Making headlines a few weeks ago was Francis Chan who seemed to have jumped off the bandwagon of traditional orthodox Christian theology and embraced the Word of Faith charismatic “faith-healing” movement. Chan was criticized for claiming that he healed countless people by touching them.

“Everyone I touched was healed,” he said, as the Christian world watched and criticized. But here’s what’s interesting — as of date, there are still no reported cases of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in Myanmar despite being surrounded by other countries on all sides of its borders who have reported numerous cases.

Here’s what we know:

• Myanmar is largely a third-world country with little ability to perform medical testing on a massive scale and, to date, have only actually tested 100 people in a country with a population of 57 million.
• Myanmar residents do not travel much as they are largely village-dwellers limiting their exposure to novel diseases that don’t originate in their local areas.
• There are thousands of counties and clustered geographical areas in the United States that are still free of the coronavirus which makes this not really an anomaly.
• Myanmar is an idolatrous country that is filled with false gods and idols and is largely devoid of the gospel. This geographical area does not please God and has suffered the judgment of God for centuries.
• Francis Chan is a fraud and God says he sends delusions to people who are perishing so that they will believe the lie (2 Thessalonians 2:11).

So while charismatics are likely to point to this as “proof” that Chan is legit and that “faith-healing” is real, it’s good to go ahead and preempt this with actual facts. Faith-heling is not a legitimate biblical practice, Word of Faith theology is a false gospel, and, to date, there is still no actual evidence that “everyone Francis Chan touched was healed.”