Epaphroditus - PH63-01

Advanced Bible Doctrine - Philippians 2:25-30

Under a world government, however, it is necessary for humanity also to be united religiously. If you're going to have the thing work on the political level as a united front, you also have to bring together the forces that move the minds of people, not the least of which is, of course, what people believe in matters of religion. So religion has to be united in the tribulation period under the leadership of the false prophet, the assistant to the antichrist. Revelation 13:11-15 describe for us how that is going to work. We are dealing with some very powerful forces (miracle-working forces), and yet forces that are under the restraint of God. Until God the Holy Spirit is removed, who is restraining the power and the expression of Satan, he will not be able to fully express what he is able to do.

But make no mistake about it. The devil is a miracle worker. The reason people who claim to speak in tongues today are not speaking in known foreign languages is because God is keeping the demons from allowing them to do it. The demons could speak in foreign languages. The devil could make you speak in a foreign language. But that would be a confirmation of something that doesn't exist. So obviously at that point, God says, "You can't do that."

The realizing of world religion requires bringing together many divergent denominations and many divergent religions of the world. When you have a one-religious-system in the world, you must recognize and remember that that means bringing together all the religions of the world. In other words: Hinduism; Buddhism; Shintoism; Taoism; Mohammedanism; and, all the cults that we have today, all have to come together along with the standard denominations, and they all have to welcome each other in a common bond of fellowship. That's the point.

If you're going to do that, there has to be some cementing element. There has to be something that will enable a Buddhist and a Christian to get together. There has to be something that will enable a Jew and a Mohammedan to be able and to be willing to get together and to worship together. That's the point. There has to be a unifying force. An ecumenical force is needed.

Such a unifying force has to be operating in the world before the tribulation in order to prepare the minds of people for such a one-world religion. That could not happen overnight. You have to have this in action before the tribulation begins, which brings us, therefore, to the charismatic movement today. The charismatic movement is claiming miracle powers which it does not possess. Yet, it is moving people emotionally toward a unity which nothing else has ever done in modern times. So divergent denominations are being cemented on the ground of the impression that they possess certain supernatural gifts from God. This charismatic movement, I'm confident myself, will continue in the tribulation period. It is Satan's cementing force. It is the thing that he is using.

What is the truth about the charismatic movement today? The forces now are so powerful that if ministers would dare to stand up and say that the charismatic movement is Satan's tool upon a bunch of deluded people and confusing folks who are not involved in it, you would be held in utter contempt by large segments of the Christian population.

The Charismatic Movement

The man that has helped us a great deal is Dr. William Nolen, in answering this question, as he decides to take the queen of the healers, Kathryn Kuhlman, and to investigate the results of her healings. He is closing the mouths of charismatics all over the place. Kathryn Kuhlman went to Johnny Carson and requested immediate time on his Tonight Show because the previous week he had had Dr. Nolen on it. Dr. Nolen had brought his scalpel with him to the program, and had cut Kathryn Kuhlman up into little bite-sized bits. She went back in order to answer him. I didn't see Nolen's program. I just had the report on it. But I did see Kuhlman on. I wish you had seen that program.

I want to tell you one thing, because as I read the concluding part which Dr. Nolen's analysis has brought us, I want you to have this in mind. Carson finally said to her, "Well, you know, Dr. Nolen indicated that whatever healings do come out of your meetings; whatever symptoms are removed from people; and, whatever happens that they do feel better and that some physical problem is solved for them, is merely a psychosomatic effect. It was something that was not an organic problem, but was a functioning problem or a thinking problem, and your meetings produce a climate that solves that."

Her answer to him was, as she reached over and smiled in that way that she has, "Johnny, don't you realize that psychosomatic healings are the hardest kind of healings to achieve?" And Carson, trying to figure out what to say, said, "Yep, that's true."

And I yelled at the screen, "Is it harder for God to heal something that originates in your mind than in your body organs, Carson?" He didn't think of that. She had conned millions of viewers with a statement like that. And this guy was agreeing with her.

