Rapacious Hyderabad, Dropping like Flies in Delhi, & Trippy, Trippy, Trippy Imagine Godzilla is coming to stomp out your town. Everybody is scrambling every direction, none of the stoplights are working, people are using every possible means of transportation to hightail it outta here. That's Hyderabad traffic for you. It is literally near-gridlock contention for every foot of space on the street with barely any rules at all. Horns blare, contestants take any conceivable shot at being the next car that goes through an empty space. Meanwhile beggars are sticking their hands in your window and holding babies in your face asking for money and if you give them something they just put it in their pocket and keep holding out their hand to get more and more from you. No gratitude, ferociously persistent, utterly obnoxious. They follow you from one intersection to another with hand held out. It gradually dawns on me that these are professional beggars (equipped with small child on arm to induce guilt, but said child does not look all that unhealthy to me). This is how they ply their trade, and there are surely more worthy targets for my charitable dollars. I'm no fount of wisdom on such matters but that's my take. Last night we arrived in Delhi, the huge, modern capital of India. Headline on today's paper: "Dropping like flies." It's 105 degrees, and get this: it's standing room only at the crematoriums... from all the people who are getting heat stroke and need to be taken care of. There's even a color picture of, uh, the job they perform at the crematorium. Fun stuff! In Delhi we visited the National Museum (once I slowed my metabolism down to Museum-speed I thoroughly enjoyed it), the largest Mosque in the country (the Muslim tour guide was extremely friendly to us despite a nearly complete language barrier between us), and half our crew went to Pizza Hut for lunch. Pizza hut on your last day in India??? WIMPS. Dude, how about some Mutter Paneer or Chicken Curry or some REAL food? But no, they wanted Pizza hut. They did insist it was the best Pizza Hut they'd ever eaten at though. Now... I never told you what happened on Sunday. Now this is nothing less than trippy, and some of the thousands of people reading this just are not going to find this believable. But I'll do my best to describe it. First a word of explanation. My dad was a minister and I, therefore, went to Sunday School like a good kid should. They told me about Jesus healing the sick and everything. And where I grew up they also told me things like that don't happen anymore. Not like that anyway, where someone lays hands on someone and prays and the person gets better. "Nope, that all went away when St. Peter and all his disciple buddies passed on. That was just for getting Christianity started." As in, Miracles may happen now and then, but they sure ain't happenin' on command. That's what I was always taught, and I accepted all that. Then of course when you turn on the TV and see the faith healers plying their trade, most of us run out of the room screaming. Educated people are way too smart for that, right? While I still have zero regard for the guys on TV, during the last few years I've been completely re-thinking this whole question. Based on personal experiences, as I shall share. I've got a friend named Geri Keck from Tipp City Ohio. She had Lupus. When you look up Lupus you see it's an incurable disease. She had it for years. Did all the things you do - went to the doctor, got treatments, changed her diet, prayed for help, all that stuff. Still had lupus. One day she's having a Bible study and one of the women suddenly stands up and says, "Geri, God just told me to pray for you right now." So they did and she felt this warm feeling flushing through her abdomen and.... went to the doctor, it was completely GONE. No trace. That was about 5 years ago. I know another guy named Lionel. Had severe ADHD (Adult Attention Deficit Disorder) and was deaf in one ear. My friend Kelly Huber laid hands on him, prayed, and healed him. No more ADHD - he even went and took a 3 hour test and confirmed it was gone. His hearing is now fine in his formerly deaf ear. That was about six weeks ago. Lionel is just ecstatic. Kelly's kinda happy about that, too. So here we are in Rajahmundry at Pastor Isaiah's church service, he's got about 30 people there, I'm here with Jeremy who, as it turns out, has been having experiences like this himself. Healing people. So Isaiah invites anybody who wants any kind of healing prayer to line up in front of Jeremy. Jeremy calls me over to help him and we start prayin' for people. One woman, maybe 60 years old, had fallen a year ago and hurt her arm. She could not raise her elbow past the middle of her chest. When she moved her arm up and down she complained that