Objection: Faith Healers Use Hypnosis and Psychological Techniques to Get People Healed

A famous objector claims that healings in healing services are the result of hypnosis and psychological manipulation that could be performed by unbelievers.  He cites the case of the late Franz Mesmer, who would point at his followers and they would start to twitch.  Mesmer, who was certainly not practicing Christian healing, even saw some physical ailments healed through “the power of suggestion.”  The objector goes on to assert that no “organic” (physical) illnesses are healed in today’s healing meetings.

It is too bad that he apparently hangs out in circles that have never seen birth defects healed, limbs grow out, and so on.  He wasn’t there when I saw God heal them.  He wasn’t there when I watched a man with AIDS get out of a wheelchair and walk – and soon after that be declared HIV-negative.  What kind of hypnosis technique can cure AIDS?  If the objector wants to blame it on hypnosis, why doesn’t he go around getting people healed of AIDS that way?  In fact, if “mesmerism” is so effective, why don’t divine healing critics take “hypnosis and psychological techniques” to the world and get people set free from all kinds of ailments?

I’m aware that people can shift their backs in a way that makes it look like their legs are different lengths or the same length, but someone I worked with who saw a LOT of miracles where legs grew out (I was right there in front of the people who got healed) always insisted that people sit straight back on a hard wooden chair so that everyone could see there was no “back shifting” going on.  One case at our church involved a woman’s leg growing out INSTANTLY when we laid hands on her, which was rather startling for all of us.  It was definitely not caused by back-moving shenanigans.  No back shift would have caused the blink-of-an-eye results.  And certainly no form of mental gymnastics could account for such a thing.

I’ve heard the complaint that people fall over in healing meetings due to the power of suggestion, and I’m not denying that it happens.  In fact, I’m convinced that it DOES happen more often than we’d care to admit.  The reason we have “catchers” is to catch such people.  (When the Holy Spirit causes someone to fall over for real, He doesn’t hurt people.  I went backwards onto a concrete floor in a meeting once without a catcher and wasn’t hurt, and I was definitely trying not to fall over because I knew there was a hard floor and no catcher.)  If people think they’re going to fall over (or are supposed to), they usually do, whether the Holy Spirit is really doing anything or not.  I actually wish such people would NOT go down, as it just makes running the service harder.  We never tell people that they should fall over and we most definitely never push anyone, subtly or otherwise, which I know for a fact goes on in some meetings—I’ve been a “push-ee” plenty of times!  The people who fall under “suggestion” are falling because of their OWN suggestion, not ours.  However, there are cases where people fall over and it IS the action of the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps one reason why people blame psychology for things at healing meetings is the fact that we encourage people to believe that they will receive their healing when we lay hands on them.  But this is not a psychological ploy; it is in attempt to get people to believe Jesus’ words that “they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover!”   Besides, what are we supposed to do, tell people, “Expect to stay sick!  Don’t expect anything to happen.  That will prove that we are not trying to psych you into getting healed?”

I could go on and on about seeing stage 4 cancers healed, diabetes healed, heart issues healed, amputations canceled, gangrene disappearing, and many other things that are not possible through psychological techniques.   But if an objector wants to stuff his head in the sand and never be around places where the works of Jesus are being done in public, I can’t make him change.  A teacher doing all his ministry around “denominational” people who don’t believe that God heals today will probably miss out on a lot of opportunities to see the risen healing Jesus at work!