Menu Close

Tag: Faith 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.

Questions From a Christian Reader About Divine Healing and Demonic Possession

Bruce Gerencser 6 Comments
peanut gallery

Recently, a Christian reader asked:

As an atheist, what do you make of the supernatural experiences of Marjoe Gortner who admits to being an evangelical fraud who was in it for the money, yet said he did experience healings and things he could not explain? I think also of a man named Richard Gallagher who is a well-respected psychiatrist trained at Columbia University. Gallagher is a Roman Catholic who definitely believes in demonic possession and professes to have seen it many times and has worked with Catholic exorcists. I ask this not to argue with your atheism, but what is your opinion? Did you ever experience demonic possession or any kind of supernatural things when you were a minister?

I have written about Marjoe Gortner in the past, Bruce, What Do Think of the Marjoe Gortner Story? While Gortner has repudiated his fraudulent past, he did have allegedly supernatural experiences he could not explain. What should we make of these unexplainable experiences?

Before attributing healings to God, proof of his existence must be provided. As a skeptic, I am not going to believe anything without sufficient evidence to justify a claim. When someone claims God did something, I am going to ask, “How do you know it was God that did this?” What empirical evidence can you provide that justifies your claim? Quoting the Bible is not evidence. The Bible is a book of claims; claims that require sufficient evidence to warrant belief. Gortner experienced things he couldn’t explain, but a lack of explanation doesn’t mean “God did it.” Gortner should continue to investigate these claims, but until he has evidence for them, at best, he should say, “I don’t know.” Of course, this approach is antithetical to how many, if not most Evangelicals, navigate the world. Questions and doubts are frowned upon. Certainty of belief is foundational to Evangelical Christianity. When is the last time you have heard a preacher say, “I don’t know.” Oh, these so-called men of God may privately have doubts and questions, but when they mount their respective pulpits, their words exude confidence and certainty.

The same goes for Robert Gallagher’s claims to have seen demonic possessions and exorcisms. How do we know Satan/demons exist? Are there other explanations for alleged possession behavior? As a pastor at Community Baptist Church in Elmendorf, Texas, I encountered several people the church and my fellow co-pastor, Pat Horner, claimed were demon-possessed. I concluded otherwise, believing both men were mentally ill. Prayers were uttered and exorcisms were performed, without success. What these men needed — professional psychological help — was never encouraged or offered. Horner regaled church members with stories of demonic possession from his missionary work in India and Mexico; of how he cast demons out of people. I questioned the truthfulness of these stories, but kept my doubts to myself.

Did I experience supernatural experiences as an Evangelical pastor? Sure, but I now understand that I was indoctrinated and conditioned to see the supernatural anytime I couldn’t explain something. “God did it” or “Satan did it” were common refrains when confronted with what I perceived to be experiences or behaviors I could not explain or understand. Instead of withholding judgment until sufficient evidence was garnered, I automatically assumed God or Satan/demons were the cause. Parishioners never heard me say from the pulpit, “I don’t know.” Not wanting to cause church members to lose their faith, I felt I needed to exude confidence, even when it was unwarranted.

During the deconversion process, my partner and I took a close look at the prayers we believed God answered on our behalf. We concluded that, with a handful of exceptions, our answered prayers could be explained without supernatural intervention. Either we answered our own prayers or other people did — no God needed. But, Bruce, you admit that there were a handful of answered prayers you could not explain! “God did it, right?” Certainly, that’s statistically possible, but not sufficient to convince us that a supernatural God supernaturally answered our prayers. If the existence of God hangs on a few unexplainable circumstances, that’s not sufficient evidence to convince us that said deity exists and is personally involved in our lives.

I am a skeptic and a materialist. If you want to convince me of the supernatural, I am going to insist you provide sufficient evidence for your claims. Anecdotes and personal experiences won’t cut it.

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.

Dear Evangelical, Why Don’t We See Any Miracles in Your Church?

Bruce Gerencser 4 Comments
healing
Cartoon by Ryan Kramer

One of the thorniest verses in the Bible for Evangelicals is John 14:12:

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.

Evangelicals believe that the fourteenth chapter of John is the very words of Jesus. This chapter tells Evangelicals not to have a troubled heart; that 2,000 years ago Jesus ascended back to heaven to prepare a room/mansion in Heaven for them. When they die or if the Rapture happens before they die, Evangelicals are promised the keys to a brand new home in the sky. This chapter also tells Evangelicals that Jesus is THE Way, THE Truth, and THE Life, proving to Evangelicals the exclusivity of their peculiar version of the Christian gospel.

