Justin Peters truly believed he was going to be healed.
The line snaked toward the front of the room where professed faith healer Nora Lam was dipping her fingers in oil and touching them to the foreheads of the afflicted. The sea of miracle-seekers ebbed to catch the person “slain in the spirit” as he plunged backwards, then flowed forward again for the next to have his turn.
From his seat, 16-year-old Peters stared bug-eyed at the exchange. This is it, he thought. He wanted very much to be rid of his crutches, rid of the sway in his gait — rid of his cerebral palsy.
And according to Lam, he would be.
For Peters, it wasn’t a question of faith. “I had been saved since I was 7,” he said.
“My neighbor came to my parents first, then to me, saying God had told him I was going to be healed there at the Holiday Inn (in Vicksburg, Miss.) that night in 1989.”
Unable to stand for very long, he and a friend watched the line dwindle away before making their way to the front. Lam looked at them, Peters said, then she turned to walk out the back door.
“My dad stopped her and said, ‘You’re not leaving. These boys have been waiting.’ Everyone was watching – she had no choice but to touch us,” Peters said.
She did touch them.
“And we fell too, but there was nothing spiritual about it. It was just group dynamics — peer pressure,” Peters said.
He walked away — still on crutches. “I was very hopeful, though I wasn’t healed yet,” he said.
His father took the boys to meet with Lam the next morning, and she recognized them right away.
“The first thing she said when my father walked in was, ‘How much money do you make? The more money you make, the more likely it is that God will answer your prayers.’ He looked at us and simply said, ‘Boys, let’s go,’” Peters recalled.
The three walked away.
“The potential was there to do a tremendous amount of damage to my faith. Thanks to my parents and church, it didn’t,” Peters said. “But my faith in faith healers was forever shattered.”
He pinpoints that instant as spiritually definitive.
Lam and others on the front lines of the Word of Faith (WOF) movement became mysteries to unravel rather than hope for healing for Peters.
The movement’s doctrine, he said, though much in line with orthodox Christianity, contains errors “sufficient and egregious enough” to label WOF as a different gospel altogether.
Different and dangerous, Peters said. WOF preaches that it’s God’s will that all who are saved be healed, a doctrine shattered by biblical figures such as Job, Timothy and others who served God but didn’t have perfect health.
“I have been told too many times to count that the reason I have not been healed is that I don’t have enough faith, my faith has been ‘tainted’ and I’m not even saved,” Peters said. “That’s an extremely hurtful thing to tell people.”
Peters, 31, who now serves as interim minister of education of First Baptist Church in Vicksburg, Miss., wrote his master of theology thesis debunking the WOF movement, something he shares in a rational yet humble manner, said Eddie Davidson, pastor of First Baptist Church, Hamilton, who will host Peters’ first WOF seminar. (See story below.)
Peters has been to seven crusades performed by Benny Hinn, a professed healing evangelist who’s one of the most widely recognized faces in Christian television. He’s heard Hinn say salvation and healing should never be separate.
Peters quotes Hinn as saying, “If you do not receive your miracle, it’s not God’s fault. You say, ‘Well, whose fault is it?’ You figure that one out yourself.”
So when people aren’t healed, that sends them into the “deep valley of doubting their own salvation,” Peters said. If Hinn were accurate, he said, then Billy Graham — who suffers from Parkinson’s disease — would not be saved either.
To say God promises to heal all is “an exceedingly reckless and unbiblical assertion,” Peters said, adding that no scriptural statement or even implication exists.
The same is true with many other key WOF doctrines, which Peters can debunk with passages from the Bible.
“I’m not vindictive — I’m thankful. I just want to try to open people’s eyes to the deception.”
For more information on Justin Peters and his study of WOF, visit www.thealabamabaptist.org.
FBC Hamilton to host seminar
First Baptist Church, Hamilton, will host “A Call for Discernment: Exposing the Errors of the Word of Faith Movement,” Oct. 17–19. The seminar will be led by Justin Peters. (See story above.)
Eddie Davidson, pastor of First, Hamilton, said the seminar is needed. “We have a really, really difficult situation up here in this part of Alabama,” he said, noting that the movement has made inroads into the city.
“The Ramp,” a conference center for youth in Hamilton led by WOF Karen Wheaton, has grown at a rapid rate and already brought in “big-name” speakers such as Benny Hinn.
Davidson said some churches in the area have lost members to the movement — and some Baptist pastors are involved in it.
“We don’t want to slam the movement,” Davidson said. “We want to give our pastors and people a handle on how to confront it and tell parents why their children shouldn’t go.”
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