Guillermo Maldonado is the co-founder and senior pastor of El Rey Jesús, a 20,000-member megachurch in Miami, Florida, that is the largest Hispanic church in the United States. The author and self-styled “apostle” also oversees over 500 churches in 70 countries through his Supernatural Global Network, representing more than 750,000 people.
We’ve written about him a few times, such as Divorcing Megachurch Pastors Fight over $120M Estate, and featured him several times in our wealthy pastor’s roundup, given that he regularly wears watches in excess of $150k. A noted prosperity preacher who teaches the ‘law of increase,’ he claims to have raised the dead and healed all sorts of people in miraculous ways, including regrowing women’s breasts. Speaking to NAR Queen Cindy Jacobs, who takes it all in uncritically:
And then (God told me) ‘Tell the people I want to create new organs.’ And I call out all the person that needed a gallbladder, new knee. And you know, a lot of people came to the altar. And among those people came a lady that her breast- two breast had been removed 17 years ago, because of cancer.
And I asked her, What do you need from God? She goes ‘I need my two breasts’…. She fell on the floor. When she got up. She was screaming. I mean, she (was) laughing, rejoicing, crying and I say ‘what happened?’ She goes, I got my two breasts’
The Lord showed me that he already assigned angels to bring those new organs for the people to receive it. And I always tell the people; ‘make sure you receive it because otherwise that angel’s gonna take that organ back to heaven.’
Oh I’ve seen it before, one breast but not two breasts….There was somebody that had an accident and they cut off one of his legs. And, you know, he said he was watching and then suddenly he felt the presence coming out of the TV. And then he said, ‘I believe my leg is gonna grow back’. And then he says ‘suddenly the presence fell’. And then he said he felt his leg grow back.
(Jacobs: “Oh, wow. And I think I remember video where fingers grew, didn’t it?”
Yeah fingers. I’ve seen hair grow back, fingers grow back. I’ve seen internal organs, like bladders, like, you know, all kinds of hearts, new hearts. So we’ve been seeing all kinds of that kind of miracles.”
"Apostle" Guillermo Maldonado claims God has helped people regrow breasts, legs, fingers, gallbladders, hearts, and hair (?!?)…
A new crop of charismatic young Christian ‘faith healers’ claim to exorcise ghosts and cure illnesses. But many question these ‘miracles’, and the way these ministries operate.
(The Print) Chandigarh: The emaciated man on a wheelchair throws his head back and contorts his face, his arms flailing, legs shaking. All eyes, though, are not on him but on ‘Prophet’ Bajinder Singh, or just ‘prophetji’, minister at the Church of Glory and Wisdom in Punjab.
In his late 30s to early 40s, and dressed in jeans and a blazer, Bajinder looks like a corporate executive on casual Friday, except that his self-assigned job that day is to banish the “evil spirit” that has supposedly taken away the man’s ability to walk.
“Do you believe you will be healed here? Do you believe?” Bajinder prods the man’s weeping wife. “Yes, I believe,” she sobs. Bajinder then whips around to the spellbound audience gathered at the venue. “Everyone, raise your hands and let the Holy Spirit work,” he urges. The crowd complies and Bajinder focuses his attention back on the wheelchair-bound man.
“Jesus, touch him!” Bajinder exclaims, and the man screams loudly. “Get up!” Bajinder commands the man. “Jesussssssss.”
The man rises.
The crowd explodes into rapturous hallelujahs, and right on cue, the band and singers waiting onstage launch into an upbeat devotional song. The catchy rhythm is too much to resist. So effective has the so-called healing been that the “patient” joins the pastor in a few bhangra-style steps to the thumping music and even does a little jog down the stage.
Screengrab of Bajinder Singh dancing with a formerly wheelchair-bound “patient” | YouTube/Prophet Bajinder Singh
Scenes like the one described above are not uncommon in the promotional videos shared on YouTube by Punjab’s controversial new crop of Christian ministries, run in private churches by self-styled ‘pastors’, ‘apostles’, and even a ‘prophet’.
