The Book Of Daniel Ekechukwu
Nigerian Pastor who was raised from dead
in 3 days!
Introduction
On November 30, 2001, Pastor Daniel Ekechukwu's brakes failed and his car slammed into a
concrete pillar. He was rushed to a Nigerian hospital. His condition was
serious.
For some reason, Daniel wanted
doctors to transfer him to another hospital. The doctors warned that the trip
would kill him. They were right. Daniel's wife remembers her husband's dying
words.
"My husband called to me and
told me that I should take care of the children and the ministry. He said he
had built a house for me, and that I should not worry. I should take care of
everybody. He said that there are some people who are called to go quick (to
die early) and that he was among them," Ekechukwu
said.
Diagnosis And
Prescription
Daniel died on the way to the second
hospital. He was rushed to a Nigerian clinic, where Dr. Josse
Annebunwa was working.
"I was told he was involved in
a motor accident in Onitsha, Nigeria. When I examined him, I looked at the
chest and there were no respiratory movements. I listened with the stethoscope
and there were no breath sounds. I searched the heart and cardiovascular
system, but there were no sounds. The patient had no pulse. I looked at the
eyes - the pupils were fixed and dilated. I came to the conclusion right away
that the patient was dead and that he should be removed to the mortuary," Annebunwa said.
Testimony Of
The Mortician
Mortician Barlington R. Mann remembers when Daniel's
father and wife brought his body into the mortuary.
"There was no life in him, no
heartbeat, and no signs of breathing," said mortician Barlington
R. Mann. "I accepted him as a corpse. After checking these things, I
checked all around the body and everything was stiff. That is what gave us the
conviction to start our embalming procedure. I sent him into the second room
and put him on the last slab."
For three days, Daniel's body lay
there, in the open-air embalming room. During that time, the body was prepared
for burial - including embalming!
Intercession By
The Wife
While they waited for the funeral,
Daniel's wife began to argue with her Maker.
"I began to call on the name of
the Lord. I wanted to remind God of His promises," Daniel's wife said.
"One verse that inspired me was Hebrew 11:35:
'Women received their dead bodies to life.' The moment I read this verse it
strengthened me to hold God firm and act."
Corpse Taken To Prayer Service
Three days after Daniel's death, his
wife decided what she would do. She had heard about a meeting near by-where
miracles were happening. It was a Reinhard Bonnke prayer service. She went to collect her husband's
body.
"Before I could come, they had
the casket ready," she said. "The moment they put him in, I ran
inside the ambulance with my son and his brother, and we started coming down to
this place. And I asked somebody if Bonnke had
come."
Within a short time, they arrived at
the Reinhard Bonnke
service, and asked if they could bring Daniel's body in for prayer.
"I felt that the anointing
would be so strong there and that the anointing would resurrect my
husband," Daniel's wife said.
"They came up to me, and I told them that it would be an embarrassment to
bring a corpse inside a church," said one of the workers at the Bonnke service. "We realized that whatever we do and
wherever we are God is present. If God wants to perform a miracle for the man,
the place where the man is does not really matter."
Raised From The
Dead
They carried Daniel's dead body into
the basement where the service was being held. They laid his body across two
tables, and several pastors began praying for him.
"As we were praying," said
one of the pastors, "suddenly, we saw the eyes started to move and life
started coming in. I said to my friend, Pastor Luke, 'You know, they say that
he was three days in the mortuary. Let us massage him.' So he was there,
massaging the right hand. And I was massaging the left hand. We were squeezing
it, making sure that life returned. We found out that as we were praying, the
heart started to become hot. He was breathing, and we started massaging the
hands. As we massaged the hands, suddenly, it seemed that life came into the
hands, and we put his hands on his chest. I massaged the neck and life came
into it. I was able to turn it."
The pastors around him continued to
massage his body, because after three days in the mortuary, rigor mortis had
set in. As they were doing this, suddenly Daniel jumped to his feet to the
amazement of everyone who looked on! The pastors were unsure what to do next.
"I said let's take him upstairs, and we followed the stairway upstairs. At
the end of the step he said, 'Water, water.' He was asking for water. I
shouted, 'Bring water, bring water. Let’s get him water!' People thronged and
suddenly, we saw people coming from the outside. It seemed that the news went
out and people came in. People came in and they saw the dead man sitting down.
Daniel like Lazarus of old, had been raised from the dead!
The story of his resurrection spread
like wildfire. Everywhere he went, people knew that God had performed a
miracle.
Visit To
Heaven And Hell
In the days and weeks that followed,
Daniel began to share about something that happened to him as his body lay
lifeless in the mortuary. He spoke about a journey with an angel who allowed
him to visit both heaven and hell.
"He told me we are going to
visit paradise," Daniel said. "So, we visited a place. When we
approached the place, I saws multitudes of people that looked exactly like the
one with me, that angel that was with me. The angel with me wore white apparel.
The body was pure white. The apparel was pure white, but the apparel did not
look removable from the body. When I saw this crowd, they looked exactly like
the one with me. In my heart I said, 'Look at where
the angels gather.'"
"After that, he then said, 'Let
us go and visit the mansion that Jesus promised.' He (the angel) now took me to
a wonderful place. In fact, what I saw there, I do not have any words to
describe it. It was so glorious. It was a very wonderful mansion. You could
look at the building and it would look like glass or look like gold or
whatever. Even the flowers there looked like gold.
"Then, the angel said, 'Now,
let us visit hell.' In the twinkle of an eye, we found ourselves in the place.
Immediately the gate opened. I started hearing lamentation. So I looked inside,
and I saw people like us there. They were putting on some clothes.
They had the same flesh; some are
black and some are white. They just looked like us.
They were shouting - there was a lot of pain, a lot of torment. It was to the
extent that immediately when the gate was opened, it was as if they were seeing
me.
They were asking me for help,
shouting. And I remember one. He was shouting. 'I am a pastor, I only stole
church money and I am ready to refund it immediately.' He just said he was
ready to refund it and that I should help. There was a force that was
tormenting them. I never saw any fire there and I never saw any flames in hell,
but the torment there looks as if the people are inside fire.
It was then that the angel declared something to Daniel, that
caused his heart to melt with fear. He told Daniel that he deserved to be in
hell too!
The Request Of The Rich Man In Hell Granted
"So, while I was shouting and asking the angel for help, that I have another
chance to go back, he mentioned this: that the request of the rich man in hell
had been granted to this generation. I did not understand it.
It was later, when I woke up and
read the Bible, that I realized what the request was.
The rich man (in Luke 16) was requesting that a dead man should be sent back to
the world. So, he just said that the request of the rich man had been granted
to this generation for the last warning. He said to me that he is giving me an
opportunity to go back for the last warning to this generation," Daniel
said.
Today, that is precisely what Daniel
is doing - warning everyone, who will listen, of the
judgment to come - and the promise of everlasting life to those who trust in
the name of Jesus.