By Pr Isaiah White
In the Old Testament Elisha is known as the greatest miracle worker among all the prophets.
His ministry was categorized with miracles after miracles. He was a prophet whose messages were communicated through signs and wonders.
God did wonders through him to individuals and to the nation at large.
He was a prophet who was filled with answers to private and public questions, and with solutions to the problems of his community.
We can draw many lessons from the life of prophet Elijah and we will in the future, but since it is Easter season, let us turn our attention to the miracle that happened while Elisha was long dead.
Here is how the Bible puts it: “So Elisha died, and they buried him. Now bands of Moabites used to invade the land in the spring of the year.
“And as a man was being buried, lo, a marauding band was seen and the man was cast into the grave of Elisha; and as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood on his feet” (2Kings 13:20-21).
In the Old Testament, we are face-to-face with not just a demonstration of the resurrection, but its reality. A man whose name the Bible does not mention, resurrected in the Old Testament.
According to my knowledge, he is the only person I know in the Old Testament who resurrected.
The resurrection of this man was a message to the Israel of then, and it has much to tell us this Easter.
Dead Israel
By the time of the death of this man, Israel as a nation was practically a dead nation too.
Israel was spiritually dead for it had resorted to Baalism and replaced it with Yahweh (1Kings 18:17-46, 21:1-29, 2Kings 10), because of this spiritual death it was economically dead as well.
Everyone was indebted and in poverty (2Kings 4:1), and Israel was politically a fugitive to other surrounding nations (2Kings 13:20).
The death and burial of this man are symbolic to the state of the nation of God. Israel was not just sick; it was in a state of the dead.
The narrative about the dead man and his burial preparations is symbolic to the present and future of the then Israel.
A Nation that has deserted the worship of a true God is headed to nowhere else but the grave.
A family that has ignored the worship of the true God is dead, business and any other organization in which God is not the ultimate C.E.O is dead and ready for burial.
The nation of Israel was not only without God, but even its prophets like Elijah and Elisha who drew it back to the right direction had already died.
All that remained for Israel were bones of Elisha in which they saw no hope.
Life-Giving Bones
As these men prepared to bury the dead man, the enemy troops closed in and since they couldn’t risk their lives for the dead, they threw the dead man in the grave of Elisha and immediately the dead man’s body touched the bones of Elisha, he resurrected.
Elisha is the only prophet whose life still ministered to both the dead and the living even in his demise.
Elisha is a symbol of Jesus Christ, whose life and death are equally beneficial to both the dead and the living in this universe.
The dead body got in contact with the bones of Elisha and life was revived in it.
Easter is a season making contact. It is a period when the dead get in contact with the bones of the saints and their lives are restored.
God used the bones of Elisha to exhibit two fundamental things that we all ought to know this season: 1- we are dead and if not dead entirely there is at least that part of us which is dead. 2-Life is not in contacting any other agent but God himself or at least his real agents.
To deny that we are not dead is to dismiss the need of the resurrection. If Jesus never died, then he never resurrected but resuscitated.
Resuscitation is not resurrection for it is not surviving clinical death, but coming out of the comma.
Jesus resurrected because he died and died an eternal death. The miracle of our salvation is that our God defied the power of death, over-powered and came back to life.
The reality of the miracle in the Old Testament about this man is that he was dead and being buried, he came back to life and ran for his life like the rest of the Israelites.
Resurrection in all spheres of life (Spiritual, Physical, and socio-economic) will happen to only those who recognize how dead they are not but not those who claim how alive they are.
Finally, the power of resurrection that raised this man was not in the bones of Elisha but through the bones of Elisha.
If the power was in the bones of Elisha, Elisha himself could have resurrected but the power was not of the bones but rather of God.
God worked a resurrection through the bones of Elisha. God has and will work our resurrection through no other thing, power or person but the person of Jesus Christ alone.
That is why, in this case, it was not the bones of any other Baal prophet, but Elisha, the man of the God of Heaven.
Christians will resurrect not because the saints of their religions resurrected but because Jesus Christ did (1Corinthinas 15:12-19).
The writer is a life coach and theologian.
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