Continuing with this series on NAR evangelist Dan Bohi, I’ll provide a comprehensive review of Bohi’s healing theology and provide an assessment of the claims he’s made about his healing ministry. I’ll directly cite Bohi’s book titled Holiness and Healing along with videos of him speaking about his healings. I’ve taken great efforts to cite Bohi in his own words by carefully studying his book and watching his online material. I’ve provided page numbers for every quote so anyone willing can easily access the material I’m citing. As I mentioned in my introduction, my goal is to hold Bohi proportionately accountable for his theology in a way that is commensurate to his tenure in the faith and his role within the church as a professional evangelist. Now, let’s examine Dan’s theology of healing.

Bohi’s Healing Theology

Bohi and his like-minded companion Rob McCorkle are theologically identical in every way as far as I can tell from reading their book, Holiness and Healing. This is especially true as it relates to the topic of faith healing. While I will be speaking specifically about Bohi in this article, everything that applies to Bohi equally applies to McCorkle within the context of this article. 

Bohi gives seven reasons why he believes that God still heals today. Let’s work our way down Bohi’s list and test whether his reasons stand the test of Biblically scrutiny. 

1) Bohi believes in healing because “it is God’s will to heal” (page 235). Does God always will everyone to be healed in this life? No. That’s an obvious and indisputable fact. If God willed everyone to be healed, there would be no illness. Bohi’s position is that it’s always God’s will to heal because “originally and eternally God’s will was, and will be, for wholeness and healing” (page 235). Bohi cites Matthew 6:10 to demonstrate that Jesus corroborates his view when He says, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” According to Bohi, if it’s always God’s will to heal and the kingdom of God is free of illness, healing is possible if we are capable of manifesting “the kingdom of God in this present age” (page 240). McCorkle affirms Bohi’s statement by saying, “If He manifested the kingdom of God in this present age, then our commission is the same” (page 241).

Looking at Bohi’s words closely, he assumes that God’s will is to physically heal everyone on earth because he’s using Matthew 6:10 as a prooftext to conclude that since there is no illness in the kingdom, therefore God’s sovereign will wouldn’t include the allowance of illness on earth. Bohi theorizes that since Jesus manifested the kingdom of God in the present age, we’re Biblically called to manifest the kingdom of God in an identical way. The ESV Study Bible provides some excellent insights on Matthew 6:10 that clear up Bohi’s confusion,

“Christians are called to pray and work for the continual advance of God’s kingdom on earth. The presence of God’s kingdom in this age refers to the reign of Christ in the hearts and lives of believers, and to the reigning presence of Christ in his body, the church – so that they increasingly reflect his love, obey his laws, honor him, do good for all people, and proclaim the good news of the kingdom. The third petition speaks of God’s will. This means God’s “revealed will”, which involves conduct that is pleasing to him as revealed in scripture. Just as God’s will is perfectly experienced in heaven, Jesus prays that it will be experienced on earth. The will of God will be expressed in its fullness only when God’s kingdom comes in its final form, when Christ returns in power and great glory (see Matt. 24:30; cf. Rom. 8:18-25; Rev. 20:1-10), but it will increasingly be seen in this age as well (Matt. 13:31-33).” (pages 1831 – 1832 — emphasis mine)

While we may see more of God’s kingdom manifested on earth increasingly over time, we’ll never fully see God’s kingdom in its final form until Christ returns. While there is nothing unbiblical about praying for healing, we must never assume that God’s will includes healing in every circumstance. This is not the case and nor is it Biblically supported by the scriptures.

2) Bohi believes in healing because “Jesus demonstrated it” (page 243). Jesus did demonstrate healing, however, does this mean that we have the same healing model in the modern world? There is no reason to believe that’s true. Simply because Jesus did something doesn’t mean we can do it too. This is an assumption without any biblical prooftext.

