A devout Christian couple are attempting to resurrect their dead two-year-old daughter through faith and prayer, but a GoFundMe campaign started on their behalf by church leaders is raising more worldly questions:
Andrew and Kalley Heiligenthal’s two-year-old daughter, Olive Alayne Heiligenthal, died early Friday morning after she stopped breathing in Redding, California.
The family called 911, and paramedics rushed Olive to a hospital, where she was declared dead. Her body was transferred to the Shasta County Coroner’s Office, a spokesman from the couple’s church told DailyMail.com.
On Sunday, Kalley wrote a heartbreaking post on Instagram, calling for ‘bold, unified prayers from the global church to stand with us in belief that He will raise this little girl back to life.’
The post quickly found support from the congregants at Bethel megachurch in Redding, where Kalley is heavily involved with the church music group and has produced her own albums of Christian music.
‘Her time here is not done, and it is our time to believe boldly, and with confidence wield what King Jesus paid for. It’s time for her to come to life,’ wrote Kalley, who has more than 240,000 followers on Instagram.
Kalley continued her calls for prayers for resurrection in Instagram posts on Monday and Tuesday.
‘Since that night, and at the continued request of the Heiligenthal family, Bethel Church has hosted prayer and worship gatherings which consist of singing and prayer,’ the church said in a statement.
On Tuesday night, hundreds gathered at Bethel Church for prayer and worship at a ceremony calling for Olive’s resurrection.
A church spokesman said that this was the first-ever public prayer gathering that the church has hosted to pray for a resurrection…
At the same time that Kalley was calling for prayer to resurrect Olive, however, Bethel Music started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the couple.
Church leaders wrote that the fund, which has raised more than $38,000 toward a $100,000 goal, was to cover ‘unforeseeable expenses the Heiligenthal family will incur, medical and otherwise.’
…Church officials said that Olive’s body has been at the Shasta County Coroner’s Office since it was transferred there from the hospital on December 14.
We are warned in Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed for the lack of knowledge,” and that certainly seems to be the case here. The fact that the dead child was 2 years old is crucial to understanding what, in all probability, caused her sudden, unexplained death.
Between birth and 2 years old, infants are subjected to a whole retinue of dangerous life-threatening vaccines that have long been suspected as the cause of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (S.I.D.S.) or Crib Death, and even court cases have also established this connection.
In all likelihood, Olive had been recently vaccinated, and instead of praying for her literal resurrection, her parents should be filing a claim with the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which has paid out millions to families with children who have died of S.I.D.S. and other known side effects.
You can partecipate to the offer if you want. If no, be quiet and pray for this baby. Stop with this critics and prejudices. God’s will sovereigns always and in this case the baby died. I seem that her family stay strong in faith, although the great sorrow at the moment, it was only a month! So be silent and take rispect for this mourning . If you want to donate you can do it, if no stay quiet. Who donated, surely they was secure of their choice.
Simona, there is a big difference between praying for the baby and praying for the baby’s resurrection, which is what these people were doing. And that is not Christian because it makes a mockery of God. As you said, that the baby died is surely God’s will, not matter how hard that is for most people to accept. It is not God’s will, however, that we inject dangerous vaccines into our infant children causing them to die suddenly. We should pray that parent’s wake up and think for themselves, so that we can save a lot of children from dying unnecessarily.
I’m speechless. What kind of unforeseen medical expenses can anyone dream up? If a brain has been devoid of oxygen for days it won’t be functioning. In other words, if Olive is resurrected, she’ll be brain dead. As a parent, I’d give the money to living children rather than pay for the mechanics of keeping her body alive.
You can argue a miracle will keep her brain alive. So why go through all this nonsense? God knows the ending if it’s a faith test. If it’s a medical miracle ? why doesn’t he just make sure nobody dies “before their time”? Isn’t it kind of insulting to be telling God that Olive died too soon and you all are buckling down to flatter him until he changes his mind? Singing songs of praise and worship, deciding Olive’s time wasn’t over … pretty manipulative.
