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Ireland Resurrection of 18 Year Old Reported in Press	Awesomepower
	Jun 24, 2008 08:18 PDT

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From The Sunday Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article4188214.ece

June 22, 2008

Liam Clarke: Lo, a resurrection brought forth the miracle of publicity

Can a man be raised from the dead? That is the question being posed by a
religious revival in Northern Ireland that threatens to turn Tigers Bay into
the Protestant equivalent of Lourdes.

This is one of the most deprived areas of north Belfast, a loyalist
working-class enclave whose community spirit has been sorely challenged by
the ravages of drugs, unemployment and poverty. For the past five weeks,
Tigers Bay seems to have become a place of miracles, with almost medieval
expressions of religious fervour linked to a revival campaign that
originates in Florida.

A dead man, it is claimed, came back to life and is now able to give
newspaper interviews. This is thanks to a prayer campaign supported, it is
said, by up to 130m people. Every night less dramatic ailments, such as
chronic fatigue syndrome, alcoholism and neck pain, are being “cured” in
Tigers Bay by the simple laying on of hands by Brian Madden, a charismatic
Pentecostal minister who claims God works through him.

A local man and self-proclaimed sinner, Madden is very like the people who
flock to his Elim Christian Centre on Alexandra Park Avenue. He likes to
relate how he turned away from a life of violence and drugs in a
road-to-Damascus style conversion as he drove along the M2 near
Carrickfergus in 1987. Right there in the car, God warned him he was going
to hell, and Madden asked Christ to save him. “The immediate change was
sorrow for joy. No need for drink, drugs, tobacco and a change of friends.
Happiness filled my heart and a great assurance that I was now saved. I
wanted everyone to know,” he said.

So he has been telling people ever since. Last week he prefaced services
with lists of forthcoming media appearances. “We do want to thank God for
that good report in the News Letter today. Did everybody read it? Go and buy
the News Letter and read about the resurrection. It will blow your mind,” he
told a healing service on Thursday, and then listed off forthcoming BBC
interviews, including one on Sunday Sequence this morning.

The “resurrection” is that of Andrew Duffin, 18, a local man whose heart
stopped in the Royal Victoria hospital (RVH) last month. Duffin was
hospitalised after the stolen car in which he was a passenger crashed into a
wall. His father, a member of Madden’s congregation, made an international
appeal for prayer.

As Madden now tells it, Duffin had been dead for 16 minutes and doctors held
out no hope, but, miraculously, he pulled through. Even before he did,
across the world in Lakeland, Florida, an evangelist named Bob Sullivan
stepped onto a stage and told a cheering crowd that young Andrew in Belfast
had come back to life.

A consultant reportedly told Duffin his recovery was nothing short of a
miracle. Madden takes that literally and claims it is due to the fact that
millions of members of his Pentecostal denomination across the globe prayed
for Duffin. Numbers may be exaggerated: the worldwide membership of even the
largest Pentecostal denomination is put at 54.7m. But what of the medical
evidence?

The Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, which controls the RVH, can’t
discuss an individual’s medical records, but it did confirm that Duffin had
been a patient in intensive care. Coronary facilities at the RVH are among
the best in the world.

Asked what would be normal in the case of an 18-year-old who suffered
cardiac failure following a crash, the trust replied: “Life-saving
resuscitation measures are put into place immediately and supported by other
methods of treatment, for example, fluid and drug therapies. These measures
are sustained for long periods of time before a patient would be pronounced
dead.”

Life support is usually maintained for more than half an hour, sometimes up
to an hour. This means Duffin was lucky to have survived his ordeal and
recover, if indeed he was on life support for 16 minutes. But not everyone
would consider it a miracle, in the strict sense. Nobody is claiming, for
instance, that brain function had ceased.

Duffin wasn’t a Christian at the time of his accident and didn’t know that
people were praying for him as doctors fought to save his life. Could the
heartfelt prayer of Madden and the other Pentecostalists have increased his
odds of survival?

There are studies to suggest that prayer, or meditation and relaxation
techniques, can promote happiness and wellbeing as well as giving us a new
perspective. Intercessional prayer, which aims at bringing about a
particular result, is more problematic. For instance, this month
Pentecostalists prayed for the BBC’s Stephen Nolan Show to go off the air
for three months because they felt it had treated Iris Robinson badly. They
are now praying for the wellbeing of its presenter, simply because he
interviewed Madden.