That's the kind of thing that takes place in the charismatic movement. Dr. Nolen went into that part of her healings, and you won't believe it. Let's get started: I'm quoting from Dr. Nolen's book, Healing: A Doctor in Search of a Miracle:

"Case number four: Rita Swanson is 23 years old. She's a senior student in a small Baptist college. In her spare time, she works for an interdenominational religious organization called Child Evangelism Fellowship. The purpose of Child Evangelism Fellowship is, as Rita put it, to make Christians out of children. Specifically, it is Rita's job to teach the children hymns and games that will, in a subtle way, teach them what is in the Bible. Rita is a very pleasant girl. I'm almost tempted to call her sweet, but I don't like the word, and I did like Rita. I would have been happy to have her teach the Bible to my children. Rita went to Kathryn Kuhlman's service both to watch Miss Kuhlman (Rita has been a fan of hers for several years), and because she (Rita) suffered from a skin problem. She hoped Kathryn Kuhlman would cure her skin.

"Her problem was apparent. Rita had blemishes all over her face, the sort of pot-scarred skin that is common consequence of severe adolescent acne. She had been treated by dermatologists off and on for years. Her latest therapy had consisted of vitamins and antibiotics. At the service, Miss Kuhlman pointed in her direction and said, "Someone there, someone in section six, is suffering from a skin problem. I rebuke that problem. In three days, that skin problem will be cured." Rita looked around and saw no one else in her section with an obvious skin problem, and knew then that she would be cured.

"Three days later, her face was very much improved. Since that time, even though she wasn't taking any antibiotics or vitamins, her skin hadn't gotten any worse. Even her dermatologist agreed that her skin was better, though he wouldn't go so far as to say she was cured. Rita knew she owed her improved skin to the Holy Spirit working through Kathryn Kuhlman.

"Rita's case is a lot like that of Marilyn, the girl with multiple sclerosis. Rita wants very badly to have a nice complexion. She has worked very hard at it. Witness the constant stream of dermatologists that she has seen in the last five years. A bad complexion is a tough cross for a young girl to bear. Her desire to be cured makes her highly susceptible to suggestion. If someone tells her her skin will be better in three days, when she looks in the mirror three days later, she will look for evidence that her skin is improved, and the chances are excellent that she will find it. 'Is that scar a little less prominent? Yes, I think it is. Is that red spot fading? Thank the Lord, yes.' After all, judging the appearance of skin is highly subjective. You look in the mirror, and unless things are too shockingly obvious, you will see, at least in part, what you want.

"There are two other points worth mentioning here, both having to do with skin diseases. The first is that Kathryn Kuhlman did not say, as far as I've been able to determine (she never says), "Someone with a skin disease has just been cured." At her services, there are instant cures of cancer; bursitis; and, hearing loss–all ailments that no one can see. But skin defects which are obvious take three days or more to cure. Kathryn Kuhlman wouldn't want Rita or anyone else coming up on the stage to claim a cure of a skin disease when it would be perfectly obvious to everyone that it was still there. It wouldn't be honest. Kathryn Kuhlman is, at least in her own mind, honest. She wouldn't plant in the audience someone with an unblemished face, and have her come up on the stage and claim a cure. Besides, all those sitting next to that person would know the claim was false. It's much better to promise a skin cure for three days later when the audience is dispersed and Kathryn Kuhlman is many miles away.

"The second point is that it is perfectly possible that three days after Kathryn Kuhlman leaves, someone with a skin disease, who was at the miracle service, will find all manifestations of the disease gone. This is not the case for a girl like Rita, unfortunately. Rita's skin disease is, at least in part, organic, as opposed to functional or psychogenic terms, which we'll discuss later. But some people with a skin disease fall into the category known as neuro-dermatitis. This means literally an inflammation of the skin caused by the nerves. How? We don't know exactly. (There's that confession again.) But doctors encounter it frequently. The nerves of the skin, and / or the glands of the skin, get into some sort of imbalance, and rashes or other skin blemishes develop.

"A simple example of nerves working on the skin is blushing. Some people blush when they're embarrassed. Nerves cause the blood vessels of the skin to fill with blood, and the cheeks get red. These nerves to the blood vessels are part of the autonomic nervous system. That is, they are nerves that are not under voluntary control.

"Another example of neuro-dermatitis is warts. Warts are, in part, due to infection with a virus, but no one will deny that psychological and nervous factors may play a role in the genesis and cure of warts. For example, one way that some doctors treat warts is to give the patient gentian violet, an innocuous purple dye, and say, 'Paint those warts with this solution every day for three weeks and your warts will go away.' Sometimes this works, just as burying a frog at midnight, or some other such routine worked for Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. In these cases, what is really at work is neither the frog nor the dye, but simply the power of suggestion–a sort of low-grade hypnosis.

