One evening, in a small village in Central Luzon, I was preaching in a dusty plaza and a commotion took place in the crowd. A 78-year-old grandfather appeared and suddenly died. I stopped and tried to get to him so I could pray for him, but the villagers had formed a human wailing ring around him..
TThe women wore western-style dresses and modern hairstyles but were jumping up and down on the spot with arms linked and shrieking loudly with grief. After ten minutes or so, I found a way to get close to the table on which they had laid the elderly gentleman. His family and friends had poured water onto his face in a desperate effort to revive him. I circled the crowd to where he was and realized that if I were to reach under the armpit of a man closest to the dead man, I would be able to touch his head. After placing my fingertips on his forehead I said, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command life to come back into this body!”
When I did a gust of ‘wind’ from my wrist passed through my left hand and entered his head through my fingertips. The elderly man then suddenly sat up, threw his legs over the edge of the table, and walked away as if nothing had happened! The crowd went wild with joy, and his adult daughter hugged me tightly and jumped up and down crying loudly and shaking from head to foot with relief.
I‘ve seen many dramatic things around the world – especially in Cornwall and on the English Channel Island of Jersey; but seeing a dead man come alive was about the most spectacular. Hollywood-style miracles of healing are accompanied with blinding flashes of lightning and drum rolls of thunder — like in those films which portray Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.
In the days that followed the grandfather’s life-restorative miracle revival after being dead for ten minutes, I found myself wondering What next? One after thirty minutes? Or an hour? I love seeing the Lord do healing miracles, but after this one I returned to the nearby Rhema Christian Training Center to teach, leaving the more spectacular highlights in ministry to the other team members.