These ministries, all of which promise miracle cures, are usually helmed by charismatic young men and women, most of whom are converted Christians who have retained their Hindu or Sikh names, albeit prefixed with a religious title.
The names of their establishments follow a template: Prophet Bajinder Singh Ministries, Apostle Ankur Yoseph Narula Ministries, Pastor Harpreet Deol Khojewala Ministries, Pastor Amrit Sandhu Ministries, Pastor Harjit Singh Ministries, Pastor Manish Gill Ministries, Pastor Kanchan Mittal Ministries, Pastor Davinder Singh Ministries, Pastor Raman Hans Ministries, and so on.
These pastors, looked upon as conduits of God, claim they can heal every possible disease and disability, exorcise ghosts, and even bring the dead to life. Their divine influence, according to them, also extends to helping people procure a visa, bag a job, find a spouse, have a baby, get a better political post.
There is no shortage of believers. At least half a dozen of these new ministries have a significant following, and their “healing and prayer” sessions draw crowds by the thousands. Some have branches in almost all the large cities and towns in the state.
This may be part of a larger trend. An earlier in-depth report by ThePrint detailed how Christianity is growing in Punjab, with many Dalits belonging to the Mazhabi Sikh and Valmiki Hindu communities choosing to convert in order to escape the oppressions of the caste system. In Punjab’s border areas, like Gurdaspur, small churches are even cropping up on rooftops. These developments have led the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, which manages gurdwaras across Punjab and several other states, to launch a drive to ‘counter’ Christian conversions. Giani Harpreet Singh, jathedar (ordained leader) of the Akal Takht, the highest temporal seat of Sikhism, has even alleged that Christians are using both money and force to convert Sikhs.
The new faith-healing ministries claim they don’t want to convert people but only to cure them, but they too offer a sense of community and recourse from painful realities.
A sign of their growing influence is that in the run-up to the assembly polls, some of Punjab’s top politicians have visited these ministries’ churches for ‘blessings’ that they perhaps hope will convert into votes. Over the last couple of months, Deputy Chief Minister Sukhjinder Randhawa, state Congress chief Navjot Sidhu, cabinet ministers Rana Gurjit Singh and Pargat Singh, and a host of MLAs have registered their presence at congregational events.
However, several of these churches are mired in controversy, not just because of their outlandish — and potentially dangerous — claims and ‘healing’ practices, but because of alleged irregularities in their financial dealings, as well as concerns about the personal conduct of some prominent figures, one of whom, Bajinder Singh, is currently undergoing trial in a rape case.
‘Healing’, ‘exorcism’, baptism, prophecies
While these ministries claim that they are not trying to convert their followers to Christianity, and only “transforming their lives”, the prayer, healing, exorcism, baptism, and prophecy sessions are carried out in the name of the Holy Spirit in tune with Pentecostal church traditions.
All congregations are carried out in the name of Yeshu Masih (Jesus Christ), and everyone present is exhorted to join in with hallelujahs. The pastors deliver sermons from the Bible and sessions held outside the location of their church are called “crusades”.
Ministries also offer “babtisma (baptism)”, in which followers are made to take a dip in holy water.
The prominent ministries hold weekly, bi-weekly, and in some cases even daily prayer and healing sessions. These are heavily advertised through hoardings, banners, posters, pamphlets, and social media. Phone lines, called “prayer towers”, run round the clock to register those who will attend the sessions.
The sessions themselves are extravagant affairs, usually held under enormous tents or in acres of open grounds that quickly get filled up with men, women, and children, many of them poor and seeking help for health and other problems. The sharply dressed and well-groomed pastor presides over the crowd from a stage (for the most part), usually accompanied by his wife, who can sometimes do a bit of “healing” herself.
A Christmas gathering organised by Harpreet Deol Khojewala Ministries | Photo: Facebook/Pastor Deol Khojewala
These events typically begin with a choir singing Punjabi carols and dancing to a live band. The stirring music often arouses a high degree of emotion, rapture even, among the people gathered. Whatever the pastor commands them to do, they do: They wave their arms above their head, they fall to the ground, they shake, they writhe. It’s a display of complete surrender.