Make no mistake though, I extend my sympathy to the family of the child and especially for a background that caused them to have this empty hope
How the heck do you know it was from a vaccine??? Her cause of death was not made public.
I am anti-vax but this is a disgusting jump and there is no proof that this was why she died.
Don’t use this child’s death and make up lies. It’s possible it is the cause of death but until there is solid proof, don’t make all anti-vaxxers look nuts.
Candice, there will never be ‘solid proof’ of the cause of death released to the public. The CDC will never admit that SIDS is caused by vaccines. Just like when a woman is found dead, her spouse or boyfriend is always the first suspect, when a child dies or comes down with an auto-immune disease ‘out of the blue’, then we should assume vaccines are the prime suspect. At this point, we should not give vaccines ‘the benefit of the doubt’, as they kill and maim daily.
The pathologist who does the autopsy on this child will never in a million years blame vaccines as the cause of her death. They never do. They are not trained to look for vaccine damage. You can’t get a pediatrician to admit to a parent that their child has asthma because of vaccines, so how to do you expect a pathologist to ever even look into the possibility that vaccines played a role?
Vaccines do not deserve the ‘benefit of the doubt’ at this point when they are killing children like Olive daily.
Please elucidate just how an ‘anti-vaxxer’ such as yourself isn’t recognizing the same demonstrable proof of vaccine death/injury that led you (I’d assume) to be an anti-vaxxer? Why all the fear based belligerence toward those who are obviously fighting the “good” fight? You must neither have a solid enough foundation of understanding of vaccines nor Scripture, thus your inordinate fear. Stick around. Read. Learn. Listen. Let your fear melt away…God has this 😉
S.I.D.S. is Bill Gates specialty.
S.I.D.S. is listed on many vaccine inserts. It’s exactly what I thought of when I heard the age of the child and that she died in her sleep. May this family find answers and peace in the midst of their unimaginable grief.
Profiteering from your childs death seems wrong.
And how to we know little Olive was vaccinated? Because California has passed the most draconian laws making vaccines mandatory for ALL children to go to school, public or private, and they got rid of all exemptions, including religious exemptions. The chances that Olive was indeed vaccinated are extremely high.
How do we know that she was vaccinated? Because there hasn’t been a media sh*t storm over the fact that she was not, with a demonized ‘christian’ intent behind it 😉
Once again, I really can’t add much of anything to the original article and the comments so far…
I love this site.
The author of this article is very precise and concise with their criticism. I would like to take it a step further.
I am not even going to vaguely attempt to judge the lives of the parents of this child. This is not about whether anyone ‘deserved’ anything. God’s plan does not work that way.
Ask Job. Did he turn into an emotional mess and tempt God when God allowed Satan to take away Job’s TEN children? NO. His answer was: Job 1:21 “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
These Christians’ lack of knowledge – of both the Scriptures and why their child died – has lead to a great public sophistic plea to God that I can confidently say will not be answered. They are straight up tempting God, and doing so in front of millions of ‘viewers’ since the story went ‘viral’.
The saddest part is, many will more than likely lose their faith (if they actually had much in the first place) over this. Had there been any meekness and humility involved in the parents plea to the Father, maybe the only way we would know that they implored God was when the report came out that this child rose from the dead…
Yes, tempting God is not a valid or effective way of grieving. I am grateful to God every day that He gave me the knowledge about vaccines BEFORE my wife and I decided to have children so that we could greatly reduce the chances that this kind of tragedy would happen.
And yes, Job should be our role model for how we respond to suffering–to praise God, not tempt Him. Imagine the disaster, yes disaster, that would unfold if his child were truly resurrected by a Megachurch in California. Just the thought of the ensuing circus is enough to know that it will never happen.
And I absolutely must add – Just WHAT “unforeseeable expenses” could there be in a spiritual endeavor? Someone please remind the “church leaders” responsible about the story of Jesus feeding the 5000…
As if there is any credibility to making demands of God, it just adds insult to injury by involving money in it. I guess these “church leaders” need to be reminded how Jesus reacted when he saw his Father’s house used as a market…