"And for the more severe neuro-dermatitis, a rash over the entire body, for example, or a terribly itchy rash, deeper hypnosis by a physician trained in the technique is often effective. Many of the techniques that Kathryn Kuhlman uses are hypnotic. It would be odd if occasionally a neuro-dermatitis, or one of the many other diseases susceptible to hypnosis, did not respond to her miracle service. Miss Kuhlman's miracle service may produce an improvement. In Rita's acne, it will not eliminate the scars, an organic manifestation of the disease.

"Case number 5. Lois Robinson is 36 years old and a Roman Catholic. She is married, and even though she has seven children, she has managed to keep a trim, athletic figure. She also has an attractive face. Lois has had trouble with varicose veins for many years. After the birth of her third child, she had an operation on her veins. They recurred, and after the birth of her fifth child, she underwent another operation. This time, she had 24 incisions in the left leg and 12 incisions in the right. Six weeks later, she had some small residual veins injected. Her seventh child was born just two months before the Kathryn Kuhlman meeting. During her pregnancy, Lois developed more varicose veins, which she described as very obvious.

"On the morning of the Kathryn Kuhlman service in Minneapolis, Lois turned on her television set at 8:30 and watched Miss Kuhlman's syndicated show. After it was over, Lois said to her daughter, 'I'm going to that miracle service this afternoon. I'm going to be cured.' Lois knew, just as certainly as if Christ Himself had told her, that Kathryn Kuhlman would cure her. At the service, Lois couldn't find a seat on the ground floor, so she went up to the balcony. During the healing period, Miss Kuhlman pointed to the balcony and said, 'Someone way up high doesn't like where she's sitting. Her varicose veins have been cured.' At that moment, Lois felt the power of the Lord go through her, and she knew her varicose veins had been healed.

"Lois's girlfriend, who had come to the service with her, urged her to go up on the stage and claim her cure, which she did. I remembered her very well, not only because she was quite attractive, but because she was wearing a pantsuit when she claimed the healing of her varicose veins. She, of course, made no attempt to show us her legs. There was really no way she could have done so without disrobing on the stage, and that would admittedly have been highly inappropriate. As a result, however, the audience had to take Lois's word for the cure.

"While I was interviewing her, I asked her about this–while wearing pantyhose and a pantsuit, how she could have known at the service that her varicose veins had been cured. Lois became irate. 'I knew,' she said, 'because I felt the power of the Lord go through me.' Then she turned on me. She asked, 'Have you been reborn?' When I replied that I didn't know what she meant, she said, 'Reborn in Christ, of course. If you haven't, then how can you possibly understand how He works?' I told her I was doing my best to understand more about all this, and apologized for upsetting her, after which we got along reasonably well. Before she left, she showed me her legs. She had scars of at least 30 incisions on the right, and 20 or more on the left, the result of her two operations. There were a few small veins still visible, but no large veins. When I talked to her doctor later, he said, 'Yes, she developed a couple of varicose veins during her pregnancy. They went away, as they usually do, after delivery.' Lois hadn't told him about Kathryn Kuhlman.

"Lois's case demonstrates two points, and the first concerns the religious fervor that is typical of believers. Lois became furious with me when I started probing, trying to piece together her story in order to learn whether she had been cured or not. Lois thought this was presumptuous of me, and that I should accept her word and the power of Kathryn Kuhlman. In short, she demanded that I have blind faith.

"This wasn't the only time I was to encounter resentment. I learned over and over again that people who believe, the true believers, as Eric Hoffer calls them, don't want anyone asking questions to find out how things really are. They want to hang on to their beliefs, and they fear and resent anyone whose inquiries might shake them. Sometimes these believers become so irate that they're belligerent. You can practically taste the hostility. Occasionally, during the course of my investigation, this hostility frightened me. I wanted to get at the root of the healing scene, but preferably without sustaining serious injury. Once in a while this led me, I'm sorry to confess, to dissemble. Even when there was apparent misinterpretation of evidence or flagrant deceptions, I didn't always point them out at the time. I went along as if I were a believer myself. To do otherwise would only have antagonized people to the point where they would cut me off from information I wanted and needed. I didn't like myself for behaving deceptively, but I couldn't then, and still can't, see any workable alternative.

