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“After praying over a freezer for more than two hours, a preacher admitted Sunday that he had failed to raise his mother from the dead” (Fort Worth Star Telegram, 3/13/78, p. 3). So reads the report of Daniel Aaron Rogers, who froze the corpse of his mother when she died February 2, 1978 in Harrison Arkansas. The evangelist had recruited three other preachers to help him and “tried everything Jesus told us to do” but his mother’s body remained lifeless. “We don’t know what went wrong,” Rogers lamented. With no intention of impugning Mr. Rogers’ sincerity or zeal, we will suggest some reasons for his failure.
- We commend Rogers for his consistency. Most of those who claim to have miraculous powers comparable to those of Jesus and His apostles claim those which are relatively “easy” for anyone to simulate (e.g., speaking in “tongues,” “interpreting tongues,” “healing” internal ailments, etc). Rogers attempted the hardest miracle, in that it allowed for no ambiguity of success: either the corpse would remain dead, or it would revive. Let it be noted that if modern “miracle-workers” really had God’s power, they could raise the dead as easily as they could heal the sick or speak in tongues. The fact that none have been able to raise the dead since the apostles did it (Acts 9:36–42; 20:9–12) is evidence that miraculous powers did not extend beyond the beginning years of Christianity.
- Rogers is mistaken when he says that Jesus commanded him to heal the sick and raise the dead, as the news story quotes him. The only persons Jesus ever commanded to raise the dead were His apostles (Mat. 10:8). If Mr. Rogers is serious about applying this passage to himself and to others now, then he must preach only to Jews, preach that the kingdom (the church) has not yet come, but is “at hand,” cleanse lepers and cast out demons, all of which are specifically commanded in the context (Mat. 10:5–8). Such a gross mishandling of the Word of God as to apply the limited commission of the apostles indiscriminately would be ludicrous were it not so tragic.
- Rogers failed, simply because no one can now work the miracles that were performed by the Lord, His apostles, and those upon whom they laid their hands. It was their function to establish and confirm the Word of God (Heb. 2:3–4) and when this was completed, miracles passed from the scene by Divine plan (1 Cor. 13:9–10).
[Note: I wrote this article for, and it was published in the March 16, 1978, edition of the Granbury Gospel, weekly bulletin of the Granbury Church of Christ, Granbury, Texas, of which I was editor.
Attribution: From thescripturecache.com; Dub McClish, owner and administrator.
“Which one is easier?” Jesus asked. But if Elisha’s bones could raise the dead, but could in no way forgive sins, then we know that raising the dead is easier. Seeing that Christianity can never raise the dead, there is no reason to believe that it can ever lead to the forgiveness of sins either.
Hello Gordon,
Thank you for visiting The Scripture Cache and for responding to one of my articles. I apologize for the unavoidable tardiness of my response. Your use of and conclusions from various Biblical contexts are classic illustrations of comparing “apples and oranges.” Please consider the following:
1. Elisha’s bones didn’t raise the dead man whose carcass touched the prophet’s bones. God raised the dead man by empowering Elisha’s bones to do so (2 Kin. 13:20–21). Besides, that occasion had nothing to do with forgiveness of anyone’s sins, except perhaps to illustrate God’s unlimited power relating to man’s welfare, including forgiveness of sins.
2. Claiming to be a follower of Christ (i.e, a “Christian,” as the preachers in the news story I referenced claimed) does not make one such. Faithful obedience to God’s Word is the “acid test” of being Jesus’ disciple (Mat. 7:21–23; Luke 6:46; 9:23; etc.).
3. Your conclusion that a failed resurrection attempt by some claiming to be Christians in 1978 implies that “Christianity can never raise the dead” is totally unwarranted. The said preachers are far from being “Christians” in any Biblical sense. Faithful Christians have not attempted to raise the dead for almost twenty centuries. They know that the age of such miraculous manifestations ended when the last one upon whom the longest surviving apostle (John) had conferred a miraculous gift died—likely no later than the mid second century A.D. (see my article, “The All-Sufficiency of the Scriptures and the Cessation of Miracles.” It’s on the “Longer Articles” page of this site.
The Jewish scribes who were present when Jesus healed the lame man were right in their private reasonings, “Who can forgive sins [ie., in the ultimate sense] but God?” (Mark 2:7). They understood that Jesus’ pronouncement of forgiveness of the man’s sins was a claim of His Godhood. In His sacrificial death on the cross and His resurrection the third day thereafter, He became the sin offering/redeemer/reconciler for all men——the only One through Whom God can forgive our sins (John 3:16). Our sins, if unforgiven at the time of The Judgment, will cause us to be separated from God and cast into the fires of Hell with Satan and all his servants for eternity. If you have not submitted your will to the Will/Word of Jesus the Christ by obeying His Gospel, I beg of you to do so while you still time to do so.
Cordially yours,
Dub McClish