Thursday, September 15, 2005

Morris Cerullo and my aunt

*Morris Cerullo, televangelist, "miracle-worker," and thief from MCWE website*



One of my aunts had multiple sclerosis. She was a very dynamic woman when she was alive in spite of being homebound. She was taking courses at a local community college with the long-term goal of counseling teens in her home. She had a two-way hook-up with her classrooms. She was able to attend lectures in real-time while sitting in her living room. She could also participate in discussions via her link. This was back in the early seventies.

My aunt had the use of three fingers. With her three fingers, she was typing an historical novel--faction, she called it-- of how she had discovered that she had MS and her life afterwards.
The pages I read were full of descriptive imagery. In my mind's eye, I could see the nursing school that my aunt had attended. She was the one who volunteered for a demonstration spinal tap. Her proteins came back elevated. That was how she found out.

I remember my aunt watching Morris Cerullo on television. "Expect a miracle today!" he would proclaim to his audiences. His audiences were mostly made up of people desperate to be rid of their physical ailments. He would exhort them to send him money with the words, "Give me your pocketbooks." My aunt bought the whole story.
In the end, my aunt died still expecting a miracle from Morris Cerullo. Morris "when you are looking at me, you are looking at god" Cerullo did not deliver. My aunt died from severe heart arrhymthia-- the second leading cause of death associated with multiple sclerosis [the first is respiratory failure] in her fifties [average age of death in someone with MS].
In the year 2000, Morris Cerullo was expected to deliver other things. For that story, go to the link below and then to its' internal search engine. Typing in the name Morris Cerullo will lead you to two articles in their archives. Of special note are the pictures of his mansion and his gold-plated interior air limo.

http://www.christian-witness.org/index.html

-sapphoq

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