Doug called for his parents, Sherri and John, and told them the wax had formed into a likeness of Jesus, just before midnight at the start of Holy Week.
"I turned it on and I saw it," Doug said. "My heart kept beating. I was so surprised about it. It was just awesome. I wasn't scared. It was just amazing."
The normally black wax in the lamp formed a swirling shape, much like that of a spiral staircase. In the middle of the tall, reddish-purple swirl is what appears to be a flesh-colored likeness of Jesus' face looking downward, complete with a brown beard.
In one photo Doug took of the lamp, it appears that Jesus is wearing the crown of thorns. His mother, Sherri, likened the image to that of many renderings of Christ on the cross.
Doug, a freshman at Luther East High School in Lansing, was so excited about what he saw in the lamp that he called his brother, Chad, at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais and told him to come home to see it.
"At first, I wasn't really sure," said Chad, 23, who came home the next night. "I thought it would look similar, like an outline or something. I wasn't expecting to see the features so prominently."
As the week progressed, the family told a few friends and neighbors, who came by to see it. The Gehrings said they knew people would think they were nuts, until they came and saw it for themselves.
"Everyone just kind of gasps and then they say they get goosebumps or the chills," Sherri, the boys' mother, said.
The Christian family is adamant that they do not believe they have been visited by Christ, that the lamp or their home are holy or that they have been party to a miracle.
"We don't feel that we are any more special than any other family," Sherri said. "We think it is special that it happened, but we certainly don't believe that this is Jesus or that we're special because of it. What we do feel honored about is that the Lord has sacrificed, what he did for us."
The family plans to keep the lamp as it is and is being careful not to leave the lamp on for too long for fear it will heat the wax and lose the likeness of Christ. The Gehrings say they'll continue to show it to some friends and family members, but don't want a parade of uninvited visitors.
"It's just exciting that a 15-year-old can get ready for bed, turn on the light he's had for four years and see this," Sherri said. "He said to me, 'Mom, man didn't do this.'"