In verse 14 Jesus says, If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it. Ponder these words for a moment. Think about all the prayers Christians have uttered over the centuries, prayers asked in the name of Jesus with nary a response. Think about this verse in light of the current Coronavirus Pandemic. Evangelicals love to say that God answered this or that prayer, but pressed for evidence of their supernatural claims, they quickly retreat to the safe confines of faith. (Please see A Few Thoughts on a Lifetime of Praying to the Christian God.)

Let’s do some Bible math:

If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it + He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do = a church that should regularly see people raised from the dead and healed; a church that should be able to feed the hungry; a church whose leaders work miracles, including walking on water, turning water into Welch’s grape juice, and healing the deaf, blind, and dumb. Add to this, Jesus also said in Mark 16:15-18:

And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

According to Jesus, those who believe in him will cast out devils, speak in unlearned new languages, handle venomous snakes, drink poison and not die, and lay their hands on the sick, miraculously causing them to recover from their illnesses.

Is it not then fair to ask where such Christians are today? Where can a non-believer go to see Christians doing greater works than Jesus? Why are hospital beds not empty, mental hospitals closed down, and world hunger eliminated? Surely if, as the Bible says, Christians are to do works greater than Jesus, we skeptics have the right to say show us.

Most Christian sects come up with elaborate schemes to explain away the normative meaning of these verses. The works of Jesus and the early church were sign gifts, many Evangelicals say, and once the canon of Scripture was completed these sign gifts were no longer necessary. I wonder if Christians who say this ever consider that what they are basically saying is that Jesus was lying in John 15/Mark 16 or that there should no longer be the expectation of verifiable miracles. (I use the word verifiable to turn away those who want to appeal to all sorts of subjective experiences that they say are evidence of God working m-i-r-a-c-l-e-s.)

waiting for a miracle
Graphic by David Hayward

In the delusional world inhabited by Pentecostals, snake-handling Baptists, and those who subscribe to CHARISMA magazine, greater works than Jesus’ are being performed regularly. When asked for verifiable evidence for their claims, appeals are made to faith, or Christians mutter, “I just KNOW that MY GOD is in the miracle-working business.” Funny business God is in . . . no advertising or place of business, yet non-Christians are expected to believe the business exists. I know there is a McDonald’s right here, says the Charismatic because a book I read tells me there is.

Here’s my challenge to Evangelicals. Please pray that God supernaturally heals me from my physical maladies, or that God stops the Coronavirus Pandemic in its tracks. If she does, I will believe and recant every word I’ve ever written about the Bible, God, Jesus, and Christianity. Wouldn’t it be a great testimony to the miraculous power of almighty God and the veracity of the Christian narrative if God healed an atheist such as me? Instead of praying for God to kill me, why not pray for God to heal me?  Better yet, forget me. Heal my wife. I’m waiting . . .

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 Say the Darnedest Things: Churches Should Do Away with Handicap Parking Spaces as a Sign of “Faith”

Bruce Gerencser 19 Comments
benny hinn and greg locke

Churches in the American culture — you know one of the largest expenses we have in buildings? The amount of handicap parking and handicap accessibility that we have in our churches. Now let me make you mad for a minute and I don’t really care. Why is it you pull up to a church that says they operate in faith, and you have fifty handicapped parking spots?

Aint no body lay hands on them handicapped folks yet? I don’t care what Twitter says. You can get mad all you want to. Fold your arms. Stick your lips out. Poot[?] your mouth. I don’t care. I’m so unafraid of what anybody in this tent thinks about me right now in my life, I could care less.

We just expect that people are going to leave church the same way they came to church. We ought to start having some signs out there, that don’t have like handicap accessibility …  people in a wheelchair. We ought to start having signs of a wheelchair laying down and someone just walking up.

‘Well pastor, you are just being insensitive.’

I think you just don’t have any faith is what I think.

— Greg Locke, pastor of Global Vision Bible Church, Mt. Juliet, Tennessee

HT: Protestia

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.

Short Stories: Bruce, the Baptist Goes to a Charismatic Faith Healing Service

Bruce Gerencser 5 Comments
somerset baptist church 1989

In July 1983, I started a new Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church in Somerset, Ohio. I would remain the pastor of Somerset Baptist Church until March 1994. Somerset was a community of 1,400 people located in Perry County — one of the northernmost counties in the Appalachian region. It was here that I learned what it meant to be a pastor; to truly involve yourself in the lives of others.

