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It's Live in the Bream with the host of Fox News Sunday, Shannon Bream. Get prepared to be encouraged. Maybe have your mind blown a little bit by this week's Live in the Bream. We have one of my favorite people, and I do say that a lot, but I
I feel very privileged that I get to have such amazing, interesting, fun people on this podcast. And joining us this week, he is an investigative journalist. He's an author. He's a podcaster. He's a host on CBN. Billy Halliwell, great to have you with us today. Thanks for having me.
Okay, we are going to talk about this amazing new documentary that you've got. It investigates true stories of modern day miracles that defy scientific explanation. It's called Investigating the Supernatural Miracles. How did this come together?
Oh, my gosh. You know, this is one of those projects where I really felt led into it. You know, we were talking about a lot of different issues that we have in culture right now. And, you know, so many people sort of so stuck in the material that we don't really think about the ways that God may still be working. And so we came up with this idea for a series. We said, OK, let's do a TV series, three parts. We'll talk about, you know, heaven and hell. We'll talk about evidence. You know, is there evidence for angels and demons? And we'll get into miracles, which,
It's a little bit of a lighter topic out of those three. And they greenlit it. We started working on Miracles. And I'll be honest with you, the minute we got in the field and started filming, it became apparent that we could not do a TV series, that we needed to tell the Miracles story in a theatrical, in a film version because it's just so multifaceted. So it very quickly transitioned into a film series. So we're working on a series of what we hope will be three films on those topics.
Well, I mean, you go right to people and talk about stories. You talk to doctors, to scientists, to people who have received these miracles. And it's fascinating to hear about the cases, walk through them, find out what happened in here. Doctors can't explain it. I mean, there's just no medical explanation for what you're seeing, these healings and these incredible stories.
Well, and that's the thing, you know, and Shannon, I'll be honest, because, you know, I've been a Christian my whole life. So as a person of faith going into this, I went into these stories skeptical still, because I think it's important. I think it's important no matter where you are on the theological spectrum that you are able to say,
that when you're looking at something, you've vetted it, you understand it's the truth. If I'm gonna go out and say, hey, I think that this miraculous thing happened, I wanna be able to prove that. And so we really went in, A, from the top, even before we filmed, we vetted these stories very, very deeply to make sure that we knew that we were dealing with people who were telling the truth and that we had true cases that science could not explain. And then when we went to film, we asked the questions that we felt would really help expose people
whether or not these were true stories. And so that was important to us going in as journalists, but also as Christians, knowing these things are possible, but really vetting to see, are they true in these cases? And I'll tell you, it really blew my mind. I went into this thinking, and I know you can relate to this too in the job that you do. You know, I thought, okay, I'm not going to be that affected by this. I know this stuff is possible. I believe the Bible personally.
But I actually walked away with my mind blown and I'm still picking up the pieces and trying to understand, honestly, where maybe I had things wrong. I wasn't understanding. So it's been personally pretty transformational.
Which is, gosh, such a beautiful kind of cherry on top of getting to do this project that's already so amazing. But I do think that we become a little bit hardened, like, OK, I believe the miracles of the Bible, but that was a different time. And Jesus was walking the earth or God was parting the Red Sea or whatever was happening. But a lot of us get so caught up in just surviving daily life and the challenges of that, that we may stop believing in the possibility of miracles in modern day.
Absolutely. And I think, too, you throw on that a job where sometimes, you know, I've been able to work in commentary and journalism, but sometimes in journalism and I don't know, feel free to agree or disagree, but I feel like you end up so in telling the story and bringing positions out and you almost remove yourself from it. So I could say, well, I'm a Christian and I believe these things. But if I haven't seen them and I hadn't seen people get out of wheelchairs and walk, I hadn't
personally seen that. So it became very easy to say, oh, well, I believe in these things, but it's sort of just a head belief, not a heart belief. And so once you're confronted with those things and you're sitting across from somebody who, let's say, was dead for 40 minutes and pronounced dead and you're interviewing them because they were brought back, you're forced into a lot of uncomfortable areas in your own sort of theology and faith. And so that was the level of story that we were dealing with in these cases. Yeah.
So let's talk about some of the cases and some of the people that you talked to. I know that one of these was a man who was a former police officer who was paralyzed in a work accident and listened for years. He and his wife, they prayed, they believed, they asked God for healing. Tell us about their story.
