Last thread someone was talking about how Bethel Church is California was mounting an effort to raise a toddler from the dead.

It is commonly believed in evangelical circles that God can raise people from the dead and that followers of Jesus have this ability. Of course Jesus was the most famous resurrection but the gospels also tell the story of how Christ himself told Lazarus to “Come out!” After the latter was presumed dead.

Also referenced is the valley of the dry bones from the book of Ezekiel in which the aforementioned prophet has a vision of a valley filled dry bones (skeletons of which all the flesh has been eroded away) where God commanded him to tell the bones to come back to life in the name of the Lord. This is exactly what happened. Flesh, muscle and tendon appeared and reattached themselves to the bones and they bodies become alive again. It is important to note though that as previously mentioned the Bible itself mentions this was a VISION and not something that supposedly actually happened.

Nevertheless, the dry bone story is mentioned in a lot of sermons and even modern Christian music as an example of how God can, at His will, allow us to overcome even death itself.

Now of course, Christianity isn’t the only old religion or system of beliefs of which resurrection is accepted as something that is physically possible. However most of these purported resurrections are likely more a result of the limited medical knowledge of the early centuries than anything else. Heck, even zombie stories are about a form of resurrection.

There are medical conditions that can make people appear dead when they are in fact alive. Someone in a prolonged vegetative state or a coma for example. In fact, even up to the 19th century some cemeteries would attach a bell to gravestones which would be a connected to a mechanism inside a casket so that if someone in a coma or what have you was mistakenly buried and came to shortly thereafter, they could ring the bell to alert people in the cemetery that “hey, you need to dig me out of here!”.

So going back to Bethel and why they are singling out this little girl among other dead children. Odds are this girl may be related to someone in the Church or they are just going with: “God put it on my heart that we need to pray for this child.” Typically though, the decision of attempting to specifically resurrect someone is only done when there’s a very a specific motivator so I think a family or personal connection is involved in this one.

I am of course a Christian myself and while I can believe that God could resurrect Jesus I’m not sure about human beings being able to supernaturally resurrect other human beings. If it is possible, I’ve never seen it first hand.