Kathy Keller clarifies husband Tim's health: 'Your prayers are working'

Kathy Keller, the wife of Timothy Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, New York and bestselling author, has “hijacked” her husband’s Twitter account to clarify details of her husband’s battle with cancer.

“Hello! This Kathy Keller, hijacking Tim’s Twitter feed again. I want to say thanks for all the faithful prayers for Tim. God has heard your prayers, and they have preserved Tim mightily! I do want to clarify something that may have caused confusion:” Kathy tweeted.

“When Tim recently tweeted his appreciation for God’s sovereignty as he faces Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, many people thought his cancer had advanced to Stage 4. Not true! It has always been Stage 4 since Tim’s diagnosis in March 2020,” she continued in a second tweet.

“Through God’s mercy and your prayers, there has been remarkable improvement in the last 18 months — in fact, his doctors are using words like “fantastic” and “dramatic” to describe the progress. Your prayers are working!”

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“As Tim begins a new round of chemotherapy this week, we hope you will pray for continued effectiveness of the treatment with even fewer side effects. Thanks again for the outpouring of love and support. We are grateful and ask for your continued prayers. -KK”.

“When Tim recently tweeted his appreciation for God’s sovereignty as he faces Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, many people thought his cancer had advanced to Stage 4…” – Kathy Keller

Twitter users who had been concerned by (Tim) Keller’s earlier tweet welcomed Kathy’s four-tweet clarification. A flood of responses expressing gratitude to Kathy, expressions of encouragement and assurances of prayer followed.

In March this year, Keller published an extended piece in The Atlantic detailing the insights on death he has received from his cancer battle.

“I have spent a good part of my life talking with people about the role of faith in the face of imminent death. Since I became an ordained Presbyterian minister in 1975, I have sat at countless bedsides, and occasionally even watched someone take their final breath. I recently wrote a small book, On Death, relating a lot of what I say to people in such times. But when, a little more than a month after that book was published, I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, I was still caught unprepared,” he wrote.

“One of the first things I learned was that religious faith does not automatically provide solace in times of crisis,” Keller revealed.

“Despite my rational, conscious acknowledgment that I would die someday, the shattering reality of a fatal diagnosis provoked a remarkably strong psychological denial of mortality.”

Christians across the breadth of the Church respect Keller for his work as a founding pastor, thinker and author. His books often tackle life’s most challenging questions, the vast array including titles such as The Reason for God: Belief in an age of scepticism, The Prodigal God, and Making sense of God: An invitation to the sceptical. With over 1 million copies of Keller’s books sold worldwide and with his work translated into 15 languages, Keller is one of Christianity’s top-selling contemporary authors.