AWESOMEPOWER NOTE: Please see counterargument note at bottom.

The first study of the power of prayer that I can find was carried out,
perhaps a little flippantly, by Francis Galton in 1872. Galton, noting that
the British royal family were prayed for in churches across the country
every Sunday, compared their life expectancy with that of commoners and
concluded there wasn’t much difference.

Since then there have been a number of scientific studies comparing the
progress of control groups of patients who were not prayed for with similar
groups who were. This year the Cochrane Collaboration, a respected medical
foundation often employed to assess the value of new drugs and treatments,
compared all the studies which met its standards. It concluded: “We found 10
studies, involving more than 7,000 participants. Most of the studies show no
real differences. Prayer was found to be helpful in one study of women
receiving fertility treatment, whereas another trial found those aware of
prayer had more complications following an operation.”

So statistically, the main effect of intercessionary prayer appeared to be
to help with the implantation of embryos in IVF treatment, a procedure of
which some religious fundamentalists disapprove.

One of the main studies taken into account by Cochrane was carried out in
2006 on heart patients in Boston by Herbert Benson, a committed Christian
cardiologist, who believed evidence for the power of prayer was mounting.
This was the study which found, counterintuitively, that people who knew
they were being prayed for fared worse than those who didn’t. Overall,
however, it found no difference.

Statistics are one thing, but it is natural that people will be convinced
when an individual recovers after being prayed for or visiting a shrine.
This natural credulity can be exploited either deliberately or unwittingly,
to make money, expand churches and spread faith.

For instance, Madden started on his present path after being sent a free
plane ticket to visit the Fresh Fire Ministries in Florida last April. There
he linked up with Todd Bentley, another charismatic preacher, who turned
away from a life of burglary, drugs and sexual abuse of younger boys,
following a religious experience. A material as well as a spiritual success,
Bentley collects money at his services in buckets, because there is so much
of it, and runs missions across the world. Sometimes he appears to read the
minds of volunteers in the audience.

His ministry is controversial, but it’s not the moral equivalent of the
statues and the holy pictures that started to bleed in August 1920 at a
house in Templemore, Co Tipperary. It became a place of pilgrimage, where
healing miracles were reported. The truth was stranger still. The shrine was
a scam run under IRA protection.

“We imposed a levy of two shillings and sixpence per day and in less than
two weeks the sum collected amounted to at least £1,000, which was handed
over to the Brigade arms fund,” the volunteer Sean South later told the
Irish Bureau of Military History.

A miracle, indeed.

<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tools_and_services/services/advertising/>
Contact our advertising team for advertising and sponsorship in Times
Online, The Times and The Sunday Times. Search <http://globrix.com>
globrix.com to buy or rent UK property.

© Copyright 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.

This service is provided on Times Newspapers'
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tools_and_services/services/terms_and_cond
itions/> standard Terms and Conditions. Please read our
<http://www.nidp.com> Privacy Policy.To inquire about a licence to reproduce
material from Times Online, The Times or The Sunday Times, click
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tools_and_services/services/syndication/>
here.This website is published by a member of the News International Group.
News International Limited, 1 Virginia St, London E98 1XY, is the holding
company for the News International group and is registered in England No
81701. VAT number GB 243 8054 69.

EDITORS NOTE: This author is obviously not aware of the myraid of medical
studies on prayer. Some can be found at our site at:
http://awesomepower.net/prayerstudies.htm

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<o:p> </o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

<img
width=222 height=25 id="_x0000_i1027" src="cid:image0-@01C8D5D2.D8CF4590"
alt="Times Online Logo 222 x 25" border=0><o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

From The Sunday Times<o:p></o:p>

<a
href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article4188214.ece">http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article4188214.ece</a>
<o:p></o:p>

June
22, 2008<o:p></o:p>

<h1 style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'>Liam Clarke: Lo, a resurrection brought forth
the miracle of publicity<o:p></o:p></h1>

Can
a man be raised from the dead? That is the question being posed by a religious
revival in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Northern Ireland</st1:country-region>
that threatens to turn <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Tigers</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType
w:st="on">Bay</st1:PlaceType> into the Protestant equivalent of <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lourdes</st1:place></st1:City>. <o:p></o:p>

This is one of the most deprived areas of
north <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Belfast</st1:place></st1:City>,
a loyalist working-class enclave whose community spirit has been sorely
challenged by the ravages of drugs, unemployment and poverty. For the past five
weeks, <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Tigers</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Bay</st1:PlaceType>
seems to have become a place of miracles, with almost medieval expressions of
religious fervour linked to a revival campaign that originates in <st1:State
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Florida</st1:place></st1:State>. <o:p></o:p>

A dead man, it is claimed, came back to
life and is now able to give newspaper interviews. This is thanks to a prayer
campaign supported, it is said, by up to 130m people. Every night less dramatic
ailments, such as chronic fatigue syndrome, alcoholism and neck pain, are being
“cured” in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Tigers</st1:PlaceName>
<st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Bay</st1:PlaceType></st1:place> by the simple laying
on of hands by Brian Madden, a charismatic Pentecostal minister who claims God
works through him. <o:p></o:p>

A local man and self-proclaimed sinner,
Madden is very like the people who flock to his Elim Christian Centre on
Alexandra Park Avenue. He likes to relate how he turned away from a life of
violence and drugs in a road-to-Damascus style conversion as he drove along the
M2 near Carrickfergus in 1987. Right there in the car, God warned him he was
going to hell, and Madden asked Christ to save him. “The immediate change
was sorrow for joy. No need for drink, drugs, tobacco and a change of friends.
Happiness filled my heart and a great assurance that I was now saved. I wanted
everyone to know,” he said. <o:p></o:p>

So he has been telling people ever since.
Last week he prefaced services with lists of forthcoming media appearances.
“We do want to thank God for that good report in the News Letter today.
Did everybody read it? Go and buy the News Letter and read about the
resurrection. It will blow your mind,” he told a healing service on
Thursday, and then listed off forthcoming BBC interviews, including one on
Sunday Sequence this morning. <o:p></o:p>

The “resurrection” is that of
Andrew Duffin, 18, a local man whose heart stopped in the Royal Victoria
hospital (RVH) last month. Duffin was hospitalised after the stolen car in
which he was a passenger crashed into a wall. His father, a member of
Madden’s congregation, made an international appeal for prayer. <o:p></o:p>

As Madden now tells it, Duffin had been
dead for 16 minutes and doctors held out no hope, but, miraculously, he pulled
through. Even before he did, across the world in <st1:City w:st="on">Lakeland</st1:City>,
<st1:State w:st="on">Florida</st1:State>, an evangelist named Bob Sullivan
stepped onto a stage and told a cheering crowd that young Andrew in <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Belfast</st1:place></st1:City> had come back to
life. <o:p></o:p>

A consultant reportedly told Duffin his
recovery was nothing short of a miracle. Madden takes that literally and claims
it is due to the fact that millions of members of his Pentecostal denomination
across the globe prayed for Duffin. Numbers may be exaggerated: the worldwide
membership of even the largest Pentecostal denomination is put at 54.7m. But
what of the medical evidence? <o:p></o:p>

The Belfast Health and Social Care Trust,
which controls the RVH, can’t discuss an individual’s medical
records, but it did confirm that Duffin had been a patient in intensive care.
Coronary facilities at the RVH are among the best in the world. <o:p></o:p>

Asked what would be normal in the case of
an 18-year-old who suffered cardiac failure following a crash, the trust
replied: “Life-saving resuscitation measures are put into place
immediately and supported by other methods of treatment, for example, fluid and
drug therapies. These measures are sustained for long periods of time before a
patient would be pronounced dead.” <o:p></o:p>

Life support is usually maintained for
more than half an hour, sometimes up to an hour. This means Duffin was lucky to
have survived his ordeal and recover, if indeed he was on life support for 16
minutes. But not everyone would consider it a miracle, in the strict sense. Nobody
is claiming, for instance, that brain function had ceased. <o:p></o:p>

Duffin wasn’t a Christian at the
time of his accident and didn’t know that people were praying for him as
doctors fought to save his life. Could the heartfelt prayer of Madden and the
other Pentecostalists have increased his odds of survival? <o:p></o:p>

There are studies to suggest that prayer,
or meditation and relaxation techniques, can promote happiness and wellbeing as
well as giving us a new perspective. Intercessional prayer, which aims at
bringing about a particular result, is more problematic. For instance, this
month Pentecostalists prayed for the BBC’s Stephen Nolan Show to go off
the air for three months because they felt it had treated Iris Robinson badly.
They are now praying for the wellbeing of its presenter, simply because he
interviewed Madden. <o:p></o:p>

AWESOMEPOWER NOTE: Please
see counterargument note at bottom.<o:p></o:p>

The first study of the power of prayer
that I can find was carried out, perhaps a little flippantly, by Francis Galton
in 1872. Galton, noting that the British royal family were prayed for in churches
across the country every Sunday, compared their life expectancy with that of
commoners and concluded there wasn’t much difference. <o:p></o:p>

Since then there have been a number of
scientific studies comparing the progress of control groups of patients who were
not prayed for with similar groups who were. This year the Cochrane
Collaboration, a respected medical foundation often employed to assess the
value of new drugs and treatments, compared all the studies which met its
standards. It concluded: “We found 10 studies, involving more than 7,000
participants. Most of the studies show no real differences. Prayer was found to
be helpful in one study of women receiving fertility treatment, whereas another
trial found those aware of prayer had more complications following an
operation.” <o:p></o:p>

So statistically, the main effect of
intercessionary prayer appeared to be to help with the implantation of embryos
in IVF treatment, a procedure of which some religious fundamentalists
disapprove. <o:p></o:p>

One of the main studies taken into account
by Cochrane was carried out in 2006 on heart patients in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Boston</st1:place></st1:City> by Herbert Benson, a committed
Christian cardiologist, who believed evidence for the power of prayer was
mounting. This was the study which found, counterintuitively, that people who knew
they were being prayed for fared worse than those who didn’t. Overall,
however, it found no difference. <o:p></o:p>

Statistics are one thing, but it is
natural that people will be convinced when an individual recovers after being
prayed for or visiting a shrine. This natural credulity can be exploited either
deliberately or unwittingly, to make money, expand churches and spread faith. <o:p></o:p>

For instance, Madden started on his
present path after being sent a free plane ticket to visit the Fresh Fire
Ministries in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Florida</st1:place></st1:State>
last April. There he linked up with Todd Bentley, another charismatic preacher,
who turned away from a life of burglary, drugs and sexual abuse of younger
boys, following a religious experience. A material as well as a spiritual
success, Bentley collects money at his services in buckets, because there is so
much of it, and runs missions across the world. Sometimes he appears to read
the minds of volunteers in the audience. <o:p></o:p>

His ministry is controversial, but
it’s not the moral equivalent of the statues and the holy pictures that
started to bleed in August 1920 at a house in Templemore, Co <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Tipperary</st1:place></st1:City>. It became a place of pilgrimage,
where healing miracles were reported. The truth was stranger still. The shrine
was a scam run under IRA protection. <o:p></o:p>

“We imposed a levy of two shillings
and sixpence per day and in less than two weeks the sum collected amounted to
at least £1,000, which was handed over to the Brigade arms fund,” the
volunteer Sean South later told the Irish Bureau of Military History. <o:p></o:p>

A miracle, indeed. <o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

<a
href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tools_and_services/services/advertising/">Contact our advertising team</a>
for advertising and sponsorship in Times Online, The Times and The Sunday
Times. Search <a href="http://globrix.com">globrix.com</a> to buy or rent <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">UK</st1:place></st1:country-region> property.<o:p></o:p>

© Copyright 2008
Times Newspapers Ltd.<o:p></o:p>

This service is
provided on Times Newspapers' <a
href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tools_and_services/services/terms_and_conditions/">standard Terms and Conditions</a>.
Please read our <a href="http://www.nidp.com">Privacy Policy</a>.To inquire about a
licence to reproduce material from Times Online, The Times or The Sunday Times,
click <a
href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tools_and_services/services/syndication/">here</a>.This website
is published by a member of the News International Group. News International
Limited, <st1:address w:st="on"><st1:Street w:st="on">1 Virginia St</st1:Street>,
<st1:City w:st="on">London</st1:City> <st1:PostalCode w:st="on">E98 1XY</st1:PostalCode></st1:address>,
is the holding company for the News International group and is registered in
England No 81701. VAT number GB 243 8054 69.<o:p></o:p>

 <o:p></o:p>

EDITORS NOTE: This author
is obviously not aware of the myraid of medical studies on prayer. Some can be
found at our site at: <a href="http://awesomepower.net/prayerstudies.htm">http://awesomepower.net/prayerstudies.htm</a>
<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

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