Brett Lindner was in Glen Innes over the weekend and before that in Griffith. Inverell is on the itinerary. In between, he fits in visits to Malaysia and New Zealand.

So, how did it go in Glen Innes?

At the Oasis Church on the evening of Friday, May 18, there were tens of people, not a packed congregation but far from empty, either.

After a lot of singing and praising God with arms stretched upwards, Mr Lindner invited people with minor and major ailments to come forward.

Julie Moore stepped forward and explained that she has a back pain.

Mr Lindner held her head in both hands, incanting until she lost consciousness, falling into the arms of a man behind her, waiting for it to happen. A short time later, she rose, as though from a daze.

“I went up for a prayer for my osteoarthritis because I have it in my lower back. Brett was praying for me and I sort of went numb and then I fell on the floor and when I got up there was a ripple in my back, a ripple and a burning and more rippling.

And now, it’s terrific.”

She is adamant that the pain was removed by prayer – God intervened because of prayer.

Julie has had cancer four or five times, she isn’t sure how often – and she has had surgery for it. Each cancer was different, she said – in a different part of the body. 

But the last bout was in her colon. She said she was told by the doctors that she would have to have a tumour removed.

She decided that she would consult Brett Lindner, the “healing evangelist” who then prayed with her for the cancer to be cured.

“I went up to pray against that cancer and when I had the operation, there was no cancer. The growth was clear.”

In other words, doctors detected cancer. There was prayer against it. When the operation was done, the growth turned out not to be cancerous.

Doctors are sceptical that prayer can cure serious illness and, indeed, Julie accepts that cancer keeps returning and she has surgery for it. She is about to have further surgery, though, not, she says, for cancer. She strongly believes that prayer heals but still has surgery.

What is also certain is that she blacked-out during the service. Something genuine happened to her.

In a review of the evidence, the Cancer Council for Victoria said: 

“The message for cancer patients is that they should seek the benefits of evidence-based medicine rather than hope for a miracle. However, evidence also shows there is no harm in prayer, provided it's not done as an alternative to the types of conventional treatments that have profoundly improved overall cancer survival rates in recent years.

“Patients who have faith could choose to add prayer to conventional treatment, as the two are not mutually exclusive.”