Illusionist seeks miracles of Jesus

News SG

Tuesday, 12/20/05

Illusionist seeks miracles of Jesus

Nashvillian Brock Gill travels to Holy Land to examine and attempt to replicate biblical phenomena for TV special

By KEN BECK
Staff Writer

Brock Gill can't walk on water, but he believes in the man who did.

The Nashville illusionist is host of the three-part Miracles of Jesus, airing Saturday afternoon on the Discovery Channel, as he goes to the Holy Land and investigates the supernatural powers of Christ.

Gill, a Christian, spent two weeks in Israel attempting to either create the illusion of or decipher several individual miracles as described in the first four books of the New Testament.

"I tried to figure out a way to replicate those in some way. Some I couldn't even get close, some I could come up with a convincing version. We turned water into wine. That one was very easy for me to do. The calming of the storm I was able to do, but we show how we pulled that one off with special effects," said Gill, 30, a Louisiana native who made Nashville his home base three years ago.

The other miracles Gill explores are walking on water, raising the dead, the multiplication of food, demon exorcism, healing the blind man and the resurrection.

The idea behind Miracles of Jesus originated with producer Jean Claude Bragard, who pitched it to BBC Discovery. They wanted an illusionist to base the show around and contacted Gill.

"I didn't know what to think, whether they were legitimate or small time," said the illusionist. "My reaction was kind of mixed: This could be a cool idea or what is this show gonna really be about? I wanted to find real truth and not expose Jesus as a fraud. They were pretty honest and upfront, so I decided to commit to it."

Eight years ago, Gill was a sawmill worker in Arkansas. A couple of close brushes with chainsaws sent him to praying about where to go with his life. He quit his job, got some books and taught himself how to perform illusions. Now entertaining in 150 shows a year, at such venues as theaters, civic centers and churches, he has made a ministry of it.

"I am known for the water coffin, where I have people from the audience chain and lock me up and put me inside a coffin full of water and I try to escape out of it. Another thing I created is the blind ride. I take someone from the audience and they blindfold me and duct tape me up around my neck and then bring out a dirt bike motorcycle and I hop on the bike and ride it."

As a magician, Gill can appear to make people float in air and he can make himself disappear in a box. He performs his illusions to draw crowds.

Thus, he asked himself, "Was Jesus a magician? Was he an illusionist? Was he a hypnotist? Was he a paranormalist? Or was he just a master of psychology? What was the deal? Was he a real miracle worker?"

So he went to work, aided by his computer, his craft, his crew and the Bible, while a number of biblical historians and theologians also gave insight from their own studies.

Gill's quest took him to such sites in the Holy Land as Cana, Nain, the Golan Heights, the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River and to Jerusalem, home of Golgotha and the Holy Sepulchre.

After it was all over, how did the adventure strengthen or weaken his faith?

"To begin with, I had to take my faith and my beliefs and set them aside, so I could take an objective approach. I wanted to know why I believed the things I had been told. Through the whole process, it strengthened me," Gill said. "I feel I am more of a believer now than I ever was. There are some skeptics' views that really make a lot of sense. I really had to wrestle with them. Scripture comes to life now in a way it never had."

The third hour of the program is centered on the resurrection of Christ.

"There was nothing I could do to try to reproduce it, so I did some symbolic illusions. . . . We had to go into skeptics' views, such as maybe Jesus never did actually die on the cross and maybe Jesus was never put into the tomb," Gill said.

As for viewers of Miracles, he says, "I think that those who are atheists are going to think again, I think those who are seekers are gonna be more open to the idea of Jesus, and I think those who are believers are gonna be more convinced and educated about the God that they follow."

News SG

Illusionist puts the miracles of Jesus to the test
Dec 18, 2005, 07:32 AM
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Nashville illusionist Brock Gill never figured Jesus for a master magician.

As an evangelical Christian, Gill always accepted the biblical accounts of Jesus' miracles as just that -- miracles.

But when the BBC asked him to travel to the Holy Lands to investigate whether Jesus could have used magic, hypnotism or some other trick to create the illusion of miracles, Gill couldn't refuse.

"I've always been fascinated by miracles, ever since I was a kid reading the Bible stories," says Gill, host of the three-hour special, "Miracles of Jesus," which will be shown on the Discovery Channel on Christmas Eve.

At the outset, the show makes clear he's a Christian. But Gill says he had to set aside his personal beliefs and approach such stories as the raising of the dead and walking on water with an open mind.

"Before I got into really doing the investigation, I did research on some of the skeptics' views and there were some quite convincing ideas. It rattled me a little bit," says Gill, a 30-year-old with a religion degree from East Texas Baptist University. "I thought, 'I really want to find the truth here.'"

Producer Jean-Claude Bragard says Gill, who could be mistaken for a surfer with his soul patch beard and long blond hair, was a natural choice for host. Gill's act includes levitation, escaping from a sealed coffin filled with water and making coins multiply.

"We realized we didn't need an academic to lead the program, but we needed somebody who was interested and knowledgeable about Scripture and particularly interested in the miracles," Bragard says.

Even if an atheist had been chosen as host, Bragard says, the conclusions wouldn't have changed.

The show uses interviews with scholars and dramatizations of Bible stories to investigate seven miracles, including the multiplication of bread and fish, the conversion of water into wine, the raising of the dead and walking on water.

One segment questions whether Jesus could have hypnotized a large crowd to convince them he had multiplied bread and fish to feed everyone. In another, Gill sloshes across sandbars in the Sea of Galilee to see if Jesus could have appeared to walk on water by staying in the shallows.

In each case, the conclusion is that Jesus probably couldn't have tricked people into believing they had witnessed a miracle.

"Is it possible? Yes, it's possible that there was some type of trick because I was able to do it," says Gill, who turned water into wine during the show. "But most of those things used technology that he wouldn't have had. We re-created walking on water, but it took three 18-wheelers full of equipment to pull it off."

Bragard thinks miracles don't receive the attention they deserve from modern scholars.

"It's a subject that has embarrassed biblical scholars for over 100 years," Bragard says. "They had to deal with historical analysis, so they focused on his sayings instead.

"The fact is, he was famous because of his miracles. The people then believed he was a miracle-worker, even his enemies. Those miraculous deeds had more significance than his sayings."

For Gill, who mostly performs for churches and other religious groups, delving into Jesus' miracles only strengthened his faith.

"Before this year my beliefs were based just on the Bible and what my parents and pastors had told me. Now, I'm really convinced that what I'm believing is the truth."