There have been many attempts to discover whether praying to the Christian god has any effect. During the last few years, some studies have been conducted in which groups of Christians and others have prayed for certain types of hospital patients. But apart from obvious methodological problems e.g. how do you exclude the effects of prayers by a patient’s family members and others outside the assigned group of supplicants, none of the scientific studies has demonstrated significant effects.

Richard Hole of Tolga in Queensland has a much more far-reaching idea and placed this ad in a recent issue of New Life evangelical magazine (’Does prayer make a noticeable difference?’, 10 Aug. 2006):

We are seeking people to help us to search for those who are obviously led and helped by God … If we can find divinely led people the benefits would be enormous, as they would be able to help, encourage and pray for us.

Did your bulldust detector just start spinning around at full speed? Let’s see where he goes next:

[These divinely led people] would teach us the truth so that we can effectively serve God. Then God would hopefully help us, so there would be fewer disappointments …

Here comes the rationale:

The Bible promises blessings and answered prayer for those who obey God, and curses for those who disobey. Therefore the people who are truly doing God’s will and teaching the truth should receive more help from God than the ungodly, so that the result cannot be explained naturally or by chance.

And how do we recognise these paragons?

The righteous should have obvious help from God in practical ways, such as remembering and comprehending things, making the correct decisions, finding what they need …

Well, are you doing all right so far?

… and supernatural healing.

Rats, foiled again!

They should also have less frustrating problems, such as inconveniences, accidents and losing things. They should also make fewer mistakes than those not led by God … Do you know anyone who is obviously supernaturally led and helped by God in practical ways as described above?

Mr Hole of Tolga proceeds to warn us that ‘desirable outcomes’ are sometimes experienced by the ungodly as well, so that:

… [e]vidence would be a greater percentage of desirable outcomes or answered prayers in the lives of those claiming to be led by God …

Only a ‘very small’ proportion of the population will fall into this category as most people have been deceived by the devil.

It seems to me that Mr Hole has taken on a very challenging task here. And I rather suspect that if your ‘divinely-led’ nominee differs from Mr Hole’s own scriptural interpretations, you may as well save your time. However, if someone springs to mind:

I am seeking the truth and have a website at truechristianity.com which contains Scripture references and suppressed truth …

And if you have some cash to spare:

Sponsors are also needed for similar ads …

As Jerry Springer has been known to remark: where do we find ‘em?

Filed in: Fundamentalism, People