Miracles

by Eric Metaxas

  In this chapter I will tell five stories of healing miracles, although as I asked friends whether they had experienced miracles, many more than these five offered stories of miraculous healing. They are more common than I ever thought. I remember my own grandmother telling me how she had prayed for her own leg, which was hurting, and “felt a sizzling” and was instantly healed. This was in the 1970s. My mother was at work and my grandmother was taking care of my brother and me over summer vacation. She told me that she spoke to God, saying, “I can’t take care of these children today unless you heal me,” and as she was talking to God—which is to say, as she was praying—she felt a warmth in her leg and it was healed, just like that. She was not a woman given to hyperbole. Although there’s nothing dramatic about it, I mention it because I have heard many stories like it over the years. Most of them aren’t especially dramatic, but all of them are in a way nonetheless amazing.

  Though I myself have prayed hundreds of times for healing, I cannot recount any answers to these prayers. I recall in the summer of 1990 being on the hot streets of the South Bronx. Some friends from Times Square Church and Saint Paul’s Church in Darien, Connecticut, were doing an “outreach” in that impoverished area, praying for people and talking to them about God. An elderly black man leaning against a storefront asked us to pray for him, lifting his shirt and revealing a hideous growth. After he replaced his shirt, we “laid hands” on him and prayed, in faith, in Jesus’s name. Whether a healing happened we will never know. But just because these things don’t happen as we would like them to happen, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pray, knowing that God can heal. The Bible says clearly that God wants us to ask him for help when we need it, and it is clear that asking for healing when we are sick is part of that. Whether he heals us is another story, but if we don’t ask for it, we are preempting the very possibility that it might happen. So we should ask. And as the following stories illustrate, God really can heal us.

  CISCO AND HECTOR

  In the previous chapter, I told the story of how Cisco Anglero found God. But that wasn’t the end of what happened to him. In fact, while he was still in prison, God used him in a dramatic way.

  Cisco remembered that one day about six weeks after his dramatic conversion experience (see page 153), he was walking back to the dorm from his job in KK—what they called the officers’ cafeteria—when he saw that his friend Hector was in bed, shaking and shivering. It was about 75 degrees out, but for some reason Hector was wearing his boots and socks, a sweater, his heavy coat, and a thick winter blanket. Cisco asked him what was the matter. “I don’t know,” Hector said. “It feels like I’m dying.” In Cisco’s remembrance, Hector had always been around 215 pounds and very muscular, but the moment Hector and Frankie had arrived Cisco saw that Hector was noticeably thinner. But he never asked him why. Cisco had always been taught to mind his own business: If someone wanted you to know something, they would tell you. But the truth was that Hector had contracted AIDS. He was perhaps 180 when Cisco first saw him a few months earlier. Now he was even thinner.

  Cisco had no idea how to respond to what his friend had said, so he just sat on his bunk nearby and opened his Bible. But then Hector called to him: “Cisco, come here.”

  “What’s the matter, Hector?” Cisco said, coming over to his bed. “What can I do for you?”

  “The Holy Spirit told me that if you pray for me, what I feel now is going to be gone.” Cisco had no idea what to make of what Hector had just said. After all, he had been a Christian for only six weeks.

  “If I pray for you?” he said. “I don’t know how to pray.” But Cisco loved his friend and wanted to do what he could. One thing he had learned was that prayers were more powerful if the person praying didn’t have any unconfessed sin. So he said to God, “Lord, if I’m doing something you don’t want me to do, show me. But I don’t want my friend to be like this.” After that, right there by his bedside, Cisco began praying for Hector in the only way he knew how. His prayers were simple but deeply heartfelt.

  Suddenly, Cisco told me, a very bright light—“as bright as the sun,” he said—covered the two of them, “like a halo. It was a circle.” They were on the second floor of the facility, so it couldn’t have been actual sunlight. Cisco said that when he finished praying the light went away and he went back to his bunk and sat down. Then, suddenly, he saw Hector stand up, take the blankets off, and take his coat off and the sweater too. And then Hector began jumping up and down and saying over and over, “Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Jesus!”

