Raising the Dead

by Chauncey W. Crandall

  Almost everyone brought a bottle of anointing oil with him—a precious commodity in Nigeria that probably cost the typical laborer a month’s salary. Hundreds came up to me, one after another, wanting to be blessed, prayed for, and anointed. They wanted the whole bottle poured over them.

  One family brought a crippled boy who was about six years old. He had never been able to walk. His father brought him to me in his arms. In faith, I suppose, his family had made some crutches for him, with elaborate carvings on the sides. I remember thinking, Wow, they did a nice job on those crutches!

  The boy’s father put him in my arms and asked me to pray for him. “Father God,” I said, “in the name of Jesus, I pray over this boy’s legs, and I command every ligament, bone, and muscle to work. I command every nerve to be restored, in Jesus’ name. I pray healing over him. I pray that he will walk, Lord, in the mighty name of Jesus.” I gave him back to his father.

  Nothing happened.

  I turned to pray for the next person, a white speck in a sea of black faces. All of a sudden I heard the crowd roaring to my right. I turned around and saw this boy’s parents kneeling in the dirt, weeping. Then the boy ran past them. He was running back and forth across the field with a great big smile. Not only his parents but everyone from his village was crying—they all knew his story intimately. There must have been two dozen people by his parents, raising their arms and praising God as the boy ran to and fro.

  Also at that crusade was a man who had had a stroke. His daughter and son brought him to me. He was drooling. His whole right side was deformed and he couldn’t walk. I prayed for him and he was completely restored, and I have a picture of him to prove it.

  That night I saw hundreds of kids who were deaf-mutes. One boy had a big hearing aid the size of an old-fashioned matchbox. After prayer, his hearing returned to normal, and I have a picture of him, too.

  Three miracles out of—how many had I prayed for? Upward of a thousand, I think. Sometimes I feel caught between my elation at seeing people healed and my continuing desire that everyone I pray for be restored. It’s hard to forget certain faces.

  “Show Me Your Glory”

  In Nigeria God soon taught me never to make my own reckoning of God’s ways. After the crusade was over, all the high-level ministers left. I was sitting in the hotel the following morning—I think it was a Saturday—and the only people left were the crew, who were going out to the site to strike the stage. I didn’t want to waste my time in the hotel, so I decided to go out and help the crew. It was a hot day and I was sure they wouldn’t mind an extra hand.

  I worked at the site until about noon, when I had a break. The sky was bright, piercingly blue. I looked over the field where well over half a million people had gathered the night before, which was now one vast dusty patch of ground. I walked to one side where the grass was still tall, put my hands on my hips, looked up into that bright, bright blue sky, and prayed, “Father God, show me Your glory. Reveal Yourself. Show me Your glory, Father.” I was walking through the grass as I prayed, and I tripped.

  I looked down and saw that I had tripped over the little boy’s crutches—I knew they were his because of the carvings. I was hundreds of yards from where I prayed for him, and the crutches lay in the form of a cross. I started laughing. “Show me Your glory, Lord?” I realized my own doubts were blinding me to what had been right before me. I lifted up my hands and started praising God. I remembered again how the little boy had been carried to me by his father, and his joy in running for the first time. “You are a great God,” I confessed. “Your will be done.”

  I began walking along in the grass and there were more crutches and canes; in fact, dozens and dozens. The whole grassy field was littered with them! None of the other ministers were there to see this, but God in His mercy wanted me to know that His works far surpass our understanding. The crutches and canes meant that many, many people had been healed. Nigeria is too poor a country for people to throw away such equipment. But those healed had thrown away their crutches in testimony to God’s work in their lives.

  “Father, show me Your glory.” Had He ever!

  The Hardest Cases

  In 2006 I was at another crusade in London. By this time I was more at ease with God’s will in choosing to heal those He chose rather than the ones I would have God choose. And I believed more strongly in God’s power to heal the most difficult cases. The need of ministries to lead crusades that make for good television has distorting effects. Often the better-looking people, the well dressed with less-severe ailments, are put in the front benches, so that if anyone is healed from among them, that person can be readily brought to the stage.

  The cripples, the demoniacs, the grotesque, and the down-and-out are put in the back, out of camera range. Some ministers justify this by saying that the failure of these hard cases to be healed would cause too much unbelief.

  In such circumstances, I make it my policy to go right to the back, because those severely afflicted need the most help. As a physician I undoubtedly find this easier than most, since I see people in bad shape every day. I make it a point to dress in my best three-piece suit and sit among those who are truly “the least of these my brethren” (Matt. 25:40 KJV), those whom disease has robbed of everything but their humanity. I sit there and I pray for the people around me through the entire crusade. (Crusades usually run from three days to a week.)

  I was at the back at this crusade in London, where I was assigned to verify people’s accounts of miracles. A black woman came up to me and pulled at my jacket. “Doctor,” she said, “my son has been healed.”

  I looked at the infant in her arms, and he seemed far from healed or even well. One quick glance and I concluded that he was suffering from paralysis on his left side. “What do you mean, ‘healed’?” I asked, eliciting the woman’s story.

  The mother and her child had been released from the hospital that day. Her baby had suffered traumatic birth injury and was paralyzed on his left side.

  I asked to hold the baby. I pulled his left arm up, it dropped. I lifted up his left leg, it dropped. No movement, no strength, complete paralysis. “I don’t see any change here,” I said sadly.

  “Doctor, I’m telling you, my baby has been healed.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “The power of God hit me and went through my shoulder, through my arm, where I was holding the baby. The power of God went into my baby. He’s been healed.”

  “Well, let’s just keep praying for you.”

  She looked at me as if she found my doubts far stranger than her story.

  I spent some time with her, praying for the child, and later that night, as I was going to sleep, I thought of that child and again prayed for him. Some of those whose experiences I verified were called to the front but not the woman and her child, because from what I could see nothing had happened.

  The next night at the crusade, I was again at the back, with all the smelly, dirty, crippled people—my crew. There’s something radical in me that wants to see God’s power demonstrate itself in the really hard cases, in whose potential healing even those with the stoutest of faiths have trouble believing. I want to see God’s greatness. I want to keep believing that one day, by God’s grace, the entire back section will be healed!

  I felt another tug on my coat—the same woman with her paralyzed child.

  “Doctor,” she said, “I told you my son was healed last night. Look at my baby now.”

  I was already gaping at him. Both of the child’s arms were up in the air, and he was waving them around like God’s orchestra conductor—no doubt leading the heavenly host in a hallelujah chorus. His legs were wiggling. I grabbed the baby’s arm, and he pulled it back. His legs were kicking hard enough against my stomach for me to back away. I just burst into tears.

  I dropped to my knees. “God, You are real,” I prayed. “You showed up. You healed this baby. I saw this baby with my own eyes last night, Lord Father. I saw him. He was cr
ippled. He was totally paralyzed on this side, and now he’s restored. Thank You. Thank You.”

  I said to the woman, “You don’t need to go onstage. This baby has been touched by God. Thank you for bringing him to me, because now I’ve been touched by God, too.”

  “I’m going to use you now. Watch,” God had said. As amazing as these miracles that occurred in distant lands were, what I would see right at home—in my own medical practice—would be even more dramatic.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Best of Medicine and the Best

  of Jesus: A New Practice

  As I’ve mentioned, my medical practice is now based on providing my patients with “the best of medicine and the best of Jesus.” This can bring astounding results, and I’ve seen miracle after miracle occur in the lives of my patients.

  We start as simply as possible, though, because aiding God’s healing in a person’s life is not about testing God to see whether God will amaze and delight us with supernatural fireworks. God created us in His image so that we could reason our way to many solutions—as modern medicine shows so well. God expects us to employ all the knowledge that has come through His gifts of reason and imagination to bring about the healing we know He desires.

  At the same time, not to understand the spiritual nature of people causes purely secular medicine to miss many opportunities for healing. I would even say that sometimes God grants me spiritual insight as an uncanny diagnostic tool. Although I’m sure some of my colleagues find the way I pray with patients and address their spiritual ills as well as their physical maladies peculiar, I think recognizing the spiritual dimension of people makes me a much better doctor. Also, I’ve practiced long enough in Palm Beach and lectured widely enough elsewhere for my idiosyncrasies to be tolerated—people know I’m a good doctor.

  Many times a patient’s way of living needs to be addressed first through medicine and then through a deeper grounding in spiritual reality; there’s a bridge that needs to be crossed to health. I tell my patients that we are going to attack their problems with all the weapons at hand, and that we are going to help them cross this bridge, first through medicine and then through true Christian spirituality, to living the healthy, abundant life God wants for everyone.

  Some of the most flagrant violators of good health habits are ministers! As with the rest of the American population, their number one killer is heart disease. So when ministers come to me, as they do more and more frequently these days, I tell them that my job is to keep them going for seventy to eighty years—not to let the devil take them out early. I want them to be long-distance runners in winning souls to Christ.

  The Word of God says that our bodies are the temple of the Lord (1 Cor. 6:19), and if people are out of shape because of their eating habits and lack of exercise, suffering from hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes, then even if they are ministers they are living in disobedience to God. “It’s not about you anymore, brother,” I say. “It’s about Jesus.” I am very direct with them. Most wake up to how much they are putting others’ souls in jeopardy as well as their own lives.

  So I first administer the best of medicine to my patients who need to get heart-healthy, using medications, regimens of diet and exercise, and interventions when necessary, such as angioplasty and stents. But to bridge these patients totally to health I also need the patients to practice the Word of God in regard to taking care of their bodies. I advise using the prayer practices of praise and thanksgiving, which do wonders for stress. Many times it’s possible to take the medications away completely when someone truly changes his or her living and praying habits. That’s the final bridge I want patients to cross over.

