Modern Day Resurrections

As a Christian I often used to hear stories of amazing miracles happening overseas. Usually in out of the way places, stories that couldn’t be verified, that were handed from one person to the next like a game of Chinese Whispers. Pastors would stand up there in front of the congregation relaying these stories and the congregation would go “Wow! Praise the Lord! Hallelujah!” and believe them without question just as the pastor had.

One of the stories I heard was about resurrections occurring and these seemed to be happening in tribes in deepest darkest Africa or some other third world country full of superstitious people. Funny how these types of things never happen in modern society where autopsies are done and coroner’s reports and death certificates are written up.  Instead we have stories coming from places like Africa where the most likely scenario is that some witchdoctor has deemed a person to be dead and then a short while later they regained consciousness.

Let’s face it, if it was possible for resurrections to occur and these types of miracles really were happening, we’d be seeing them in the modern society. There would be no doubt about them and they would be easily verifiable. After all, when somebody dies in the western world and you have a body, then they will always go through a coroner. They will always have a death certificate and then, if not cremated, they will most likely be buried six feet under the ground. You can be well and truly certain they are dead once the funeral is complete. There can be no mistake once that body is buried and rested for several days that they ain’t coming back from the dead unless by a bon-a-fide miracle. But we don’t see this and rightfully so. Once you’re dead and you’ve been dead for a couple of days you’re not coming back. That’s an absolute fact.

The bible tells us stories about Jesus and Lazarus rising from the dead. Of course they didn’t have an autopsy done on them, nor was there a registered expert there signing off their death certificate. They weren’t buried six feet under the ground. They were put into tombs by family members… pretty much rooms that could be sealed or unsealed so that people could go in and tend to the dead bodies with perfumes and what not to keep their cadavers as fresh and nice smelling for as long as possible. If Lazarus and Jesus were supposedly resurrected we have no way of knowing exactly whether they were really dead or even if they were the original person who was laid to rest there.

Modern day graveyards aren’t easy to remove bodies from without making it obvious, but when tombs are involved it wouldn’t be that difficult. Take a look at the story of the resurrection of Jesus. Thomas didn’t believe it was Jesus!  A guy he hung out with day in and day out. Hellooooooo? Could it be that it wasn’t Jesus at all? In modern society, you can’t just dig up a grave, take away a body and then have a lookalike turn up one day saying they’re that person. DNA tests would easily prove you a fraud. But there were no DNA tests in Jesus day.

People, let’s just stop with the perpetuation of lies. People don’t rise from the dead. Just because you heard a story from the pulpit or somebody emailed you a story, or a website promotes some story, doesn’t make it true. No matter how much you want to believe in resurrections, let's try to be rational here. People being resurrected from the dead is a fantasy. 

Even if they were registered clinically dead and then regained consciousness a short while later while still on the operating table, that is also not a resurrection. If people could be resurrected it would be a common miracle in modern society and it would be on the 6 o'clock news and on the front page of newspapers, after all stories like that would get huge ratings and that's what the media wants - huge ratings.

But of course we know that when people have been officially registered as dead and are buried six feet under the ground they ain’t coming back from the dead. It just doesn’t happen except on zombie movies.