Empty! Hallelujah!—Six Sentence Story

They rolled a stone in front of His tomb. At the request of the religious authorities the stone was sealed and a guard placed by it.

The news was still spreading that He had called forth a man who had been dead for days and that man came out of his tomb. Since He Himself was now dead and lacking any agency to cause trouble, they hoped this would end the resurrection mania that He started.

Twilight darkened into night as the religious authorities wondered how the veil of the temple could have been torn from top to bottom.

Days later when some of His followers went to the tomb they found it opened and empty.

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Denise offers the prompt word “agency” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Matthew 12:40 NKJV – 40 “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

John 11:43-44 NKJV – 43 Now when He had said these things, He cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!” 44 And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Loose him, and let him go.”

Matthew 27:51 NKJV – 51 Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom…

Matthew 27:62-66 NKJV – 62 On the next day, which followed the Day of Preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees gathered together to Pilate, 63 saying, “Sir, we remember, while He was still alive, how that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise.’ 64 “Therefore command that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest His disciples come by night and steal Him away, and say to the people, ‘He has risen from the dead.’ So the last deception will be worse than the first.” 65 Pilate said to them, “You have a guard; go your way, make it as secure as you know how.” 66 So they went and made the tomb secure, sealing the stone and setting the guard.

The Door—Ovi Poetry Challenge

Some choose to lick a dirty floor
and dream of crumbs, but we need more.
Abundant life lies through That Door
and He’s the one we hear.

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Ronovan Hester offers the inspiration “dream” for this week’s Ovi Poetry Challenge. Also posted on Poet’s Corner.

John 10:7-10 KJV – 7 Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them. 9 I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. 10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

Fancy floor, but don’t forget that He’s the door

Door Within a Door—Thursday Doors

The cap below is a kind of door that leads to the underground water system.

On this cap/door from Prague is an image of an open door with an arm holding a sword in a defensive posture.

In case that door doesn’t count I’ve included a door from somewhere in the Prague Castle.

º º º º º

In the semicircle at the center is a door with an arm holding a sword
Door from somewhere in the Prague Castle

Posted as part of Thursday Doors.

Dan Anton’s Image for Thursday Doors

Light—Ovi Poetry Challenge

The fields have ripened—harvest soon
as dawn respects the waning moon.
The light of gladness shines through noon.
His name reigns over all.

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Ronovan Hester offers the inspiration “respect” for this week’s Ovi Poetry Challenge. Also posted on Poet’s Corner.

Psalm 97:11 KJV – Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart.

The Kingdom of God Has Come Near To You—Six Sentence Story

When Ryan visited his friends one evening he talked to their aunt who sat in a wheelchair with her heart wrapped in a web of bitterness so tightly that love couldn’t escape. Feeling a rush of reckless compassion for them he risked asking her if she’d like a prayer of faith even though he knew she wouldn’t.

Compelled by politeness she agreed sternly informing him that she knew what paralysis was even if he didn’t and he merely responded by saying, I command healing in your body in the name of Jesus. After a pause he spoke directly to the hostility in her eyes, The Kingdom of God has come near to you. When nothing happened, he told her to remember and expect her healing, but if anything was amiss it was his faith and not her lack of it.

Three days later she rose from her chair and walked wanting out of habit not to smile yet overcome with such joy she couldn’t help it.

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Denise offers the prompt “web” for this week’s Six Sentence Story.

James 5:13-15 KJV – 13 Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms. 14 Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: 15 And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.

1 Peter 2:24 KJV – Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

Natural or Supernatural

In trying to find out how far back the idea of the natural went the search engine offered a link to a paper by a naturalist philosopher, David Papineau, who described philosophers like himself as people who were committed to the belief that reality contained only what is natural, nothing supernatural.

Papineau wrote1,

They [naturalist philosophers] urged that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the “human spirit”…

His argument could be easily rejected. All I’d have to do is reject any definition of natural that could exhaust reality. Indeed, I’m more inclined to feel that reality is exhausted by the supernatural rather than the other way around.

A Miraculous Raising From the Dead

Besides Papineau, I was also listening today to Curry Blake give a testimony during his Divine Healing Technician Training lectures. Before he was involved in his healing ministry his first daughter died when she was three and years later another daughter fell over twenty feet onto concrete. He could tell she was dead, but he carried her and then stood her up against the wall commanding her over and over again: In the name of Jesus you will live and not die.

And then she came back.

She said she was hungry. He gave her only a small piece of bread, because her mouth was crushed in the fall. When he took her to the hospital they said she had been dead for 45 minutes.

Blake made an interesting comment (about 52:50 in the video) explaining why he didn’t take his daughter to the hospital when he realized that she was dead:

Now I didn’t rush her to the hospital cause any time you take a dead body to the hospital they take them away from you and you don’t get to be with them anymore. Right? That’s why we don’t see many dead raisings in the States. Soon as somebody dies they take them away and they start cutting on them and taking pieces out and you’re not with them and you can’t get to them again until the funeral. Whereas in other countries they, a lot of times they, keep the body in the house and different things go on and you can get to the body. That’s why there are so many more dead raisings in other countries. You know, we’ve civilized ourselves out of the power of God most of the time.

In my mind I took Blake’s testimony back to Papineau. I had a few questions to ask the naturalist philosopher.

  • If dead bodies are part of a reality that is exhausted by nature can commanding them to live and not die in the name of Jesus bring them back to life?
  • When dead bodies do in fact come back to life, how does that fit into the deterministic natural laws that supposedly rule a universe closed to the supernatural?

He didn’t answer, but then I only asked him in my mind. In my heart I was beginning to see how our philosophical commitments to what we think of as natural keeps us from seeing what is truly real.

Footnotes

1 Papineau, David, “Naturalism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2023/entries/naturalism/>.