Mike Hoesch — Claimed Healing of Malignant Skin Tumor

Arizona — c. 2000–2008 Evangelical Protestant testimony Biopsy record not published

Claimed diagnosis period

Around 2000

Hoesch places the original dermatologist diagnosis about eight years before the reported healing.

Claimed condition

Malignant skin tumor / malignant neoplasm

Public sources repeat those terms but do not identify a specific histological subtype.

Claimed resolution

January to August 2008

The public testimony centers on a roughly six-month period from theological shift to disappearance of the lesion.

Public record type

Ministry testimony and evangelical media

The case circulates through Andrew Wommack Ministries, Healing Journeys Today, and Hoesch’s own ministry.

Context of this case

Mike Hoesch is an evangelical Protestant affiliated with Andrew Wommack Ministries, a Word of Faith charismatic ministry. The public record of this case comes through evangelical healing media rather than through a Catholic diocesan process, the Lourdes Medical Bureau, or a canonization cause.

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Primary-source file

Current team biography Healing Journeys Today - About Mike Hoesch

This page preserves the current short-form public summary of his malignant-neoplasm testimony and his place on the Healing Journeys Today team.

healingjourneystoday.com Andrew Wommack summary Power of a Testimony - Mike’s Journey

Andrew Wommack Ministries preserves a concise written account of the doctor visit, emergency surgery recommendation, and the later faith shift.

awmi.net Ministry background Mike Hoesch Ministries - About Us

Hoesch’s own ministry page ties the healing account directly to the later ministry he and his wife built around the testimony.

mikehoeschministries.com Current AWMI profile Healing Journeys - Andrew Wommack Ministries

The Andrew Wommack page preserves the present publishing context in which Hoesch’s story continues to circulate.

awmi.net

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Who He Is

Michael “Mike” Hoesch is an evangelical minister, speaker, and podcast host now associated with Andrew Wommack Ministries. Before the illness story he tells publicly, he says he was running a business in Arizona and attending a nondenominational church. He says the long decline of the tumor eventually forced him to close that business.

After the healing he describes, he and his wife Caroline moved into the Andrew Wommack orbit in 2010 by attending Charis Bible College in Colorado Springs. He later became an ordained minister, founded Mike Hoesch Ministries Inc., and built a public ministry that regularly retells this testimony.^[1][2]

How the testimony circulates publicly

Since 2010, Hoesch’s public ministry has frequently centered on this healing account. Most detailed retellings come through his own platform, Andrew Wommack Ministries, or associated evangelical media.

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Publicly documented chronology

• Around 2000: Hoesch says a small sore appeared on his chest and that, after eventually seeing a doctor, a dermatologist diagnosed it as a malignant neoplasm and scheduled emergency surgery for two days later.^{[1] [3]}
• He says he cancelled the surgery, and over the following years the lesion enlarged to the point that he and his wife had to clean and bandage it repeatedly every day.^{[1] [3]}
• Around January 2008: Hoesch places the decisive shift in understanding after hearing Andrew Wommack’s teaching series You’ve Already Got It!^[1]
• Around February 2008: he says his wife first noticed the lesion shrinking while changing the dressing.^[1]
• May 2008: Hoesch says he no longer needed the supportive bandaging he had relied on for years.^[1]
• August 2008: he says the tumor had disappeared, leaving only a scar.^{[1] [3]}
• 2010 onward: the couple moved into the Charis / Andrew Wommack orbit, and the healing story became a recurring part of his public ministry profile.^{[2] [3]}

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The Diagnosis

The public sources all describe the problem in broad terms: Hoesch says a dermatologist told him he had a malignant neoplasm, meaning a cancerous growth, on his chest.^[1][3] What the sources do not tell us is exactly what kind of cancer it was. No public page names the tumor subtype.^[1][3]

Limit of the public file The most important fact to keep in view here is what is missing: no biopsy report, no named doctor, no pathology record, and no published medical confirmation after the lesion disappeared.

