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Several Christian pastors are calling for united prayers to stop the coming coronavirus pandemic. That seems like a good thing to do, although my sense is that to be effective the American churches need to be more united than they are now. However I would personally join in any such prayer.
But let me share how I have resisted and minimized viral infections of all sorts. In the last five years or so I have had perhaps four colds, and they usually last only a few days, rather than the five to seven days that is normal recovery time. Colds, of course, are most commonly viruses of different forms, and some strains of colds are mutations of the current corona viruses.
Before I explain my method for short-circuiting the length and extent of cold and flue type illness (virus and bacterial) let me say that as a healing minister I have always encouraged healing prayer in conjunction with good medical practices. Most of my collogues in the healing ministry would agree with this. An early variety of Pentecostalism from the 1900s claimed that if you wanted God’s healing via prayer you must avoid medications, as that would weaken one’s faith.[1] Nonsense. Medicine and doctor’s wisdom are part of God’s provision for healing. All of which is to say follow what is now advised by the medical profession to avoid the new coronavirus, such as washing hands frequently and avoiding shaking hands – at least for a season.
When I celebrate Holy Communion in the immediate future, I plan doing so with the tiny communion cups common in Evangelical churches, as against the chalice common in my Anglican church and other liturgical churches. I will also use oyster crackers that are often used for soup for the communion bread. This will cut down possible person to person contamination. (I personally believe that consecrated wine and bread never spread disease, but that would be a stretch for many people, and they might refuse to receive Communion.)
Now for the main part, how to avoid and lessen any form of viral or bacterial illness. There are three keys here. The first is a double action of strengthening the immune system and at the same time cursing the bacteria or virus to death.
The immune system is immensely complex and not localized in one area of the body, so one can’t lay hands on it directly to pray for its strengthening. An exception to this is if the supplicant is deficient in “T” cells which are produced in the leg bones, then I my lay hands on the lower legs. In all cases I use my authority in Christ to proclaim its strengthening. In most cases I ask the person to look me in the eye as I say (using different words, as prayer is not magical) “In Jesus’ name I command your immune system, in all its parts, to be strengthened and conform to the pattern of Jesus’ immune system. Amen.”
The second part of this key is to curse the pathogen. For instance, if the person has the flue, when I finish proclaiming a strengthened immune system, I command the T cells by direct address to be especially empowered to surround and eliminate the flue virus. This of course can be used against the coronavirus. I will also directly address the virus (or bacteria) and curse it. No squeamishness here, Jesus cursed to death a fig tree to demonstrate to his disciples that this can be done. (Matt 21:18) Note also how he rebuked the fever in Peter’s mother-in-law, i.e. a direct address. (Luke 4:39).
The third and last thing I do is to make sure the body’s normal energies (and God’s energies) are flowing unobstructed via a correctly aligned skeletal system. This is a chiropractic understanding that was combined as an effective healing prayer technique by the Pentecostal couple, Charles and Francis Hunter back in the 1980s, and made famous by their books and “Healing Explosion” tours.[2] This is done by diagnosing if one arm is shorter than the other, and commanding the shorter arm to “come out” to equal length. What this does in reality is realign the backbone so that a person’s normal vital energies can flow unimpeded, as well as God’s healing energies, as you lay hands on the person for healing. This is difficult to explain in writing, but can easily be seen in multiple YouTube videos by the Hunters.[3]
OK, these are the prayer tools I have used top practically eliminate clods and the flue in my life. Of course I get the flue shot every year, but I occasionally catch a cold if I allow my immune system to be depressed, usually by depression. I have learned to quickly repent, for depression is really the sin of lack of faith in God’s goodness in our difficult circumstances, and then do the steps I have just described. If I am alone, I look into the mirror and do the commands I outlined above.
[1] Actually, this erroneous doctrine came from the “Faith-Cure” movement of the 1880s, which on the one hand was the pioneer healing prayer movement of Christendom (battling cessationism), but some of its adherents advocted the “faith or medicine” error. Both there valid discoveries on healing and this error was passed on to Pentecostalism in the 1900s. On this see my work, Quenching the Spirit (Lake Mary: 1996). Chapters 9 and 10.
[2] Their major, and classic, work on this is How To Heal the Sick (Kingswood: Hunter Ministries, 1981). I have explained this ministry breakthrough in detail in my blog posting “The Hunter’s Revolution in Healing Prayer,” which was removed by Blogger along with my other blog postings, but recovered and graciously hosted by Troy day at: http://www.pentecostaltheology.com/the-happy-hunters-revolution-in-healing-prayer/
[3] Their healing teaching here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLziXKAmk7VmAmdP42_V-v346-7EI9xdkS
Varnel Watson
William DeArteaga Nelson Banuchi Where do you even start with what Trump said tonight? All the good work that the people in the executive branch below him are doing to fight this pandemic is completely overshadowed by this nitwit going on Hannity to say things that are not only untrue, but dangerously untrue. Listen to the clip — a simple recap can’t do it justice. The man just opens his mouth and foolishness falls out.