"The second point that Lois's case makes has to do with misinterpretation of evidence. Lois had a few varicose veins which developed during her pregnancy. This, as most women know, happens frequently. There are two reasons why women who are pregnant develop varicose veins. One is the direct effect of the female sex hormone estrogen on blood vessels, and the other simply the bulk of the enlarged uterus containing the baby. The uterus fills the pelvis, pressing on the iliac veins, and impeding the flow of blood from the veins in the leg. The back pressure on the veins causes them to balloon. Once the baby is delivered, the estrogen level drops to normal; the uterus shrinks; flow in the iliac veins becomes unrestricted; and, the veins in the legs go back to their normal size. Though sometimes, if they'd been stretched too badly, the veins don't collapse to normal size, and the woman is left with varicose veins.

"Lois may or may not have understood all this. Whichever the case, she chose to attribute the disappearance of her varicose veins to the miraculous intervention of the Holy Spirit working through Kathryn Kuhlman, rather than to the normal physiological response of the body to relief from a pregnancy. That is Lois's privilege, but it would be very difficult to convince anyone, even a rabid Kathryn Kuhlman devotee, that the decrease in the size of Lois's veins was indeed a miracle.

"In talking to these patients, I tried to be as honest, understanding, and as objective as possible. The only thing I refuse to dispense with (couldn't have dispensed with, even if I had tried) were my medical knowledge and my common sense. I listened carefully to everything they told me, and followed up every lead which might even remotely have led to a confirmation of a miracle. When I had done all this, I was led to an inescapable conclusion: None of the patients who had returned to Minneapolis to reaffirm the cures they had claimed at the miracle service, had, in fact, been miraculously cured of anything by either Kathryn Kuhlman or the Holy Spirit."

Now, there's one other question. As you know, Kathryn Kuhlman, or the man that you can see on channel 39 after church today, every one of them, without a hesitancy, will claim to cure organic disorders. They will make no hesitancy to claim cure of cancer of every kind. Malignant diseases are one of their biggest areas of operation. So therefore, the question very fairly comes up: "OK, Dr. Nolen, let's have it straight. What happened to the malignant cases?" We have already previously introduced you to some of them. Continuing:

"Although well over 100 patients had claimed cures at the miracle service, there were, of course, thousands who had not. How did they react to the service? All were disappointed–some deeply so. This included, for example, the mothers with retarded, deformed children whom I had seen crying as they left the auditorium. Others tried to be philosophical about their experience. After all, Kathryn Kuhlman hadn't promised them a cure, had she? If they weren't cured, perhaps it was their own fault. Perhaps they weren't spiritually ready to be cured. It was the Holy Spirit's right to decide whom He would and would not cure. No one blamed Kathryn Kuhlman. Most blamed themselves. Many of those who weren't cured were reluctant to talk about the experience at all.

"From Litchfield, for example, two busloads of patients (about 60 people) had gone to the Kathryn Kuhlman meeting. For two weeks prior to the meeting, our local newspaper had run notices telling those who might want to make the trip what numbers they could call to make reservations. Not only because I was looking into faith healing, but as a surgeon in practice in Litchfield, I was curious to learn if any of the local people (I assume some of my patients would be in the group.) derived any medical benefit from the service.

"So a few days before the meeting, I called the number listed in the paper, and asked the woman in charge of the trip to help me out. 'I have no desire to infringe on anyone's privacy,' I told her, 'but I'm interested in spiritual healing, and perhaps you might do me a favor. Just tell those who make the trip that I'd be most grateful if they'd contact me afterward and report on their experience.' She agreed to make that announcement. I never heard from any of those who went to the service from Litchfield. I assume no one was cured. Litchfield, being the small town it is, I think that if anyone had been cured, even to the extent that those I've reported were cured, word would have gotten around. I made a few discreet inquiries with negative results.

"I did, however, learn of one repercussion I sustained from even daring to ask about the local trip to see Kathryn Kuhlman. A friend of mine told me at a party one night that there was some resentment toward me in Litchfield because I was looking into this Kathryn Kuhlman thing. The feeling was that I was a doctor, and that Kathryn Kuhlman's work was not medical–not in my field, and that I had no business nosing around locally, trying to find out who went to her service. I mention this episode only because it is typical of the attitude, which I've already mentioned, that believers have toward probing. Believers just do not want anyone asking questions. They resent those who do. Still, in my nosing around, I discovered one thing about those who weren't helped. They frequently rationalized their visit as being something they did just out of curiosity.

