Journalist Billy Hallowell Discovers the Truth About Miracles in New Film 'Investigating the Supernatural'
DALLAS -- For centuries, theologians, scholars, and everyday people have debated whether miracles still happen. Are they a glorious outcome from the hand of a living God, or are they a relic of a bygone era rooted in the Old Testament?
As people of faith we would like to believe that someone’s cancerous tumor mysteriously shrinking overnight is a miracle, yet the scientific community quickly pumps the brakes on that notion, pointing instead to obscure, unreliable research to support what cannot be explained.
CBN News investigative journalist Billy Hallowell believes in miracles. Curious to know the inside story of people who have experienced a miracle, Hallowell recently embarked on a journey to discover exactly what happens to these affected people and find proof to support what the Bible says about these seemingly supernatural occurrences.
In the new documentary Investigating the Supernatural: Miracles, Hallowell traveled around the United States cobbling together fascinating insights from scientific experts, theologians, and those who have actually experienced a miracle, to determine whether miracles are still happening today. What he found may surprise you.
I recently sat down with Hallowell to discuss the sociological or psychological impact of believing in miracles, common threads he found in those who have experienced this type of supernatural event, and a personal discovery he made that changed everything.
Many cultures see miracles differently. For the sake of our conversation, how would you define a miracle?
I think there's two definitions I would give. The first one is general. I think a miracle is something that happens that we can't explain. It's something that is shocking, that is stunning, that is mesmerizing. We know the end result, but we don't know how we got there. Within the context of the film, a miracle is a medical miracle. For example, somebody has a tumor and you can't operate on it. You can't do anything about this. There's no treatment. And then, that tumor disappears. It disappears overnight in some cases. What was it that precipitated that? What were the things that happened in the middle? We know the end result, what got us there? So we're really dealing with those medical healing miracles in this film.
What is the sociological or psychological impact of believing in miracles?
I think that is such a good question because it goes back to our faith. If we have hope and we understand Scripture, then we have to be open to God working in a way that might make us uncomfortable. We might not understand it. We might not even want to believe that it's still happening. And I think that's why a lot of people have issues with miracles, because it's so hard to get your head around.
Look, there's a number of topics including heaven visitation stories, healings, demonic influence, these are things that people don't love to talk about, even though they're interested. They flee from it. And those are the topics I love. I love them because we need to talk about this stuff that Scripture tells us to talk about.
In the film, you traveled around the country visiting with people who had experienced a miracle of some sort in their lives. In each of these cases, were there any common threads that you found in each person who had experienced a miracle?
I love this question because it's one of those things. You're telling the story, and you're noticing things. As you move story to story, you start to see patterns. And the pattern that really struck me, and it was a very convicting pattern for me, was that every one of these people who received a healing, and this is not to say, I want to preface this, I want to be careful. I'm not saying that everybody who feels this way or experiences this way will receive a miracle. However, everybody who got one fought to the very end of that miracle to get it. And they believed wholeheartedly that it was possible.
When you say they fought it, what do you mean? Were they against it or were they for it?
They were for it. They fought for that miracle. Let me give you an example. There was a couple where the husband had a brain tumor. They were going to a healing ministry. They're driving hundreds of miles to get there. Then they get to an event, where they are in the audience. The pastor never gets to them and he eventually goes back to his hotel room. The couple knock on that guy's door. They find his hotel room, and he comes out in his robe. They asked the pastor if he would pray over the husband.That's the kind of hopeful desperation that these people all had in different ways. And it really stuck out to me because I thought, would I have that same desperation for a miracle? I don't know.
I’m interested to know about some of the experts and doctors you interviewed to try to get a sense of what went on scientifically or medically. What was their scientific perspective on explaining these miraculous events?
I think every story's a little different. And some of these people were on journeys. In fact, one of them, Dr. Chauncey Crandall is a medical doctor, who actually does healing ministry now. And his story is particularly fascinating. I think people will really resonate with this. This is important to talk about because here's a doctor who's saving people's lives. Every day he gets a phone call that says, “Hey, this patient has leukemia.” Basically, they give him the blood results and these numbers are horrific. And one day they tell him on the other line, this is your son. Your son has leukemia. And so here's this doctor who's finding out that his son has leukemia and whose son ends up dying eventually. And you have to make a choice when that happens. Are you going to be mad at God? Or, are you going to lean in (on your faith)?