Bohi states, “If 40 percent of the gospels are about the miracles of Jesus then I think that they are important, and we should be wondering how, why, and what happened to us if we’re not duplicating what Jesus did. The question is: are we really Christlike disciples?” (page 244 – emphasis mine) He continues by saying, “In John 14:12, Jesus said that if anyone believed in Him, and that is present tense faith (meaning that if we are believing Him), then they would do what he did. So if we are intimate enough with Jesus and lean into Him with faith, then we will do what he did and even greater. That means “anyone” who believes in Him.” (page 244) 

Referring back to the ESV Study Bible again for clarification on John 14:12,

“the works that I do. In John’s Gospel, the term “works” (Gk. ergon), both in singular and in plural, is a broader term than “signs.” While “signs” in John are characteristically miracles that attest to Jesus’ identity as Messiah and the Son of God, and that lead unbelievers to faith, Jesus’ “works” include both his miracles and his other activities and teachings, including the whole of his ministry. These are all manifestations of the activity of God the Father, for Jesus said, “The Father dwells in me does his works” (14:10). Here Jesus is teaching his disciples to imitate the things he did in his life and ministry. The disciples’ greater works will be possible because Jesus is going to the Father, subsequent to his finished work on the cross; this indicates that the “greater works” will be possible because of the power of the Holy Spirit who would be sent after Jesus goes to the Father. The expression “greater works” could be translated broadly as “greater things,” since the Greek meizona is simply a neuter adjective and the noun “works” (Gk. erga, plural) is not included here as it is in the earlier part of the verse. These “greater works” include evangelism, teaching, and deeds of mercy and compassion – in short, the entire ministry of the church to the entire world, beginning at Pentecost (E.g., on the day of Pentecost alone, more believers were added to Jesus’ followers than during his entire earthly ministry up to that time; cf. Acts 2:41.) These works are “greater” not because they are more amazing miracles but because they will be greater in their worldwide scope and will result in the transformation of individual lives and of whole cultures and societies” (pages 2052 – 2053 — emphasis mine)

In light of the proper context, Bohi’s glamorized view of us being functionally equivalent to Jesus is farcical at best and arguably heretical at worst. Bohi pays no attention to the fact that there were individuals within the early church in the presence of apostles who remained ill. Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 4:16 that “Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” demonstrating that their physical bodies were failing. This wouldn’t have been mentioned if they were physically healed. Similarly, Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 5:23 and says, “No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.” Again, Timothy wasn’t healed miraculously but was being encouraged to treat his ailments medicinally. Lastly, Paul wrote to Timothy again in 2 Timothy 4:20 and said, “Erastus remained at Corinth, and I left Trophimus, who was ill, at Miletus.” The ESV Study Bible states, “Even Paul, with his apostolic gifts (cf. Acts 19:11-12; 2 Cor. 12:12) was not always empowered to heal. Christians today should pray earnestly for physical healing, but God is still sovereign in whether he grants healing in each specific case.” (page 2343 — emphasis mine). Would Bohi suggest that the Apostle Paul misunderstood Christ’s healing model?

3) Bohi believes in healing because of “the kingdom” (page 249). He repeats many of the same points found in his first point concerning bringing God’s kingdom down to earth. Bohi states, “In Matthew 10, Jesus commissioned us to preach, teach, and do ministry. He was saying: I’m going to give you all the authority that I have because I can’t do this by myself. I can’t cover the world without helpers” (page 249 – emphasis mine). For a matter of clarity, I’m going to cite what Bohi’s referencing in Matthew 10:1,

“And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction.” (ESV)

Bohi made a common exegetical error of substituting a description with a prescription. In Matthew 10, Jesus gave them, the twelve apostles, authority over “unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction.” There isn’t a scripture in Matthew 10 that prescribes authority to us in this way.

