Dave Diamond is a Hospice Chaplain in Covington, Lousiana who trained with The Elijah Challenge on three separate occasions
More reports from Dave Diamond
March 2012
“The healings are happening almost daily as I go about my work as a Hospice Chaplain.
First understand that I very rarely seek healing for my Hospice patients simply for the reason that, by the time they come to me, most are old and very tired and not seeking healing. They are usually at a point in life where death is a blessed release, and I don’t often seek to intervene in the ultimate disposition other than (1) to make sure they have placed their faith in Christ and (2) to address symptoms of their condition which are painful or causing anxiety. I very often, very often see “miraculous” changes in this regard.
If a Hospice patient tells me he or she wants to “get well,” then I minister as you have taught and am seeing more and more dramatic changes. I have seen a man healed of lung cancer so that, in the weeks before his death, he transitioned from a position where he could not walk from his chair to the bathroom even with oxygen without having to stop and rest to catch his breath to a condition where he put in a complete garden and cleaned and organized a 10′ x 20′ “toolshed” without oxygen or discomfort. The week before he died last year he told me that he had not felt as healthy or as strong in 20 to 25 years. When death came, he contracted pneumonia and died painlessly within 72 hours of the first symptoms.
More dramatic at this point is a man who came to me as a Hospice patient with pancreatic cancer. The cancer had wiped out his pancreas so that the smell of food even from the next room would send him into waves of nausea. My brother, a retired trauma surgeon, and our Hospice medical director confirmed for me that this condition was one of the final indicators of terminal cancer and was entirely irreversible. When we met, Jesse had not eaten in ten weeks, and his weight had dropped from 260 lbs. to 158 lbs. He accepted Christ on my second visit and asked me to “pray for” his healing. I ministered healing as you taught me. Now, six weeks later, he is eating three meals a day, is gaining weight and strength, has no symptoms of pancreatic cancer, and is leaving on April 7 for a three-day cruise out of New Orleans with his wife. Even though he asked me to pray for his healing, he has had some trouble actually grasping the truth that he is healed. His wife has also been healed of nagging knee pain associated with a knee replacement done several years ago.
My brother, who is not a believer, was so stunned by the report from the pancreatic cancer patient that he called me to ask me to travel to Pennsylvania to minister to a relative there who had just been diagnosed with appendiceal cancer. I spent two days with “Jackie” who accepted Christ and received the Holy Spirit in a really remarkable way. Although I believe she is healed as well and there are indicators that show no cancer in her system, appendiceal cancer is extremely small celled, very hard to detect, and almost completely invisible. Even when she was diagnosed the first time before our time together, she was told by surgeons examining tissue from her appendix, ovaries and fallopian tubes that there was no evidence that the cancer had metasticized (sp) only to find after lab examination that the very same tissue was riddled with cancer cells. For this reason, she is continuing an aggressive and extremely difficult regimen of chemo-therapy and will undergo surgery unless God provides doctors with some convincing evidence that the cancer is indeed completely eradicated. This is an important prayer request because the chemo regimen, without God’s intervention, could come very close to killing her even if she is healed of the cancer itself.
In a workshop that I’ve taught over the past two weeks, we’ve seen a man with a broken shoulder and two broken ribs healed as women I instructed laid hands and ministered to him. Another man was healed of scoliosis so that his spine actually moved and eighteen years of daily pain came to an end. In a chance encounter with a young park ranger at Fountainebleau State Park last Thursday, I ministered to a shoulder in which he had very limited range of motion. That is dramatically improved, and I am ministering again tomorrow over the phone. In another incident on Thursday, an elderly woman was cured of arthritis in her shoulder and arm.
Even though our office is dominated by medical staff — a physician, several RNs and a host of LPNs and CNAs — office staff who are struggling with physical issues are often coming to me for healing. One social worker, still not a believer, was healed of chronic pain surrounding her artificial knees and is referring me to others. A staff member was healed of chronic back pain. An LPN was healed of a back injury suffered, I think, in moving a heavy patient. Another was healed instantly of an “incurable” blood condition in which oxygen would not bind to her red blood cells. The symptoms included severe shooting pain in her head several times a day, frequent episodes of shortness of breath, muscle spasms, panic attacks, etc. After ministering to her only once, all the symptoms immediately ceased; two weeks later, her physician confirmed that the entire condition had mysteriously vanished from her system. The woman’s husband has now embraced Christ, and the entire family was baptized two weeks ago.
In a Bible study I conduct on Thursday nights with a small group of eight or ten people, we’ve seen a tumor on a woman’s thyroid disappear so that scheduled surgery was unnecessary — even though an aneurism in her brain did not respond to our ministry and required surgery to correct. (???) More importantly, another woman to whom Debbie and I have ministered for nearly two years has been healed of severe demonic oppression that manifested in serious depression, constant voices, frightening sounds such as hundreds of dogs barking, drug abuse, night fears and frequent compelling thoughts of suicide. She is a different woman now and growing daily in the Lord. Other healings in this circle include back pain, painful bone spurs on a woman’s feet, a tumor on a woman’s hand, high fevers, etc.
Another woman was healed of chronic severe pain associated with a broken neck and disks crushed in a horse-back riding accident. I baptized her within an hour of that healing. She is still struggling with emotional and financial issues in her life, but the pain which had almost entirely incapacitated her no longer exists.
There are incidents where no healing is immediately evident, but I am seeing greater frequency of dramatic healings.
The book “John G. Lake: His Life, His Sermons, His Boldness of Faith” has been a great encouragement to me.
The best thing from my perspective is that, as I become more and more attuned to the voice of the Spirit in ministering healing, I often have the boldness to tell people even before I lay hands on them something like this: “Listen, with your permission, I’m going to pray for you. Now understand this: a hundred people will offer to pray for you. Maybe 20 or 25 will actually do it, and, out of that number maybe one or two will actually expect God to act immediately. What’s going to happen here is that, first, I’m going to pray for you. Then, I’m going to stop praying and, with my hands on you, I’m going to speak to your illness (or injury). Immediately when I take my hands off of you, you’re going to be healed.” When I sense the freedom to tell people this, I see dramatic results almost every time. I am also finding that I am more effective in recognizing, as held by John G. Lake, that EVERY illness has a demonic source or affective influence. In speaking healing to someone’s shoulder or fever, for example, I will also address “any demonic power, any spiritual entity opposed to the Lordship of Christ,” rebuking, binding and commanding those spirits to go to Christ for judgment.”
Our reply to Dave:
“We are extremely thankful that the training the Lord has entrusted to us is bearing such fruit. Not infrequently other nameless servants of God around the world who like you have been trained will share with us reports of very powerful miraculous healings which we personally have never witnessed. Some as taught by the Holy Spirit have gone beyond the foundational principles we presented to them. So we know that it has little to do with us, but simply the word of God being faithfully applied by trained disciples. It’s the Lord fulfilling John 14:12, teaching His disciples to do the works that He did when He was on earth 2,000 years ago. We are now anticipating reports of the “greater works” through fellow disciples like you. And we are blessed simply to be the instruments by which it was originally taught and given away.”
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