The big-ticket item of these spectacles, however, is when the pastor demonstrates “miracle healing” on the spot.
The YouTube channels of the ministries show pastors ostensibly restoring sight to the blind, liberating the wheelchair-bound, and making short work of cancers, cysts, and stones in the body. There are also mass “healings” through laying hands on people’s heads or spraying them with holy water.
‘Resurrecting the dead’ is another speciality. In one clip, Prophet Bajinder Singh claimed to bring a three-year-old child back from death. As singers chanted “Jehovah, Jehovah, Jehovah” to a crescendo, Bajinder lifted up the inert toddler and revived her with a few good splashes of water from a plastic bottle.
Apostle Ankur Narula trumped even this when he claimed to have reversed a miscarriage and brought a baby back to life in a woman’s womb. He told the audience that a rich mother would not have taken such a rewarding gamble on faith and would have instead wasted time in hospitals.
Also popular are exorcisms of various hues, including oils that supposedly banish evil spirits once you rub them on your body and say “holy ghost fire”, preferably in a trance-like state. More disturbing spectacles include the pastor grappling with “possessed” people, including children, to drive out demonic forces.
When a pastor casts out or “arrests” a spirit, rejoicing and frenzied dancing follows amid cries of “praise the Lord” and “hallelujah”.
Gawahi (testimonies) by those who have been “healed” or whose wishes have come true are also a big part of these sessions. Occasionally, the benefits of sowing the seed (donating) are also shared by people claiming to have received high returns in the form of a well-paid job or other successes.
A ‘healing’ ritual at Amrit Sandhu Ministries | Photo: Twitter/@PastorAmrit
There are also prophecy sessions, where pastors make predictions about the future or claim credit for events that they say they foresaw, including the misfortunes of Bollywood stars or natural disasters.
Every minute of every event is carefully orchestrated, with hundreds of volunteers and ministry employees managing the crowds and the stage.
Multiple cameras capture every miracle, with the videos later uploaded on the ministries’ social media handles. The top ministries have lakhs of followers on YouTube and Facebook, and some sessions, particularly those of faith healing, gather millions of views (here, for example).
When ‘healing’ goes wrong
There have been reports about these so-called miracle healers asking patients to leave their ongoing treatment, sometimes resulting in worsening of their condition or even death, but very few complaints have reached the police.
In April 2021, however, a Mumbai family complained to police in Punjab that Prophet Bajinder Singh Ministries had charged them Rs 80,000 to treat a 17-year-old girl who was suffering from cancer. After she died, the ministry staff demanded more money offering to bring her back to life, the complaint alleged.
According to Sukhpal Singh Randhawa, deputy superintendent of police (DSP) in Kartarpur, investigations are still ongoing. “We are recording the statements of the complainants and gathering evidence,” the DSP told ThePrint.
There are concerns also that these faith-healing ministries are promoting superstition for profit at the cost of their followers’ wellbeing.
Megh Raj Mittar, the founder of the Tarksheel Society, a rationalist organisation, said it was regrettable that even politicians were encouraging such ministries.
“Superstition is being promoted to earn money. It suits everyone, including those who should be acting against them. The only way that people can be stopped from falling into these traps is to encourage rational thinking and scientific temper,” he said.
Hemraj Steno, the in-charge of the Punjab chapter of the Tarksheel Society, made similar points. “These healers are frauds. We will pay them Rs 5 lakh if they can bring a dead person to life or restore the eyesight of a blind person — provided we bring the body or person, and they perform the ‘miracle’ publicly,” he said, adding that it was a pity that the government was not bringing faith healers to task. “For politicians, these people become vote banks.”
Steno said superstitious beliefs abound across religions, and they all should be countered.
Murky funds, no regulatory mechanism
Many ministries claim that prayers are offered for free, but followers are encouraged during gatherings to “sow the seed in the church”, which means to donate. Donations are also openly solicited through the ministries’ buzzing social media accounts.
