The 40 Richest And Most Controversial Spiritual Gurus Throughout The World

30. Benny Hinn  Earnings Go Up To $42 Million

Toufik Benedictus “Benny” Hinn was born in Jaffa, in the then newly established state of Israel, he was raised in Canada where he converted to Pentecostalism and then moved to the United States. In 1983, in Orlando, Florida, Hinn founded the Orlando Christian Center and began holding healing services proclaiming himself as a miracle healer called by God. Televangelist teachings are Evangelical with a focus on financial prosperity and he is best known for his regular “Miracle Crusades”, events usually held in stadiums in major cities and broadcast worldwide on his television show This Is Your Day. In 2001, HBO aired the documentary A Question Of Miracles focusing on Hinn and German minister Reinhard Bonnke, and following seven cases of “miracle healings”. The director of the movie, Antony Thomas, told CNN and The New York Times that they did not find any cases where people were actually healed by Hinn and stated, “If I had seen miracles I would have been happy to trumpet it…but in retrospect, I think they do more damage to Christianity than the most committed atheist”. On CBC Television show The Fifth Estate, with the aid of hidden cameras and crusade witnesses, the producers of the program exposed Hinn’s misappropriation of funds, his fabrication of the truth, and the way in which his staff chose crusade audience members to come on stage to proclaim their miracle healings.

31. Billy Graham Earnings Go Up To  $25 Million

Ordained as a Southern Baptist minister William Franklin “Billy” Graham founded the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in Minneapolis in 1950 and later moved to Charlotte, North Carolina reaching mostly a middle-class moderately conservative protestant audience. For several years American evangelist hosted the radio show Hour of Decision, the annual Billy Graham Crusades, and operated a variety of media and publishing outlets. Graham was also a spiritual adviser to American presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon. In 1989, a secret, thirteen page letter was written by Graham in 1969 to U.S. President Richard Nixon was released to the public by National Archives and Records Administration, in the letter he encouraged Nixon to utilize a military campaign to bomb dikes across North Vietnam should the Paris Peace Talks fail to reach a negotiated settlement of the U.S. war in Southeast Asia. One of Graham’s most controversial statements defined the role of wife, mother, and homemaker as the destiny of “real womanhood”, and affirmed that feminism was “an echo of our overall philosophy of permissiveness”, and that women did not want to be “competitive juggernauts pitted against male chauvinists.”

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