God Is Working on People's Intestines and Colons

Pat Robertson has been claiming to heal people over the television airwaves for 40 years or so with something he invented called the "Word of Knowledge."  See, God sends him a "word" that someone watching him on the TV is—oh screw it, it's faith healing.  We're talking about faith healing.  Pat Robertson has the power to hear God telling him who in his audience is suffering—and miraculously, everyone who has ever co-hosted The 700 Club with Pat has been imbued with the same power.

Apparently, someone over at The Raw Story only just discovered this, because he thought this video of Pat supposedly healing a man's infected jaw was something new and hilarious enough to highlight.

Well, shit.  Practically every day Pat Robertson and The 700 Club claim that they've healed someone in their viewing audience.  And I was reluctant to say "shit" back there, but it's actually kind of literal:

“A bowel obstruction is being healed right now, that is being taken care of.  Somebody else with colitis is being healed, and somebody else with diverticulitis.  God is working on people's intestines and colons.  There are a number of people with ulcerated colitis and various nervousness… God is giving you peace, just deep settled peace, it'll come all over you…”

And other stuff.

Want more?  Here's a heretofore infertile woman who Pat impregnated over the air with his healing.  Or something like that:

Even Pat's own people know this whole thing is a scam.  As former CBN producer Gerald Straub wrote in his behind-the-scenes tell-all Salvation for Sale:

“I used to muse that if this healing and 'word of knowledge' was really happening, why was it relegated to the last few minutes of the show?… Beyond that, if this activity was legitimate, I would think we'd want to fill the entire show with it, but instead we chattered about politics, the economy, or the Supreme Court for most of the show and let God do his healing during the last few minutes.… I just assumed that someday I would understand.  I was wrong. 

“There was nothing 'mystical' to understand; it was simply 'statistical.'  Robertson's little faith-healing procedure is a charade—he simply 'calls out' an illness and predicts its cure, and with millions of viewers the statistical probabilities are that someone will have the disease named and that they will naturally recover.”