Trump to Hannity on WHO saying coronavirus death rate is 3.4%: “I think the 3.4% number is really a false number. Now this is just my hunch, but based on a lot of conversations … personally, I’d say the number is way under 1%.”
The president’s willful ignorance and incompetence are not news, but his terrible handling of the coronavirus outbreak has thrown his dangerous unfitness for office into stark relief. Responding effectively to an outbreak like this requires leaders that are transparent, honest, and willing to respect and follow the advice of trained experts, and Trump is none of those things. Worse, he insists on a culture of toadyism and flattery from everyone that works for him, and that creates incentives for his subordinates to put a positive, Trump-pleasing spin on everything they say no matter what the facts are. Trump spreads misinformation about the virus to offer people a false sense of security because he fears the effect that the outbreak will have on his political fortunes. Even when there is a public health crisis, the president remains concerned primarily about what it means for him. Perversely, by trying to minimize the seriousness of the outbreak, the president makes it more likely that it will be worse than it had to be. When he encourages the people that trust him to behave irresponsibly and put themselves and others at risk, he is betraying them, and he sabotages the efforts of his own officials to limit the spread of the virus.When Trump says that he thinks the fatality rate from coronavirus is “way under one percent,” he is either stubbornly resistant to what experts have been telling him or he is lying because a lower fatality rate is less alarming and therefore more politically convenient. The fatality rate from the virus definitely isn’t “way under one percent.”
Nelson Banuchi
What else did you expect from Trump? Now it’s up to the majority of voters, specifically as it effects the electoral college, to either be willing to put up with it for another 4 years or dump him.
Varnel Watson
The Covid-19 rate is obviously a moving target, so I’ve included both the 3.4% worldwide mortality rate reported this week by the World Health Organization and the 1% estimate from a study released Feb. 10 by the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London that factored in probable unreported cases. The authors of that study also said that, given the information available at the time, they were 95% confident the correct fatality rate was somewhere between 0.5% and 4%. Gates used the 1% estimate in his article, and when I ran it by Caroline Buckee, an actual professional epidemiologist who is a professor at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, she termed it “reasonable.”
In a context that includes Ebola and MERS, the Covid-19 death rates are much closer to those of the flu, and it’s understandable why people find the comparison reassuring. Compare Covid-19 with just the flu, though, and it becomes clear how different they are [bold mine-DL].
The 61,099 flu-related deaths in the U.S. during the severe flu season of 2017-2018 amounted to 0.14% of the estimated 44.8 million cases of influenza-like illness. There were also an estimated flu-related 808,129 hospitalizations, for a rate of 1.8%. Assume a Covid-19 outbreak of similar size in the U.S., multiply the death and hospitalization estimates by five or 10, and you get some really scary numbers: 300,000 to 600,000 deaths, and 4 million to 8 million hospitalizations in a country that has 924,107 staffed hospital beds. Multiply by 40 and, well, forget about it.
The president is evidently incapable of putting the public interest ahead of his own narrow, personal interests, and the coronavirus outbreak is showing us just how dangerous it can be to have such a reckless and self-serving president. The slow, inadequate government response to the outbreak has already allowed the virus to spread undetected for many weeks, and that poor response is being made worse by the president’s irresponsible attempts to downplay the seriousness of the situation. Americans should have a president more concerned with protecting our health and safety than he is with burnishing his own image, and right now we don’t have that.
chris westerman
Glad to have a President who is doing an excellent job protecting us, but the article by William is excellent for believers to follow.
George Hartwell
Excellent teaching from William and good history lesson. Great balance re medicine and healing. Refusing available resources is, in my opinion, testing the Lord.
Covid19 has 10 to 100 times higher death rate than the flu and spread is much higher than in some previous serious outbreaks.
One either takes strong measures to isolate people or wait and face a major outbreak.
Varnel Watson
sharing is not caring anymore?
William DeArteaga
Unfortunately, wishful thinking
Varnel Watson
William DeArteaga IDK about that – seems more and more probably as Nelson Banuchi said long ago The only way out is suspending this November elections 🙂
Robert W. Graves
Troy Day you’d rather be in Italy or Iran? Go for it.
Resisting Disease in Prayer : The Pneuma Review
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