This week I got a new comment on How I Stopped All The Complicated Stuff In Healing The Sick. In that post, I mentioned a time when I prayed for many New-Agers who were healed. My reader asked if the New-Agers gave Jesus glory after the healing. I realized that I never shared the rest of that story in any of my blog posts. So here it is…

The Healing Tent And The Picnic

A friend invited me to a Native American longhouse dedication event. A church set up a small tent for people to receive prayer at the event. A group of Christians were involved in the event, celebrating with the Native Americans and also asking forgiveness for the sins of the past against Native American peoples.

I had a lot of fun meeting people and hanging out. When the ceremony was over, various activities and celebrations were planned. I went to the prayer tent to see if anybody would come.

Only one or two people came to the prayer tent, and they were Christians. I got tired of sitting in there waiting to see if anybody came to us, and I knew there were lots of people outside who needed to be healed. So I went out and started with talking to a few people who were limping. I talked to people, they accepted prayer, and as I commanded the pain get out, it went!

“Do I Have To Believe What You Believe About Jesus For This To Work?”

After a few people were healed, everyone started to go to an area with a bunch of picnic tables. By this time, nearly everybody from the church groups had left. I was having fun and enjoying hanging out with people.

I started talking to a guy sitting at a picnic table and I told him how Jesus healed me, and that I now lay hands on people and they are healed. I asked if he would let me help him.

He asked “Do I have to believe what you do about Jesus for this to work?” I said, “No, it works based on what I believe.” So he said “Sure.”

The pain didn’t immediately go away completely when I ministered to him, but he felt it significantly reduced and he felt God’s power. He told everyone what he felt, and then other people at the picnic table said I could pray for them.

Those other people began to be healed. Everyone else said all the pain they had was gone. Then I started going from one picnic table to another, asking if anyone needed to be healed. Many people did. As well as I can remember, everyone else I prayed for felt something, and everybody (after the man at the first picnic table) who said they had any pain got 100% free from it. I estimated that somewhere between twenty and thirty people were healed.

Are You Practicing Reiki?

Everybody, or nearly everybody that I prayed for had strong spiritual beliefs. Many people asked me if I was practicing Reiki healing. They felt heat and energy when I prayed for them. I said “I know almost nothing about Reiki healing. I come to God through Jesus. Jesus carried our sins and our sicknesses on the cross. Because I have been washed by Jesus’ blood, I can approach God’s presence without fear. God’s presence is what is healing people. I have been made righteous just like Jesus is, and because I’m in right relationship with God I can do the things that Jesus did.”

Then a lady started giving me some advice. She was very nice and (as most of these people were) and genuinely wanted to help me.

She said, “You’re a very good person, and you are helping many people by taking the sicknesses and pains off of them. But I want to give you some advice. If you don’t release those sicknesses, they can build up in your body and make you very sick. Hold the branch of this tree, and transfer the sicknesses to the tree so that they will not make you get sick.”

I was disturbed in my heart when she said this, like Paul and Barnabas were when the people wanted to worship them as gods. I realized that she did not see what Jesus had done. These people understood a lot about spiritual principles. They understood the spiritual principle of transference. The principle of transference is very biblical. We can see it in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. The high priest Aaron laid his hands on a goat, transferred Israel’s sins to it, and sent it into the wilderness. But the scapegoat was an imperfect solution. It pointed to Jesus, who would bear the sins of the world.

These people didn’t understand what Jesus had done in order to once-and-for all deal with sin, sickness, and demonic affliction. They thought that they needed to transfer the problems into the poor tree. My heart broke with compassion for them.

I responded “Thank you for the advice, but I am not carrying these pains and sicknesses. In fact, I have been doing this for years, and I have not become sick from it, but I myself have been healed several times! Jesus carried our sins and sicknesses on himself when he was crucified. Jesus already carried them in his body, so I don’t have to carry them! That’s why I don’t have to transfer them into a tree or anything else!”

How Are Alternative “Energy Healing” Techniques And Christian Healing Different?

This experience made me curious about Reiki. I didn’t know much about it. I did know that what people felt when experiencing Reiki seemed very similar to what they felt when I laid hands on them and commanded the problem to go.

But I did realize something, from the conversation. Their Reiki and energy channeling could never really deal with the problems. They transferred them around, from one place to another. Christian healing doesn’t transfer sickness and affliction around. It destroys it. I didn’t have to transfer the sicknesses and pains from those people into a tree, because I never took them on myself. Jesus took them on himself. He took death on himself, and then destroyed death.

There was something I noticed there. I’m used to praying for people in groups. These people were so open to alternative healing methods like energy channeling, Reiki, crystals, shamanism, and more. They were sensitive to the spiritual world and believed in “the power of faith.” But they, as a group, seemed to have a higher rate of disease and chronic pain than the average group of people.

By this lady’s own admission, her understanding of healing was that it could be a dangerous practice, making the practitioner sick. On the contrary, the more we minister healing to others in Jesus’ name, God’s goodness keeps soaking into our own bodies as well. Sometimes others standing nearby are also suddenly healed. I have been spontaneously healed while ministering to others, without even thinking about my injury. I’ve also often become consciously aware of the Holy Spirit giving life to my mortal body. (Romans 8:11)

Here are part two and part three about the difference between Reiki, Spiritism, and Christian healing. After that, I’ll share about some ways that Evangelical Christians often fall into some of the same errors as false religious like New-Age, Spiritism and Macumba do.