Do miracles still happen? “Investigating the Supernatural: Miracles” host Billy Hallowell joins Glenn to tell some of the shocking stories he has heard while working on the CBN documentary: “What we found really blew my mind.” Hallowell explains what miracles are from a Christian perspective, tells the story of a man who was dead for 40 minutes and came back to life after a prayer, and how he believes we should deal with the miracles we don’t see.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: You know, I have -- when we started TheBlaze, we started with a bunch of people that were really unknowns. And we have seen so many people leave here. And go on to unbelievable things.

I mean, most people don't know.

Will Cane, he started his career here. Pete Hegseth began his career at TheBlaze.

Buck Sexton, started his career, at TheBlaze. And Billy Hallowell.

Billy worked with Dan Andros, who used to be a writer of mine. He was our head writer for a long time.

Just fantastic writer. All those years at Fox. It was Dan that was writing all those things. And he left to go to CBN. Oh, Christ needs me!

Whatever.
(laughter)
And Billy Hallowell used to work at TheBlaze, and he did the same thing. Oh, I've got to go. Christ needs me. And so he's working at CBN now as well. You can find. What is he going to be talking about, at CBN.com/supernatural. Billy, welcome to the program. Glad to have you here.

BILLY: Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. You bet.

GLENN: You bet. Okay. So why did you this do, and what did you find?

BILLY: You know, it's crazy. We went around the entire country, waiting sidelines not just minor miracles. But claims that tumors disappeared. Paralysis disappeared. And really, that the lie was this feeling. There's a lot of people out there who don't think miracles still happen.

Right? Even people who are Christians who think, eh. I don't know if God is still moving.

So we wanted to go out and test that. And we wanted to see, are miracles still happening? And I will tell you, what we found really blew my mind.

When we went into this project, I thought, okay. We are going to go into this. We are going to do this, and it will inspire me. It's not going to change me.

I walked away. And you know this, Glenn. I'm a Christian. I've been a Christian my whole life. And I walked away completely transformed and challenged by the insane things that we encountered.

GLENN: Okay. So, first, define what a miracle is.

BILLY: Okay. So miracle, there is a wide range of that things miracles qualify as. Right? You have the small miracles, the things that we as Christians, or people of faith feel God doing in our lives.

Right?

Those can be miracles. But you can't really prove them. Then you have the big miracles. The things like, hey, this guy was dead for 40 minutes, and somehow came back to life. Which, by the way, that's one of the stories. That you talk about, that we encountered along the way.

You know, we were looking at miracles in this documentary, that were 30,000-foot huge things.

Things that have scientific backing. That have doctors involved. That have really evidence, right?

And so miracles, again, they could be a wide range. But we wanted to look at those big ones. And we could say, okay. Is there proof?

How close can we get to actually proving that these things happen? And, by the way, you have to go into these stories skeptically. Because I don't think any of us should just go out and say, oh, yeah. Whatever you say, we believe. We really wanted to provide the evidence along the way.

GLENN: Okay. So tell me. Tell me some of the things you found.

BILLY: All right. So let's talk about the guy who was dead for 40 minutes. This story, when it came across our desk. We did a ton of research. Dug into it.

Jeff Markin is a guy who wasn't feeling well. Went to the hospital. He had a heart attack.

He dies essentially inside the hospital.
They call a doctor. An emergency doctor room in.

They're trying to revive him. They spend 40 minutes, trying to revive him. They pronounce him dead.

This guy is on the gurney, on the way to the morgue. Dr. Chauncy Crandle, who is the doctor in the room that day.

He leaves the room. He assumes, oh, well, this is over. The guy dies. He will move on with his day.

As he's walking in the hallway, this doctor feels God say to him, go back and pray over that body. Go back into the room. And he ignores that, because he thinks that's insane.

He feels the prompt again. Coming back to that room. And he's like, well, I'm a Christian. I better listen to this. He goes into the room. You can imagine, the nerves from the doctors. They're thinking this guy is nuts. He's going to come in and pray over this dead body that we've already declared dead.

And so he starts praying over the guy. And all of a sudden, he starts saying to the other doctors, shock him one more time. And they're like, look, there's no way we're shocking him again. Because we tried for 40 minutes, and he's dead.

And so they end up doing it. Bays tells them to do it. And immediately, this guy gets a perfect heartbeat back.

Again, they tried for 40 minutes, and got nothing.

GLENN: Jeez.

BILLY: Now, the nursery is saying to the doctor, what are you doing? Now he's going to be brain dead after this. What's so crazy about this story, this man, Jeff Markin had a near death experience, which I'll hold off on that. You can watch it in the film. While this was going on. But he ends up two days later, waking up completely fine. We interviewed him in this film. And so it's those kinds of stories. I mean, there's multiple miracles in there, and again, these are not just claims. We have medical documentation. So that's the kind of stuff we were dealing with in this documentary.

