Elijah Stephens ’03

While at Covenant, I began going to a church in Chattanooga. After I moved to California, my former senior pastor, Bucky Buckles, left the faith. He said there was no God and no evidence of modern miracles. While I had enough of an understanding of apologetics to know he was wrong about the nature of God, I wondered if he was right about modern miracles.

In 2015, I began working on a documentary called Send Proof. The purpose of the film is to ask the hard philosophical, theological, and scientific questions about healing miracle claims. It also asks people who claim to have had miraculous healing to send in their medical records for research purposes. To fund the film, we raised $133,000 on Kickstarter, which was in the top 1% of funds raised on the platform at the time.

Providentially, I have been blessed to work with the Global Medical Research Institute, a group of medical professionals who study the results of prayer in Jesus’ name. They collect the records for each case, verify the claimant was sick and then healed, research the peer-reviewed literature to look for naturalistic explanations, then publish a case study. All but one of the cases in the film have been published in peer-reviewed medical journals.

My time at Covenant deeply shaped Send Proof, so much so that, in the film, I talk about how the college taught me to value critical thinking. Covenant also shaped my approach to constructing the film, in that I show all sides of the argument. I allowed skeptics such as Dr. Michael Shermer, John Loftus, Dr. Michael Ruse, and James Randi to present their side. I interviewed prayer ministry leaders including Bill Johnson, Dr. Randy Clark, and Dr. Heidi Baker. I also interviewed the apologists Dr. William Lane Craig, Dr. J.P. Moreland, Dr. Craig Keener, and Dr. Gary Habermas. In the end, we show both the charlatanism that has marked many so-called “miracle ministries” as well as highlight legitimate miracles God has done.

This film has won the hearts of believers and skeptics worldwide. Multiple atheists have told me that the film brought them to tears and made them reconsider a relationship with Jesus. We have won film festivals around the world from Rome to Istanbul to Tokyo. Find out more at SendProof.com.