  One of the corrections officers saw what was happening. He knew Hector had been in very bad shape, so he immediately called up Dr. Matthews in the infirmary and told her that Hector had taken everything off and was jumping up and down. A few minutes later Dr. Matthews showed up and asked Hector what had happened. He told her everything. Then she examined him and said that it didn’t seem that anything was wrong with him. For no reason anyone could divine other than the prayer that Cisco offered, Hector was suddenly feeling fine.

  What happened that day was clearly mystifying and dramatic, but it didn’t halt the overall progress of the disease. Hector continued to lose weight and grow weaker.

  About two months after the day he prayed for Hector, Cisco had a terrible argument on the phone with his wife, Christine. It so affected him that he stopped reading the Bible and praying. It was a very dark period for him.

  One day during this time, Cisco walked into the dormitory and saw that they were taking Hector out in a wheelchair. Cisco learned they were taking him to Kings County Hospital, where Dr. Matthews was in residence. Hector’s weight had by now dropped down to about 145 pounds. Dr. Matthews was with Hector and she took Cisco aside and explained there was nothing more they could do for Hector. They were taking him to the hospital to make him more comfortable while the disease took its inevitable course.

  About ten days later one of the officers came over to Cisco and told him he had a visitor. Cisco absolutely never had visitors. He had made a point of telling his wife, Christine, never to visit him, so he was sure it wasn’t her. His brothers lived in Puerto Rico, so he knew it wasn’t either of them. His sister lived in Florida. Cisco had no idea who it could be. But he went to the visiting room and saw a woman coming in. She sat down and told him that she was Hector’s mother. Cisco asked how Hector was doing and she said not well. He was on many medications and had IVs all over him. His weight was down to 120 pounds.

  But Hector’s mother told Cisco that Hector had told her the story of how Cisco had once prayed for him and how his symptoms had vanished instantly. She told Cisco that Hector had said that God had spoken to him again. God had told Hector that if Cisco prayed for him again, he would be healed completely. Not just the symptoms, but the disease itself. Cisco again had no idea what to make of this. How could he pray for Hector? He was in prison. He certainly couldn’t go over to Kings County Hospital and pray for his friend in person. The only thing he could think of was to go down to the infirmary and talk to Dr. Matthews. Perhaps she could call Kings County, since she was a resident there. Perhaps they could get Hector on the phone and Cisco could pray for him that way.

  Cisco told Hector’s mother he would do whatever he could. So he went downstairs to the infirmary and found Dr. Matthews and explained the situation. He said that he felt he needed to pray for Hector over the phone. Dr. Matthews said she would see what she could do. So she called Kings County immediately and asked to be put in touch with Hector. But that wasn’t possible. They told her she could speak to the doctor in charge, or to the head nurse, but not with Hector himself. She could visit him in person if she liked, but talking to him over the phone was simply not allowed. They were at an impasse. “I don’t know what else to do,” she said to Cisco.

  Just then, for the first time in his life, Cisco heard God speak to him, telling him to get the phone number Dr. Matthews had just dialed. So he asked her for
it.

  Dr. Matthews didn’t know what Cisco thought he could do with the phone number. She explained to him that if they wouldn’t let her speak to Hector, they certainly wouldn’t let Cisco speak to Hector. But Cisco knew what he had heard. God told him to get the number, so he persisted. Finally she relented and gave it to him. Cisco immediately left the infirmary and went upstairs to use the phone. But as he was doing that, God spoke again, telling him, not yet, to wait. So he obediently went to his bunk and waited. Phone use was restricted, and there were no calls allowed after 10:00 P.M. But it was just after ten when Cisco heard God speak the third time, saying, “Now. Go.”

