The Faith Healer's Favorite Scam

[Music] foreign [Music] for a second that you are a slimy depraved scam artist if you actually are one stop watching right now or I don't want to give you any ideas but in this scenario Your Mark is a church congregation filled with faithful Believers for months you've advertised your healing revivals and now in order to fill the offering bowls to the brim you just have to convince them that you actually possess the gift of Divine Healing to win their trust there are a host of different Miracle scams that you can choose from but you need one that's not hard to pull off one which easily impresses a crowd and the obvious choice is a trick with such a high success rate that it's become the go-to favorite of almost every major Faith healing charlatan for as long as miracle healing scams have existed and has even fold some of its more honest practitioners into believing that they themselves genuinely have Divine gifts we'll call it the rise and walk scam and it dates back at least as far as Jesus himself and while it's not exclusive to Christianity here's the Christian version of how the scam Works someone in your church lies paralyzed on a stretcher or is confined to a wheelchair you have them brought to the front for everyone to see then just as the apostles Peter and John did in the Bible in an Act of Faith you command The Afflicted to rise and walk in the name of Jesus and Miracle of Miracles the person does often exclaiming that their pain is gone I feel good what do you mean no pain anywhere oh let alone not much not much no you have them run around the building to show that they've been sealed before telling them to throw away their leg braces or crutches especially you won't need those crutches anymore Kobe or for dramatic effect you have them push their own wheelchair out of the building give your wife a ride praise God hallelujah now everyone get your wallets out I want you to bring your billfo your checkbook if you're using your credit cards make sure to put your name your account number but if this isn't a miracle then what's really going on well first and foremost you have to understand that just because someone is in a wheelchair or is wearing a cast or leg brace that doesn't necessarily mean that they can't walk at all good yeah I can walk without a cane I know I see you doing that but just how you feel I feel all right my toes though are normal you didn't tell me about your toes well you didn't you didn't answer yeah I had nerve damage to my toes and to my legs from a car accident over 50 years ago and your knees tell me about your knees though your knees are pretty good it goes sideways don't worry how they go how they feel strong sore sore yeah I covered this briefly in the video that I just did on Jack Co oftentimes it just means that walking for an extended period of time can be painful or that a doctor wants them to isolate a bone or avoid putting pressure or weight on an injury while it heals if this is your own wheelchair no it's raining he uses crutches you rented it yeah and when we questioned the people Grant had lifted out of wheelchairs everyone we talked to said they could walk all along could you walk at all before you can even if they don't have an injury at all many people will still use wheelchairs simply because they have bad balance severe pain or weak legs for example and this isn't an example of an attempted healing but here's my grandmother in her 90s the year before she passed away getting out of her wheelchair to dance with my dad towards the end of her life she was weak and was almost always in a wheelchair to avoid falling and breaking a hip but there's obviously nothing miraculous going on in this video that said it's still super cute and is still one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen however other people in wheelchairs are actually physically paralyzed at least from the waist down and absolutely cannot walk no matter how much Faith they have how much prayer they receive or how much adrenaline courses through their veins and here's what happens when Faith healers attempts to heal people in this condition come on let me help you come on let's go let's go come on James [Music] can you stand James come on James now you can tonight you're standing come on James tonight you're standing tomorrow morning you walk come on let's go [Music] [Music] we'll try this again tomorrow morning okay okay give James a big God bless you come on [Applause] expect the miracle dear Jesus the Lord's gonna touch you young boy that wasn't gonna touch you sweetheart seven weeks after the Crusade ashnil prakash was dead in the name of Jesus Jason Moore I can't really handy what a good sport God bless you Emily it's the last 10 minutes of the last night the time he believes he will walk again [Music] [Applause] really really hard right now but I don't know where it wasn't you're feeling a warmth on your body that's right get up out of that wheelchair in Jesus name and start walking this lady struggled for nearly 30 minutes to rise out of her wheelchair only to sink back in exhaustion now in a sea of other apparently successful healings Faith healing Fails Like These are often overlooked by the congregation skepticism is discouraged even to the point where the paralyzed person himself is often blamed for not having enough faith if the miracle fails your desire is growing it's good yes your desire is growing I believe and your faith is growing yes we'll try this again tomorrow morning okay okay you'd be thinking about it all night tonight okay stand it on that promise okay or the faith healer will claim that God's work of healing is just beginning to take root now this is very important we see some people in the wheelchairs will instantly bang other times is a process because who's gonna actually follow up with the person later and fact check this that said if a faith healer wants to avoid or at least men minimize these failures they can increase their success rates by vetting Their audience that's why Reinhard bonco wouldn't usually pray for healing for people individually but would instead shotgun prayers and Declarations of healing into an audience and when people felt healed often due to the pain numbing effects of adrenaline his screeners would determine whether or not they looked healed enough to showcase on stage in front of the cameras below stage a heartbreaking scene begins to unfold as the sick and the maimed are auditioned for their performance value we want Miracles we want healing we don't want somebody that wants to be prayed for to be healed can you see okay those who have been barred from the stage try and try again to prove that God has rewarded their faith with a miracle but fail the test and Billy hint screeners would actively block people with visible conditions and disabilities from going on stage with him born with curvature of the joints Grace perlot the Fernie BC was just eight years old when we met her at a crusade in Calgary hoping to be healed by The Man known as Pastor Benny it was something that I focused on for like 18 years of my life and focused on it in what way just the the healing and you kind of think oh it's going to happen today it'll happen this time and that it's going to be your life's Gonna Change in Calgary Grace's mother Janice carried her to the stage but before long they were stopped by The screeners Who keep the truly sick and disabled away from Benny in another way to increase your success rate is to take people who can already walk and Supply them with the Wheelchairs and stretchers yourself and have your ushers push them to the front of the service for healing if you think that's far-fetched that is literally what WV Grant would do if you arrive to his Services early enough you would see dozens of wheelchairs being unloaded from trucks which were then offered to congregants as they arrived James Randy documented this in his book The Faith healers anyone with bad knees backs or just general difficulty or discomfort when walking would be encouraged to take a wheelchair for comfort and convenience and they would usually gratefully accept later in the service Grant would have them rise and walk making a huge spectacle of something that they could already do the whole time oh and while it looks impressive telling someone to rise and walk and then have them push their own wheelchair out of the building the wheelchair becomes a walker you have literally taken someone who could already walk albeit potentially with pain or difficulty if I stand up too long my legs will give up and provided them with a support to lean on which helps with their balance similarly Jack Coe would even go so far as to provide free ambulance rides to his revivals and fill healing rooms with people on the stretchers that he provided and then he would stack up the stretchers after the service as a spectacle of his Divine Healing gift which he would photograph and send to his 300 000 magazine subscribers while asking for money to support his clearly God ordained Ministry now some people who experience pain when walking will genuinely experience pain relief when prayed over and in their excitement will declare themselves healed often with much spectacle any pain anywhere no no pain no how about strength I'm that is good [Applause] this is partly due to the powerful mind over body effect that belief can have this is a well-documented and purely natural psychological phenomenon known as the placebo effect it can be a little longer lasting but usually once the endorphins wear off and the adrenaline Fades the pain returns but the eventual failure gets far less attention and coverage than the initial Declaration of success what's wrong with your legs last night I was in a line in my knees felt better yeah but I want to complete healing this morning so that you would they were better last night better last year and and uh this morning they started acting up I felt better but I need a complete healing because there's such a huge financial incentive to lie or exaggerate and I mean private jet level Financial incentive you'll often hear Faith healers talk up just how bad someone's condition is even if the person's own doctors reject these claims and the faith healers don't even know a thing about the person who they're healing other than the prayer cards that they've collected she is basically a walking dead woman she should not be alive because through both of her lungs is cancer the doctors are overwhelmed the fact that she is still alive and still breathing Susan her oncologist rejected all these claims Susan had an unpredictable form of cancer that was stable at the time of the Crusade but deteriorated afterwards and Susan died nine months later perfectly whole but the person coming forward with nothing but Faith doesn't want to embarrass the Healer by correcting them if anything exaggerating the success and the degree of healing is encouraged because it may be more likely to win skeptical souls and save them from Eternal Hellfire so what harm is a little fibbing and fubbing of the facts now if all of this isn't enough some Faith healers will take things one step further and plant paid actors to pose as paralyzed disabled or even dead people who the Healer commands to stand and walk generating much Applause and greatly increasing the weight of the offering bowls he was not and because commanding a paralyzed person to rise and walk was literally one of Jesus most famous Miracles by copying his actions and generating the same results how could anyone possibly deny that you're sent from God so people fill the offering plates they remove their crutches and braces throw away their wheelchairs and oftentimes walk on weaker broken legs potentially causing irreparable damage now all of this said I don't think that every single Pastor who tells someone to rise out of a wheelchair is a deliberate scam artist because there is a natural placebo effect and there is a natural expectation that not everyone will be able to rise up and be healed so I think that some people genuinely believe it and have quite frankly drank their own Kool-Aid but as for most of the big name Faith healers most of them know exactly what they're doing especially the ones who've been caught using these methods and it's my goal to shine a light behind the curtain and not let them control the narrative and paint themselves as some kind of Heroes of morality especially while taking advantage of the most vulnerable people and causing tremendous harm while lining their own Pockets I've wondered why sometimes someone comes in comes out of a wheelchair he walks around runs around and hours later they're back in that wheelchair again [Music] I'm sorry I'm allergic to if you appreciate the work that I'm doing definitely go check out the rest of this series and if you appreciate that I've dedicated my life to exposing scams dogma and con artists while promoting scientific skepticism and critical thinking your support is literally what allows me to do this full-time you can support my work with either a one-time donation on PayPal or an ongoing per video Pledge on patreon I've got links to everything below thank you so much for your support and as always dare to be curious but don't drink the Kool-Aid [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Holy Koolaid

Views: 324,512

Keywords: faith healers exposed, faith healing debunked, miracles debunked, faith healing con artists, miracles explained, benny hinn, Billy Burke, Reinhard Bonnke, John Mellor, W.V. Grant, Jack Coe, A. A. Allen, Faith healing charlattans, televangelists, evangelical scams, miracle cures, miraculous healing debunked, the science of miracles, exposing charlattans, faith healing cringe fails, exposing faith healers, the rise and walk scam, how faith healing works, skepticism, skeptic

Id: 9U89da4YCI0

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2023