4) Bohi believes in healing “because of authority” (page 252). Bohi believes that we have the same authority as Jesus, so we should always expect Jesus-like healings. Bohi states, “There are three times in the gospels where we are told that a student is never above His teacher, but when we are fully trained, we will be exactly like Him. Jesus said that!” (page 257 — emphasis mine) He makes this comment without reference to any scriptures to substantiate his Biblical assertion that “fully trained” students can become “exactly like Jesus.” Bohi opines about why people don’t “operate with this divine authority that Jesus has given to us.” His ironic response is that “people in the church don’t use the authority that they have because they are biblically illiterate.” (page 257 — emphasis mine) 

Bohi provides a lot of insight into what he thinks are Biblical messages about how we have the authority to heal, but he is guilty of the very thing he accuses people of being. He’s biblically illiterate. Again, he takes historical descriptions of the apostles who were given authority to heal and imports that same authority upon us without providing any prooftexts for how his claim can be biblically reconciled. 

5) Bohi believes in healing “because of faith” (page 259). Bohi states that prayer will only function among the faithful. Indeed, there is Biblical support for having faith. This is a virtue and I don’t trivialize the point that Bohi is making with this specific point. The problem that Bohi keeps crashing into is that he’s assuming that we have the capacity, in theory, to have the same authority as Jesus in virtue of faith. For example, Bohi comments on the miracle story found in Mark 9, “Jesus didn’t pray at that moment for the father’s boy to be healed. His bank account of faith was already full because He lived a lifestyle of prayer. Power and authority are based on what has happened in us before we get to the moment of crisis.” (page 262-263) Jesus was in constant prayer with the Father, yes. However, Jesus acted on His own authority to heal the boy. We haven’t been given that authority to heal in the way Jesus did and the way His apostles did. Bohi says that Jesus was able to heal the child because “His bank account of faith was already full”, which is why he didn’t need to pray at the moment. This is the type of absurdity that naturally results when we equate ourselves to Jesus.

6) Bohi believes in healing “because of the atonement” (page 263). Bohi makes some dicey claims about how the nature of the atonement and healing are linked. Bohi says, “Sickness and disease are the results of sin that entered our world, but if you remove all sin from our lives through the atoning power of Jesus, then there is no room for sickness to remain in our lives either” (page 265 – 266). This statement implies that if you’re sick, the atoning power of Jesus didn’t extend to you. Bohi doesn’t seem to realize that the atonement is true in the final eternal sense, but doesn’t necessarily extend to the physical conditions of our earthly bodies. To assume otherwise creates an unbiblical environment where Christians question their salvation every time they sneeze. 

7) Bohi believes in healing “because I have never been to a place where I didn’t see someone healed” (page 266). Bohi continues, “I’ve been brainwashed into believing this because I’ve seen so much. I just keep seeing miracles everywhere I go. I have seen tumors shrink, cancer cleansed, paralyzed limbs move, people get out of wheelchairs, and deaf ears opened” (page 266 — emphasis mine). Bohi says, “I’ve even seen people raised from the dead.” McCorkle commented in the conclusion of the chapter, “I believe that we have been commissioned to heal the sick as Jesus did. I believe that we have the same power in us as Jesus possessed” (page 269 — emphasis mine). 

These are radical claims about healing, resurrection, and extremely fringe unorthodox views that equate us with God Himself. Bohi recalls the resurrections of two babies in his book on pages 110 and 111. 

“I was in Hilliard, Ohio, and I laid hands on a young woman who was really longing for a breakthrough in her life. When the spirit of God came on her, she couldn’t even walk back to her seat. She and her husband called me two days later and told me that the hair on her arms and legs stood up from the moment God came upon her. It was like an electric current going through her. Four days after this manifestation of the Holy Spirit, she went to the doctors for a scheduled D & C because her fetus had died. However the baby was alive, and they canceled the procedure. The doctors have no explanation for how the fetus came back to life.”

“I remember when I was praying for people in Idaho, and many people were falling under the power of the Spirit. It was during this meeting that another lady, who had fallen out in the Spirit, testified that her dead fetus came back to life.” 

Here is a video of Bohi talking about how he brought three dead people back to life.

