An Evening With David Hogan, A Critique of Signs and Wonders

Recently, I attended an event at a "church" that brought in faith healer and traveling evangelist David Hogan. Hogan has spent a couple decades as a missionary in Mexico with his Freedom Ministries, where he has claimed divine healings and other signs, wonders and miracles. The crescendo of his claims, though, is that the ministry has seen over 200 people raised from the dead, and he himself has been apart of 30 or more resurrections.

I will give my personal observations, but first: For the best critique of Hogan's ministry, Personal Freedom Outreach has a well researched and referenced article at http://www.pfo.org/exploits.htm. Also, because of Hogan's involvement with the revival at Brownsville in Pensacola, PFO's article includes some critique of that movement as well. Another good resource is this video about "glory of God clouds," and other revival events: 

(These links are not tacit endorsements of the rest of the content either PFO or "Wretched" produces, but these singular links, I do endorse.)

Now for what I observed:

I found it interesting that the staff at the event were vigilant in making sure that no one took any pictures or video of the event. They actually had spotters looking for people with their cell phones held up and would ask them to not take pictures or video. This is probably because they were themselves taping it to be sold later and didn't want any of it "leaked" before they got the chance to profit from it. This is the old "Prophet for Profit" cliche. It is hard to imagine Elijah or John the Baptist asking people to pay for their message.

In fact, the "pastor" of the church where it was held heavily promoted Prosperity Gospel. I have always had a hard time with this message, mostly because Jesus was pretty direct when it came to wealth - specifically that it made it harder to be a person of faith, and that one should "store up their treasures in heaven."

Anti-intellectualism was in full effect as well, with Hogan joining the likes of Pat Robertson condemning the Ivy League. This too is a larger topic for further consideration, but, put simply, why would God give man the capacity for intelligence, then be anti-intelligence? 

My final personal observation, was that Hogan claimed a certain apostolic anointing like Paul. In fact, he used a story about Paul from Acts to begin the evening. Hogan quoted Acts 19:11-12 to justify people bringing up articles of clothing to be blessed, so these clothes could be taken back to the sick and heal them. Hogan asked the technical crew to display the verses on the projection screens and said it didn't matter what version, so I will use the NET Bible (http://bible.org/netbible/):

19:11 God was performing extraordinary miracles by Paul’s hands, 19:12 so that when even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his body were brought to the sick, their diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them.

People were bringing up scarves, shirts, hats, ties - any clothing they could spare based on Hogan's claim that he would touch them and they would heal people. This verse doesn't say that God will give others the authority or the ability to do this - but the Signs and Wonders movement, tied to New Apostolicism and Latter Rain movement, relies on the gospel writer who says in John 14:

the person who believes in me will perform the miraculous deeds that I am doing, and will perform greater deeds than these

The problem I have with Hogan using Acts 19, is that after verse 12 it goes on to say:

19:13 But some itinerant Jewish exorcists tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were possessed by evil spirits, saying, “I sternly warn you by Jesus whom Paul preaches.” 19:14 (Now seven sons of a man named Sceva, a Jewish high priest, were doing this.) 19:15 But the evil spirit replied to them, “I know about Jesus and I am acquainted with Paul, but who are you?” 

I love irony like this.

UPDATED:
I will leave you with this - the human mind, power of persuasion and the placebo effect are very powerful. "Carpet time," (http://www.dictionaryofchristianese.com/carpet-time/) seems awfully similar to the "No Touch Knockout," challenged on National Geographic's "Is It Real?":