Spontaneous healing after prayer in Jesus' name featured in peer-reviewed medical journal

By Brandon Showalter, Opinion writer and social commentator Monday, April 01, 2019

A peer-reviewed medical journal published a documented case of spontaneous healing after prayer in Jesus' name. A young man who wasn't able to eat without a feeding tube for 16 years has been healed of gastroparesis.

The article, "Case Report of gastroparesis healing: 16 years of a chronic syndrome resolved after proximal intercessory prayer," was published in the April edition of the Complementary Therapies in Medicine.

The case report explains how at the age of two weeks, a male infant was hospitalized after forcefully vomiting and underwent a pyloromyotomy, a surgical procedure in which an incision is made in the longitudinal and circular muscles of the opening from the stomach into the small intestine.

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After not improving with medical therapy, he was diagnosed with gastroparesis and required both a gastrostomy tube (g-tube) and a jejunostomy tube (j-tube) for feeding. It was many years later, as a teen, that he experienced healing.

"In November 2011, he experienced proximal-intercessory-prayer at a church and felt an electric shock starting from his shoulder and going through his stomach. After the prayer experience, he was unexpectedly able to tolerate oral feedings. The g- and j-tubes were removed four months later and he didn't require any further treatments for his condition as all symptoms had resolved. Over seven years later, he has been free from symptoms," the abstract explains.

The young man, who no longer has gastroparesis, is now 23. While his symptoms were severe during the 16 years he battled the disease, he was reportedly able to live a "normal" life.

His family members were Christians who believed that miracles occurred in the biblical era but no more, a view known as cessationism. When he was healed, they were attending a nondenominational church that held that view.

The service he and family attended in November 2011 was led by a healing evangelist at a Pentecostal church that believed miracles of healing occurred both in biblical times and in the present day, which is called continuationism.

“Living with feeding tubes was a struggle, to say the least. Growing up being an active child, it was difficult to get the hydration and nutrition necessary with a drip feeding process," the patient is recorded as saying in the medical journal.

"During the prayer, I felt an electric shock that started from my right shoulder traveling down through my stomach. That was the moment that I knew I had been touched by the Holy Spirit. Since I have been healed of my illness, I have had more energy than ever before, and have thoroughly enjoyed the new adventure of trying all different types of foods. I have entered into the medical field in search to help the sick and needy, and to give back the great care I received as a patient.”

The Complementary Therapies in Medicine article is not the first scholarly publication to document the miraculous.

As The Christian Post reported in 2016, Indiana University's Dr. Candy Gunther Brown traveled to Pemba, Mozambique, in pursuit of evidence for miraculous healings along with a team of researchers. They were there to test the effects of prayer on the deaf and blind.

Brown's team detected statistically significant improvements in hearing and vision in 24 Mozambicans after receiving healing prayer and the results were published in the September 2010 edition of the Southern Medical Journal.