her shoulder would crack and pop and Jeremy and I could feel that too, when we put our hands on her shoulder when she'd move it. He started praying for her. Probably spent 15 minutes. By the time Jeremy was done both shoulders felt identical, there was no cracking and she could raise her arm above her head on her own strength. I asked her to do it for me and I snapped a picture. She said it didn't hurt anymore and both arms were equally good. Another lady, maybe 30 years old, had somewhat recently had brain surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. She pulled her hair back and I could tell just brushing my hand over her head that there was a big piece of her skull taken out and a large indention on her head. She complained that she's been having seizures since the operation, and she has had no feeling anywhere in her left arm. Jeremy started praying that God would heal her entire skull and put everything back. We prayed for her and prayed for her. After about a half hour her head hadn't changed but she started feeling tingling on her skin and by the time we were done, she said she could feel everything with her left arm exactly like her right arm. No success on her skull filling in. Not yet anyway. But she was VERY excited about the feeling come back in her left arm! Oh, and last Tuesday in the Deep Forest we'd done the same thing with some other people. There was a guy with a broken wrist who could barely bend it, and when Jeremy was done he had full range of motion with no pain. Now I've told you about three people, there were many more - most got some benefit, some didn't seem to get any. These are the most dramatic examples of what happened. But I'll tell you one thing: I learned that prayer CHANGES things. Especially when administered the way the apostles always said to. I fully understand that a lot of people reading this are very, very skeptical. As well you should be. After all, you wasn't there, were you? No you weren't. You only have my word to go on. Well, I forgot to bring my portable MRI machine on the plane so I could do before / after scans of all these people, and as concerns this particular event, my own eyewitness testimony is about as good as I can give you here. However... if you're skeptical in the healthy sort of way that wants to really investigate things and see for yourself, There's a book I recommend for you: "Real Miracles" by Richard Casdorph. This was written in the 1970's, Casdorph was a medical doctor who documented 10 different healings like this, complete with medical charts, photographs, x-rays, letters from physicians, all that stuff. You can look the book up on Amazon and read the Table of Contents, which is impressive in and of itself. Healings of: -Malignant Brain Tumor -Multiple Sclerosis -Cancer of the kidney -Osteoporosis of the Entire Spine ...and a whole bunch more. Link is here. We joked about Jeremy doing rotator cuff surgery and neurosurgery all on the same day and only missing lunch, but of course Jeremy didn't heal these people, God did. Why? 'Cuz God loves us. I'll leave you with that thought. The Great Physician can heal you too. God Bless. Perry Marshall UPDATE: On August 2, 2007 I got this email from Ananth: Respected Mr. Perry Marshall, Greetings from India! Thank you very much for your prayers. Your trip to India was amazing. Many were healed and increased their faith in God. They are sharing their testimony to many people. Manyt times they are asking about you and Mr. Jeremy for prayers. We told them that next year definitely they will come to pray for you and for many. I would like to share the testimony of my Grand mother(My father's mother). Her name is Mrs. Suvarthamma and her age is 75. She was suffering from severe headache and neck pain from so many years and also if she takes anything from her mouth she will be feeling pain in her throat. After your prayers She is completely healed. She is very happy and doing all the works easily irrespecitve of her age. God did miracle in her life through your prayers. Another women named Mrs. Mary, Her age is 30. She had operation on her head. Hair was fully sworn and the head was like smooth sponge. She used to have pain on her head daily. and also her hand is not working and she doesnt have any feeling on her hand. After your prayers she bacame healed. She feels her hand and she can do works with that hand normally as another hand. Praise the Lord. Every one hearing of her witness, asking us about you and requesting us to bring you back to India. These are some of the Miracles happend because of your prayers. My brother Pastor Isaiah and his wife Surekha and all the boys of the Rajah Boys Home and Pastors in the Deep Forest are sending their greetings to you. Thanking you Sir, Yours faithfully, Ananth India India Home Page |