Is healing
for us today? I believe it is. There are some who believe that the power to
heal went out with the days of the apostles. I have seen too many instances of
God’s miraculous power to accept this. Allow me to tell you about one of them.
After church
one Sunday I went with my brother John and his family to the beach in Gulfport,
Ms. When we got to the beach the tide was out so we decided to wade out as far
as we could. We were at a place called Moses Pier. At that place you can go out
quite a distance from shore during low tide. Once the tide started to come in
we had to hurry to beat it back to the shore.
As we neared
the beach someone began to yell, “There is a man in the water.” My brother and
another man hurried back to see. There was a man unconscious in the water near
the end of the pier. The man, whom I will refer to as Jack Smith, had dove off
of the pier into three feet of water. They began to pull him back to shore with
John asking if anyone knew CPR. The man who was helping John pull Jack out of
the water was yelling the whole time, “don’t bother, this man is dead”. They
got him to the beach and someone began to do CPR. It was evident after a few
moments that CPR was not working. There were two nurses at the scene who also
said he was dead.
John knelt
down and put his hand on the man’s chest and began to pray saying, “Not now
Jesus. Please don’t let this man go into eternity”. In a few minutes he felt
the man’s heart beat one time. Then it began to beat more steadily. When the
ambulance crew got there the man was still unconscious but he was alive.
When the
beach patrol showed up, one of the policemen identified the man as Jack Smith and said he
was an alcoholic. He implied that we should have left him in the water to
drown. My brother looked at him and said, “Man you don’t know what I was before
God changed my life.” No one is beyond the reach of God’s love.
Later John
was able to visit Jack in the hospital. He was paralyzed from the neck down but
conscious and able to talk. He thanked John for praying for him and helping to
get him out of the water. I don’t know where Jack is today but this event will
be forever imprinted on my mind as a testimony to the miraculous power of our
God. I can honestly say I have seen someone raised from the dead.