  So Cisco walked over to the “bubble” and knocked on the glass and said to the CO that he had to make a call. The CO laughed, figuring Cisco was kidding around with him. But Cisco made it clear he wasn’t kidding at all. “I need to make a phone call,” he said. “I need to call Kings County.” But the CO said that wasn’t possible. The phone was already shut down for the night, and he wasn’t about to lose his job by letting Cisco use it.

  Cisco said that at this point “something just came over me and I said, ‘If you don’t give me the phone, then it’s on your head.’” Cisco later thought that it must have been God speaking through him, because he wasn’t sure why he said that, but the urgency was powerful. Those words shook up the CO somehow, and he immediately changed his mind and gave Cisco the phone. But he said, “Please just make it ten minutes. If you’re on longer and they catch you, I’m going to get fired!”

  So Cisco dialed the number. A nurse answered. She asked if he was Hector’s relative. Cisco said that he wasn’t, that he was a friend. The nurse said she was sorry, but if he wanted to speak with the patient he had to be a relative. But he was welcome to come there in person. Cisco explained he couldn’t come there in person because he was calling from prison. The nurse said that was even worse, and he might as well forget about talking to Hector.

  But for the second time, a tremendous boldness came over Cisco. “If you don’t put Hector on the telephone,” he said to the nurse, “God says that he will punish you.” At this point Hector, whose bed must have been nearby, said something to the nurse. Cisco could hear his voice through the phone. Hector obviously knew Cisco was on the phone because of what he heard the nurse saying on her end. Finally, the nurse relented. “Okay, okay,” she said, “but you can only talk for a few minutes, because I’ll get in trouble.” She handed Hector the phone.

  “What happened, buddy?” Cisco asked. Hector said that the Holy Spirit had spoken to him again. “He told me that you were going to pray for me,” Hector said, “and that he was going to heal me.” Cisco knew that what Hector said the last time had happened just as he had said it would happen. There wasn’t much time, so right then Cisco prayed for Hector’s healing over the phone. After he finished praying, he told Hector that he loved him and hung up.

  That Friday the COs told Cisco he had another visitor. He went down to the visitors area and saw Hector’s mother walking in. From the look on her face Cisco assumed she was there to tell him that Hector had died. He braced himself. But when she got to the table, her expression changed. She was beaming. She told Cisco that what happened when he prayed was a miracle. She said that a few minutes after he finished praying and hung up, Hector’s whole body began shaking violently, so much so that all the intravenous needles came out of his body. He then fell off the bed, got up, and started jumping up and down, over and over, thanking God. It was a miracle. She told Cisco that the Kings County doctors had been checking Hector for the last three days and they couldn’t find any evidence of the AIDS virus in his body. They decided to keep him there for a few more weeks, just to make sure that he was okay, but after that, they would release him.

  That was the last Cisco heard of Hector for about five years.

  Not long after Hector’s healing, Cisco was sleeping in his bunk when suddenly he woke up, sweating. He didn’t know if it was in a dream or in a vision, but God had spoken to him, telling him that he was going to prepare Cisco to become the director of a men’s ministry to alcoholics, drug addicts, people with mental illness, ex-cons, and homeless men.

  After some time, Cisco was transferred to a prison upstate, and then to Rikers Island. After Rikers he went to Ulster County Jail and then to Eastern Correctional. He finally got out in 1992, going back to his home and his wife, Christine, on Coney Island. Cisco began attending a church nearby called Coney Island Gospel Assembly. The pastor who founded the church was a man named Jack San Filippo, who had died not long before, so his daughter had become the pastor and Cisco was a deacon. One Sunday after church, Cisco was sitting in the pastoral office when a phone call came in for the pastor from Larry Johnson, the director of Victory Outreach.

  He explained that seven homeless men had been staying at the Victory Outreach church but could no longer do so for various reasons. “Would Coney Island Gospel Assembly be willing to take them in?” Larry asked. The pastor asked Cisco if he would be able to take responsibility for them. “I’m not a babysitter!” Cisco shot back. But then, Cisco felt “something like a bolt of lightning” hit him in the back of the head. And he heard a voice telling him, “Remember!” It was God jogging his memory of when he had told Cisco that someday he would run a ministry for the homeless, ex-cons, alcoholics, drug addicts, and people with mental illness. So Cisco changed his mind and those seven men eventually turned into a ministry that he ran for nine years.

