human. This was a disgraceful attempt on their part to explain away misunderstood mystical phenomena in favor of racial bigotry.

Another "expert" they turned to, a Jewish rabbi, compared the charisma of the faith healers' power over the people to Adolph Hitler who was notorious for charming all of Germany to follow after him. This comparison is one that the Palestinian-born Hinn went ballistic over. "And you know what really upset me?" Hinn said to the Crouches. "How dare they compare us to Hitler? How dare they!"

Yet the similarities on the expressions of the faces of the people HBO showed were striking. At Hinn's crusades one only has to look around at the people to see their expressions of adoration for Hinn. It resembles the looks upon the faces of concert-goers at rock concerts of popular teen idols. Hinn seems to become the focus, not Jesus.

And after the 15 people were crushed at a Bonnke crusade in Africa, the parents of one of the dead, a little baby girl, tried to get the body to Bonnke hoping he would raise her from the dead but were barred from the stage. The family did the next best thing and laid the body on Bonnke's Mercedes Benz in hopes of the baby coming back to life. Apparently they were putting their faith in the anointing of the faith healer, not God.

HBO reporters did a thorough investigation into the idea of mass hypnosis and the placebo affect. They looked at various hypnotists who knew how to mesmerize groups of people through the use of auto-suggestion and hypnotic repetitious music. As the cameras panned on the people with eyes closed, swaying with vacant expressions, Hinn's voice could be heard saying, "You must let your guard down. You must be completely open. . . . these manifestations happen . . . they're real, the divine is still there."

On the Behind the Scenes rebuttal program, Hinn acknowledge there was some truth to what was reported about the placebo affect. "And then when they said something about he placebo affect, which I did not know much about," Hinn commented, "how mental power is so great that people can actually come out of wheelchairs. Well, it's true. It does happen. In
fact, it happens in every healing ministry, in every healing service. It happens all the time. . . I said, well I've seen things happen like
this. In fact they've caused me, ya know, to question what I've seen with my own eyes. But, I said, 'When God does it, it's definite. When God heals them, they can't go right back in that wheelchair again because then God did it.' And God doesn't do it and then take it back." "Absolutely not," responded Paul Crouch.

By the end of the Behind the Scenes rebuttal, Hinn seemed to back down from that statement. "Paul, I'm doing a whole teaching on what I've never done before," said Hinn, "on how to keep your healing and also why some people lose it. Because I've seen this happen over the last 20-some years . . . I'm gonna take one session and teach on why do people lose healing and how to keep your healing."

"What is one main reason that people would lose a healing?" Paul Crouch responded. "Faith," said Hinn. "What happens is sometimes with individuals whose faith is not strong, who's not founded -- the second they say 'Ah, maybe,' it's gone.
That could explain why all the people that HBO followed up on after the healing crusades were found to be in the same condition they were in before the crusade. If a person's healing depends on living every moment with a faithful positive attitude, as soon as the difficulties in life enter in and faith for being well is challenged by the reality of aches and pains, all will end up losing their healing. This is just a "Christianized" way of explaining the placebo affect.

"You know, we have to fight for our healing to keep em," added Jan Crouch, "just like we fight for our salvation." And turning to Benny Hinn, she said, "you taught us that."

The Crouches then made a plea for funds to finance a special that TBN would produce that would present verifiable testimonies of people healed through Benny Hinn's ministry. They promised to buy air time on secular TV stations to get their message to HBO and the secular media. They had come up with this same idea several years ago after "Inside Edition" ran a negative report on Hinn's bad healing record. Perhaps this time they're serious about such a production. They then asked those healed
to contact them with their stories along with confirmation from their doctors.

If such a program is ever produced, you can be sure you won't see any before & after pictures of the horribly disfigured people who are ignored at the healing crusades. Only those who look normal outwardly come forward to testify. The deformed people don't even show up on Hinn's coverage of his crusades. They are usually stationed together where the cameras are trained to avoid them.

Jan Crouch, shared her perspective of all the criticism aimed at Hinn and TBN. "This is an act of Satan, we all know that. What did he attack? The fundraising. Oh, hello! What's new? . . . This goes back to Judas, 'Don't pour the costly oil over Jesus.' It goes back to Judas. . . But they attack the money. That is so old and so yesterday, CNN," she said sarcastically, taunting them. "It's so Judas. Hello? And then they attack the healings. That is just so yesterday. Hello! It's been done!" In comparing televangelists to Jesus and the costly oil being poured out on him to their right to live luxuriously off the offerings of the
people is a horrible metaphor to present.

Hinn shared the bright side of this with the TBN audience. "I talked to Oral Roberts afterwards and he said, 'If one good thing came out of it, is the thing that you finally made the decision to never again talk to them.' And I'm telling you today before the Lord, I will never ever allow them -- they will never be allowed in my meetings." The Crouches agreed that they came to that conclusion long ago. The only way to protect their empires is to keep out all who would question their activities.

Paul Crouch relayed a message of consolation from a TV preacher who is well known for putting a positive spin on every trial. "I just talked to [Robert Schuller] on the phone a few minutes ago. He said, 'please tell dear Benny Hinn . . . tell him that very few people saw that. (the HBO program).'"