GLENN: So you know, Billy, the amazing thing, we all have -- we all think that God doesn't talk to us. He doesn't talk to us.

I don't hear him. But he does. And it's those things, usually like that doctor, that we think, that's crazy. And you just dismiss him because you think it's you.

And if you obey them any of times. And then you realize, oh, wow. That was amazing. I tinder around and did that. Because I was told to. And that turned out to be an amazing thing. I mean, not as amazing as that usually.

But you start to discipline yourself to listen.

And it happens more and more often.

Or maybe you just notice it more.

But he does speak to us.

And it requires us, to not dismiss it as our stupid little voice in our head, saying, you know, go back and pray over him.

What?

That's stupid. No. Why would I?

Right?

BILLY: Well, and being open to it.

GLENN: Yes. Right.

BILLY: Because the thing that struck me in all of this. Right? And after we finished investigating the supernatural miracles, and we were looking at the story, all of these people, they had to fight for miracles. Like the other three stories that we cover in this film, none of them went to a prayer event and got healed on the first try.

It was ten years of praying and struggling. That opens a lot of interesting, theological questions, which we do deal with.

We deal with not getting the miracle. Because, look, we all die eventually. Right? Even Lazarus, who was raised from the dead. He died again. So eventually, the miracles run out.

But to your point -- I mean, I'll even share for me, and I think this was a miracle. I was really upset about a diagnosis my daughter had. Scoliosis. I was in my car. And I'm driving, and I'm crying out to God, what are we going to do? Give me a sign that this is going to be okay.

And, Glenn, you know I live in New York. There aren't a lot of Bible verses on this. I literally look up as I'm praying, and the truck in front of me has a verse speaking about God comforting us and how it will be okay. In that very moment, I would say that's a miracle. And I think that's more like what most of us deal with day in and day out. And I think that's how God will often communicate with us.

GLENN: Let me be real -- let me ask you something, Billy.

This is a very personal thing.

I have -- I had been praying really hard, over my children.

And there are some things that just -- I just don't understand.

And I'll pray.

And, you know, I'll see no result.

And it has really hurt my faith. At weak points.

It has hurt my faith.

Because I've thought. And I haven't thought about him.

I've thought about me.

I'm just not the in sync with him enough. I'm not worthy enough. You know what I mean? Have you ever felt that way?

BILLY: Yeah. Absolutely.

I think -- I think in all of this, especially when we're not getting an answer. And, you know, I saw this in the film. I've seen it in my own life. There is this tension that we have to live in. And I think it's really hard because we're human beings. This tension of, I'm going to trust God, that I believe, until the day I die, if I'm terminally ill or my kid is struggling with something, you know, I'm going to believe for healing or for better decisions or whatever the issue is, because I believe it's possible. And God can do anything. I will believe that until the very last minute, while at the same time, and this is where this gets hard. Having the trust that if that thing does not happen, if the healing does not happen on this side of eternity, that I'm going to trust God and be okay with whatever that plan is. Those two things are really tough. It's really hard.

GLENN: Yeah, it's really tough. Really tough.

BILLY: But that's the death to self. That's the death to self, that we're called to kind of live in. And I struggle with that all the time. I think we all do.

And, by the way, I mean, if any of this actually helps. That doctor in that emergency room who brought that, who prayed over that body. His son died of leukemia, a couple of years before that.

And he fought for a miracle, and didn't get it for him. And now this guy, he's able to have those two things.

Right? That radical trust. That really helped me actually. Seeing that this guy didn't get a miracle for his kid. And yet, still believes it's possible.

GLENN: It's remarkable when you see people who are WHO can actually live with this happen.

My daughter, you know, she's been with all kinds of doctors. She's had brain surgery and everything else. And I've prayed over her, so many times, to get her seizures to stop, and they just don't. And they're relentless. And she'll say to me. Dad, I'm not worried about it.

I'm not worried about it. And she's really tired of them.

I'm not worried about it.

Lord will heal me when I'm in heaven. He is going to heal me. And that faith is just remarkable. Just remarkable.

BILLY: Profound. Wow. Yeah. It is.

No. You know, as a parent, you know. And something like that, scolioses. You know, what I mentioned with my daughter. That is not a terminal illness. And I kept saying, thank God it's not something worse. The struggle watching your kid go -- and by the way, we were going through this as this film was going on, and a lot of this, as I've been talking about it in promoting it.

It dawned on me. On how good God was, in this particular circumstance. But just watching your kid struggle in suffering. You know, my daughter went from a normal 6-year-old playing to being in a brace, 21 hours a day. And, you know, not being able to do certain things.

And you watch your kid suffer. And it is a profound challenge. And that is where we have to rest in that trust, right? In believing that the miracles are possible.

In knowing again, that we may not get them.

In the case of my daughter, you know, she's out of her brace, and they can barely detect scoliosis now. We had a real miracle, honestly.

You know, and I have been so grateful for that. But recognizing that there are other things that we haven't had that in our lives. And it is tough. It is really tough.