  A year after that, Cisco was at DeKalb Avenue in Brooklyn, meeting with his parole officer. On the way home he stopped into a restaurant to get a soda when he bumped into someone who knew his old friend Hector. It had been five years since he’d prayed for him over the phone and he hadn’t heard anything since. So he immediately asked the friend about Hector. Had he heard any news of him? The friend told Cisco that Hector was completely healthy. In fact, he was at that time in Bible college, training to become a minister.

  Cisco’s ministry to the men of Brooklyn thrived too. Over the next few years 1,200 to 1,500 passed through it. The journals kept by Cisco and the pastor documented that during the nine-year period more than eight hundred of them gave their lives to God, went back to their families, and found work. Cisco’s been ministering to men in Brooklyn ever since.

  A SIMPLE HEALING PRAYER

  I’ve known my friend John Alan Turner for about ten years now, and every time we meet I marvel at how similar we are, especially in our taste in literature and our sense of humor. John studied at Pepperdine University, Pacific Christian College, and the London School of Theology, and then went into the pastorate. One day John told me the story of something that happened in the spring of 2000. It was during a Sunday morning worship service in Columbia, Maryland.

  John was then thirty, and he pastored the church—the Columbia Church of Christ. The congregation was a relatively small congregation, with about 125 attending each week. But this was in one of the least “churched” counties in America. “We were struggling to keep the lights on and our hopes up,” as he put it. There was no church building, so they met in the local community center, which they rented for Sunday worship. According to John, the room where they met was depressingly generic, “the kind of place where people might have all kinds of events, from a wedding reception to a child’s dance class.” Every week the church volunteers had to show up early to set up and then tear it all down afterward.

  In his congregation there was a soft-spoken parishioner named Michael who was a psychiatrist. Michael was part of the group who had volunteered to be in the rotation to lead worship and that week, it was his turn. But Michael’s father—with whom he had had an incredibly tumultuous and painful relationship—had died recently. His father had been physically abusive, with a harsh religious streak. John said he was “the kind of Catholic who believed kids needed to be spanked periodically for no good reason other than it helped beat the original sin out of them and taught them how
to suffer like Jesus.” So Michael’s father’s death was sudden and unexpected, and John could see that Michael was having a very difficult time reconciling his decidedly mixed emotions. More than once Michael said: “I don’t know how people process stuff like this without a church family. I suppose that’s what keeps guys like me in business.”

  So that Sunday, John walked into the room where they gathered for worship when Michael, who was already there, approached him. John saw that he was wearing a sling and walking gingerly. For some reason, John had a bad feeling about it. “John,” Michael said, “I’ve pinched a nerve in my neck. It’s made my arm go all pins and needles. It started Friday and was so bad I had to cancel all my patients for the day. I went to my doctor and thought it would be better by now. But it’s throbbing. I can’t lead worship today. I’m sorry.”

  Michael’s eyes were shining, and John could see that it was from tears. He was in real pain—physically, emotionally, spiritually. Obviously playing guitar and leading worship was out of the question.

  John’s mind began racing immediately. He had a service to lead in a few minutes. But he didn’t want to lead the music portion of it and preach too. He thought it would look too much like a one-man show. In mentally scrambling to figure out what best to do, he was probably a bit dismissive with Michael. He told him everything would be fine and said he should get some rest and that he hoped he would feel better soon. A few quick conversations later, he found someone to fill in for Michael. Then he took a deep breath and the service began.

  The services always began with a song, after which John would greet everyone, share a few announcements of upcoming events, and have the congregation stand to greet one another. This week, after the first song, as John brightly said, “Good morning!” to the congregation, he saw Michael sitting off to the side, obviously wincing in pain and discomfort, though he was trying to look pleasant.