Today, great effort and expense are poured into publicity. Faith-healers actively seek publicity through various media. Public posters make glowing promises. Leaflets are distributed. The mass media, in the form of newspapers, radio, television and social media are enlisted to build the fame of the faith-healer. Even when the crowds thus drawn are assembled, there are seldom immediate displays of power. Rather, the crowd must first be prepared. This pattern of publicity before most healings stands in contrast with the pattern seen throughout the Bible. Then, typically, the healing activity comes only after the audience has been stirred up to expect something exciting.
In the Gospel accounts and in Acts, the publicity followed the miracle.
Then there is the publicity within the meeting. When a miracle is supposed to have occurred, attention must be drawn to it— often because it hardly seems noticeable within itself. The evangelist places a microphone in front of the healed person and says, “Tell us what is happening” or “Tell us how you feel.”
Read again the Gospel accounts. Then try to imagine Jesus on a stage with spotlights glaring and music blaring. Try to imagine Him, for the benefit of the audience, asking a healed person, “What sort of miracle did you receive?” “Tell these good folks what is happening right now in your body.” If you are familiar with the Jesus of Scripture, you may find such scenes out of character and hard to imagine.
Neither Jesus nor His apostles had any desire or need to seek such support for their miracles. Their miracles were self-evident as being completely supernatural. They were done in ordinary places where the public, even those who were skeptical, could see them. They did not have to advertise beforehand. They did not have to excite emotions beforehand. And they did not need to assist the credibility of what was supposed to have happened. When we observe the opposite today, we know that we are seeing something quite different from the New Testament.