There are indications that at least some ministries are raking in the cash. According to an August 2021 Punjab intelligence report accessed by ThePrint, the two top ministries — Prophet Bajinder Singh Ministries and Apostle Ankur Yoseph Narula Ministries — both based in Jalandhar, collectively received over Rs 60 crore in their bank accounts in the past five years. Ankur Narula Ministries received Rs 36 crore and Bajinder Singh Ministries Rs 24.5 crore; Harpreet Deol Khojewala Ministries, the report added, received Rs 5.42 crore.
ThePrint made several attempts to contact Ankur Narula and Bajinder Singh through phone calls and text messages, but there was no response from them.
John Kotli, the president of the Pentecostal Masih Mahasabha (council of Pentecostal preachers), Punjab, who claims to be a close aide of Narula, said prayer meetings are generally attended by poor people who do not donate more than Rs 10 or 20 per head.
“Whatever donation is collected, and it could be Rs 36 crore as you have mentioned, is used to do a lot of social service,” he said.
Prophet Bajinder Singh rings in the new year with a song and dance spectacle | Photo: Facebook/Prophet Bajinder Singh Ministries
Nevertheless, the top pastors flaunt a lavish lifestyle, complete with fancy clothes, big cars, and elaborate private security. According to the intelligence report, they are also buying property across the state to build more private churches for their ministries.
In November and December alone, new branches of top ministries opened in Jalandhar, Patiala, Pathankot, Mohali, Zirakpur, Nawanshahr, Nakodar, Rajpura, and Ludhiana.
These burgeoning ministries function independently and are not affiliated to either of the two mainline churches in the region: the Church of North India (CNI), which has under it the majority of Protestant churches in North India, and the Diocese of Jalandhar, under whose jurisdiction come Roman Catholic Churches in 15 out of 23 of Punjab’s districts, as well as four districts in Himachal Pradesh.
Dr Pradip Kumar Samantaroy, bishop of Amritsar Diocese (under CNI), told ThePrint that these “independent churches” are answerable to no one except themselves. He also compared them to deras — religious sects that operate outside mainstream Sikhism but have huge mass followings.
“They represent dera culture in Christianity. In the beginning, when wandering preachers and faith healers started out, they were driven by a genuine desire to serve and heal. But now what we see seems to be driven by commercial interests,” he said.
“I have been the moderator of the CNI, which has 27 dioceses with it across almost three-fourths of India, but nowhere else have I seen this scale (of operations) of independent churches (as in Punjab),” added the bishop.
Samantaroy said he is concerned about the fact that the ministries seem to be “seeking money in the name of healing”. That is why, he said, he thinks of the ministries as “fake healers not faith healers”.
A regulatory mechanism to monitor the functioning of these ministries is the need of the hour, the bishop said.
“There are two aspects to this. First is the religion, the faith, its teachings and practice. Second is the system or discipline or order which should be both transparent and accountable. All church orders should come together and create a mechanism to regulate the functioning of these ministries,” he said.
Father Peter Kavumpuram, public relations officer of the Roman Catholic Jalandhar Diocese, told ThePrint that these ministries worked independently and had no ties to the diocese. “We do not interfere with their work; we are concerned only with our own churches,” he said.
“If they (the ministries) do anything fundamentally against the doctrine of the church or the dogma or the faith, naturally they will be countered. Until then, what they are doing is for their conscience to (guide). They are answerable to those who believe in them,” Kavumpuram added.
In 2019, the state’s Christian community made an attempt to regulate the functioning of these ministries with the setting up of the Shiromani Church Parbandhak Committee (SCPC), but it was short-lived.
Albert Dua, president of the Christian United Federation, Punjab, was instrumental in creating the SCPC, but told ThePrint that the body is currently “non-functional” because “no consensual decision could be taken” due to differences among the members.
“We are aware of what these ministries are doing and we receive a lot of complaints as well, but there is nothing much that we can do until we have the authority to take action,” he said.
Lavish New Year’s Eve celebrations at Apostle Ankur Narula Ministries | Photo: Facebook/Ankur Narula Ministries
Dua believes the state government should collaborate with churches and Christian bodies to set up a regulatory body to monitor the ministries, but he does not have high expectations.
“We are observing that instead of strengthening mainline churches or traditional Christian bodies, government representatives are patronising these ministries,” Dua said.