"One woman, for example, took her seven-year-old son, sick with inoperable bone cancer, to the service. The boy wasn't helped. The mother, a very intelligent woman, was embarrassed because she knew that many of us in town were aware that she had taken Michael to the service. 'I didn't really take him down there because I thought he'd be cured,' she told a friend. 'It's just that I was curious to see what the service was like, and I couldn't find anybody to stay with Mike, so I brought him along.' God knows she didn't have to explain. No one with any compassion would have criticized her or laughed at her. Her son was dying a slow, painful death. It was easy to understand any patient grasping at the straw that the Kathryn Kuhlman service, as advertised and publicized, represented."

Please don't miss the fact that Dr. Nolen has pointed out a thing that is very significant about healers' meetings. They get advertised and publicized. This would have been like the apostle Paul running ads in the local papers at Corinth before he had his healing meetings down there at the stadium (which he, obviously, didn't). Continuing:

"But did the Kuhlman service even offer a remote chance that a patient with a malignant disease might be cured? Even though none of those who had claimed a cancer cure at the time of the service returned to Minneapolis to reaffirm their cure, I was anxious to find out what had happened to them. I wrote to everyone on my list who, at the time of the meeting, had claimed a cure of a malignant disease. I called or visited those who didn't respond. This is what I learned:

"Case A: Richard Whalen was the 21-year-old boy with what appeared to be cancer of the liver. He had tried to claim a cure, but Maggie had prevented him from getting to the stage. The legal secretaries had gotten his address. Richard had died of his cancer twelve days after Kathryn Kuhlman's visit.

"Case B: Leona Flores was the woman who had claimed a cure of lung cancer, and who had, on the stage, at Kathryn Kuhlman's suggestion, proved her cure by taking deep breaths without any pain. Leona, it turned out, when I contacted her, did not have lung cancer at all. 'I have Hodgkin's disease,' she said, 'and some of the glands in my chest are involved. But since no one else got up when Miss Kuhlman said someone with lung cancer is being cured, I figured it had to be me. I've been back to my doctor, and he says he can't see any change in my X-ray. I think I breathe better than I did before the miracle service. But it's hard to tell since I never had much trouble with breathing anyway. I've had Hodgkin's disease for almost four years now. I still take my drugs regularly, and my doctor says I'm doing nicely.'

"Hodgkin's disease is difficult to classify. It may or may not be a type of cancer. One thing is certain. It is a very unpredictable disease. Some patients can be cured by surgery–others by radiation or drugs. Many live comfortably with the ailment under control for 10, 15, or 20 years, or longer. Unlike lung cancer, Hodgkin's disease is certainly not a highly malignant illness. Leona Flores, who had breathed deeply to a loud ovation at the miracle service, had definitely not been cured of lung cancer; Hodgkin's disease; or, anything else by Kathryn Kuhlman.

"Case C: Peter Warren was the 63-year-old man with kidney cancer which had spread to the bone. He is the man I helped to walk into the auditorium, and for whom I found a wheelchair. He went to the stage to claim the cure of bone cancer. The wheelchair I had found for his temporary use was carried to the stage by an usher, and put beside him as evidence of his cure. He was one of the many to whom Kathryn Kuhlman addressed the question, in a voice full of amazement, 'Is that your wheelchair?' When he answered, 'Yes,' she said to a rousing ovation, 'Praise the Lord.' On the stage, Mr. Warren had performed, at Kathryn Kuhlman's suggestion, a number of deep knee bends to demonstrate his cure. I asked Mr. Warren's daughter, when I reached her two months later, about Mr. Warren's subsequent course.

"'After the miracle service, he felt real good for about 3 or 4 days,' she said. 'Then he began to get weak again, and we took him back to the doctor. The doctor took some more X-rays and told us that the tumor had grown some more, and that was making Dad's blood drop. So he gave him a transfusion and changed his medicines around. Since then, he's had to go back once a week for shots. He's losing weight, and he needs pain pills now for his back. I guess Dad was wrong when he thought Kathryn Kuhlman had cured him.'

"Case D: Joseph Virgil was a 67-year-old man with cancer of the prostate. Mr. Virgil had been a most impressive witness for Kathryn Kuhlman. He too had his wheelchair brought to the stage. When Miss Kuhlman asked him to tell everyone what had happened, he said, clearly and fervently, 'I came here with incurable cancer, and now it's gone. I feel perfectly well.' When he left, he pushed his wheelchair back down the aisle to loud applause.

"When I talked to Mr. Virgil three months after the service, he said, 'I was feeling pretty low when I went to that miracle service. I've always been an active man. Just a few days before Kathryn Kuhlman came to town, I'd gone to my doctor for a routine physical examination, and he discovered a cancer of the prostate. He told me there wasn't any point in operating on it–that the chances of curing it with surgery were very poor. So he just put me on some pills. I didn't feel sick when I went to the doctor, but I sure felt lousy afterward. I figured my number was up. When I heard she was coming to Minneapolis, I decided I might as well give Miss Kuhlman a try. I was feeling awfully low when I got to the auditorium, but after the singing and the praying and seeing all those people going up cured, I began to think maybe it can happen to me too. Then when she pointed in my direction and said, over there, about halfway back, there's someone who is afraid of dying of cancer. He doesn't have to worry. The Holy Spirit is healing him. Stand up and claim your cure. I just knew it had to be me because, boy, was I worrying about dying of cancer.

"'I went back to my doctor a few days later just to make sure it had been me. He tells me the cancer is still in my prostate. But this time, he also said he didn't think I'd die of it. He says I don't need surgery, but if I take those pills, which he's giving me, I can go on working and hunting and do everything I've always done. I don't know whether Kathryn Kuhlman cured me or if I just misunderstood the doctor the first time. Either way, I feel a lot better now. I'm not worrying anymore.'

"Cancer of the prostate gland is, in many instances, a very benign sort of cancer. Often the disease causes no symptoms. The doctor finds it, as in Mr. Virgil's case, when he does a routine examination on a patient. The cancer feels like a hard, rough spot in the prostate gland. Some surgeons operate on early cancer of the prostate, but most doctors prefer to treat the disease with Stilbestrol, a female hormone which will cause the cancer to shrink. Patients with cancer of the prostate can live comfortably for years simply by taking one Stilbestrol pill a day.

"Mr. Virgil's doctor made an error the doctors make only too often. He hadn't fully explained Mr. Virgil's problem to him. Once a doctor tells a patient he has cancer, the patient understandably panics. Cancer is a disease we all dread. When the doctor adds, 'No operation is necessary,' the patient, again, understandably, may interpret his statement as meaning there's nothing we can do. After being clubbed with that message, it is only natural that a patient responds, as Mr. Virgil did, by going into a severe depression. Mr. Virgil's doctor, because he didn't do his job properly, drove Mr. Virgil to Kathryn Kuhlman. She didn't hurt him. In fact, she helped him by lifting his spirits. But she didn't cure him, nor did the Holy Spirit working through her cure him. Mr. Virgil still has prostate cancer, but now that his doctor has explained his disease to him, Mr. Virgil is no longer depressed. He may very well live many more years to die, as the saying goes, 'Of natural causes.'

"Case E: Mrs. Helen Sullivan was a 50-year-old woman with cancer of the stomach which had spread to both her liver and vertebrae in her back. At the miracle service, Mrs. Sullivan had, at Kathryn Kuhlman's suggestion, taken off her back brace and run back and forth across the stage several times. Finally, she walked back down the aisle to her wheelchair, waving her brace as she went, while the audience applauded and Kathryn Kuhlman gave thanks to the Lord.

"Two months after the miracle, I talked to Mrs. Sullivan. At that time, she was confined to her bed, which had been moved into the living room of her farm home. Her husband was at work in the fields, and Mrs. Sullivan's 18-year-old daughter, the youngest of her three children (The other two are married.) had just arrived home from school and was busy cleaning the house. Mrs. Sullivan was not thin. She was emaciated. Her arms weren't much thicker than a broom handle, and her cheekbones were barely covered with flesh. Despite this wasting away, when she smiled, you could tell that she had once been a pretty woman. Her eyes, though they were sunk far back in her head, still radiated a feeling of warmth. I liked her immediately.

"'In September of 1971,' she told me, 'I began to have trouble with swallowing. Food would stick in my throat. I didn't think much of it. I just began to chew my food better. But when I started to lose weight, I thought I'd better see a doctor. He took some X-rays and told me I had a growth in my upper stomach and esophagus. They operated on me and found a cancer. They took out part of the stomach and esophagus where the tumor was, but they couldn't cure me with the operation. The tumor had already spread to the liver. After the operation, I could swallow pretty well. But I didn't have much appetite, and I kept losing weight. The doctor gave me treatment with 5-FU (Fluorouracil), a relatively new anti-cancer drug. After I got over the nausea that the treatment caused, I felt better for about three months. Then I began to lose weight again. My doctor gave me another course of treatment of 5-FU, but this time it didn't do any good.

