Faith healers attack cancer with prayer

BY IAN STEWARD
Last updated 05:00 13/08/2009
IN GOD THEY TRUST: A faith-healing group prays over Stacey Edmonds at the Healing Room in Linwood yesterday. The faith healers are, facing camera left to right, Pastor Dee Rea,  Adele Marsh and Ruth Taueki.
THE PRESS
IN GOD THEY TRUST: A faith-healing group prays over Stacey Edmonds at the Healing Room in Linwood yesterday. The faith healers are, facing camera left to right, Pastor Dee Rea, Adele Marsh and Ruth Taueki.

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A Christian faith-healing clinic has opened in Christchurch offering to cure cancer, broken bones and mental illness through prayer.

The New Zealand Healing Rooms clinic in Worcester St, Linwood, is set up like a doctor's surgery, with a waiting room leading to treatment rooms, where two pastors and divine-healing technicians pray for patients.

Pastor Marie Rea said they used "aggressive" prayer techniques based on the teachings of Canadian evangelist John Lake.

"It's a place where Jesus is the healer," she said.

Patients were not charged and were counselled to not stop regular medical treatment.

Rea said patients with problems as diverse as stroke paralysis, cancer or dyslexia were cured, usually within one 20-minute session.

Shirleene Turnbull, a member of the group, said she had a stroke on Boxing Day last year and was paralysed. With treatment by prayer, she was able to walk out of hospital 16 days later, she said. "The doctors called it a miracle," she said.

Adele Marsh, another member of the group, said her daughter suffered from dyslexia and her handwriting was illegible. After a prayer session, her writing became legible.

Pastor Dee Rea said the group did not want to give false hope to patients but it got "very high results" in the treatment of cancer.

The patient did not have to convert to Christianity and did not even have to be a believer, he said.

One sceptic, Phil Tauwhare, said he had a history of bladder disease. On two occasions he went to the healers in great pain and urinating blood. After his healing sessions he felt worse than before, he said.

He went to a doctor who gave him antibiotics that cleared up the problem in three days. "I thought, `What's going on here?"'

However, he became a believer when a subsequent checkup showed he had seven tumours in his bladder. He had several prayer sessions, and surgeons could find only three tumours after that.

GP and former New Zealand Medical Council chairwoman Pippa MacKay said the claims about curing cancer were "mischievous".

"To imply that that kind of quackery is as good or better than medical science is dangerous. How can they claim that? How many controlled trials have they done?"

McKay said the group would give people "the wrong kind of hope".

Christchurch School of Medicine and Health Sciences Associate Professor Dee Mangin said it was important people with serious illnesses sought treatment that had the strongest evidence for efficacy.

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Mangin said seriously ill people were "vulnerable to hope".


- © Fairfax NZ News

134 comments
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ruth   #134   09:31 am Jun 29 2010

god is real and he heals if you want you know more read the holy bible

Cody   #133   07:56 pm Aug 30 2009

I don't agree at all, how could praying possibly work? A supposedly all knowing god would not need someone to ask him, and an all loving god would heal or prevent. What a load of rubbish.

Coral   #132   11:53 am Aug 17 2009

Sceptics are a dime a dozen, and usually not needing this type of help themselves. I applaud the healing clinic for what they're doing. It's about time the western world opened up it's other eye, and realised there are unseen sources available, and sometimes the results are nothing short of a miracle.

vIQleS   #131   04:04 pm Aug 16 2009

I suggest that "Bob's mate" reads The Faith Healers by James Randi to find out how the very common trick of making it look as though a leg is growing slightly longer is done.

As well as reading a very telling account of how these sorts of charlatans have been exposed in the past. And the kind of damage that they can do.

@All - Why should it ever be ok to lie and trick people out of their money? False hope is wrong because it's false.

Not one of the attributes or actions that the above comments have praised this group for are noble, good or even excusable in a rational society.