Currently, the closest thing there is to a monitoring body is the Pentecostal Church Parbandhak Committee (PCPC), set up in November 2021 by the Pastor Harpreet Deol Khojewala Ministries. The aim of this body is to help self-regulate the ministries.
“If anyone has any complaint to give about anyone, please let us know,” Khojewala announced during the launch of the PCPC.
Kuldip Mathew, senior pastor at Church of Hope in Ferozepur and a member of the executive of the PCPC, told ThePrint that 980 organisations have already registered with the body. “If there is a complaint against anyone, we conduct an inquiry into the matter and then discuss the issue with other members. If there is need for any action to be taken, we do that,” Mathew said.
Transparency, though, is a long way away.
Very little is known about the functioning of these ministries other than what they choose to share on their websites and social media accounts.
In addition to Bajinder Singh and Ankur Narula, ThePrint tried to contact all the other popular pastors — including Harpreet Deol, Amrit Sandhu, Manish Deol, Kanchan Mittal, Raman Hans, Davinder Singh, and Harjit Singh — through calls and messages, but no one responded.
Top ministries, some controversial leaders
Apostle Ankur Narula Ministries, on its website, claims to be the “biggest and the fastest growing church ministry in Punjab”. With its home base in the Church of Signs and Wonders in Khambra village, Jalandhar, it claims to have almost three lakh members.
Its leader, Ankur Narula, comes from a Hindu Khatri business family, and professes to be a recovered drug addict. According to his website, Narula “came to know about Lord Jesus Christ at suicide point frustrated from intoxications and sickness. He surrendered himself to God for the gospel and started his ministry with 3 people in the church in the year 2008…”
The site further declares that Narula now “preaches the good news of Jesus Christ to a congregation of more than 100,000 people every week in the Church of Signs and Wonders”.
It adds that “through miracle services, conferences, TV broadcasts, the Internet, printed page (Masihi Sansar), and audio-video recordings”, Narula’s message now inspires “thousands of people around the globe”. Narula’s was one of the first ministries in Punjab to command a significant following.
Many other upcoming ministries of pastors like Amrit Sandhu, Harjit Singh, Pankaj Randhawa, and Pawan Chohan have declared that Narula is their spiritual father and that they are following in his footsteps.
This January, Narula will also start a mentorship programme for pastors.
According to Yunus Masih, a pastor working with the Ankur Narula Ministries, the church works purely for “charity”.
“We give rations, help in marriages of the poor — every penny is accounted for. We work solely on voluntary donations. There is no fee for healing or other services. And there is no conversion of anyone’s religion,” Masih told ThePrint.
As mentioned earlier, Apostle Ankur Narula Ministries has come under the scanner about its funds, and it has also faced backlash from Hindu Right-wing organisations.
In November 2020, the Legal Rights Observatory, an RSS-affiliated group, claimed in a Twitter thread that it had lodged a complaint with the Union home ministry against Narula for alleged violations of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA).
The group alleged that Narula had created a shell company in the UK for ten days and then dissolved it with a view to set up a “money laundering network”.
On 23 November, Narula opened a Delhi branch of his church, which was allegedly vandalised by members of the Bajrang Dal a week later, and has stayed shut since then. While an FIR was lodged against the miscreants, the ministry’s staff were also booked for violating the requirements of the Disaster Management Act by holding large gatherings without social distancing.
During his recent church service “Pastor” Greg Locke of Global Vision Bible Church in Mount Juliet, TN claimed that their church was experiencing legitimate miracles, after one of their pastors was anointing chairs with oil and claimed that much like the ever-replicating fish and loaves of bread in John 6, the oil kept on coming despite the bottle being completely empty.
It’s for this reason that we at Protestia don’t believe a word he says,as we operate under the premise that the Lord does not give miraculous sign gifts to confirm the ministry of unrepentant adulterers with ratchet theology. Still. he claims:
“Pastor Danny…came out and he hugged me, and he had big tears in his eyes. He said, ‘I believe I just witnessed a miracle, Lord.’… and he began to talk about the 10 virgins and how they weren’t prepared and not as equally prepared as they thought.