Yeah. And this this story, it's the the Brian Lapu story. He's a police officer. And it's so crazy how life happens because he's out there walking on the ice, patrolling, doing his job. And he falls and he breaks his neck in this freak accident. And the doctors initially say, you're going to be OK. You're going to recover in a month. You'll be back to work.
And what ends up happening, as you said, is 10 years of excruciating pain paralysis. He was paralyzed on half of his body, required this horrific brace that he had to walk in in order to move around. And for three years straight after a surgical procedure, had a migraine that did not go away. And so you think about that level of pain. And the thing with Brian's story is they spent 10 years believing that he would be healed, going to prayer events, doing everything they could to
And he was not getting healing. And that is something I'd love to unpack more in all of these stories, because it's this persistence that just boggles my mind. But but in Brian's story, the thing that's so interesting in this, I think, is important for us as as human beings, as Christians to be encouraging to other people, because, you
His wife was the one saying, no, we need to keep going. He felt like, look, I don't want anybody praying over me anymore. I don't want anybody touching me. He just got disgusted with the entire process because he wasn't getting healing and he was in pain. And she said to him, Brian, let's go to one more event. Just give me one more prayer event.
And he said, fine, we'll go. And so they go to this event and it's remarkable because it's on film and we include it in investigating the supernatural miracles. The moment that he is healed, he's at this prayer event. They pray over him. And for the first time in 10 years, his hand opens up. He had had sort of this clenched fist due to his injuries. And he gets out of his brace and walks around and not only walks around.
leaves that venue walking and to this day has never needed the brace again and is completely healed. That's the kind of story where you say, well, what in the world is going on here? What happened to make that? And it's it's caught on tape, right? We have it.
And I know that you, I mean, praise the Lord on that. It is tough in these seasons of waiting. And sometimes you don't get your earthly healing. You don't get that. But sometimes you do. And I love that the power of his wife and the resilience of hers was to keep asking for that miracle and to keep believing that it was possible. In a lot of these cases, you talk to medical professionals and say, how do you explain this?
Yeah. Well, and and the thing is, they can't explain it. And I think in his case, the doctors were were very baffled by it because the condition he had, nobody had recovered from. And you'll hear that we had we had another subject who had a brain tumor and his particular tumor was.
was not one where you could do anything medically. They gave him epilepsy pills to stop him from having seizures, but outside of that, there was nothing they can do. Well, when that tumor goes away and you're dealing just with scar tissue, the doctors are looking at this and they're saying, we've never seen this before. In fact, he's the person who has lived the longest after having that condition and the only person to have had that tumor disappear. So these are cases where the doctors are baffled. And I think what's interesting is
When you're a doctor or a scientist in that position, you have to make a decision. Are you going to just sort of throw your hands up and say, well, I don't have the answer. I don't know what happened. Or are you going to dig deeper and try to understand? Because we can never prove a miracle 100% of the way, but we can get...
98, 99 percent. We can get pretty close to, hey, we don't have an explanation here and science cannot explain this. And so it's interesting to watch people process that. But we were very fortunate enough to find a number of doctors. In fact, one of them who has a story where a miracle didn't happen for him sort of come in and really validate a lot of what we're seeing in these cases.
Yet again, we're talking to Billy Halliwell with CBN. He's an investigative journalist and he's got this new documentary. Well, it's a feature length film as a documentary called Investigating the Supernatural Miracles. And so it talks about these things that just defy explanation. You talk about how, listen, we can't ever prove anything at 100 percent level when we're talking about these kinds of stories. But that's where faith comes in. And I find that so much of this project really does encourage your faith.
It does. It encourages your faith. And there's a challenge here because the thing that, you know, once we finished filming and we prepared for release, I was really thinking through everything we had experienced and processing it and even thinking about my own family and my own daughter who has been on this scoliosis journey. And, you know, I'm happy to talk about that. I've been talking about it. That was simultaneously going on. And I was thinking, well, how have I have I been believing that?
Right. Really believing for healing. And we have to be so careful with this because just as you were saying, you may not get your healing on this side of eternity. You will get it. It may be on the other side. But but there's this tension that we live with as Christians. And there's some debate about this. But I think when Jesus talks about dying to self, when Paul talks about this, when we see it throughout Scripture, part of dying to self is putting full trust in God. And what we saw in these stories is.
