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SPIRIT DAILY
Healing and deliverance expert Dr. Francis MacNutt says that a formal and dramatic scientific experiment has demonstrated the reality of healing "incurable" disease.
MacNutt, a Catholic lay evangelist who with his wife operates a healing center in Jacksonville, Florida, says the experiment was reported in the Southern Medical Journal. "We prayed for forty rheumatoid arthritis patients for a three-day period in two groups and we chose rheumatoid arthritis because it is medically incurable at the present time," he says. "It was all on video tape. Two of the patients were totally healed, and most of them were improved. The possibility of what happened to these patients happening by chance was .0001. Anything better than .04 is statistically significant."
According to the journal, the patients were on average 62 years of age and had what is known as class-II or class-III rheumatoid arthritis -- a horrifically crippling disorder that can inflame and twist the joints of those who suffer to the point where many can no longer use their hands or walk. After five years about 33 percent can not work and after ten years approximately half have substantial functional disability.
The prayer study, which was authored by MacNutt as well as a medical doctor, Dr. Dale A. Mathews from Clearwater, Florida, indicated that the effects were not temporary. "Patients receiving in-person intercessory prayer showed significant overall improvement during 1-year follow-up," said the report. While symptoms can temporarily remit, and while there are periods when rheumatoid-arthritis sufferers feel relatively good, rarely does the disease "go away," according to a website maintained by medical experts at Duquesne University.
During the experiment, volunteers from the Christian Healing Ministries in Jacksonville administered in-person prayer as well as lectures on the nature of healing, God's role in it, and the impact of anger and lack of forgiveness. A total of six hours of personalized, hands-on "soaking" prayer was offered, in which several prayer ministers prayed aloud and laid their hands for prolonged periods over affected joints or other parts of each individual.
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