What About the Dead?¶

The objection¶

Two questions arrive together, and they are not the same.

The first is general. If the gifts are for today, why do believers still die? The church prays, and the church buries; the mortality rate is unchanged. A healing gift that leaves the grave as full as ever looks less like a gift than a rumour.

The second is harder. Some continuationists claim the dead have been raised. If that is true, it is the most important news in the world; if it is false, it is a scandal, and it is being sold.

What Scripture records¶

Scripture is not shy about resurrections. Elijah raises the widow of Zarephath's son (1 Kings 17:17-24); Elisha raises the Shunammite's son (2 Kings 4:32-37); a dead man revives at Elisha's bones (2 Kings 13:21). Jesus raises the widow of Nain's son (Luke 7:11-17) and Lazarus (John 11:38-44). Peter raises Tabitha (Acts 9:36-42); Paul raises Eutychus (Acts 20:7-12). The mission charge includes it: "Heal the sick, raise the dead" (Matthew 10:8).

Every one was a resuscitation, and every one died again. Lazarus came out of the tomb; he did not ascend. Tabitha was given back to her sewing for a season. The biblical raisings were signs pointing forward, not the arrival of the thing signified.

Only Christ's resurrection is permanent. "We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him" (Romans 6:9). He is "the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20) — the first sheaf of a harvest still standing in the field.

The modern claims, and how to grade them¶

Claims that the dead have been raised are made today, especially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and among the poor the health system has given up on. I have not seen one that would survive the tests this casebook sets out, and I will not pretend otherwise.

The difficulties are practical, not mainly prejudice. Was death medically confirmed? Is there a record made before the event? Can the person be examined now, and is the account independent of the movement reporting it? Where a comatose patient can look dead to a crowd, "he was dead and came back" may be true in the teller's experience without being a resurrection. Sometimes CPR or a corrected diagnosis is the answer.

The honest grade for the best of these reports is reported, not documented. Some may be true, some misdiagnosis. How to weigh a testimony applies here too.

What the site does not rest on¶

This casebook makes no modern resurrection claim load-bearing, and neither should the reader. The argument stands on Scripture: the command to desire the gifts, the absence of any text predicting their cessation, the horizon of 1 Corinthians 13. Withdraw every modern report and not a line would change. A defence that needs a particular grave to be empty now has stopped trusting the promise and started needing a trophy (what this site does and does not claim).

The sign, not the substitute¶

Healing and raising are signs of the resurrection, not a substitute for it.

Jesus answers John the Baptist's disciples with the prophets: "the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them" (Matthew 11:5). The works are signs of the age to come breaking in, not the age itself. That is why the Jesus who raised Lazarus wept at his grave (John 11:35), and why Lazarus still died.

The church's hope is not that we will never bury anyone; it is that the graves will give their dead back: "we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:23). "The last enemy to be destroyed is death" (1 Corinthians 15:26), and it has not been destroyed yet. Every healing is a down payment on that day. None of them is the day.

The pastoral caution¶

Raising the dead is not a technique, and it must not be sold as one.

There is no formula, posture, or volume of faith that guarantees it. Elijah stretched himself over the child and cried to the Lord (1 Kings 17:21); Peter knelt down and prayed (Acts 9:40); Paul bent over Eutychus and embraced him (Acts 20:10). These are prayer and presence, not method. Turn them into a method and the grieving become a test of it, and blame falls on people already carrying too much — the harm when healing does not come exists to name.

So the calling is quieter than the claims. Pray for the dying, boldly and specifically; sit with them, manage their pain, and never tell anyone to stop treatment. When death comes, bury the dead with hope: a funeral is a gospel proclamation, not a defeat. "We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13). The gifts are given to a body that is still mortal, and a church that can pray for the sick, care for the dying, and bury its dead without despair is not lacking faith (the gifts in the church).

What this does and does not prove¶

It proves: that Scripture records real resurrections and promises a final one; that every biblical raising was a resuscitation whose subject died again; that healing is a sign of the resurrection rather than its replacement; and that the modern claims are reported rather than documented.

It does not prove: that God cannot raise the dead today, that every modern claim is false, or that the church should stop praying for the dying. It proves that the grave is not the measure of the gift — the resurrection is.