But he had a little bottle of oil, a little vial of oil. And God told him to come into this tent, and we got people that pray over every chair, but God told him to touch every single chair under this tent with that oil. Just to put it on his finger and put the oil on the back of the chair and keep praying and keep walking.
And he said he got-somebody saw it- he said he got halfway through last night, and he didn’t bring (unintelligible) and didn’t prepare enough. So his bottle was empty.
And he showed it to me. It’s as hollow as a gourd. Empty. Nothing in it.There weren’t no residue laying in the bottom- It’s empty. But he felt like the Holy Spirit said ‘I told you to anoint all the chairs, so just keep doing it.’
Now if I’m lying I’m done. This man was torn all to pieces, he said “I just saw a miracle from the Lord, pastor...I got halfway through, my bottle was empty, but God said ‘keep on going…so I put my finger on it..and there would be a little oil on it. I put on a chair… I put my finger on it. there’d be some oil”
He did the rest of the tent and never ran out of oil with an empty bottle, praise God. I’m telling you- God’s got enough, he’s got enough. He’s got enough for his children. Am I telling the truth man of God? I’m telling the truth. And I’m telling you as much as they would when they wanted seconds, they got fourths. He gorged him up, fed them good.”
Francis Chan has upped the theological ante recently, going from the relatively sound reformed pastor, through Bill Johnson-loving charismatic, to a full-fledged faith healer, and now to Jesus in the Flesh when he described in a recent video how he laid hands and healed a whole village in Myanmar, ostensibly without the Holy Spirit.
Chan has a particularly irritating way of speaking, where his modus operandi is to consistently engage in religious performance art, not unlike Todd White who falls to his knees red-faced and weeping every three sentences or a certain baptist and pentecostal segment of preachers who insert “-ah” after every few words.
In Chan’s case, he reads the scriptures and preaches like he has an intestinal blockage, with strained features and gasping breaths, as if he’s fighting to speak when he’s not gesticulating wildly. It’s all a show, and it’s sad that some find it convincing.
But in his “Final Message to America,” Francis describes how he laid hands on he healed an entire village of unbelievers, ascribing his success to alleged miraculous machinations, rather than the normative means that Christ saves. He says:
Every time I pray nothing would happen, but that night in that village, I’m going God these people have believed one thing their whole lives, and there’s some really elderly people sitting at my feet. How am I supposed to convince them that this message that contradicts everything they’ve ever believed is true? God you have to do something. There’s little children here. I have no power. I’m speaking through a translator. You need to do something. Please. Visit. Show them one night of Power like nothing they’ve ever seen in their lives, begging God for this.
And believing, believing scriptures, scriptures that I memorized as a high school student came alive in me. Where I believe that Christ and I are one. And I was walking around that village and going ‘this is no different than if Jesus walked through this village.’
Because he says I can do whatever he did, and I can do greater things than he did. John 14:12. and I go I memorized that as a high school student and I believe it right now. I am Jesus right now. He and I are one. He abides in me, I abide in him. These are not just memory verses.
We seem to recall scripture about wicked and adulterous generations looking for a sign, but more importantly, this is a complete abrogation of John 16:7-1, which says:
Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you. And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they do not believe in Me; of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
For Francis Chan, however, the preaching of the word and the power of the Holy Spirit was insufficient to save. You heard him say it. “I have no power.” In fact, there’s not even a recognition of the Holy Spirit to bring about faith and repentance.
Because he has no power, and the preaching of the gospel doesn’t quite cut it, he needs that “poison drinking, serpent handling power” to get things done. Perhaps Chan has an extra verse tacked on to the back end of Romans 10:14, which after saying, “and how shall they hear without a preacher?” adds, “and how shall they believe without signs and wonders?”
This is notwithstanding that Chan is promoting some sort of TOS (Theosis on Steroids), a position he assumes by saying “I am Jesus right now” and likened himself walking through a village as literally NO DIFFERENT than if Jesus was walking through that village and engaging in mass healings of bad backs.
We await with bated breath to see where Chan goes next.
