Costi Hinn is the nephew of multimillionaire preacher Benny Hinn, who preached the prosperity gospel — which is the belief that if you have faith in God, God will provide you with security and prosperity in the material world.
And this multimillionaire did not take criticism lightly.
“If people, maybe like you or others, would say things about us or criticize,” Costi Hinn tells Allie Beth Stuckey on “Relatable,” “we would say, ‘We’re being persecuted like Paul and like Jesus,’ and so I grew up with this chip on my shoulder.”
“And Baptists and like nondenominational Christians or people like you who will speak truth on things, you are all dead Christians. You don’t have the spirit, you don’t have the power,” he continues, adding, “And so that was the way I grew up.”
However, one small interaction challenged his entire belief system while he was playing baseball at Dallas Baptist University.
“I had already worked for my uncle, and so I rolled up on the DBU campus in a black H2 Hummer and had like a $10,000 watch, and my Baptist coach, who literally is one of the best hitting coaches in college baseball,” he recalls, “is sitting there. And he, at the time, drives this white Camry, super mellow guy.”
“He’s talking about God’s sovereignty, and he’s saying like, ‘Guys, don’t worry about scouts and getting drafted, Proverbs 21:1 says, the heart of the king is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever he wishes, he controls kings, scouts, leaders, the world. Don’t worry, God’s sovereign, you just control what you can control, play hard, and trust the Lord,’” Hinn explains.
“I always used to make fun of him in my head, like, ‘This Baptist dude with this white Camry, like I know how to control God and get him to do what I want, and what does this guy even know,’” he continues.
Despite his inner protests, this is what planted the seed that would change his life and led to him preaching the true gospel.
But that hasn’t come without cost.
“He doesn’t want to talk to me,” Hinn says of his famous uncle, Benny. “He’s pretty upset still. My family is a very tight-knit Middle Eastern-cultured family, where no matter what you do, don’t go against the family. We’d say blood is thicker than water.”
“I’ve described the way I grew up as a hybrid between the royal family and the mafia royal family because of the lavish wealth, and we flew on Gulfstream jets and lived the high life, the highest life,” he continues. “When we left, we were cut off. No money, no safety, we got death threats.”
Rumors have swirled in the past that his uncle had repented for his false teachings, but Hinn claims that if he did, it was “not truly.”
“He would repent throughout these intervals in history. Like in the ’90s when he said that God was going to burn all homosexuals in America with fire,” Hinn says. “He said Jesus was going to physically show up in Africa, and he would apologize later because he would just get raked over the coals by a lot of wise, faithful pastors.”
“He apologized, said, ‘I’ll never do it again.’ Then, he would falsely prophesy again and then again,” he adds.
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