Becky Dvorak, an alleged prophetic healing evangelist, recently detailed a report of a miraculous healing from skin cancer:
Is God able and willing to heal skin cancer? Is skin cancer greater than God? Most of my readers immediately respond with the correct answer, “No!” while others do not know Him as healer, so in all honesty, they are not sure which is greater. And then there are many who say He is able to do anything, but perhaps, He is not willing to heal skin cancer or any disease for that matter. But I am here to testify to you that our God is both able and willing to heal all who come to Him.
….
Let’s look at a modern-day healing and be encouraged that we serve a living God who is both able and willing to heal us today.
On Oct. 10, 2019, Liberty submitted a prayer request on behalf of her father. She wrote: “My dad had prostate cancer years ago; [he] had a botched operation and lots of radiation therapy. Last week his doctor told him he had skin cancer. I need people to believe with me that his body is completely restored in the name of Jesus. We are not believing the lie of the enemy. Thank you.”
responded to her request on Oct. 17, 2019. “Liberty, in the name of Jesus, I renounce this cancer lingering in his body. I curse it at its root and seed and command it to die off at the seed and dry up at the roots and be completely gone from his body, never to return again. I command every cancerous cell and tumor to be gone in Jesus’ name. I say, ‘Body be healed, be strengthened and be made whole for the glory of God, amen.'”
Liberty wrote back on Nov. 11, 2019, with this wonderful praise report: “Becky, I want to thank you and give all the glory to God for my dad’s healing.
“The doctor had taken a biopsy from his face, he was told it was skin cancer. The following tests showed NOTHING, I think they were surprised because they even took an X-ray of it to make sure. He is all clear and will remain that way in Jesus’ name. Thank you, Lord, for Your mercy.”
Our God is able and willing to heal skin cancer, or whatever deadly disease that is attacking you and your loved ones.
Is this really a miraculous healing? Did God interrupt his daily routine of helping elderly saints find their car keys to heal this woman’s father from skin cancer? The short answer is no. Evangelicals — especially Charismatics and Pentecostals — are so desperate to prove that their God is real that they will grasp at the slightest bit of “evidence” to “prove” that their God is the Great Physician — a God who answers prayers and heals the afflictions of his chosen one.
According to the woman telling Dvorak about her father’s healing, her dad had prostate cancer. Her father had failed prostate surgery and went through radiation treatments. Years later, her father had a lesion that his doctor suspected might be cancer. The doctor biopsied the lesion and it wasn’t cancerous. Woo hoo! right? Ain’t God wonderful. The biopsy coming back negative was, in the minds of Dvorak and this woman, proof that God can and does heal cancer. Case closed?
Of course not. I am a fair-skinned, redheaded man who stupidly subjected his skin to all sorts of ill-treatment — including more sunburns (some with blisters) than I can count. Over the past decade, I have been diagnosed with skin cancer three times. I had a basal cancer lesion removed from my nose, basal cell cancer on my lower lip treated with a chemotherapy cream, and a squamous cell lesion removed from my hip. I have also had numerous precancerous lesions removed. I am so used to having precancers frozen with liquid nitrogen that I don’t even flinch when the doctor freezes lesions on my face, arms, and back. Polly watches in horror, thinking these treatments must really, really, really hurt. Yeah, having my skin sprayed with liquid nitrogen hurts, but as with blood draws, injections, and cortisone shots, I have gotten used to the pain.
Every six-months, I dutifully go to my dermatologist’s office. There’s always something that needs to be frozen or scraped away. On occasion, the doctor will say, “Hmm, that looks interesting. We better have that biopsied.” In other words, “Bruce, that might be cancer, so we better take a tissue sample and have the pathology lab look at it.” More often than not, the biopsies come back negative — no cancer. Did God “heal” me? Of course not. My doctor, knowing my track record and knowing that it is likely I will get cancer again, errs on the side of caution. Better safe than sorry, especially if melanoma is lurking in the shadows. Basal cell and squamous cell cancers tend to grow slowly, and if treated early rarely cause death. Melanoma, on the other hand, is a deadly cancer that can quickly metastasize and lead to death. I want my doctor to be proactive, even it means biopsying lesions that come back negative.
The woman said her father’s biopsy showed NOTHING. This is, of course, not true. His biopsy showed that the lesion was not cancerous. Big difference between this and “nothing.” I also question whether the x-ray was related to the lesion on her father’s face. It is far more likely that the doctor wanted to make sure the prostate cancer hadn’t returned or spread to other parts of the body. I can’t think of a circumstance where an x-ray would be needed for a lesion on the face. I am sure there may be, but I am not aware of one.
This story, as with all other reports miraculous healings, fails to rise to the level of a miracle. The results are easily explained with science and common sense — no God needed.
