Menu Close

Tag: Divine Healing

Why Faith Healing is a Scam

Bruce Gerencser 7 Comments
td jakes

Faith Healing: The belief that sick, addicted, or “possessed” people can be supernaturally healed using prayer, faith, and/or the laying on of hands.

Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. (James 5:14-16 KJV)

Are you sick? Call the church leaders together to pray and anoint you with oil in the name of the Master. Believing-prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet. And if you’ve sinned, you’ll be forgiven—healed inside and out. Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. (James 5:14-16 The Message)

According to James 5:14-16, sick Christians should:

  • Call for the elders/leaders of the church, asking them to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of Jesus
  • If the elders/leaders of the church pray in faith, Jesus will heal the sick, restoring them to health
  • If the sickness is due to sin, their sins will be forgiven
  • This should be a common practice in Christian churches

Are you a Christian? Former Christian? Have you ever witnessed church elders/leaders anointing a sick church member with oil, praying over them, and the person was supernaturally healed? Some of us have, perhaps, witnessed this healing ritual, without healing taking place. I can’t think of one time when a sick Christian was supernaturally healed. Not-One-Time. Typically, clerics blame prayed-over sick people for their lack of healing. “You didn’t have enough faith,” sick/dying followers of Jesus are told. Wait a minute, the Bible says the healing of sick Christians is dependent on the faith of elders/church leaders, and NOT the faith of the sick.

Turn on Christian television — an oxymoron if there ever was one — and what do you find? Programming dominated by Evangelical/Charismatic/Pentecostal/Apostolic charlatans claiming they can supernaturally heal the sick by laying hands on and praying over them. This fake healing has filtered down to countless churches and pastors who week after week claim they are healing people in the name of Jesus.

Have you ever noticed how their practices never square with James 5:14-16; that healings never materialize; that when healings do occur, they are the result of very human medical intervention? If Jesus is indeed a prayer-answering, healing God, he sure is bad at his job. I would argue that MOST healings attributed to supernatural intervention can be attributed to human instrumentation or natural healing, and those few healings that seem to have no medical explanation are not enough for us to warrant giving credit to Jesus, the Great Physician. Not every recovery can be explained by science, but that doesn’t mean God — which God? — should get the credit. Unexplainable stuff happens, but that doesn’t mean we should praise a deity who hides from us for what happened. Sometimes, the answer is, “Hmm, I don’t know.”

Billions of Christians have lived and died since Jesus walked the shores of Galilee. Billions of sick, dying people of faith have desperately prayed — often for months and years — for Jesus to intervene in their lives, without success. Prayer may have a psychological benefit, but it doesn’t affect healing. By all means, pray if it comforts you or gives you hope. but when you find a lump in your breast or feel sharp pains in your chest, the only proper response is to either call 911 or see a doctor. It’s 2024. We no longer need to seek out shamans, witch doctors, homeopaths, or faith healers for healing. Doctors certainly aren’t the end-all, but they should be the first people we contact when sick. Pray if you must, but by all means, get that lump in your breast biopsied or get an EKG for the pain in your chest.

Last week, TD Jakes, an Apostolic megachurch pastor of The Potter’s House in Dallas, Texas, recently suffered a medical emergency while preaching. Jakes collapsed, 911 was called, and emergency medical personnel rushed him to a hospital where surgery was performed. Jakes has not said what caused the emergency, but it was serious enough to require immediate surgery and ICU care. Afterward, Jakes said, and I quote, “Many of you don’t realize you’re looking at a miracle. I faced a life-threatening calamity, was rushed to the ICU unit, I had emergency surgery. Survived the surgery.” Jakes later added, “I’m in good spirits, I feel good, no pain. I’m in peace and tranquility and I want you to know that I can feel your prayers.”

Did church elders pray over Jakes, anointing him with oil, believing in faith that Jesus would instantly heal Jakes so he could finish his sermon? Of course not. They dialed 911. No time for empty religious rituals; no time for anointing oil and prayers. In a lucid, rational moment, church leaders knew that Jakes needed immediate medical intervention lest their pastor die.

A miracle? Nope. Another win for science.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Christians Don’t Do the Works Jesus Did, Proving Jesus Never Resurrected from the Dead

Bruce Gerencser 8 Comments
jesus raising the dead

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it. (John 14:12-14)

Evangelicals believe the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. It’s a one-of-a-kind divine religious text that is to be, with rare exception, read and interpreted literally. Of course, when confronted with glaring contradictions, Evangelicals will abandon literalism quicker than Sarah Huckabee Sanders abandoned truth at a White House press conference. When confronted with Bible verses that are contradictory or which put God/Christianity in a bad light, Evangelicals discard the literal, plain meaning of a text in favor of a convoluted, look-the-rabbit-ran-that-way, theological explanation.

Take John14:12-14. Printed with red ink — the universal sign for “Jesus is talking” — the Son of God said that he would soon return to his Father in Heaven, and once he was gone his followers would do greater works (miracles) than he did. Wow, what a statement, right?

What were the works (miracles) that Jesus did?

  • Healed the sick
  • Cured the deaf and mute
  • Gave sight to the blind
  • Reattached severed body parts
  • Fed 5,000 people with 2 loaves of bread and 5 fishes
  • Fed 4,000 people with 7 loaves of bread and a few fishes
  • Caused the lame to walk again
  • Cured mental illness
  • Raised the dead
  • Turned well water into Boone’s Farm
  • Walked on water
  • Stopped storm winds from blowing
  • Walked through walls
  • Resurrected himself from the dead

What a list of miracles! The writer of the gospel of John said, in John 21:25:

And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.

According to that verse, the Bible contains just a small handful of the millions of miracles performed by Jesus. Why, Jesus worked so many miracles in three years, that if all of them were written down, all the books of the world wouldn’t be able to contain them. Wow, just wow! So many miracles, yet there is not one non-Biblical contemporary record for any of them. If a Jewish itinerant preacher performed millions of miracles in a thirty-six-month period, you’d think at least one Roman historian would have mentioned it. Yet, the pages of history are silent.

For the sake of this post, I am going to go with the miracles performed by Jesus as recorded in the gospels. In John 14:12, Jesus told his followers that after he ascended back to his Father in Heaven, they would perform works (miracles) as great as and greater than those worked by him. The Christian church has existed for almost 2,000 years, yet there is no recorded history of Christians doing greater works (miracles) than Jesus. In fact, Christians today think a “greater work” is Jesus helping Grandma find her lost keys or causing someone’s cancer to temporarily go into remission. Healing the sick? Raising the dead? Causing cripples to walk? Giving sight to the blind? Where, oh where can we find and see such medically verifiable miracles? And if Jesus worked millions of such miracles, where can we see legions of people being healed? Where can we see thousands of people being fed with two Big Macs and five large orders of French fries?

Modern Christians are supposed to be greater miracle workers than Jesus, yet everywhere we look we see impotence. Why is that? Evangelicals will make all sorts of peculiar theological arguments, attempting to explain away the clear, literal reading of John 14:12. Perhaps, there is another explanation for the present-day paucity of miracles. Jesus said that miracle-working by his followers was contingent upon him returning to his Father in Heaven. Perhaps, the real reason Christians can’t work Jesus-esque miracles is that he never resurrected from the dead and ascended back to Heaven to sit at the right hand of his Father. Maybe, just maybe, when Jesus died, he stayed dead. You know, just like every other human who has ever lived and died.

John 14:12 remains a direct challenge to the belief that Jesus resurrected from the dead. Had Jesus really escaped the permanency of death and magically floated away from the earth until he could no longer be seen, then Christians from 33 CE until today should have the power to repeatedly do the miraculous. That they don’t tells me that Jesus died on a Roman cross centuries ago and was buried in a borrowed tomb, never to be seen again.

Thus saith the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of Bruce.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Sounds of Fundamentalism: Evangelical Evangelist Todd White and His Acolytes “Heal” People

Bruce Gerencser 3 Comments
todd white

The Sounds of Fundamentalism is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section.  Let’s have some fun!

Today’s Sound of Fundamentalism is a video clip of Evangelical evangelist Todd White and his acolytes “healing” people. White is the president of Lifestyle Christianity University in Watauga, Texas

Enjoy! 🙂

Video Link

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Is This Story Proof That God Heals People with Cancer?

Bruce Gerencser 11 Comments

becky dvorak

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.

Are you on Social Media? Follow Bruce on Facebook and Twitter.

Thank you for reading this post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section. If you are a first-time commenter, please read the commenting policy before wowing readers with your words. All first-time comments are moderated. If you would like to contact Bruce directly, please use the contact form to do so.

Donations are always appreciated. Donations on a monthly basis can be made through Patreon. One-time donations can be made through PayPal.