Lisa   #130   12:22 pm Aug 15 2009

I'm surprised nobody's brought up the world of world-renowned cellular biologist Dr Bruce Lipton, PhD. His work has proven, a few years ago now, that it isn't genes or chemicals that control our body, but energy and external environmental energy signals; the kind they talk about in quantam physics. The Newtonian theory is out, and disproven - quantam physics is where you really get to understand how our bodies work.

And if you understand what this man has achieved and discovered, you'll soon realise that our beliefs - the mind - and intention are literally the controlling factors in our health.

So while what these people are claiming may sound totally cuckoo, like vicious quackery almost preying (scuse the pun) on the naive, it is reasonably sound scientifically and there's every chance it could work better than chemical intervention in a lot of instances, given the potential for chemical toxins to interrupt said energy signals.

Check out http://www.brucelipton.com or his book The Biology of Belief if you want to find out more - fascinating stuff.

Jan Gurr   #129   06:21 pm Aug 14 2009

For all those sceptics who proudly parade their ignorance,shoving their close-minded pooba down more enlightened folks necks; I say,read the Bible. Then read anything you can about Quantum Physics-it may just deliver you from your smug complacency.The narrow minded sceptics of today are the controlling bullies of yesteryear, the oponents of Galileo; the flat earth believers. Frontiers, scientifc progress is extended through open minds, by those whose theories threaten the entrenched perceptions of the day; tightly held by the plodding sceptic. It is fundamentally an issue of control, when a sceptic feels the necessity to speak on behalf of those who may find comfort or cure through faith healing. People have choices,and have a right to decide for themselves what is best for them and a right to treatment from a variety of sources,including the Medical profession,and Faith healing if so desired.

Tim   #128   04:04 pm Aug 14 2009

I say good on 'em for having the guts to be so open about the power of prayer. You'd have to be blind or living in a closet to ignore healing miracles as fact. After all, ignoring divine interaction is one of the most narrowminded worldviews any single person can have and takes a heck of a lot of non-scientific faith -- because God's plan is so, so, so much bigger than ours and all evidence points towards intelligent design. And the fact that they are so forthcoming about how important it is to be medically checked etc. is yet another wise action on their part. You go guys!

dna   #127   03:48 pm Aug 14 2009

hmm where should i start... heh its amazing how many people freak out at the posibility that this could be true, that God may exist...

Open your eyes, look around yourself, look at this wonderful creation we live in (beyond all the sin and disgust), God has mad it plain to us that he exists, you've just never seeked, instead you believe in theroies, made by the same people who swore this earth was flat.

The power of God is amazing, it is a force to be reckoned with. If there was such a God don't you think that nothing would be impossible for him, if he created this world, then using people as a vessel to heal others and free them from hurt and suffering is an easy thing to do. Things like growing limbs, mending bones, healing sickness and raising the dead are all possible with god and the proof is out there, there is footage, search Google, search youtube - see for yourself.

You people are just blinded by it, not only is there proof of the power of God, theres proof of his existance and the past events of the Bible, Where noah arc is, remains of the eyptians in the sea where it parted for Moses, sodom and gomorrah remains its all out there.

If you dont seek you will not find.

knock and the door will open.

If you honestly believe that there is no God, you are a fool, I do feel for you... I hope that one day you will see and get to know the love of our father, if not you will find out he exists the hard way.

Realist   #126   03:37 pm Aug 14 2009

If faith healing is real as they claim, the evidence is not with them, faith healing only 'heals' ailments that can heal on their own or by modern medicines etc, how come God won't heal amputees? Did they do something to warrant denying the use of their limbs? In fact why is God putting people through the hardship of ailments if all it takes to cure these ailments is to pray to him? What an egotistical sadist bible God must be.

Kay   #125   11:59 am Aug 14 2009

Setups like this are not harmless, or funny.There is ample evidence that people are not physically healed.But they are subjected to spiritual abuse. And though those involved claim to be christian,their beliefs are in fact more like new age mysticism or shamanism.


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