In addition to these five resurrections, Bohi spoke to Presence Worship on April 5, 2021, and said, “In my ministry, in 12 years, I think we’ve had about 77,000 healings.” (clip here)

On May 15, 2022 (a little over a year after the above video), Bohi spoke at Lebanon House of Prayer and said he stopped keeping track of healing testimonies “three years and nine months ago,” but the number of healings somehow increased to “over” 82,000 since the first video. (clip here)

If Bohi resigned his ministry from documenting faith healings starting in January 2019, which is considerably earlier than the first clip, why didn’t Bohi mention this fact in his first clip? Why did the number increase from the first clip (April 2021) to the second clip (May 2022) if his ministry no longer documented the number of healings? Why should anyone believe Bohi given his demonstratable dishonesty about his claims concerning his faith ministry?

However, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that everything Bohi said is 100% true. This would mean that five dead people are now alive among us. In an age of new media, where virtually nothing happens without detection, how have these five formerly dead people not caught anyone’s attention? Supernatural events in history leave a massive fingerprint. If God used Bohi to resurrect one person, let alone five people, the news about the resurrection would boil over the surface, and news of the miracle would spread far and wide. Not only would Bohi be known locally for his involvement in the resurrection, but the news would spread nationally and potentially internationally. Now, let’s assume that this happened five times. If Bohi was involved in five confirmed resurrections, God’s glory couldn’t be contained and it would give Bohi a perfect opportunity to exalt God and spread the Gospel. 

Let’s forget about the resurrections momentarily and focus on Bohi’s 2021 statement in the video above, “In my ministry, in 12 years, I think we’ve had about 77,000 healings.” Mathematically speaking, that is 17.5 miraculous healings a day. With this many healings over 12 years, there would be crowds of people chasing him down! Why wouldn’t he volunteer at a hospital to bring healing if God granted him the gift of healing? How come the world isn’t familiar with Bohi’s divine healing ministry that has touched 77,000 people? God should be glorified by these healings, and these healings can be used as a tool to bring people to Christ. Yet, as great as these stories sound, something doesn’t feel quite right.

I couch the rest of the article by saying that I generally believe in continuationism. I say this because I anticipate the onslaught of criticisms from people assuming that I’m a rabid cessationist. I don’t believe that the ‘signs’ have ceased with the original apostolic age. There is plenty of reasons to believe that ‘signs’ outlasted the original apostolic age. I am open to the possibility that God used Bohi to perform miracles of healing. I also believe in the Biblical characteristic of discernment. If we’re informed in the scriptures, we can soundly identify a tree by its fruit (Luke 6:43-45). Sadly, Bohi’s tree isn’t producing a healthy harvest.

The high number of healings and resurrections lacks the accompanying evidence one would expect to see if these claims were true. The sheer volume of healings would’ve easily caught the attention of a medical journal over the span of 12 years. The five resurrections would be publicized in American media ad infinitum. Yet, nobody has heard of these events outside of Bohi personally telling people in very imprecise terms with very few details. 

Conclusion

Respected biblical scholar Wayne Grudem, also a continuationist, has a very balanced theological outlook on healing. He writes in Systematic Theology 2nd Edition, “In each individual case it is God’s sovereign wisdom that decides the outcome, and our role is simply to ask him and wait for him to answer (whether “yes” or “no” or “keep praying and wait”)” (page 1319). Grudem doesn’t argue that if we simply had the faith of Jesus, we’d have Jesus’ identical authority as Bohi argues. 

While I agree with Bohi that healing exists in the modern world, I strongly disagree with his theology on this subject matter. His seven reasons lack any serious degree of biblical understanding, insight, wisdom, and discernment. Sadly, it’s embarrassing that any pastor would invite Bohi into their church for healing or revival services with this information publicly available. 

Let us pray for Dan Bohi. He’s in desperate need of biblical understanding. I urgently warn churches that are considering having Bohi lead a revival or healing service to reconsider. These church leaders must protect their flock from false teachers. This article easily demonstrates that Bohi meets the criteria of a false teacher because his theology distorts the Word of God and his claims of the miraculous are inflated, unsubstantiated, and misleading.