These people were willing to fight all the way to their death if they needed to, believing that the miracle was possible, while at the same time, even though it's difficult, and this is the hard part, trusting that God has a plan and that they may not get that miracle. It's that trust that is so radical, and it really rocked me and challenged me because I feel...
think I would have given up before this film. I probably would have given up if I were in a similar position and just said, OK, God, take me now is my time or I'm not going to get this healing. And I have a very different view now on how I would handle that after seeing these people go through it. Live in the Bream continues in a moment.
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Yeah, because sometimes the healing doesn't come or the miracle doesn't come the way that we think or would like for it to come. I think, you know, I've been really open about living with chronic pain. You've talked about your daughter's, you know, real journey with scoliosis. Like there are so many prayers that you have. Some of them are really heartfelt and eloquent. Some of them are just what you can squeak out in the moment. Like, Lord, help me.
And I prayed for healing for such a long time from what I'm dealing with. And I was always brought back to Paul's story in second Corinthians, where he talks about the thorn in his side and, you know, it wasn't healed, but instead, you know, Christ said to him, you know, my power is made perfect in your weakness. You know, my strength is made perfect in your weakness. And so,
For me, though I prayed for the miracle of healing, I finally got to the point where I said, "Okay, Lord, if you're not going to heal me, will you send me somebody that can walk me through this?" Because I had given up on the medical establishment at that point.
And I, my husband and I have told the story. We literally the next morning got up and started calling and started trying with the insurance company and trying all these things again, found this doctor who wasn't taking new patients, but had a cancellation. As I called the office, I got in with him the next day and he was the person to finally diagnose me and to help me manage my condition, which isn't curable, but it's very manageable. And so your miracle might not come in the way that you expect, but it may still be a miracle. Yeah.
Absolutely. And I love that you share that. And I love how open you've been about that struggle, because I think a lot of people, even in interviews that I'm doing, people on the air will admit, you know, that they're struggling with their faith because they're not getting the healing. And I think, you know, there's a lot of theology out there that gets dangerous when it comes to saying that people it's their fault almost. Right. Or they haven't. You know, we have to be so careful with that because we're
We don't know what God is teaching us through these challenges either. I will say to you, and I think everybody listening will agree with this. If somebody comes and says, what are the moments you've learned the most in your life? Very few of those moments are the times where things have gone well. I've learned the most when I've been in a difficult season. And I don't want to diminish the difficulty we all go through, but I think that is a reality. And as we sort of finished the film, I thought, well, what was Brian learning during those 10 years of paralysis? What are the lessons? And
I'll tell you all of these people. And again, we deal in investigating the supernatural miracles with people who don't get their healings, too, because you have to honestly deal with that and talk about it since we've we can all relate to it. But it just it really got me thinking about the lessons and leaning in like you were leaning in and saying to God, like, bring me bring me somebody who can help me navigate this. And he answered that prayer in a different way than you could have imagined. Exactly. Well, do you want to update us on how your daughter is doing?
I do. So this is the crazy thing, Shannon. So we as we were wrapping up filming, we were inching towards release. She has a scan of her back every six months. And just so people understand, you know, she was diagnosed with scoliosis, 34 degree curve when she was just turned six years old, which is very young.
And once you hit about around 50 degrees, you're surgical usually. So we found it by the grace of God, a doctor noticed it. We did not notice it. And she was like, you need to get her to a specialist. If we had not noticed that she could have very easily been over 50 degrees by the time she was eight or nine.
She went, though, from playing normally, doing normal things overnight to being essentially in a brace 21 hours a day, a full torso plastic brace, sleeping in it, living in it, playing in it. And it really restructured everything that we do. So I just wanted to share that so people understand, you know, it was very challenging for her and for us.
But I will tell you, we also looked for other, you know, we prayed endlessly and we said, God, send us some other doctors. You know, we love our doctors, but they're surgeons. And he did. And in February, while we were preparing for release, we took her for her scan. They can barely detect scoliosis in her spine. It is almost perfectly normal.
where it should be right now. And she is out of her brace and we're monitoring her every three months right now to see what will happen. And so we, we experienced this miracle ourselves as, and it didn't even dawn on me. I mean, it's been incredible. So yeah, that's where she is right now. Well, I'm glad to hear the update. We really, I mean, I like to say that honestly, every time you look in the mirror, like you could say you're a miracle because it's,
Just the breath that you're breathing, the way that your body operates, the blood pulsing through your veins. I mean, all of it is we're all such a unique creation. And just the fact that we're alive for one second at a time.
