What About Miracles Today?

WHAT ABOUT MIRACLES TODAY?

There are many men and women who claim to be working miracles today. These so-called miracle workers may be well known and be seen on TV, while others are less well-known and may be seen in many small towns and cities. Are these people really working miracles? Is what they are doing divine healing? My answer to these question is simply, "NO!"

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Before I state what I think is being done, let me give a comparison of modern day healings(?) and the miracles of Jesus. There are at least thirteen differences.

1. Jesus did not heal for money: most today do their thing for money.

2. Jesus did not heal for notoriety. He often said: "tell no man." So-called miracle workers today spend much in advertizing and use "horn tooters."

3. Jesus healed every kind of known affliction: no case was too hard. Modern divine(?) healers form healing lines and will never attempt to heal those physical ailments that are obvious.

4. Jesus never indicated that healing was to be universal. Only four times were large groups healed while one time Jesus healed ten lepers. All the rest were individuals or two at a time.

5. Jesus did not discourage the use of physicians or medical remedies.

6. There were never any questions about his healings. Even His enemies admitted that He was healing people. There are many questions about so-called divine healing today.

7. Jesus performed no partial healing with the healed one to be well on down the road. Faith healers today claim this often.

8. Jesus did not make faith a uniform condition of healing. Only one time: Matt 9:28, did Jesus ask about faith. In 3 cases he commended faith, but in 15 cases faith is not required, and in 4 cases faith was im-possible. Modern faith(?) healers require faith, and if they fail in their healing attempt, the reason given for their failure is the faith of the person seeking healing.

9. There were no failures in the miracles of the Lord: none! There are many today.

10. There were never any relapses when Jesus healed: today there are many.

11. Jesus was never guilty of fraud or trickery.

12. Jesus never failed to heal all in a group when he proposed to do so. And

13. Jesus did not use hypnotic influences or auto-suggestionism.

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In 1973 William E. Nolan, M. D. began a study of miracle workers, and entitled a book "In Search of A Miracle." Dr. Nolan concentrated his efforts on a nationally known faith healer known as Kathryn Kuhlman. She was an ordained minister who had been "healing" about 30 years at that time, and claimed to have treated app. one and one half million patients. Dr. Nolan interview Miss Kuhlman, and secured permission to follow up on the people who attended her services at Minneapolis in June 1973. He used two legal secretaries to secure names, addresses, phone numbers and diagnosis of everyone who was willing to cooperate. In July of 1973 letters were sent by Dr. Nolan requesting those who claimed a "cure" to come to Minneapolis. Twenty three responded. In every case examined by Dr. Nolan there was not found one case of a miraculous cure. Note this quote: "Kathryn Kuhlman's lack of medical sophistication is a critical point. I don't believe she is a liar or a charlatan or that she is, consciously, dishonest. I think that she believes the Holy Spirit works through her to perform miraculous cures. I think that she sincerely believes that the thousands of sick people who come to her services and claim cures are, through her mini-strations being cured of organic diseases. I also think--and my investigation confirms this--that she is wrong." (Quotes and facts are from an article in McCall's 9/74). I also have another article from McCall's, dated February 1957. In this article entitled "The Truth About Faith Healers" John Kobler has some interesting things to say. His work concerned such faith healers at A. A. Allen, Oral Roberts, Jack Coe and other lesser known lights. Mr. Kobler also followed up on several cases of "healing". He too found no evidence of real organic healing. Note this quote: "One of the most searching studies of American faith healers has been undertaken by Reverend Carroll Stengall, Jr., pastor of the Pryor Street Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, Georgia. For six years Reverend Stegall has attended healing campaigns and interviewed scores of invalids before and after they were admitted to the healing line. ‘All healers,' he says, ‘use a certain psychological phenomenon called the "ready-made frame of desire." A great desire tends to produce results--in facsimile if not in reality. The more intense, the more easily one accepts a substitute satisfaction.' The testimonials of healings which Stegall examined fall, he feels, into four categories: genuine relief from psychological disturbances through suggestion, momentary fancied relief which the sufferer in his rapture endorses but later repudiates, staged fakes, and stories invented by editors for magazine publication." From that same article this quote: "The Miami Council of Churches denounced Coe as a religious quack. Three ministers of the Churches of Christ, a Protestant sect which maintains a standing offer of $1,000 to Oral Roberts for proof of a single cure acceptable to a committee of three doctors, issued the same challenge to Coe, raising the purse to $2,500. Like Roberts, he ignored it." Then this quote from the 1957 article: "In the town of Evans-ville, Indiana, some relatives of Mrs. Mary Vonderscher, age forty-three, who had moved to Burbank, California, were watching her give testimony on one of Oral Roberts' televised prog-rams. She had, she stated, been cured of cancer of the spine, though doctors considered her condition hopeless. Three days later Mrs. Vonderscher's Hoosier relatives were en route to her funeral."

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I know personally of a young man in high school when I was who developed cancer at an early age. For some time he testified that Miss Kuhlman had cured him of cancer, but he died of that disease. He thought he had been healed, but he had not. I also personally know William Bryson, a gospel preacher, who was born with only one arm. He attended many "healing services", including Kathryn Kuhlman's in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. He has been threatened with jail and with ejection from the meeting by force. He was rejected on the charge that "you do not have faith" as well as being "a trouble maker." It was evident from his condition that no one could heal him, so he was rejected as an infidel or a trouble maker. In fact, one becomes a trouble maker when he challenges the claims of these religious frauds. And in my judgment, that is what they are.

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Several years ago I read of a man who walked with crutches, and was caught in an open field with a wild boar. When the boar charged the man he threw down his crutches, ran to the fence and jumped over. In another case a man who was confined to a wheel chair is known to have walked out of a burning house, saving himself and some children. These two examples help explain what so many see as a miracle. Many illnesses or diseases are the product of the human mind. Symptoms, real or imagined, are found without any known cause, but through the process of "auto-suggestionism" they are healed. The truth of the matter is, there never was any real organic illness: it was psychosomatic. That big word is defined by Webster: "a physical disorder of the body originating in or aggravated by the psychic or emotional processes of the individual." So-called faith healers do not heal by the Holy Spirit today. They only seem to cure when in reality there was no real physical problem: it was psychosomatic, and the "cure" was due to auto-suggestionism.

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Pat Gibbons -- August 1996