prqnl
14th July 2007, 02:37 PM
Hi, everyone. As a hobby, I research miraculous healing claims made by Pentecostals. Usually, this involves me searching around for a Pentecostal website that has posted such claims on its website, and when I find a claim that is particularly extraordinary, I contact the operator of the website and ask for more information on the person they allege was healed. In most of the cases, they are unable to produce even the most rudimentary evidence that this person was miraculously healed, or that the person even exists. Sometimes the host of the website will voluntarily remove the claim from his or her website as a result of my inquiry. Occasionally, though, I will get a case in which the operators of a website refuse to address their claims, even when I have shown them why their claims cannot possibly be true. When that happens, I go public with my findings, and that is why I've come here.
I would like to introduce you to Bethel Church. Their website is ibethel.org, and they make some pretty interesting claims.
First is a claim Bethel Church has made on its website of a paralyzed woman whose spinal chord was miraculously reconnected. It turns out this story was related to Bethel Church by one of its members, and the woman whose spinal chord was allegedly reconnected actually lives in London. This "testimony" was placed on the website without even the slightest attempts to verify whether the woman even existed.
Second is a claim in which a follower of Bethel Church was pronounced healed of Bipolar Disorder by a doctor after being given a blood test. I politely explained to the folks at ibethel that there is no blood test that can diagnose Bipolar Disorder, and that the blood test he was given was likely to test the presence of lithium in his blood. Despite my explanation, the testimony remains on their website.
Third, and my all time favorite healing testimony, was that of a flight attendant who wanted to donate blood, and was given a false positive on a hepatitis test. The flight attendant believed she had been diagnosed with hepatitis, and began a long series of praying rituals to be healed of the disease. She eventually took a new hepatitis test, which came up negative, and she and her church took this to mean God had healed her of hepatitis. I politely explained to the folks at ibethel.org that false positives occur from time to time in hepatitis tests, and are due, not to the presence of hepatitis in the blood, but to an error in the test. Thus, the woman and her church spent a good deal of time praying for God to heal her of a disease that she did not even have.
The last, and easiest healing to debunk, was the little boy whose brother poked him in the eye, resulting in a scratched cornea. The folks at ibethel were surprised that his cornea healed within a week, and believe it was due to their prayer. I explained to them that the eyedrops that the doctor put in the little boy's eye was a topical steroid, which sped the healing of the already-fast-healing cornea.
I have put some videos of Bethel Church and their false healing claims up on youtube. I would like to make sure plenty of non-Bethel-Church folks see these videos before someone at Bethel does and gets them removed.
My username here is the same as my username on youtube.
If this post is not in line with the rules here, I apologize, and feel free to remove it.
prqnl
I would like to introduce you to Bethel Church. Their website is ibethel.org, and they make some pretty interesting claims.
First is a claim Bethel Church has made on its website of a paralyzed woman whose spinal chord was miraculously reconnected. It turns out this story was related to Bethel Church by one of its members, and the woman whose spinal chord was allegedly reconnected actually lives in London. This "testimony" was placed on the website without even the slightest attempts to verify whether the woman even existed.
Second is a claim in which a follower of Bethel Church was pronounced healed of Bipolar Disorder by a doctor after being given a blood test. I politely explained to the folks at ibethel that there is no blood test that can diagnose Bipolar Disorder, and that the blood test he was given was likely to test the presence of lithium in his blood. Despite my explanation, the testimony remains on their website.
Third, and my all time favorite healing testimony, was that of a flight attendant who wanted to donate blood, and was given a false positive on a hepatitis test. The flight attendant believed she had been diagnosed with hepatitis, and began a long series of praying rituals to be healed of the disease. She eventually took a new hepatitis test, which came up negative, and she and her church took this to mean God had healed her of hepatitis. I politely explained to the folks at ibethel.org that false positives occur from time to time in hepatitis tests, and are due, not to the presence of hepatitis in the blood, but to an error in the test. Thus, the woman and her church spent a good deal of time praying for God to heal her of a disease that she did not even have.
The last, and easiest healing to debunk, was the little boy whose brother poked him in the eye, resulting in a scratched cornea. The folks at ibethel were surprised that his cornea healed within a week, and believe it was due to their prayer. I explained to them that the eyedrops that the doctor put in the little boy's eye was a topical steroid, which sped the healing of the already-fast-healing cornea.
I have put some videos of Bethel Church and their false healing claims up on youtube. I would like to make sure plenty of non-Bethel-Church folks see these videos before someone at Bethel does and gets them removed.
My username here is the same as my username on youtube.
If this post is not in line with the rules here, I apologize, and feel free to remove it.
prqnl