Have any healings during modern revivals been medically confirmed?

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Many healings during modern revivals have been medically confirmed. Far fewer have been documented or published. There certainly is no biblical reason for miracles to cease. The same reasons for which the apostles performed miracles continue to exist today. Many people still need encouragement to believe. They still need God to help them with problems they cannot solve on their own. Who knows how many whispered prayers are answered that are never publicized?

Several M.D.s have written books about their miraculous experiences such as Dr. H. Richard Casdorph, in The Miracles (link), who medically documented several of the healings which occurred at Katherine Kuhlman’s meetings, and Dr. Richard Bartlett, medical missionary to Iraq, in Journey of a Medicine Man (link).

I could provide many examples but will limit myself to one by citing an article from the Southern Medical Journal • Volume 103, Number 9, September 2010.

Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Proximal Intercessory Prayer (STEPP) on Auditory and Visual Impairments in Rural Mozambique

Candy Gunther Brown, PhD, Stephen C. Mory, MD, Rebecca Williams, MB BChir, DTM&H, and Michael J. McClymond, PhD (link)

The subjects for the study were recruited at Charismatic evangelistic “revival” meetings by Iris and Global Awakening Ministries at four locations in Mozambique. The study was limited to those with vision and hearing problems presumably due to ease of diagnostic verification. Recipients of prayer participated in diagnostic tests before and after. Prayer time ranged from 1 minute up to an hour. Here is the conclusion reported.

Our study has three main findings. First, Mozambican subjects did exhibit improved auditory and/or visual acuity subsequent to PIP interventions. Second, the magnitude of measured effects exceeds that reported in previous studies of suggestion and hypnosis. Although it would be unwise to overgeneralize from these preliminary findings for a small number of PIP practitioners and subjects collected in far-from-ideal field conditions, future study seems warranted to assess whether PIP may be a useful adjunct to standard medical care for certain patients with auditory and/or visual impairments, especially in contexts where access to conventional treatment is limited. The implications are potentially vast given World Health Organization estimates that 278 million people, 80% of whom live in developing countries, have moderate to profound hearing loss in both ears, and 314 million people are visually impaired, 87% of whom live in developing countries, and only a tiny fraction of these populations currently receive any treatment. p. 868

It should come as no surprise that an all-powerful God, in his great love, miraculously intervenes in the lives of those who believe in him and seek his assistance.

Luke 17:19 Then [Jesus] said to him, "Rise and go; your faith has made you well."

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I know this is going to be dissatisfying to some people, but no. At least not in the specific circumstances you are referring to. The issues with these revivals is that they tend to build psychological hype and create pseudo miracle experiences. The other difficult part is defining "healing". Some illnesses can be furthered by the mind and an event like this could in certain cases lessen the issues caused by the mind.

I do know there are documented cases of miracles in medical journals, but that seems to be beyond the scope of the question.

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Unless the question is about individual cases being confirmed as inexplicable, there isn't going to be a good answer to this.

Scientific confirmation of a supernatural cause would require very different test conditions than what is currently available.

There's no doubt that "miraculous" healing occasionally occurs, even to non-believers. But for atheists, the term "miracle" simply means something unusual that science currently has no reasonable explanation for.

Millions of people have been to revivals, so it's not unexpected that some of them would experience a miracle cure. But would that cure have happened to them had they not attended; would it have happened if they were atheists? And of those millions of people, only those that recovered report it; we don't hear about the others that experienced no change or even died after attending.

Unless those questions can be answered and reliable independent data is available, there can be no scientific proof.

Divide a large sample of people into three groups:

  • The faith-healer prays for them, anoints them, etc.
  • An actor does the same thing, but only pretends, and in his head he keeps repeating "Please God, help them to die.".
  • Nothing is done for them.

Then follow them for a year, recording all health changes among all people.

Until there are statistically significantly different results between the groups, nothing can be said of the phenomenon.

Listening to anecdotal stories, given by only those that experienced success, is not scientifically convincing.

It's no different from the current practice of attributing deaths to COVID-19, or to the vaccination therefor, simply because someone that was murdered or died in traffic happened to have the virus, or happened to have recently received a vaccination.

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There is one medically documented case I can think of found here. Furthermore, the miracles of healing at Lourdes are heavily debated and often well cited. Much more nuanced discussion can be found in Craig S. Keener's 2-volume tome Miracles. Somewhat more accessible is the publicly available PowerPoint from Dr. Keener found here. And a lecture by him here. Here is the case of someone raised from the dead from within a hospital.

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