About Bruce Gerencser
Bruce Gerencser, 62, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 41 years. He and his wife have six grown children and twelve grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.
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Bloodsuckers.
These kinds of story annoy the life out of me. Mostly I doubt that they are even true, especially when one gets claims of limbs growing back, or bones healing overnight, but this one could be, in the sense that isn’t very notable. That puts it into the category of so what? It’s not in the least a miraculous cure, despite the claims of this silly woman, it’s totally lacking in any form of persuasive quality, and most of all it’s disgustingly arrogant to think that god prefers one low level cure over all the competing claims out there.
God is pretty fickle about who he heals and doesn’t heal. An evangelical friend from my past whose husband was a Sunday school teacher died in 71 days after diagnosis of glioblastoma – lots of people prayed for him. An evangelical friend from high school is watching her husband get sicker and sicker from his cancer despite lots of prayers. Another evangelical friend from childhood is facing increasingly aggressive chemo treatments for her breast cancer as it continues to spread – lots of people are praying for her too.
I work in a cancer unit and I welcome Liberty to come to our hospital and arrange miraculous healing for all of the people I would desperately love to see freed from their suffering. Liberty, since you were able to renounce your father’s cancer, how about showing some compassion for others. I will pay for your plane ticket and lodging.
Well then Bruce, how do you explain Jan Crouch praying and raising a fan’s pet chicken from the dead? Maybe if you wore as much makeup as Jan Crouch, you could do that too, and it would protect your skin from anything!
Yeah. None of these types of stories are ever corroborated, by impartial witnesses or science. It’s all bunk and I now believe that people are either (1) passing on stories they wish were true, or (2) flat out lying.
My Norwegian-American dad loved to garden, and as far back as I remember he was happily out in the garden every weekend. When I was about 5 years old, my parents bought a little weekend place–Mama called it ‘the cabin’ but it was really just an ordinary small house–with a really big yard. Dad transformed that yard into his magnum opus of a garden. He hired someone to water it midweek in the long, hot summers, and the produce fed the entire neighborhood. Of course, during those long, hot summers, he insisted on working without a shirt. Sunscreen? He didn’t need sunscreen, because he didn’t sunburn. By midsummer, people could be forgiven for addressing him in Spanish because his skin was as brown as that of his Mexican-American friends.
Thus, I spent the last decade of his life taking him to the dermatologist regularly. One cancerous unit on his ear required surgery with general anesthesia, and they took a generous hunk off. The rest of the cancers were frozen off. Every six months we would go, and more cancers would be treated. A few months before his death, his dermatologist suggested a treatment for his entire face that would be uncomfortable but kill lots of precancerous cells. Dad was pondering having it done when his body gave out at 93.
I suspect it’s easy to say Jesus healed someone’s skin cancer, and simply leave out the liquid nitrogen part.
I always get hollered at by the religious for saying this, but: if Jesus is so interested in healing, why are there so many sick, injured, and disabled in the world? And usually I get these answers:
1. They don’t have strong faith
2. They don’t believe
3. They deserve it for making bad choices
4. God’s plan. We don’t understand it
5. Satan is hurting them
6. God won’t stop Satan because they didn’t tell Satan to get lost
7. “How dare you ask us this hard question of God!”
8. *blank stare, changes subject*
Wishful thinking, denial, imagination run amok, lying. Oh, yeah, when I was religious, I saw and experienced all sorts of “miracles.” But I was also seriously mentally ill. When the treatment started, the miracles stopped. How miraculous.
Take that “healing” nonsense to your local children’s hospital and cure a few kids with terminal illness. Restore the burned flesh that was cut away for skin grafts.
Then, and only then, will I consider your “healing” claims.
Several years back, I was in a Charismatic church and I saw people die of cancer who prayed for miraculous healing. Instead of showing these folks understanding, compassion and kindness, some of the congregants blamed them for not getting healed. How cold hearted is that!
Of course, if there is no god, then he cannot perform miraculous healing of any kind. If God exists (which I doubt very much), then maybe he is unable to heal? Maybe God’s power is the power of love, not a naked power that intervenes in history. Who knows?
The Fundamentalist Charismatic/Pentecostal claims to know based on their supposed divinely inspired, inerrant book. Much of this book was written by a bunch of very bloodthirsty, violent, barbaric and ignorant savages who created god in their own likeness. This god is hardly kind or caring. He’s a being so cruel that he is going to burn us in the flames of hell forever with unspeakable torture. Such a person is NOT a healer of fallible, finite humans. We need to put the bible in the rubbish bin where it belongs, if we are to care for one another.
Replying to Tony I saw skin graft once now I can’t eat pie or play checkers anymore without vommitting