Cult leader Lee Jae-Rock's 2002 Chennai crusade - No spectacular healings, some looking fake
The Lee Jae-Rock Miracle Healing Crusade was held from October 10-13 2002 at Marina Beach in Chennai India. Churches (especially those on the charismatic/pentecostal end of the scale) from all over the city participated. Attendance by different reports on the 3 nights was from a few hundred thousand to 1.5 million!
However the glowing reports from ASSIST News service, the enthusiastic reports in the Manmin websites and the Manmin supported documentaries do not give the full picture.
But was it really? I watched the crusades live on TV and attended one evening to try to have a look.
Lee Jae-Rock had a unique way of conducting this healing crusade. He preached a message and then they invited people to come for healing as he and the senior pastors of Chennai crusade prayed over the crowd in general from their high stage platform about 30 feet above, kind of like Soviet communist politburo leaders used to observe military parades on Red Square. I did not see Lee Jae-Rock pray for anyone individually. This was all done by the local pastors.
The healings I saw did not look all that impressive. Many like this man here and the woman (who they said was healed of Polio) demonstrated their healing by walking on their own - but they just appeared to be struggling to limp without any aid. They would limp along to demonstrate their healing as they were assisted by a group of Koreans, and then as they left the observer could sometimes watch as these "healed" people would be handed back their crutches or walking sticks. A fair amount interviewed spoke of less visibly verifiable things such as being healed of depression and anxiety or chest pain.
Were people healed at this crusade? I would say most probably yes. God used the local pastors praying for people. Staff at a school I was familiar with said that their Hindu cleaning lady had clearly been miraculously healed of some ailment. And a number of the testimonies at the crusade sounded believable. But I did observe this aspect: The spectacular healings that were expected did not materialize. Where were the people healed of AIDS or of cancer? The totally lame walking? Nothing impressive observed.
Sometimes the video screen would show live or past clips of people rising from their wheelchairs - and then cut to something else before we could tell if they could truly walk or not. (such as in the photo above.) No dead were raised though I did hear some bodies were brought to the crusade.
It appears there was some healing that went on, and this is common in India. But this crusade seemed to be nothing special other than the numbers of attendees. The healings that did occur were probably the results of people seeking God for help and the faithful prayers of local pastors. Not because of Lee Jae-Rock, more likely in spite of him.
The weather started to lightly rain so Lee Jae-Rock held his arms forth and told the rain to stop in the name of Jesus - and then it poured! You can see there people are wet in some of these photos
When I attended the crusade I went up the to stage during the prayers for healing to have a closer look. The scene was quite crowded and chaotic, which is common in India. It was also more confused as things had been disrupted by the heavy rain that was just ending. As I was on the side of the stage taking photos some counselors came up to me and I half expected them to tell me to leave since I was not an official volunteer. Instead they were bringing up a couple people who needed prayer! This was not my purpose for being up there, but seeing these Indians who simply wanted prayer, I complied.
Then the volunteers brought up more people for prayer! I was with a friend and he and I eventually "prayed our way" off the stage. I was not able to get a good view of the main microphone area where people would testify of the healings, and of course could not observe all the groups praying for people at the same time.
My conclusion was that due to the plurality of events in the situation and the fact that it is difficult to verify things as they happen, that this crusade, like many other healing crusades, was subjective. One could come to whatever verdict on it that one wished to. Therefore the glowing reports and high praise of this crusade may be only the biased and hopeful opinions of the crusade organizers and promotional friends of the Manmin church such as Dan Wooding of ASSIST news.
People like this man above were "healed" and able to walk but needed assistance and/or the walking sticks and crutches they were already using. Some people did manage to limp along on their own a bit for the crowd and cameras, and once they left the stage they were handed back their crutches.
In their award-winning documentary, Chennai, Site of a Miracle, there is a clip of this woman who has supposedly been healed of polio walking across the stage. But the images are staggered and only a short clip is shown. Why? Though this can often just be a modern videoing style, in this case the staggering covered up the fact that the woman was visibly and strongly still limping and very awkwardly ambling across the stage.
Pastor Kumar and Pastor Kim interviewed people who wished to testify of healings. It was noticed that Pastor Kumar always wanted to bring praise to the Lord for the healings. Pastor Kim tried to instead center things more on Lee Jae Rock. "So you got healed just after Pastor Lee prayed for you?"
Overall the crusade was not very impressive and they tried to make it look much more than it was. God probably touched a few people through the prayers of local pastors but Lee Jae Rock would have served everyone better by staying home in Korea. The damage is these crusades is that they gave the Manmin church a foothold in Chennai to plant Manmin cult churches there.
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