Pastor Billy Burke | |
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Born | Billy Burke May 24, 1953 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
Education | Melodyland Christian Center |
Occupation | Evangelist |
Billy Burke (born May 24, 1953) is an American Pentecostal healing evangelist and the president of his itinerant healing ministry, Billy Burke World Outreach, headquartered in Tampa, Florida. [1] Burke is also the senior pastor of the Miracle Center World Outreach in Tampa. [2] His healing ministry is founded on his testimony of being healed of terminal brain cancer when he was 9 years old. [3] [4]
Billy Burke was born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. When he was 9 years old, Burke was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. After undergoing an unsuccessful operation that left him partially paralyzed, and given three days to live, his grandmother removed him from the hospital against doctors orders. Her goal was to bring him to a Kathryn Kuhlman healing service at the First Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Burke says that while at this service Ms. Kuhlman touched him, allegedly healing him from cancer which has never returned. [5]
Then at the age of 19, Burke’s younger brother was killed by a drunk driver. This devastated him and he began to search for the reason of why he was spared from a horrible disease. He was miraculously healed and yet his younger brother was taken. It was then that he was called back to another Kathryn Kuhlman service in Youngstown, Ohio. From there he decided to enter the ministry and attended Melodyland School of Theology in Anaheim, California.
After graduating from Melodyland School of Theology, Burke returned to Pittsburgh and started his ministry in Northeast. In 1989, Burke moved his ministry to Tampa. In 1995, he founded the Miracle Center World Outreach. Since then he has traveled all over the United States and the world, spreading God's message of healing and faith. [6] In 2009, Burke shared his testimony on Sid Roth's "It's Supernatural". [7]
Faith healing is the practice of prayer and gestures that are believed by some to elicit divine intervention in spiritual and physical healing, especially the Christian practice. Believers assert that the healing of disease and disability can be brought about by religious faith through prayer or other rituals that, according to adherents, can stimulate a divine presence and power. Religious belief in divine intervention does not depend on empirical evidence of an evidence-based outcome achieved via faith healing. Virtually all scientists and philosophers dismiss faith healing as pseudoscience.
A miracle is an event that is inexplicable by natural or scientific laws and accordingly gets attributed to some supernatural or praeternatural cause. Various religions often attribute a phenomenon characterized as miraculous to the actions of a supernatural being, (especially) a deity, a miracle worker, a saint, or a religious leader.
Toufik Benedictus "Benny" Hinn is an Israeli-born American-Canadian televangelist, best known for his regular "Miracle Crusades"—revival meeting or faith healing summits that are usually held in stadiums in major cities, which are later broadcast worldwide on his television program, This Is Your Day.
Granville Oral Roberts was an American Charismatic Christian televangelist, who was one of the first to propagate Prosperity Gospel Theology. He was ordained in the Pentecostal Holiness Church until 1947 and in the United Methodist church briefly in the 1960’s. He is considered one of the forerunners of the charismatic movement, and at the height of his career was one of the most recognized preachers in the US. He founded the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association and Oral Roberts University.
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Kathryn Kuhlman was an American Christian evangelist who was referred to by her contemporaries and the press to be a 'faith healer'.
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