Teen group reports 200 miraculous healings

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By Thomas Chamberlin and Anthony Gough

Grant Shaw from the Bridgeman Downs Christian Outreach Centre attempts to heal journalist Anthony Gough. Picture: Peter Wallis Source: The Sunday Mail (Qld)

 

Children as young as 13 claim they have instantly healed hundreds of people using the miracle powers of Jesus on Queensland streets.

The Pentecostal group Culture Shifters in Queensland says it has healed people suffering from cancer and multiple sclerosis and is developing a large youth following.

Children from the group have been approaching people at random on the street, prompting alarm from parents and warnings from doctors for the sick to seek medical attention.

“Anyone who has a medical condition should always seek advice from their doctor,” Australian Medical Association Queensland president Dr Richard Kidd said.

Leaders, aged in their teens and 20s, claim they have also healed an entire football team’s injuries, given hearing to a deaf woman and brought sight to a girl’s blind eye.

Experts say faith healing has been on the decline globally but, in Queensland, it is attracting an increasing band of followers, who might be putting their lives at risk.

The 160-member Culture Shifters group from the Bridgeman Downs Christian Outreach Centre is led by Grant Shaw, 27, and his wife, Emma, 23.

The couple claim to have had a 95 per cent success rate and to have healed more than 200 people in the past year.

YouTube videos posted online of the “Brisbane miracles” show leaders talking to teens in areas including busy Chermside Shopping Centre.

“Sometimes there can be a tingle, sometimes there can be a warmth, sometimes there can be a click, sometimes you don’t hear anything at all,” Mr Shaw, a former state government counsellor, said of the moment a person was healed.

Group leader Shayna Kendall, 16, said she joined against the objections of her mother who was concerned for her wellbeing.

“She thought it was stupid that I was getting into some sort of cult,” she said, adding the group had changed her life.

Christian Research Association senior research officer Reverend Dr Philip Hughes said that about half of all attendance by young people in churches had been happening in either charismatic or pentecostal churches.

Flinders University Department of Theology professor Andrew Dutney said youth could be more attracted to flamboyant religious styles than to mainline churches.

“There are issues of course … for example, if a person is drawn to this group with a promise of healing and then they are not healed,” Professor Dutney said.

“There can be situations where people blame the person themselves for not being healed and say: ‘You don’t have enough faith’ and ‘You have some secret sin’ and that can be extremely damaging.”

Mr Shaw denied the street and church healings were used as a money grab and said no donations were collected from those who were healed.  —The Sunday Mail

 

5 COMMENTS

  1. Wonderful news. Children and young people still have open minds. Therefore, God’s love is able to flow through them.

  2. I believe an individual can be used by Jesus to heal. However, from the expression on the face of this person, I wonder if he is being used by God or not. Jesus, in all cases, instills peace, serenity, calmness and especially joy. His instruments have no need to shout, shake or yell to “bring the Spirit” down. Jesus is not deaf. There is no need to “force” a healing. If it is the Will of God for the individual to receive healing, it will happen. More important than physical healing, Our Lord will bring about a spiritual healing if the person is open to it.

    I recently saw pictures of Fr. Pfleger, the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. They were faces filled with anger. I don’t think a preacher who can be filled with such anger is truly being used by God to do good. Do you?

  3. I have been on many healing prayer teams over the years, at churches and other events. Yes, healings do take place, but not necessarily every person or on every occasion. The first and foremost thing we were always told, is to advise the person who may have gotten healed, that if they were on medication of any sort, not to stop it until the healing was confirmed by a doctor. God is obviously using them as instruments of healing but they need to learn how to do things correctly, like not give people who are not healed wrong information. Blaming the person for not receiving healing is absolutely wrong. God makes that decision to heal or not, not an individual themselves.

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