That does not make the testimony false. It does mean this page should be read as an evangelical healing testimony with a scar and a story, not as a medically documented cancer-remission dossier.

Andrew Wommack written summary Open source

His own public timeline is:

• Approximately 2000: A small pimple-sized sore appeared on his chest; he ignored it for approximately a year before seeing a doctor
• A dermatologist in Arizona diagnosed it as a malignant neoplasm and scheduled emergency surgery for two days later
• Hoesch cancelled the scheduled surgery
• The growth enlarged substantially over the following years, requiring cleaning and bandaging multiple times daily by himself and his wife
• He says the growth spread across his chest; at his worst he was too weak to hold his head up to eat; he closed his business because he could no longer function normally

The treating doctor and medical institution are not named in any public source.

Documentation note: biopsy not published

The diagnosis appears in public sources as a dermatologist’s judgment, but no biopsy result, pathology report, or named physician record has been published.

That leaves three central open questions:

• the exact tumor type was never made public
• the original malignancy was not histologically documented in public sources
• the later resolution was not published through released imaging or physician testimony

Hoesch points to the scar on his chest as evidence that the lesion was real. The scar does show that something substantial was there, while the public medical record remains limited.

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Treatment

Hoesch says he declined the emergency surgery recommended at diagnosis. No chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy, or systemic medication is mentioned in the public sources. The interventions described publicly are:

• Home wound care (cleaning and bandaging, multiple times daily)
• Prayer
• Attendance at a nondenominational church
• Listening to Andrew Wommack’s teaching series “You’ve Already Got It!” (2007–2008)

He had also attempted herbal remedies prior to the formal diagnosis.^[1]

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The Claimed Resolution

The catalyst: A friend gave Hoesch a copy of Andrew Wommack’s teaching series “You’ve Already Got It!”.^[1] The basic idea behind that teaching is that Christians should not wait for God to maybe heal them someday, but should believe healing has already been won for them and should be received now by faith. Hoesch says this changed how he understood his illness.^[1]

“It just blessed me so much when I heard Andrew sharing these things. It was like, yes, yes, I’ve already got it!”

He describes moving from asking God to heal him in the future to believing he was already healed in a spiritual sense and would see that healing appear physically.

Timeline of apparent resolution:

• Approximately January 2008: The theological shift
• Approximately one month later (c. February 2008): His wife Caroline, while changing the wound dressing, observed the tumor had decreased in size
• May 2008: He reports no longer needing the supportive bandaging he had relied on for years
• August 2008: The tumor was, by his account, gone — leaving only a scar on his chest

The total period from the faith shift to complete apparent resolution was approximately six months.^[1][3]

Mike Hoesch file

1. Diagnosis Reported malignant lesion He says a dermatologist identified a malignant skin growth but the biopsy record is not public.
2. Decline Years of worsening The public testimony says the lesion enlarged for years and required constant daily care.
3. Turning point 2008 faith shift He ties the change to a new understanding of healing after hearing Andrew Wommack teachings.
4. Claim Reported disappearance He says the lesion gradually vanished over months, leaving only a scar.

Open full graphic

Mike Hoesch's public file is a testimony sequence: reported cancer diagnosis, years of decline, a 2008 faith shift, and a later claim that the lesion disappeared. Local explainer graphic

Hoesch tells the full story in the video below:

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Documented facts and open questions

Claim	Status
A skin lesion existed on his chest c. 2000	Consistent across all accounts; a scar remains
A dermatologist diagnosed it as malignant c. 2000	Self-reported; physician and institution not named; not independently confirmed
Histological confirmation (biopsy) of malignancy	Not cited in any source — appears to have been a clinical diagnosis only
The lesion grew substantially over ~7 years	Self-reported; no physician documented the progression
He declined surgery	Self-reported; consistent across all accounts
The lesion resolved c. 2008	Self-reported; first observed by his wife; no medical documentation cited
Post-healing physician examination confirming resolution	Not cited in any source
Post-healing biopsy or imaging confirming clearance	Not cited in any source
Submitted to any formal review body	No

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Medical context in published literature

No peer-reviewed paper addresses the Hoesch case itself. So the medical question is more general: can a cancerous skin lesion ever shrink or disappear without treatment?

