Kristina Dines has a remarkable, albeit traumatic, story to tell. In June 2015, her husband fired a shotgun at both her and her friend Carrissa. Her friend was killed; Kristina was shot at close range in the abdomen, her guts being spilled out as she tried to escape. She was in a coma for two months and nearly died. She lost some intestines and some of her liver, also losing three toes as a side effect of medication she was put on. Over time she made a remarkable recovery.

Three new toes

Just two or three weeks ago, Kristina attended a service at the Joplin church plant of the James River megachurch in Springfield, Missouri, where guest pastors Bill Johnson (of Bethel Church) and Randy Clark were leading services. Kristina was offered prayer for her missing toes. As they prayed, the skin on her foot apparently began to change colour. Pretty soon, her toes began to grow. The crowd erupted with applause.Kristina Dimes Soon “bone began to form where there was none before." Over the next 30 minutes, all three toes grew, and within an hour, nails began to grow on each of them.

Kristina has personally testified to the reality of the healing, as has John Lindell, the pastor at James River Church.

There’s only one problem. No one has seen a photo of her foot prior to the miracle, and she declines to allow anyone to view her three beautiful new toes.

A local Christian, sceptical of the story, launched a website, ShowMeTheToes.com, asking anyone with corroboration of the healing to share it. To date, no mobile phone photo or video evidence has been offered. For a church with a state-of-the-art video production team, and a healing that took an hour to complete, this seems incredulous.

Not that any of this stopped Bill Johnson from afterwards enthusiastically repeating the miracle claims in his own Bethel Church, stating that James River Church saw "hundreds and hundreds of miracles over three nights" as they prayed for creative miracles.

Creative miracles

‘Creative miracles’ have been all the rage in some charismatic churches – not least those connected to what is termed the ‘New Apostolic Reformation’ – for many years. Highly popular but deeply suspect personalities like Patricia King, Joshua Mills, Sid Roth and David Herzog wax lyrical about supposed new body parts miraculously replacing defunct and unworking ligaments in their meetings – but with a disturbing absence of evidence to support their incredible claims.

To date, no mobile phone photo or video evidence has been offered. For a church with a state-of-the-art video production team, and a healing that took an hour to complete, this seems incredulous.

Kenneth Copeland even offers ‘15 scriptures to stand on for a new body part to get you started in your faith journey’. Among the most common creative miracles claimed by Herzog are ‘bald people’ receiving ‘instant hair growth’, the sudden appearance of gold teeth, and overweight people receiving ‘instant weight loss’!¹

Heaven’s ‘body parts storehouse’

It has long been standard practice among faith healers to recognise the existence of a ‘body parts warehouse’ in heaven – numerous healing evangelists have professed to have been ‘transported’ by angels in visionary experiences and shown this vast storehouse, packed with thousands of human body parts of all types, sizes, colours and shapes. With faith, a believer can apparently pull the required body part(s) from that store into their own body.

Some go into great detail as to how exactly this heavenly warehouse operates, and how new body parts are requestioned. Self-proclaimed prophetess Kat Ker stated that on one occasion, “I was in a service where an angel came down with a gift box and walked through a man who was due for heart surgery. He walked in that man’s body and left a new heart in that man’s body.”

All this, of course, is fanciful, pie-in-the-sky nonsense with not a scintilla of scriptural backing. Indeed, anyone genuinely seeking healing will see it as deeply offensive. Inevitably, it has also resulted in mockery and disdain by non-believers, leading one sceptic to develop the website, Why Won’t God Heal Amputees some years ago. To this day, no one has provided him with any evidence that seriously challenges his cynical claim. These are sobering considerations.

Searching the Scriptures

As a follower of Christ who is fully aware from Scripture of the power of God to heal, I fully believe that His healing power is available today. Over the decades I have come across innumerable accounts of convincing testimonies of physical healing, many from personal experience or personal connections.

Even his healing of a servant's ear involved restoring the severed ear rather than creating a new one.

Creative healing miracles are of a different type. In a very real sense we are all creative miracles, fearfully and wonderfully made, fashioned by His hands. But I confess to being surprised when I did a search through the Bible for ‘new body parts’ stories – and being unable to find a single one.²

Jesus performed many healings during his ministry, including cleansing a man with leprosy, and healing a centurion's paralysed servant, a man's withered hand and a man blind from birth. But in none of these accounts does it say that new body parts were created. 

At the same time, we recognise that the God we serve is creator God, and the Bible records numerous accounts of other ‘creative’ miracles – such as the miraculous multiplication of food.

Savino’s eye

Very occasionally in my reading over the years, I have touched upon credible testimonies of creative healing. One story relates to Giovanni Savino, an Italian labourer who was seriously injured by rock fragments striking him in the face following an explosion at work in 1949. Hospital records testify that Savino was admitted with injuries that consisted of one eye blown out (‘emoptalmo’). Savino later stated; “The socket was completely empty. There was not much hope of saving my other eye.”

It was three days before Savino regained consciousness. His head and face were bandaged like a mummy and he was in atrocious pain. Local priest, Francesco Forgione urged all who knew him to pray for him constantly. When the bandages were finally removed, Savino exclaimed that he could see. The doctor thought he was hallucinating and told him it was impossible that he could see. But although it was shown that he no longer had vision in his left eye, his right eye was apparently now back “in its socket” and the patient could see clearly.

Savino’s son, who became a priest, later testified, “After the accident, my father’s eyes were destroyed, especially one of them where a deep crater was created … Miraculously, my father’s more damaged eye healed completely and recovered its sight, while the less damaged one healed but remained sightless. My father did not wear a prosthetic eye … his eyes were normal and completely healthy”. Savino became a hospital receptionist, and possessed good eyesight right up to his death in 1974.

There are numerous other striking details to the story, which I don’t have space to share here. In the conclusion of the author who shared the account,³ “It is hard to dispute the miraculous – or at least inexplicable – nature of this occurrence, without calling into question the good faith, or good sense, of a number of people, including Savino, his wife, his son, and Father Dominic, all of whom insisted he was able to see out of an eye that had been obliterated”.

Reasonable evidence

God heals. Of that there is little doubt. But reasonable belief must be grounded in evidence. Let us be wary of the suspect faith healers who expect gullible audiences to believe their sensationalist accounts of “hundreds of creative healing stories” without offering verification to support their claims.

What a powerful witness it would be to a deeply curious world if Ms Dimes would release simple verification.

Was Kristina Dimes given three new toes? Like so many ‘creative healing’ stories, this one raises as many questions as it answers; not least of which is why Ms Dimes refuses to offer evidence of her missing toes (she says she could obtain that), or of the new toes that God miraculously created.

We hear of entire communities turning to Christ in Africa, China or elsewhere on the basis of a single confirmed ‘miracle’. The ‘three toes’ story was picked up by scores of international media outlets, including USA Today, The Daily Mail, and Newsweek. What a powerful witness it would be to a deeply curious world if Ms Dimes would release simple verification.

Until she does, the watching world remains unconvinced and unimpressed.

Endnotes
1 David Herzog, ‘Glory Invasion: Walking Under an Open Heaven’, 2007.
2.Though some have interpreted the story of the ten lepers as Jesus healing them all by removing their disease, but to the one who came back, he restored his lost toes/fingers etc., which may well have been eaten away by leprosy.
3 C. Bernard Ruffin, ‘Padre Pio: The True Story’, 2018.