Six of us skeptics went along to Father John Rea's healing event on Tuesday in Tawa, Wellington. John is a well known healer in New Zealand, and he's appeared on my skeptical radar in the past for making claims about being able to treat cancer.

https://www.sm.org.nz/about/missionary-parishes/john-rea/

When we turned up, the room was about half full - maybe 80 or so people, with the first two rows totally full. The evening started with someone giving a description of what was to come, and then we sang some hymns. I managed to take a picture of the offering basket as it went around during the last hymn:

After the hymns, we had several people come up to give testimonials. They talked about how Father John's healing had helped them with various conditions.

Father John then came up and started by telling the story of an atheist olympic diver who went to practice at a swimming pool at night with the lights off. This is audio of the start of the story:

On the high diving board, he stretched his arms out to begin his dive, but broke down in tears and then prayed when he saw his shadow looked like Jesus on the cross. Then, before he could resume his dive, a caretaker turned the lights on and he saw that the swimming pool had been drained.

Of course, it doesn't take much these days to check the veracity of stories like this one. A quick search on google for the keywords "olympic diver Jesus cross pool empty caretaker" finds a Snopes article from 2007 debunking the story.

After the story, John gave some more "evidence" for his healing ability, then waffled on for a while before giving "words of knowledge". Here's some audio of his prophetic words:

Skeptical Thoughts

Mark Honeychurch

March 5, 2017

My Visit to faith healer Father John Rea

Mark Honeychurch