"'I knew about Kathryn Kuhlman from watching her television show, and when I read that she was coming to Minneapolis, I got pretty excited. My husband tried to calm me down. He kept telling me not to get my hopes too high. But when you're awfully sick and someone tells you that you may be cured, it's impossible not to get excited. By the time Kathryn Kuhlman came to the auditorium, I was just about sure I was going to get better. At the service, as soon as she said someone with cancer is being cured, I knew she meant me. I could just feel this burning sensation all over my body.'"

Notice that repeated burning effect that the demonic world works through.

"'I was convinced that the Holy Spirit was at work. I went right up on the stage, and when she asked me about the brace, I just took it right off, though I hadn't had it off for over four months–I had so much back pain. While I was up on that stage; bending over; touching my toes; and, running up and down as she asked me to, I felt just wonderful. I didn't have a pain anywhere. Even when we were riding back home (Mrs. Sullivan lives 130 miles from Minneapolis.), I refused to wear the brace. I was sure I was cured. That night I said a prayer of thanksgiving to the Lord and Kathryn Kuhlman, and went to bed happier than I'd been in a long time.'

"'At 4 o'clock the next morning, I woke up with a horrible pain in my back. It was so bad that I broke out in a cold sweat. I didn't dare move. I called to Ralph and he got up and brought me some pain pills. They helped, but not enough so I could sleep. In the morning, we called the doctor. He took me to the hospital, and got some X-rays that showed one of my vertebrae had partially collapsed. He said it was probably from the bending and running I had done. I stayed in the hospital in traction for a week. When I went home, I was back in my brace. Since then, as you probably guessed by looking at me, I've gotten a lot weaker. I can't make it upstairs anymore. That's why we've got the bed down here. Sometimes I can sit up to eat, but not often.

"'I was awfully depressed for about a month after Kathryn Kuhlman's visit. I cried a lot. Our minister finally convinced me to forget about her and put my faith in God. I know I'm going to die soon, but I've learned to accept the idea of death. I've had a pleasant life–nothing out of the ordinary, I suppose, but I've had a loving husband and three children that I'm proud of. A lot of women haven't had as much. I still pray a lot–not to be cured, and not even to be free of pain: just to have less pain so I can bear it. And God answers my prayers. He never gives me more pain than I can stand. I'm very grateful to Him.'

"Mrs. Sullivan died of cancer four months after she had been cured at Kathryn Kuhlman's miracle service.

"The more I learned of the results of Kathryn Kuhlman's miracle service, the more doubtful I became that any good she was doing could possibly outweigh the misery she was causing. I wrote to Miss Kuhlman and asked if she would send me a list of patients she had cured so that I could check on them. Miss Kuhlman was most cooperative. Almost by return mail, I received a letter listing 16 patients by name, address, telephone numbers, and diagnosis. Her letter was very friendly, but the line that interested me most was this: 'What I tried to do (referring to the list of patients) was give you a variety, and diseases that could not possibly have been psychosomatic.' When I looked at the list, I found that two-thirds of the patients suffered from diseases such as multiple sclerosis; rheumatoid arthritis; paralysis; loss of sight; and, allergies, in all of which, the psyche often plays a major (a dominant) role. It was apparent from her letter that Miss Kuhlman knew very little (next to nothing) about psychosomatic diseases.

"Before I return to this matter, let me briefly report on the results I obtained pursuing those patients on Miss Kuhlman's list who had supposedly been cured of cancer. In her letter, Miss Kuhlman said, 'I am sure they will not mind if you contact them for further information.' In this matter too, I found that Miss Kuhlman was either misinformed or naive. I wrote to all the cancer patients on her list–six of them, and only two answered my letters. I phoned the others only to find that they were not the least bit amenable. Of the two who wrote, one said that he had granted exclusive rights to Miss Kuhlman. I sent a copy of this letter to this man, after which he sent me the name of his doctor so that I could get more information. Unfortunately, the doctor refused to cooperate.

"The one patient who offered to help out was a man who claimed he had been cured of prostate cancer by Miss Kuhlman. He sent me a thorough report of his case. I have already mentioned that prostate cancer is frequently responsive to hormone therapy. If it spreads, it is also often highly responsive to radiation therapy. This man had had extensive treatment of his disease with surgery, radiation, and hormones. He had also been treated by Kathryn Kuhlman. He chose to attribute his cure, or a remission, as the case may be (only time will tell), to Miss Kuhlman. That is, of course, his privilege. But anyone who reads his report, layman or doctor, would immediately see that in his case, it is impossible to tell what modality of treatment had actually done most to prolong his life. If Miss Kuhlman had to rely on this case to prove that the Holy Spirit cured cancer through her, she would be in very desperate straits.

