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Now watch.
You're going to feel a warm heat go into that leg and straighten it out.
Right, there it comes, thank you Jesus.
Remember how I said there were two groups of Christian healers?
The con-artists and the ones that truly believe God is using them?
My old church fellowship belonged to the second group.
I grew up around these people,
and I saw many of them pray for healing in casual settings
and behind closed doors.
Sometimes even praying for the short leg of one of their own children.
They genuinely believed that God healed people.
It's very much like the world of psychics.
While there are a number of intentional con-artists,
there are also plenty that honestly believe
that they are gifted with special abilities.
My old church group has hundreds of pastors around the world,
and draws a lot of negative attention and accusations.
Yet despite that,
to this day I still have not heard even a rumor
that one of the pastors was intentionally faking miracles.
Often times these preachers would bring a person on stage
to see if they had a short leg,
only to find out that their legs were even.
This is generally not the kind of thing you'd do if you were trying to fake it.
So why would they check people for short legs?
Well it's because a major symptom of having a short leg
is lower back pain.
So if someone said they had such pain,
the first thing these evangelists would do
is sit them in a chair and check their legs.
I think this gimmick initially started as a scam
and was eventually adopted by naive evangelists who thought it was genuine.
Remember how I said I prayed for my short arm and God healed it?
I was just deluding myself.
Measuring short legs and arms is extremely susceptible to error.
In fact, medical professionals carefully use x-rays to measure the length,
because other forms of measurements are so prone to error.
If a naive preacher is expecting a short leg,
he may be more inclined to accept an invalid measuring.
Then when he is holding the legs during prayer,
it's easy to unwittingly adjust the angle
because he has an expectation that they will become even,
and he's looking for the results.
The person being prayed for can also interfere.
If you sit in a chair and stretch out your legs,
you can make one leg look short just by shifting your weight
from one leg to the other.
If you're a church member or visitor getting prayed for,
you've just spent the last hour surrounded by people
singing and basking in the positive, warm atmosphere of the church,
all of whom are expecting God to perform miracles.
The mood is infectious
and you're much more psychologically prepared to believe you'll be healed.
Reign in all the earth
Reign in all the earth
Jesus
I don't believe Hillsong prays for the sick on stage,
but if you've never been to a Pentecostal church like this,
I'd recommend going just to experience the kind of
emotional atmosphere these churches can generate.
You alone are God
Although, church members will tell you this atmosphere
is actually the presence of God.
Most people want a touch from God so much,
that they just might convince themselves that they got it.
It becomes this toxic circle of delusion.
The preachers are convinced God is using them,
and the church members are convinced that God healed them.
None of these supposed healings that occur are outside the realms
of natural explanation.
I injured my foot recently and was limping around for a few days,
so I decided to go see a doctor about it.
Before going, I wanted to test my foot and see where exactly the pain was
so I could explain it to the doctor.
Well, I began walking around like normal and I couldn't feel any pain.
It was gone.
I had simply become used to limping around
because I didn't want to aggravate my foot.
And in fact, the way I was limping
was putting pressure on a different area of my foot
which was then giving me discomfort.
I was needlessly making it worse.
At these healing services they will always tell you to test yourself
right after being prayed for.
Try to see if the pain is gone.
If I had gone up for prayer with my foot and tested myself afterwards,
it would've been a miracle!
I would've been running laps around the audience.
What you see on stage is only a fraction of the story.
Is the person absolutely confined to a wheelchair,
or are they able to walk for short periods anyway?
What about the women who say they couldn't get pregnant,
then are suddenly healed?
Were they perhaps undergoing fertility treatments?
Is the person known in the church as an attention seeker?
If the doctors looked again and your illness had disappeared,
how common is a misdiagnosis for that particular ailment?
Did the doctor believe something supernatural took place?
Reasonable questions like this are often seen as unbelief
and an insult to the healing power of God.
For major sicknesses like cancer and other medical problems,
it's often a case of the drugs working, yet God gets the credit.
Or, for some reason the seriousness of the illness is later reduced,
like cancer remission.
But this happens to Christians and non-Christians alike.
Not to mention people with the same medical conditions
are prayed for all the time, yet they never receive healing.
Just before I deconverted from Christianity,
I started getting very frustrated at the lack of real healings.
I wanted more than just having to trust someone that their pain was gone.
God was always hiding in the shadows,
performing miracles that no one could actually prove
beyond reasonable doubt.
I never saw spots or bruises disappear before my eyes,
or hands growing back from stumps.
If I cut my finger as a kid, I never saw it heal up instantly,
despite the amount of times I was prayed for.
In the end, it's like those that attribute their healing
to good luck charms, magnetic therapy,
or any other kind of new age fad.
Some people use God, some people use crystals.
All of these healings are a result of psychological processes,
genuine medical science,
or the body's own natural healing ability.
There never seems to be tangible proof to indicate otherwise.
A couple years ago,
I went to a healing service conducted by Daniel Kolenda.
After people were prayed for,
there were the usual claims of generic pain being healed,
but eventually the audience members start scraping the bottom
of the testimony barrel.
Saying things like,
"I had a bad diagnosis from the doctor, but after praying
I just felt in my heart that God is going to give me a miracle".
And everyone claps and thanks God for something that hasn't even happened.
When you start hearing testimonies like this,
you know it's time to wind things up.
So they're about to close the service, when Daniel Kolenda is interrupted
and told that there was one more testimony.
A boy about 11 or 12 years old gets up on stage with his dad,
and starts telling us what God did for him.
He had been diagnosed with some form of cancer,
I don't remember what type.
He said that as he prayed the prayer of healing
with everyone else in the room,
he felt in his heart that God healed him from his cancer.
Clearly he had been influenced by the whole "felt it in my heart" thing.
The auditorium erupted in praise,
thanking God for this amazing miracle.
I felt so bad for this kid.
The first thing I thought of
was him walking into the doctor's office on Monday,
and finding out the cancer was still there.
Just imagine how devastated and heartbroken he would be.
In some ways I could relate to him.
A church kid growing up surrounded by miracles,
influenced by family and church members
who all believe that Jesus can heal you.
He was only acting out what he had been taught.
This of course is one of the sad side effects
of childhood indoctrination.
Thanks for watching.