Houston, Texas
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Dear Brethren in Christ,
We just received a report from
Dave Diamond in Covington, Louisiana. Dave has been exposed to Elijah
Challenge Training a total of three times, if we remember
correctly---once in Houston, and twice in Louisiana.
The area in which Dave ministers healing is perhaps more challenging than any other. He is a Hospice Chaplain.
Do read his report to us below...
Dear William & Lucille,
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 the following:
(1) To make sure they have placed their
faith in Christ.
(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.
That's a lot, brother, but that's my report.
God bless you! He is so very good!
Dave Diamond
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."