This place and moment in history, I don't think is ever a coincidence. I do think it's a miracle. But again, back to what you're doing. You're looking at miracles as people understand them in the broader sense in this investigating the supernatural miracles. This feature length documentary by CBN News, as we talked about, you're an investigative journalist. And so you came to these stories, as I would have to with a little bit of skepticism, at what
What was the tipping point for you, though, in looking into these stories and talking to these people and putting this together, thinking, okay, I believe there are modern day miracles and we should ask for them?
Yeah, you know, I think for me and I love I love the second part of that. And we should ask for them, because I think that was the challenge for me of thinking, have I actually been doing this? Have I actually asked God? I say I believe it. Have I actually gone and taken steps that show that? But really, as we were navigating the stories and having so many conversations, you know how it is when you're filming, you do a lot of conversation off camera.
Right.
Oh, and by the way, as we're talking about this, people can go to CBN.com slash supernatural to watch the film. But as we were sort of sitting down having these interviews, this man who had been dead for 40 minutes, I mean, this story just blew my mind because when I read about it on paper, I thought –
This seems ridiculous, right? If I'm being honest in my mind, I'm like, this seems ridiculous. This man was dead for 40 minutes. He's pronounced dead. What ended up happening was he had a heart attack at the hospital. He's, you know, thankfully he was at the hospital when it happened, but they tried to revive him for 40 minutes to no avail. They pronounce him dead and they're bringing him to the morgue. Literally, they're preparing the body to bring him to the morgue. And so this doctor, Dr. Chauncey Crandall, who's incredibly fascinating and has a story of his own,
Chauncey Crandall is the emergency room doctor. He comes into the room. He sees that this man's been pronounced dead. He says, well, my work is done here. There's nothing I can do. He leaves the room. And as he's walking down the hall, he feels God say to him, go back in that room and pray for that man. Pray for his soul. If he didn't know me, you need to pray for him.
And he's thinking, this is ridiculous. I'm not going back in that room. He keeps walking. He gets the prompt again from God. So he turns around, goes into the room. And you can imagine these nurses and doctors have got to be thinking, what are you doing? He's praying over this dead body.
And he prays and then he says to them, prompted again, shock him one more time. And they end up saying, well, we can't do that because he'll be brain dead even if we got a pulse back. But they do finally do it. They shock him. He gets an immediate pulse back, this guy, a perfect pulse. Yeah.
And within two days is awake and alive and fine as though nothing happened to him. When I encountered that story and sat across from that man and had the medical documentation and had Chauncey Crandall telling this story, that for me was the moment where I said, and why wouldn't I believe this? We see it happen with Lazarus, right? But it brought it into our contemporary time for me and really convinced me in that moment. Yeah.
Well, and a reminder to follow the prompting, too, because I think we all sometimes get these things like go back to that person at the cash register or go back to that person at the gas station. You're like, no, I'm going to seem so weird. I don't want to go back and do this. But if you really believe it's a prompting, I mean, there is a reason that you are called to reach out to somebody or to do something that may
give you some discomfort that may be potentially a miracle in the making. Yes, I agree. Dr. Crandall is a fascinating guy and the conversations that you have with him in this documentary. Tell us again where we can watch this and what else you're working on.
Absolutely. CBN.com slash supernatural. And, you know, there there is another project. You know, I mentioned that this is a film series. And so we are in process right now. And we filmed a fair amount of our interviews for Angels and Demons, which is a very difficult and different topic. But it's the same approach. We're going in with the very same approach.
And I think people are going to be really shocked and surprised by the types of people who we talk to, academics, well-respected professors at Columbia University, people who are looking at this from both a theological and a practical perspective. And so that is going to be our next project that will most likely release next year. And it'll be investigating the supernatural angels and demons. And so we're very, very excited about that one.
Yeah, you tackle conversations and topics that may be a little bit uncomfortable for us, but really important ones that we should have. And so you go there and we're thankful for that and all that you do and you're investigating your writing. There's so much out there that we all benefit from because of the journeys that you are willing to jump into and to take and then take us with you. Billy, thank you so much for this and for being on Live in the Brain this week.
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Listen ad-free with the Fox News Podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app. It is time to take the quiz. It's five questions in less than five minutes. We ask people on the streets of New York City to play along. Let's see how you do. Take the quiz every day at thequiz.fox. Then come back here to see how you did. Thank you for taking the quiz.