Back From The Dead

                                   "Oh Lord, give me a simple heart to believe your word."

Excerpt From: A Rushing Mighty Wind by Mel Tari

Mel Tari and others had been instructed by the Spirit of God to pray for a woman who had died, and God said he would raise her from the dead. Because of their unbelief, they did not obey God and the Lord showed them that it was his will to have raised her from the dead that His name would be glorified. They prayed and asked the Lord for forgiveness and said:

"Lord, if you give us another opportunity we really want to believe your word."

Not too long after that, we were in another village called Amfoang where a man had died. He had been dead not only for a few minutes but for two days. The family invited us to the funeral because there were many people planning to come -- as a matter of fact, hundreds -- and they said, "Maybe you would have a word of comfort to give the family." So we went. 

When we arrived there, there were more than a thousand people. That man had been dead for two days and was very stinky. In our tropical country, when you're dead six hours, you start to decay. But after two days -- Oh, I tell you, you couldn't stand within 100 feet of him. You smelled that smell and it was awful. In America, you cannot understand that because in your funeral services, they make everything very good. But it is because of your $2,000. In Indonesia, we don't have a way to make a dead person look so nice. The people there just look terrible in two days after they have died.

When we were there and sitting with the mourners, suddenly the Lord said, "Now please go and stand around that dead person, sing songs, and I will raise him back from the dead."

When my brother-in-law told me that, I said, "Oh, dear! The first time, the lady was dead only a few minutes. That was different. Now we will really get into trouble. This man has been dead two days. Oh no, this is too much!"  My computer was working again. Their computers were working, too. We began to wonder, shall we do it or not? All of a sudden, we remembered how sad we had been when we failed to trust the Word of God. So I just prayed, "Oh Lord, give me a simple heart to believe your word."

I remembered the Scripture as Jesus came to the city of Jericho. Zacchaeus was waiting for Jesus, but he was waiting for Him in the wrong place. He was up in a tree. Jesus said, "Zacchaeus come down." The Lord visited with him in his house and Zacchaeus was so happy. He probably had to come down five or six feet out of the tree to find Jesus. But I believe we in this modern age don't need to come down three, four, or six feet because we are not in trees. We only need to come down about a foot -- from our minds to our hearts. We have all the words of God in our minds, and we do all the figuring out there, and we have lost the power of God. If we would only put the Word of God one foot down from our minds to our hearts, I am certain we could see the power of God move in a mighty way today. 

Then I said to the Lord, "Oh, Lord, please give me a simple heart, and move in our midst." So we decided in unison that we would obey the Lord because we had failed Him before. And we did. 

We went and stood around this dead person. We began to sing. You know that time, the devil said to me, "It is awful for you to sing by this stinky man. When you are 100 feet away, it is bad enough. But now that you are standing near this dead person, when you open your mouth all that filth and stench comes in your mouth. It is foolish to do that."

This is true, but I must still obey the Lord," I thought. So we began to sing. But after the first song, nothing had taken place. So we started to wonder, "Lord if you're going to raise him up, please do it quickly, because we can't stand to stay around this stinky man. We just can't sing any more songs by this terrible smell."

Then we sang a second song, and nothing happened.

On the fifth song, nothing happened. But on the sixth song, that man began to move his toes -- and the team began to get scared. We have a story in Indonesia, that sometimes when people die, they wake up and hug a person by their coffin and then die again. However, we just went ahead and sang. When we sang the seventh and eighth songs, that brother woke up, looked around and smiled.

He didn't hug anybody. He just opened his mouth and [said], 

"Jesus has brought me back to life. Brothers and sisters, I want to tell you something. First, life never ends when you die. I've  been dead two days, and I've experienced it." 

The second thing he said was, 

"Hell and heaven are real. I have experienced it. The third thing I want to tell you is, if you don't find Jesus in this life, you will never go to heaven. You will be condemned to hell for sure."

After he had said these things, we opened our Bible and confirmed his testimony by the Word of God. He not only found Jesus Christ as his Savior, but in that area, more that 21,000 people came to know Jesus Christ as their Savior, because of the ministry of this man. 

Source: A Rushing Mighty Wind by Mel Tari with Cliff Dudley (Chapter 8 Pg.76-78)