GLENN: I want to talk about some of the other things that you found in the documentary. And you started exploring -- thought it originally was going to be a three-part series. And I want to ask you why you didn't do that. Why you're focusing on the miracles. Because it was miracles, heaven, hell, angels, and demons. Which I find fascinating. But we'll talk about that coming up in just a second.

GLENN: I got out of my patrol car. And I slipped. I went from having a promising career as a neuroscientist to having a medical death sentence.

VOICE: I said, there was nothing else that we could do. There was no heartbeat.
(music)

VOICE: Are miracles real? Do they happen today? Let's investigate.

VOICE: A lot of skeptics will say, well, miracles are impossible. Why? Because it violates the lays of nature. You can't violate the laws of nature.

VOICE: People have prayed for me, and somehow I felt like this power had just zapped me.

VOICE: When I woke up, she says, can you do anything that you couldn't do before? I looked at my hand, it was clutched. I said, hand move. Another doctor came in, and he said, what's going on in here? He's dead. It's over.

I said, shock him one more time.

VOICE: Well, maybe it happens. Maybe it doesn't. Let's look at the evidence.
(music)

GLENN: So tell me the story about the -- the guy who apparently was paralyzed. Couldn't do anything. And how that miracle happened.

BILLY: Yeah. Yeah. That Bryan Lapooh. That story blew me away. They lived out in New Jersey. He was a cop. And it's so crazy how this story happens.

The guy is a police officer. He's walking on the ice. He slips. He breaks his neck. Slips and falls. Breaks his neck.

And ends up in a ten-year nightmare.

Basically, you know, he ends up paralyzed on half of his body. As a result of the injuries and the surgery that he needs to have.

The doctors says, oh, he will be fine.

He was not fine.

Had no hope of recovery.

Nobody had actually recovered from what he had. And the damage he had. So during these ten years. He and his wife Meg, they start going to prayer services. And they start trying to heal. Very similar to what we were just talking about.
They're not getting healing. Nothing is happening.

And he gets to the point to where he's like, look, I don't want anybody touching me. I don't want anybody praying over me.

I am done. And his wife says to him.

And this is why it's so important, that we encourage people.

You know, when people are no longer encouraged, and they don't want to move forward. The wife says, look, let's go to one more of these events. Let's just get them to pray over you one more time.

He says, no. She says, yes. Just do it for my birthday. It will be my gift. And so he says, fine. We'll go.

They go to this event. And it's at that event, that he gets his healing. That his hand opens up for the first time.

He walks out of that event, without his brace, for the first time in ten years. And we interviewed him.

He no longer has a brace. And his condition is completely healed. And it's remarkable bays it's on film. It's on camera. The moment he was healed on this conference.

Somebody captured it on a cell phone.

And so you see stories like this, and it just blows you away. Because the persistence in the faith. And the fighting, ongoing, grief, that this was possible.

And, you know, in this case, he got that healing.

GLENN: There's -- there's so many people that will capitalize on this. There's so many frauds. Did you cover any of that?

BILLY: Right. You know, we didn't get into that. Because when we actually did the vetting for these stories, we made 100 percent sure that before a camera turned on or we went anywhere. That we knew -- at least compelling stories.

We went in skeptically. We tried to poke holes and look. But we knew that these were people. These people can't even get through their story, by the way, crying.

You see this through the film.

They are so overjoyed and moved and transformed. So we made sure that we tackled those stories.

But you're absolutely right. I mean, there's a lot of people, when it comes to near death experiences. All these things. They will make things up to make money.

But none of these people were in that camp. And we made sure of that.

GLENN: So you were going to do it as a series, and you were going to do into demons and angels and everything else. Are you still going to do that? Why did you not pursue that? Why did you just go with miracles?

VOICE: Yeah. Yeah. You know, so CBN. Christian Broadcast Network. It was greenlit as a three-part series, thirty minutes each.

And when we started filming miracles, which is episode one. Like day one. We knew. We were like, you can't tell this story in 30 minutes.

I mean, these stories need to be told, and we need to spend time on them.

And with culture, what is happening right now, in this culture. We have college students flocking to hear about God.

GLENN: It's crazy.

BILLY: We have these moments. Despite the culture crumbling, right? At the same time, we wanted to write proof to people. And so we ended up shipping this into a three-part film series. So the second film will be investigating the supernatural. Angels and demons.

And that is underway, right now.
We've started work on that.

We started filming that, and it's going to be the same approach.

You know, we want to go in, and show people. Is this real?

What do Christians believe? What does the Bible say? Is this true?

And it's obviously a difficult topic.
Angels and demons. It's a little hard. But, yeah. We are planning on doing it. Yep.

GLENN: Billy, thank you very much.

I appreciate it. Billy Hallowell. I went you to see this special. You can find it at CBN.com. CBN.com.

That's a Christian broadcasting network. CBN.com/supernatural. Kind of a perfect thing to watch this weekend with your family.