The membership of Somerset Baptist was primarily made up of poor working-class people. Most church families received some form of government assistance — mostly food stamps and Medicaid. In many ways, these were my kind of people. Having grown up poor myself, I knew a good bit about their struggles. I deeply loved them, and they, in return, bestowed their love on me.

I grew up in a religious monoculture. The only churches I attended were Evangelical/Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregations. I attended a Methodist church one time, but that was only because I was chasing a girl who went to that church. I was twenty-six years old before I attended the services of any other church besides a Bible-preaching Evangelical church.

One of my responsibilities as an IFB pastor was to preach against false pastors and their teachings. On Sundays, I would preach against Catholics, Southern Baptists, Charismatics, mainline churches, and any other sect I deemed heterodox or heretical. As a fully certified, circumcised, and lobotomized IFB preacher, I had a long list of things I was against. The goal, of course, was to make sure that congregants didn’t stray. They were members of the “best” church in town. Why go elsewhere, right? I saw myself as a gatekeeper, a divinely called man given the responsibility to protect people from false teaching. And protect them I did — from every false, harmful teaching but my own.

One Sunday afternoon, I decided to attend a Charismatic faith healing service at the Somerset Elementary School gymnasium. I thought, “if I am going to preach that Charismatic movement is from the pit of Hell, I’d better at least experience one of their services.”

I arrived at the service about fifteen minutes early. I brought one of the “mature” men of the church with me, a man who wouldn’t be swayed by the false teachings we were going to hear. There were 50 or so people in attendance. Songs were sung, a sermon was preached, and an offering was collected. Pretty standard Baptist stuff. But then it came time for people to have the pastor lay hands on them and deliver them from sickness and demonic possession. People started speaking in tongues as the preacher walked down the front row “healing” people. According to the preacher, numerous people were being healed, though I saw no outward evidence of this. This so-called man of God would stand in front of people, ask them their needs, lay his hand on their heads, and pray for them. And just like that, they were “healed.”

Near me was sitting a dirty, scraggly woman. Her black hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks. It had a sheen that said, “last washed with used motor oil.”  When it came time for the preacher to lay his hand on top of the woman’s head, he refused to touch her greasy, dirty head. Instead, he held his “healing” hand just above her head, prayed for her, and quickly moved on to the next mark. I thought, “What a fraud. Why not put your hand on this woman’s head? What’s a little grease on your hands?”

I attended other Charismatic services during my eleven years as pastor of Somerset Baptist, but there’s nothing like your first one, right?

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.

Pacemaker Miraculously Dissolves and Disappears

Bruce Gerencser 10 Comments

The Revival Hub is a Charismatic Christian ministry located in Holiday City, Ohio, 20 minutes from my home. According to the church’s Facebook page, they are in the midst of a protracted revival meeting. Souls are being saved and their peculiar God is working miracles in their midst. One such miracle is a woman’s pacemaker being dissolved and disappearing from her chest. Now that’s quite a miracle, right? Of course, no evidence is provided for this claim. No medical reports, no scans, just the claim of miracle-working apostles, Pete & Alice Garza, and their mark.

Video Link

You can watch other fantastical “miracles” here.

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.

COVID-19 Infections and Deaths Expose Faith Healers as Frauds

Bruce Gerencser 7 Comments
elmer gantry
Is Your Pastor an Elmer Gantry? Are You Sure? How Can You Know?

Cable and satellite TV subscribers are “blessed” to have numerous explicit Evangelical channels to watch. These channels are dominated by Charismatic faith healers, many of whom are fabulously rich. Con artists, the lot of them, their goal is fleece the flock while pretending to heal them of everything from cancer to cavities. As the Coronavirus pandemic sweeps the world, infecting and killing people of every race, religion, and social status, I have noticed that these faith healers seem impotent, unable to heal anyone of the virus. Bill Johnson, pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, California, a renowned fake healer, revealed his powerlessness over COVID-19 by cancelling all in-person worship services at his church. Johnson even shut down the church’s Healing Rooms, going to online healing instead. Why is that?

All across the world, Evangelical faith healers are powerless over COVID-19. Oh, they keep praying, anointing people with oil, and performing magic tricks, but their marks still get sick, and in some instances die. Their helplessness exposes for all the world to see the bankruptcy of faith healing. Rational, skeptical people have always known this, but I suspect that true-blue Charismatic believers are beginning to wonder if these so-called men of God are little more than modern Elmer Gantrys and Sister Sharon Falconers.

The Coronavirus pandemic also exposes Jesus himself as a fraud. Again, rational, skeptical people have always known that the miracle-working Son of God was a fraud; that the miracles recorded in the Bible are works of fiction. Yet, 2,000 years later, Charismatic (and Pentecostal) Christians still believe that Jesus, through the hands and prayers of Holy Ghost-filled preachers, can and does heal them. After all, Jesus did say to his disciples:

And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give. (Matthew 10:7-8)

Just before allegedly ascending to Heaven, Jesus said to his followers:

And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. (Mark 16:15-18)

Jesus’ brother James had this to say:

Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms. 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. (James 5:13-15)

These Bible verses seem clear to me: preachers, evangelists, missionaries, and even common, every day Christians are empowered by God to heal the sick. Why, then, are they powerless when it comes to healing people of COVID-19?

It is obvious, at least to me anyway, that faith healers are frauds; that for all their supposed supernatural power and faith, they are unable to heal anyone from COVID-19. Will the Coronavirus pandemic be the seismic event that finally exposes these preachers for who and what they are: money-grubbing frauds? Will devoted Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians finally pull back the curtain and see that the divine wizard is but a man? Will they put their checkbooks away and let these so-called anointed prophets starve? I want to think that this is finally the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back. I really, really, really want to believe that Charismatic and Pentecostal believers will be drawn to the light of reason and science. However, the Coronavirus pandemic will eventually fade into the fabric of human history, and when it does, faith healers will come up with a new shtick to rob Christians of their money. Perhaps if God would infect Kenneth Copeland, Jim Bakker, Bill Johnson, TD Jakes, Todd Bentley, Benny Hinn, Rodney Howard-Browne, Paula White, Pat Robertson, and others like them with COVID-19 and let them die horrible deaths while hooked up to respirators, maybe then believers would see the light.

I don’t wish COVID-19 on anyone, but a bit of karmic justice might put an end to the control faith healers have over so many people. Did you attend a Charismatic or Pentecostal church? Did you really believe faith healers could deliver you from your afflictions? If yes, what caused you to change your mind? Please leave your heavenly thoughts in the comment section.

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 Say the Darnedest Things: Stop Making an Idol Out of Sickness

Bruce Gerencser 11 Comments

becky dvorak

Have we idolized the sickness? Has it become all-powerful to us? Has it become the center of our lives? Is it the controller of all we say and do? It is the center of every message we give? Do our words glorify Jesus as the healer of all, including this sickness, or do they insinuate this sickness is more powerful than Jesus? I know these are hard questions to ask ourselves, but in order to dethrone this sickness we need to know what we are glorifying.

Have we become a walking billboard for advertising the disease? Are we its new poster child? Are we walking down the catwalk modeling the disease for the world to see? Have we turned the spotlight onto the sickness? Are we highlighting the strength of this disease with every breath that we breathe?

I don’t think we set out to idolize the sickness. I think it sneaks into position, and before we know it, we bow down to it and comply to its every demand. Instead, we should take our stand and by a faith-filled command, curse it and bind it back to the land from where it came: the pit of hell. Take hold of our spiritual claim, the redemptive power of the blood to deliver and heal us from these filthy chains that try to bind us. It’s time to set ourselves free from this golden calf of sickness and disease.

We need to stop promulgating a false doctrine that says God gave this disease to us. This message goes against the Word of God, and devalues the blood that Jesus shed for us at the whipping post so that we could be healed from sickness and disease. With every fiber of His precious being He shed His blood for our healing.

….

Again we have a choice to make. Are we willing to admit and repent of all our doubt and unbelief to our Healer, Jesus? Or will we hold onto our right to a false doctrine and glorify this sickness? Are we ready to dethrone this disease in our lives? And are we going to lift up Jesus higher and place Him, our healer on the throne of our hearts, and cleanse our temples from the filth of this disease?

— Becky Dvorak, Charisma News, Stop Making This an Idol, December 31, 2018

BTW, Dvorak, a faith-healing evangelist, believes if you just speak that “right words” Jesus will heal you.

The Sounds of Fundamentalism: Tunnel of Fire, a New Charismatic Practice

Bruce Gerencser 3 Comments

 

charismatic faith healer

This is the one hundred and seventy-sixth installment in The Sounds of Fundamentalism series. This 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 features clips of a new Charismatic practiced called Tunnel of Fire. Charismatic churches are always on the look out for new methods and gimmicks to arouse the passions of congregants. The Tunnel of Fire is one such practice.

Fire Tunnel With Todd White at The Sound The Alarm Youth Conference, Orlando Florida 2016

Video Link

Video Link

Bethel Church, Redding, California

Video Link

Video Link