Healing Explosion Explodes with 5,000 Fans of Faith Healing

For eight years Ona Davis has suffered pain and problems with arthritis in her knees. The doctors couldn’t seem to do much to help, so Davis turned to a faith healer. It worked, she says.

“It isn’t energy,” Davis said, describing how her life changed a few days ago. “It’s a great kind of peace. It’s a joy that comes.”

With that kind of testimony, it’s little surprise that Davis joined more than 5,000 people Friday night at the San Diego Sports Arena to take part in a Healing Explosion.

That may seem a contradiction in terms, but to Charles and Frances Hunter, the two evangelical Christians spearheading the faith-healing event, it makes wonderful sense.

The couple have been working their brand of healing for years, but in 1985 they came up with a new idea--to spread the practice by teaching laymen the tricks of the faith-healing trade.

To do that, the Hunters have developed a 14-hour course on videotape. The tapes, along with “To Heal the Sick,” one of 32 books the couple has written, form the backbone of the course.

“Jesus trained his disciples,” said Charles Hunter, 66, a lanky man with a balding head ringed by thick, white hair. “What we’re doing is the great commission of teaching other believers. We can train them.”

About 1,000 of their newest pupils gathered at the Sports Arena for Friday night’s session to test for the first time their powers of healing. As snappy Christian music wafted through the Sports Arena, the assembly stood on its feet, clapping as one, some dancing about, some with arms raised overhead, emersed in the moment.

“I’d like to come down and hug every one of you,” Frances Hunter, 70, yelled to the crowd as it pressed against a towering stage set at one end of the arena’s concrete floor. “You’re going to help change San Diego. You’re going to change Mexico. You’re going to help change this entire area.”

The event is nothing new for the Hunters. They’ve held similar gatherings in a dozen cities across the United States, among them Pittsburgh, Pa., and Minneapolis. Later this year they plan to travel to Columbia. Early next year they’ll move on to the Philippines. Indeed, the couple say they’re on the road more than 300 days of the year.

Generally, they said, thousands of true believers have flocked to the meetings, eager to have their aches and pains, their infirmities, dashed away with a touch to the forehead and the power of the Lord.

Skeptics maintain that faith healing is little more than a hoax and, at worst, can prove dangerous if a person does not seek needed medical attention while awaiting a miracle cure. But faith healers such as the Hunters insist that it can work wonders.

“We pay little attention to those who don’t believe,” Charles Hunter said in an interview before the gathering. “They’ll never be true believers. Or, when they see the miracle of God, the miracle of healing, they’ll believe.”

The Hunters insist that faith healing can cure just about anything, from back problems to infertility or cancer. Faith healers say they’ve seen broken bones mended, teeth restored. Even problems like alcoholism or psychological difficulties after a divorce have been eased through faith healing, they say.

“It’s very simple,” he said. “We’ve simply learned how to dispense the power of God . . . . Sometimes it’s like a wind coming out of your fingers, like electricity.”

But even the strongest advocates of faith healing acknowledge that not everyone comes away cured.

“A lot of times it happens instantaneously, a lot of times people leave thinking nothing has changed,” said Ruth Holloway, who serves as an aide to the Hunters at their headquarters in Kingwood, Tex., a suburb just outside Houston. “Not everyone gets healed, but the percentages are getting better.”

Many people verify they’ve been healed, because the pain they had felt was gone, Holloway said. Others have found they were able to function in ways they couldn’t before.

“You’ll sometimes have people coming back looking a little forlorn, but even Jesus couldn’t heal someone if there was doubt and no belief,” she said.