  Spiritual Healing Before Physical

  It’s also true that an encounter with God may be necessary for those who are profoundly lost before they can begin to heal physically. I take care of many wealthy people, and I often find that their internal gyroscopes no longer work—they don’t know how to navigate through life. This comes about in a paradoxical way. Their wealth allows them to manipulate people so easily that soon they don’t have real friendships anymore or even genuine relationships with family members. Spirits of division, lust, and perversion take over, and instead of being free as a result of their wealth they are blown about by every whim and fad. First, they stop trusting other people, then they stop trusting themselves, and after that they seem to only know how to seek the next distracting pleasure, and the pleasures have to become ever more exquisite in order to get their attention.

  I knew of one man who, dissatisfied with the dimensions of the galley (kitchen) in his yacht, had the oceangoing vessel cut in half so that it could be widened by six feet, at a cost that would have flooded anyone else’s balance sheet with red.

  Palm Beach does its best to supply diversions to the most jaded. Its many attractions and pleasures can be addictive. When we first moved to town we were plunged into a type of spiritual warfare that I did not understand and hardly suspected. But slowly I began to realize why Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:18–21 that it’s very difficult for someone of noble birth, worldly wisdom, or great financial means to enter the kingdom of God. It is foolishness to them.

  Faith is not another instrument with which to control the world and manipulate other people, and that’s what the spirit of wealth counsels as all-important. Rather, faith is an invitation to live in a much greater reality—that we are not in control but God is. It’s only when we recognize our limits that we enjoy the real freedom we do have as a result of being created in God’s image. But when we mistake ourselves for gods, we become something less than human.

  Serious illness often proves a wake-up call. Many finally realize that all the money, the big houses, the boats, the exotic cars, the young wife or boy toy cannot make them healthy again. At that moment I have the opportunity to intervene and ask, “What is your purpose in life? What is your call? Your legacy? Have you placed yourself and your possession in God’s hands? He is real.”

  When illness reawakens the superrich to reality and they come to Christ, they are radically changed. They experience peace, joy, and a sense of fulfillment and direction—even if their lives will soon be at an end—that they have never known before.

  Terminal illness is often a horror, but I’ve seen God use it to great ends. The suffering someone goes through can prepare the person and even the person’s family to meet God.

  The secular infatuation with euthanasia is—like the love of money—essentially the worship of one’s own will, of being in control. I’m not a fan of hospice care, in general, because hospice often medicates its clients to such a degree that they are deprived of the will to reach out to God. I truly believe that those who advocate medicating people to the point of hastening death or outright euthanasia are playing into the devil’s hands, as he does not want people recognizing their standing before God. The devil does not want the seriously ill reaching out for what they most long for, the love of God. I’ve met few lost people who are not hungry for God and fewer still among this group who do not reach out for Him in their last days.

  “I Want to Die”

  I had a patient I’ll call Elizabeth who was ninety-nine years old. She was a scrawny woman with a hunch to her shoulders that suggested she was about to topple into her grave, but she could still shuffle forward under her own power. Her caretaker, a nurse, came in with her. I had been caring for Elizabeth for about four years, treating her for congestive heart failure.

  At the beginning of one appointment, I asked, “Elizabeth, how are you doing?”

  “I want to die,” she mumbled.

  I thought, Well, you are ninety-nine years old. That makes sense. But I had my wits about me enough to see an opportunity to ask the all-important question: “If you died, Elizabeth, where would you go? In the afterlife?”

  “I’m going to hell.”

  That caught me off-guard. “What do you mean, you’re going to hell?”

  “I’m not worthy to go to heaven, s
o I’m going to hell,” she said, resolute if terribly unhappy.

  I said, “Elizabeth, not in this office are you going to hell. Do you go to church?”

  She was a nominal Catholic. She had not been to church in years.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “It’s not about going to church.”

  “But it is about being worthy, and I’m not!” She was almost shouting at me.

  I said, “Elizabeth, if you accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, you will go to heaven. Would you be interested in doing that?”

  She said, “Yes, yes I would, but I’m not worthy of doing that and I’m going to hell.”

  I told her that Christ gave Himself for us because we are all unworthy, and none of us would get into heaven if salvation were not a free gift. “If you accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, as I’ve said, you can know, right here, right now, that you’ll go to heaven. Would you be interested in doing that?”

  “Yes,” she said, very quietly.

  I started leading her in what’s often called the Sinner’s Prayer, where she could confess to having sinned, acknowledge Jesus’ sacrifice as the means of her salvation, and accept Christ as her Savior and Lord.

  At the mention of Jesus’ name, her teeth clenched and her eyeballs bulged out of her head. I was on one of those little rolling chairs in the exam room, and I scooted over to her. She was sitting in the corner, and I put myself squarely in front of her, with her nurse behind me. I said, “Elizabeth, say this prayer after me, in the name of Jesus.”

  At the mention of the name, her teeth clenched again in a way that made her skull virtually protrude through her aged skin—a death mask.

  I looked back at the nurse. “What’s happening?”

  “Every time I mention Jesus she does that, Doctor,” she said.

  But when I looked back her face was once again relaxed. I tried praying again, with the same result. Her mouth clenched closed; her eyes bulged.