"This brings me back to Kathryn Kuhlman's lack of medical sophistication, a point that is, in her case, critical. I don't believe that Miss Kuhlman is a liar. I don't believe she is a charlatan. I don't believe she is consciously dishonest. I think (this is, of course, only my opinion based on a rather brief acquaintance with her) that she honestly believes the Holy Spirit works through her to perform miraculous cures. I think that she sincerely believes that the thousands of patients who come to her services every year and claim cures are, through her ministrations, being cured of organic diseases. I also think, and my investigation confirms this, that she is wrong.

"The problem is (and I'm sorry this has to be so blunt) one of ignorance. Miss Kuhlman doesn't know the difference between psychogenic and organic diseases. She doesn't know anything about hypnotism and the power of suggestion. She doesn't know anything about the autonomic nervous system. If she does know something about any or all of these things, she has certainly learned to hide her knowledge.

"There is one other possibility. It may be that Miss Kuhlman doesn't want to learn that her ministry is not as miraculous as it seems. If so, she has trained herself to deny, emotionally and intellectually, anything that might threaten the validity of her ministry. Personally, I favor this latter hypothesis.

"As far as other people who work with Miss Kuhlman and her foundation are concerned, I reserve judgment. I haven't investigated the organization except from the medical point of view. I find it difficult to believe that all those who surround her are true believers. I know, for example, from talking to people who have attended many services, that one of Maggie's main functions is to find reluctant patients; encourage them to stand and claim cures; and, to start the flow toward the stage–hardly an honest or honorable assignment.

"I don't have anything more to say about Kathryn Kuhlman as a person. Having finished my report, I'm inclined to rest my case on the axiom often used by the prosecutor in malpractice cases when a sponge has been found in an abdomen–that "res ipsa loquitur;" the thing speaks for itself."

So we leave it with you, on the basis of a medical doctor's examination. The next time you attend a Kathryn Kuhlman meeting, and the singing and the jumping and the clapping and the excitement of the thing makes you feel better, and you see those people going up on stage claiming these miraculous cures, just remember the calm; the qualified; and, the systematic research of Dr. William Nolen on the best that Kathryn Kuhlman had to offer. As he said, it is a delusion, and most of all, one which she practices upon herself. She dare not give up what she wants to believe.

When I was in Southern California, I visited Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Disneyland, as you know, is a marvelous make-believe world. Once you walk in there, you are surrounded by one thing after another that you know is not so. But you keep telling yourself and you keep pretending it is so. I had a beautiful ride through Peter Pan's carriage right through the air over London. You wouldn't believe it–what London looks like from the air from Peter Pan's carriage. You can't tell me, and you shouldn't try to tell me, that I didn't do it. I was there. I had the experience. I floated right through the air. I saw the Thames. I saw Big Ben. I was hundreds of feet in the air. The only thing that bothered me, folks, was that the building was so small in which all this was taking place. But I just dismissed that from my mind, and I said, "I don't care what I saw–that it was a small building with a low roof. I was hundreds of feet in the air. And there's no use in your trying to tell me I wasn't."

I had turned left into Disneyland in Anaheim. On the other side of the street, if I had turned right, I would have gone through another magnificent establishment called Melodyland. Melodyland is the headquarters of the charismatic movement in that part of Southern California. It is a vast operation of make-believe, just like on the other side of the street. Once you turn right to go into Melodyland, you do exactly the same thing as you do if you turn left to go to Disneyland. You just go into a real make-believe world, and no matter what you see or hear, you don't allow yourself to admit that it isn't so. I'm telling you, it isn't so–on either side of the street, whether you turn left or right, to Disneyland or to Melodyland–it's a monumental illusion. If you don't get that straight, you're going to hurt yourself and a lot of other people.

I hope that what we've done over these last few sessions is going to get thousands of people straight who hear what you have heard here. I hope they get their minds settled once and for all. I hope they (in spite of the thunderous, strong, evangelical voices in our day that are seemingly condoning this sort of thing) get their minds straight, once and for all, that this is a delusion. You can close your mind, and you cannot listen to the tapes. There'll be some people who will listen to a few parts of the tapes, and they'll turn it off. They're not going to listen to it. There are some people who won't attend these services if they knew what we were saying here. They're just not going to listen to it. Let him that will be ignorant, be ignorant still. And you will be.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1973

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