There’s great emotion in the air. The organist is playing a sentimental hymn, people are looking upward, waving their arms with tears streaming down their cheeks. A blind man is escorted onto the stage by an attendant. The popular evangelist asks him how long he has been blind, and does he believe Jesus will heal him? He answers: From birth and yes, he believes. The evangelist then hits the poor man on the forehead while loudly commanding, “Be Healed!” The man falls backward in some kind of trance into the arms of an attendant, and when he awakes, he blinks a few times and shouts “Thank you Jesus – I can see.” And the crowd erupts in cries of “Praise the Lord.”

Thinking people wonder: Was this real? Or was it a show contrived by well-rehearsed actors? This is an important question as there is reason to believe these supposed healings are, more often than not, deceptions played out on ignorant people.

However, the Bible proclaims that God does supernaturally heal and we read of Jesus healing all manner of sickness and infirmities. Were these real, or was Jesus the first to exploit gullible people seeking relief from desperate physical circumstances?

I’ll answer these questions on this Tomorrow’s World program.