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Spiritual healing: Miracle or myth?

Marvin does it in Fife, Pope John Paul II did it for a nun in France and without it, others say they would be dead. So what is the reality behind the power of faith healing? Karin Goodwin investigates.

Feature taking in charismatic renewal healing and the Elim pentecostal church in Glasgow, the Venerable Margaret Sinclair, and the Zion Prayer Center International in Kirkcaldy.

"At the Zionist [sic] Prayer Center International in Kirkcaldy, Pastor Joe Nwokoye does not consider miracles in short supply. The first is that the Nigerian preacher ended up in this nondescript Fife town at all. In 1983 he answered God's call to Scotland, a far-away country where he knew no-one. He chose Kirkcaldy at random and three years later God rewarded him with his own centre, where we have agreed to meet.

"Were it not for the sound of the Congo drums spilling like sunshine into the dusk, I might have walked past the doorway, next to an office supplies shop. At the top of a dingy stairway, where the main hall is painted a dirty pink, the simple words 'the Lord is our God' arc above the stage where Pastor Joe preaches.

"At the front, dressed in a tracksuit and lost in prayer, is Marvin Andrews, the former Rangers footballer, who last August returned to Raith Rovers, the club that brought him to Scotland from Trinidad in 1997, when he was just 22.

"It was in these less than salubrious surroundings that the footballer claims to have been healed of a groin injury, for which doctors said he needed surgery. 'In Trinidad my grandmother always taught me to pray every day, but I didn't understand about healing until I came here and Joe explained the scriptures to me,' he says.

"He can't pinpoint the exact moment the pain left him, but he knows it was God's work. In turn he now performs healing services at the church, under the guidance of the pastor. "God has given us all the authority to heal," he explains. The truth, according to Andrews, is very simple. You just have to believe.

"'So many people think the Bible is an old story book,' he says. 'But the God who raised Lazarus is still the same today. The people who witness miracles know it can happen. If you believe with all your heart, you don't need to be suffering or in pain.'"

Full story at the Sunday Herald.