It's such an amazing story. I'm not doing it justice. In the film, we take you through that entire narrative of struggling through his son's illness and death. That is what leads him into healing ministry. So, when you ask this question about doctors, I mean, you have this doctor who very literally understands healing. Now, maybe he didn't before, but after going through this journey of not getting a healing and then seeing plenty of other people healed, he had a very different take. So, doctors are all over the map on this, but we have a number of people, including neuroscientists, who very much understand that what is going on cannot be explained.
How did you find these people or arrive at the folks you eventually decided to feature? What criteria did you use for pursuing them?
A big thing for us was medical documentation. We needed expert documentation. There are people out there, and we talk about this in the film, who are studying this issue of miracles. There are academic papers being written on this. I think the idea that there are people who don't believe it's happening, it really fascinates me because at the very least, if you're an atheist or a skeptic, you have to look at these cases. And I don't care if you walk away from the film even saying you don't believe it, because you're confronted with so much evidence that you have to come up with some kind of explanation of how these things are happening.
Was there anything you discovered that made you step back and go, “Hmm, I never realized that before.” Or, “Wow! This is unbelievable!”
There was, and I think it was more about an issue of this is so complicated when you don't get what you want. There are people right now who probably have wanted a healing. Or they had a friend, a family member, a loved one, and they did not get the healing they had hoped for. That person died and their healing was on the other side of eternity. And I think that it becomes very difficult for people to understand why. Why did they get cancer and I didn't? As we were going through this, I was really struck by, as Christians, if we really trust God's plan for our lives? This may be hard for non-Christians to understand, but if we really trust that plan, we have to trust every part of it. Believing and hoping that healing is possible, while at the same time, holding the tension that God may have a different plan. It’s hard to actually be okay with that. And that is a struggle. That was a struggle for me as we were going through these stories.
Now, I’m going to put the spotlight on you. Have you ever personally experienced something supernatural or a miracle in your own personal life?
As we were working on this project, my daughter experienced something. She had a scoliosis diagnosis a few years ago. She had a 34 degree curve in her spine, which for a kid, just turning six, is pretty severe. And it could have changed very quickly and been very dangerous for her. So, we had to very quickly get her into medical intervention. This consisted of doctors and hospitals trying to figure out the best treatment and how we were going to deal with it. And in three and a half years, the curve in her spine has gone under 10 degrees. There's nothing to treat at the moment. Praise God. I consider that to be a miracle.
I think God chooses different ways to enact miracles. Sometimes it's through doctors, sometimes it's through medicine. And I don't want to oversimplify that, but the things we're talking about in this film are much more direct. But even in my daughter’s case, as we were working on this film, I'm not even realizing it but we're going through this thing in my daughter's life. So, yes, I feel like I have experienced something. She's out of her back brace. She went from 21 hours a day in the back brace to no hours a day in a back brace. That could change tomorrow. But right now, that is a miracle that we are living through. And I'm just really grateful for that.
After people have seen Investigating the Supernatural: Miracles, what would you like your audience to get out of the viewing experience? What's your greatest hope for this film?
There's a couple of different things here. If you're not a Christian, if you're a skeptic, or if you're on the fence and you're not really sure, my hope is that you would have an openness to understanding that maybe there's things going on that you're not quite seeing. We know as Christians, that in Ephesians 6, there's a spiritual battle going on. There's things we don't see. I'd like people to be open to that, and I think they will be because of the evidence we provide in the film. For Christians, there are people in different camps. One camp thinks this doesn't happen anymore. I'd like those people to be challenged to think, should we be limiting God in that way? And I would say, no, we shouldn't be. But for all of us, I hope we find a deeper appreciation and understanding that we need to have a trust that surpasses all understanding and a peace that does as well. And as hard as that can be, seeing through the lens of these characters, we just need to believe that God has a greater plan for all of us.
For More Information on Where You Can Watch ‘Investigating the Supernatural: Miracles’ Please Visit CBN.com/supernatural.
WATCH A TRAILER FOR INVESTIGATING THE SUPERNATURAL: MIRACLES:
