"A last warning..."?
Dear friends:
The below is a totally fascinating story. I am familiar with evangelist Reinhard Bonnke, a man of great faith whom I have always admired. Note at the end that the man who was resurrected said that while dead he had been told this is "a last warning to this generation." Bonnke's Web site is at http://www.cfan.org/offices/usa/cfanusa.htm
Jim
FROM CHARISMA NEWS - http://www.strang.com
LEAD STORY: by Andy Butcher
Reinhard Bonnke Video Documents Modern-Day Lazarus
Nigerian certified dead, but revived days later at evangelist's meeting
The dramatic documentary of a modern-day Lazarus has been released by
international evangelist Reinhard Bonnke. The German preacher who has
led crusades in Africa for 30 years says that the remarkable
resurrection of Daniel Ekechukwu is so well-documented that no one can
be unaffected by the report.
Bonnke's Christ for All Nations (CfAN) ministry has released a 45-minute
video of Ekechukwu's testimony, and also reported at its Web site how
the Nigerian pastor had been certified dead and injected with embalming
fluids before reviving three days later at a Bonnke meeting.
Ekechukwu's wife was so sure that God would bring her husband back to
life after he was fatally injured in an auto accident that she persuaded
the local mortuary to allow her to take his body to the church where
Bonnke was preaching.
There pastors lifted Ekechukwu from the coffin in which he had been
laid, and were amazed when the man started to breathe again as they
prayed for him. The CfAN video includes footage of Ekechukwu beginning
to stir, and later returning to the mortuary where his body had been
laid out.
The "Raised from the Dead" report, subtitled "A 21st Century
Resurrection Story," features interviews with one of the doctors who
certified Ekechukwu dead, and the mortician. "It's shocking," one of
them tells the video team. "Seeing a dead man, someone that was once
dead and is now alive...it is very shocking. To God all glory should
go."
Nneka Ekechukwu says that when her husband was pronounced dead after
last November's accident, she remembered promises God had given her that
she would not suffer any more misfortune. "I said: 'This can't happen. I
must do something, to prove God again.'"
On the third day after the accident, Ekechukwu's body was taken in its
coffin to a church in Ontisha, where Bonnke was preaching at a service.
The body was taken out of its coffin and put on a table in the church's
conference center, where several pastors began to pray.
Senior pastor Pat Nwachkuw Sr. tells the CfAN documentary makers that
when members of the church learned about Ekechwuku's resurrection, a
woman who had been on crutches threw them away and started running, and
her husband ran to the church altar to ask God to forgive him his sins.
Interviewed by CfAN, Ekechukwu says when he was being taken to the
hospital in the ambulance, he was visited by two angels and taken to
heaven. There he saw a "multitude" of people dressed in white who were
singing and praising God. Then he was taken to hell, he says.
The angel told him that he had "another chance" to go back, and that the
rich man's request to Lazarus -- to warn those still alive about hell --
had been "granted to this generation." Ekechukwu said that he had been
told he could return to the living to give "a last warning to this
generation."
In commentary on the video, Bonnke says that the testimony -- which has
been reported in Nigerian newspapers -- spoke of "stubborn faith and the
miracle power of Jesus." Ekechukwu's story is a "sign from heaven," he
says.