In some belief systems, God and His son Jesus Christ are regarded not only as the Creators of the universe and all of human kind, but also as possessing ultimate power to enact divine healing to those who believe. Explore this topic further and read about scientifically-backed evidence from Harvard, Duke and Vanderbuilt Universities as Dr. Karlfeldt, ND, PhD interviews Dr. John Ruthven, PhD on this fascinating topic.
Dr. Karlfeldt: With me I have Dr. John Ruthven. So John, you teach a program where you teach people to teach other people about how to do Christian healing, spiritual healing.
Dr. Ruthven, PhD: That’s right. It’s a doctoral level program. We try to keep pretty rigid scrutiny about what’s going on. We’ve discovered through hard research. We have a panel of two professors from Harvard Medical School, two from Duke and one from Vanderbuilt, who sit in and vet our program. They are pretty conservative given their reputations.
Dr. K: Absolutely.
Dr. R: We are trying to, or at least scientifically, get the word out, the fact that Christian healing really works. For example, I had a student that just graduated this December. His dissertation was on 880 cases of operations where surgically implanted materials had caused a great deal of pain, or loss of mobility. And his criterion for a cure was 80% improvement in mobility, 80% deminution in pain. Actually, pretty much all of them were 100%. But we’re talking 880 cases here.
And physical therapy is baseline, compared with normal physical therapy. If they get 10% improvement in either, they think that’s a miracle. These were mostly 100%. He checked them 30 days later, 100 days later, and did video interviews. But what was really interesting, was in most cases, they self-reported, they volunteered the information. I couldn’t feel the metal anymore.
Dr. K: Really?
Dr. R: It had disappeared during the healing session.
Dr. K: So they were actually able to x-ray, and see that the metal was not there?
Dr. R: He had x-rays, right. But most of the time, the metal rods, plates, whatever are millimeters under the skin. So through palpation you can easily tell that they are still there. So for example, I was in Brazil in October and I was following up on this dissertation, and he was talking to crowds of people – 1 to 2 thousand minimum – and this young man, suddenly, he would ask the congregation, “What can you do now that you can’t do before?” Test it out.
This young man, late 20s, had a motorcycle accident. Of course, in Brazil, everybody has a motor cycle accident. He broke his back and they put in a rod, and screwed in plates into his pelvis up his spine, to keep it straight. And he couldn’t bend much more than 10 degrees. And right after this healing experience, felt this warm oil come over him, the presence of Jesus.
He went up, along with several others, who were all in this category of metal. He was almost touching his toes and bending more than 90 degrees
Dr. K: Really, because he had a metal rod in his back?
Dr. R: Right. Except that it wasn’t there anymore. (laughing) And so, when he came off the stage, I hijacked him.
I said, “Wait a minute, you could feel the rod in your back?”
He said, “Yeah, it was right under the skin.”
So I and got a little “fresh” with him, and I pulled his shirt up, I saw the heavy scar tissue all over his back, where they had installed this plate and this rod. And nothing. I felt down, all I could feel was the nodes in the backbone.
He said, “Yeah, it’s gone. Trust me!”
But this was one of 27 cases during that two-week period that I was with him in Brazil. And this was after the 880 cases.
Dr. K: But, was there verification saying that prior to, there is somebody saw,”Yes, he had a rod”, or in these cases, “Yes these were the screws”.
Dr. R: We have some of those, and in the dissertation there’s a lot of those. But most of the time, it’s self-reported. And when they say, “I couldn’t move my back” or “I couldn’t move my arm above shoulder level.”
You believe them. And especially when you can see the huge scars where they put the plates in and whatever. So it’s credible.
And as I say, we had this team of medical professors who were on also on top of this. And they have a web site, the GMRI, the Global Medical Research Institute. Where they record these kinds of stories, and present the evidence besides.
Dr. K: What do you think is the factor that these healings can take place? What is causing this to take place? From having the rod there and not having the rod, and being in pain versus not being in pain?
Dr. R: The way the people who have had it happen to them describe it, they say it’s the power of Jesus Christ coming down over them. The power of the Holy Spirit. And that’s the way they describe it. And I would too.
Dr. K: Yes.
Dr. R: The New Testament is loaded with healing stories. The traditional religion kind of down-played, because in the nature of human institutions, people want power. And they don’t like people, popping up all over the place, that can do things like this, and show them up. And the question is, “How come you can’t do this if you are a church leader?”
“Well, it doesn’t happen anymore.” And that’s the answer, usually. And so they protect their turf by lying about the power of God, and the action of Christian healing that Jesus came to bring.
Dr. K: Yeah.
Dr. R: 44%, for example, of the public ministry of Jesus in the New Testament in the gospel of Matthew is nothing but healing miracles, and exorcisms. 65% of the gospel of Mark is that. It’s huge in terms of the emphasis.
Dr. K: To me it’s just fascinating. Because we are so prone to saying that this is physical, my physical me. This is physical matter. And just recognizing that there is so much, more above and beyond, that just we physically cannot understand sometimes.
Dr. R: Absolutely!
Photo by Olivia Snow on Unsplash.