Published oncology literature says that spontaneous regression does happen in some cancer cases, though it is rare. It has been documented for several skin-cancer types:

Spontaneous complete regression of cancer across all types has been estimated at roughly 1 in 60,000 to 100,000 cases.^[4] Among skin cancers, one of the best documented examples is Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC). Reviews suggest complete spontaneous regression in roughly 1.7 to 3 percent of MCC cases, often with an immune-system explanation.^[5][6]] Spontaneous regression has also been documented in melanoma and, more rarely, in basal and squamous cell carcinomas.

The difficulty here is that Hoesch’s tumor type was never made public. If it was one kind of skin cancer, one medical comparison would be relevant; if it was another, the comparison would change. So the medical literature shows that spontaneous regression is possible in some skin cancers, but the missing biopsy leaves the exact comparison unresolved.

Biopsy status in formal review

Formal Catholic review processes such as Lourdes or canonization causes require a confirmed baseline diagnosis before a healing case can advance. The absence of a published biopsy does not establish that the diagnosis was wrong, but it does explain why this case remains a testimony-based file rather than a formal medical dossier.

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How the testimony has circulated publicly

Most public coverage of this story comes from evangelical Christian media. One regional secular outlet also profiled it:

• Colorado Springs Gazette (December 18, 2021): A faith/values section feature, “God’s still in the miracles business,” grouping Hoesch with other claimed supernatural experiences.^[7]

Everything else located for this page comes from Andrew Wommack Ministries, related faith-based outlets, or Hoesch’s own ministry.

How the testimony is framed

Andrew Wommack Ministries frames healing through a Word of Faith lens: believers should see healing as something already provided by Christ and received by faith. Hoesch’s story is consistently told inside that framework, and that shapes how the public sources interpret the event.

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References

1. Mike Hoesch, Healing Journeys Today. “Episode 02: Healed of Cancer — Introducing Mike Hoesch.” The fullest first-person account located for the diagnosis, deterioration, faith shift, and reported disappearance of the lesion. Public team page available at: https://www.healingjourneystoday.com/about
2. Mike Hoesch Ministries Inc. — ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer (EIN: 46-3623462). Tax-exempt status granted October 2014. Available at: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/463623462
3. Andrew Wommack Ministries. “Power of a Testimony” and “Healing Journeys.” Current ministry pages preserving the written public summary of Hoesch’s cancer testimony and its continuing circulation in the Andrew Wommack ecosystem. Available at: https://www.awmi.net/browse-teaching/power-of-a-testimony/ and https://www.awmi.net/healingjourney/
4. Papac, R.J. (1998). “Spontaneous regression of cancer.” European Journal of Cancer, 34(8), 1131–1135. — Establishes the background rate of spontaneous cancer regression across all types at approximately 1 in 60,000–100,000. See also: PMC8271173, “The spontaneous remission of cancer: Current insights.”
5. Vesely, M.D. & Kerr, J.P. (2014). “Complete spontaneous regression of Merkel cell carcinoma: case report and literature review.” Dermatology Online Journal, PMC4336382. — Review of 22 documented cases of complete spontaneous MCC regression; establishes immune-mediated mechanism as primary hypothesis. The most documented spontaneous regressor among cutaneous malignancies.
6. Cirillo, F. et al. (2015). “Spontaneous Regression of Primitive Merkel Cell Carcinoma.” International Medical Case Reports Journal, PMC4703916. — Additional case documentation and literature review. Hoesch’s tumor type has not been publicly identified as MCC or any other specific subtype; this literature is cited to show that spontaneous cutaneous regression is documented in medical literature.
7. Mike Hoesch Ministries. “About Us.” Ministry biography page tying the healing testimony to the later Hoesch ministry launched with his wife Caroline. Available at: https://mikehoeschministries.com/about-us/