For two and a half weeks I conducted meetings mostly in the Eglise El Shaddai. My dear friends Isabelle and Olivier Derain of France are pastors of that young and thriving eglise, (that's French for church.)
The meetings were supernatural, but they were not so spectacular that they took your breath away. I wasn't crusading, but teaching and building church, supporting the work of the Derains in their daytime bibleschool and in evening meetings.
About fifty people got saved and many more than that were healed of sometimes pretty good-sized ailments. A father for instance had brought his child, who had been diagnosed by two hospitals as incurably sick of the heart. The child was healed when hands were laid on him, as was the father who parted with an old "friend" - as he termed it: a chronic and painful liver problem. (Probably a Hepatitis of some sort, which is very prevalent in Africa.) Many others - scores - got healed of back problems, intestinal problems, liver problems. Legs grew out. Malaria vanished.
A few devils came out.
In one meeting outside of Bujumbura, I prayed for the sick until dusk set in. (Then a gentleman in a long blue trench coat appeared out of the dark, brandishing his trusty old Kalashnikov AK-47. He was friendly, but my hosts put me and my co-worker into the car and drove us off, anyway.)
I was also asked to go to hospitals and to people's private homes to pray for them. One request was to come to the ICU ward at Hôpital Roi Khaled to see a beautiful lady of about fourty years of age, who had slipped into a coma by reason of a heart attack. We checked the schedule and found Monday the 17th of May, 5.30 pm, to be a good time to see her.
Well, I met her, but not at the Hôpital. Instead we drove to her house that Monday. Word had it that she had been released from the clinic that very day. In Africa that doesn't mean anything, since they release sick people to die at home. But we found that she had been released because of a clean bill of health, not because she was given up to die!
Came to find out, she had already died at the hospital!
She told us the most marvellous story.
On Monday the 10th of May Martine went to her cardiologist because of a known heart problem that had given her severe trouble for quite some time. There - at the doctor's - she had a heart attack, passed out and fell into a coma. She was transferred to the Roi Khaled for intensive care.
At that time I was asked to come and pray for her, which I didn't do because of my maxed out schedule.
On Sunday, May 16th, her ailing heart stopped. Martine died.
A cardiologist frantically tried to reanimate her, but to no avail. Despite all his efforts: her pulse remained non-existent.
Finally the exhausted doctor gave up and resigned himself to the death of his young patient.
Her father and mother, her brother and sister then gathered around the body. They weren't born again christians. She had been a catholic. I assume her family was, too.
As the realization dawned on the strained family's mind that she was dead and gone for good, hot tears welled up and the agony and pain of mourning set in.
After about twenty minutes the unconsoled family heard somebody laugh.
The laughter didn't subside. As the weepers looked at who laughed, Martine opened her eyes and kept on laughing. She sat up. Then - still laughing - she rose from her deathbed and told them her version of the story.
She doesn't have any recollection of her time in the coma. All she remembers is that she was on the way to her doctor and passed out. Then she died.
Her next memory is Jesus.
She saw the Lord at a few yards distance. He wore a red robe.
Jesus stood, waved at her with both hands and laughed.
When he laughed, she had to laugh, too.
As she laughed and laughed, she woke up to life in the circle of weepers.
The stunned doctors at Roi Khaled examined and reexamined her. They couldn't find anything wrong with her. No trace of her former condition was found. So she was pronounced well by these authorities and released from the hospital on Monday the 17th. Later that day we met her and discussed her experience with her.
Martine appeared as healthy and agile as I have ever seen anybody. Seeing her, you would never have believed that this woman had been comatose and in intensive care for a week. It was glorious.
Gloire à Dieu!
Raising the dead is nothing new to Jesus. He did it several times in the gospels. As a matter of fact, I even see a "system" in the three recorded instances where Jesus raised the dead.
He raised the daughter of Jairus. (Mark 5, 41.)
He raised the widow's son at Nain. (Luke 7, 14.)
Jesus raised Lazarus, his friend, from the dead. (John 11, 43.)
(The city of Nain was at almost exactly the same site as the city of Shunem had been, where Elisha had raised another young man from the dead 850 years before.)
The girl had just died.
The widow's son had recently died.
Lazarus had been dead for a long time.
The girl's body was still warm.
The boy's body was stone cold.
Lazarus' body was in decay, to put it nicely.
The girl was lying in her bed, not ready to be interred.
The boy was lying on a funeral bier on his way to the cemetary, ready to be interred.
Lazarus was lying in his tomb in the cemetary, already interred.
Jesus took the girl by the hand and spoke words of life to her: "Talitha kumi!"
Jesus touched the boy's bier and spoke words of life to him: "Young man, I say unto thee, Arise."
Jesus ordered the stone to be rolled away and again spoke words of life: "Lazarus, come forth."
The daughter was restored to the father, Jairus.
The son was restored to the mother, the widow.
The brother was restored to the sisters, Mary and Martha.
(The widow's only son was her old age insurance. In the last few decades social security has supplanted the family. But the family is God's original design for mutual and old age insurance. Or what did you think the commandment means when it says: "Honour thy father and mother"?)
Jesus went progressively from faith to faith, from power to power, from glory to glory.
I personally believe he was just gearing up for his own resurrection, the greatest one of all.
Figure: myriads of men had gone into the place of judgement. And not one single, solitary soul who went in ever came back out. Positively nobody!
(Dante Alighieri, author of the Divine Comedy, places this superscription over the entrance of hell: "O ye who enter here: surrender all hope," and he is right. There is no hope in hell!) Jesus is the only sin-laden spirit, (burdened not with any sin of his own but with our sin), who ever went in, sunk into the deepest depths of the heart of the earth, AND CAME BACK OUT.
Talk about faith.
Jesus, our substitute, came back after three days and nights by virtue of his own righteousness! He is the First Born from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. (Colossians 1, 18.)
Jona's three days and three nights in the hot belly of the great fish are a type and a shadow of just that. (Matth. 12, 40.) And no, Jona did not have a good time being slowly digested by that creature.
Jesus does great things for people he meets in passing, like the widow and Jairus.
But his greatest works he does for his friends: the wealthy family of Bethany had hosted him many times. He had been their guest on numerous occasions. They had honored him with gifts and a place of rest in his days of trouble. In turn he raised their dead!
Honor him and he might just "raise you from the dead," too.
Isn't the bible a marvellous book?
And - as Martine in Bujumbura proves: Jesus is still the same today!
Your friend,
Gert Hoinle, Editor of Teaching News
P.S.: I covet your prayers as I travel into the Himalayan Kingdom of Nepal in a few days. I will "hit the ground running," as I will begin to minister on the day of my arrival. (Just like I did in Africa.) I will let you know how it went. G.H.