Saturday, July 16, 2016

Reflection: A Vision of the Resurrection of the Just

A Vision of The Resurrection of the Just

Elder O. Kris Widmer

Based on Ezekiel 37 1-14
Foundational beginning:  The Message Bible
With modifications into the context of Second Coming by the Author
July 15, 2016

Inspired while working on a card with my mother’s parents wedding picture on it as well as preparing to preach from the above passage.

God grabbed this Pastor the other day, on a Friday (as I was reading Ezekiel 37), and whisked me away.  The Divine One – the One with the unspeakable name, the One who was and is and is to come - set me down in the middle of a cemetery.  It was no particular cemetery, for if you’ve seen one field of bones and ashes, you’ve seen them all.  And believe me, this preacher has stood in his share of cemeteries by open and closed graves. The Evergreen Cemeteries of Riverside, California and Vancouver, Washington (each containing my four grandparents) or Ukiah, Hayfork, Lakeport, Upper Lake, St. Helena.  Or Redding.   Or Antioch.  Or Igo - or the ones near you…or far from you.

God led me in and around the graves.  I knew what was six feet under my feet.  Bones.   Many, many bones.   The bones of my father, my grandparents, your mother, your uncle, your brother or sister, the baby you buried or didn’t bury, but released to the morgue.  They are all somewhere “’a listening for their name.”

He said to me, “Preacher, do you think these bones can live?”  I said, “Holy God, Creator and Resurrector, only You know if that can happen.  You said they would in the 66 books I consider to be Your revelation.  But…”

He said to me, “When the Son of Man comes again, approaching the earth…this is what it will happen!   I’ll show you.  Speak over these tombs – these graves, these crypts, these niches, these ashes – in urns or scattered on land, sea or air.  Speak to  these bones.  Say:

‘Dead Dust and Dry bones – listen to the voice of God.  I will bring the breath of life to you and you WILL come to life.  I will take the dust and make of it new bones.  I will take the bones – new and old - and create new sinews and tendons and cartilage.   I will put new meat, new muscles on your bones, and cover you with skin.   I will reform your organs, fill up your tubes with vital fluids, (5.5 liters of blood) and set your heart beating once again.   I will fill your new lungs with new breath - my breath of life.   I will cause your thoughts and memories to resume in a new brain, with billions of new neurons and I will cause your eyes to open.”

I paused…not knowing if I should. “Go on…say it!” God urged.  So I did.  Word for Word.

As I started speaking…I heard a rattling and a rumbling underneath my feet and within the mausoleum over yonder. 

Scattered cremains and common dirt flew into the shape of skeletons.  Niche covers flew off and crypts were broken open.  Sod was peeled back.  Dirt flew out into neat cubic piles, liner lids and coffin tops flew into the sky, disappearing.  Bones flew out of graves and joined together that had been disconnected.  Skulls with holes were now whole.  And above ponds, lakes, rivers and streams appeared bones too, hovering, as it were, just above the waters.   The seas also had thousands and thousands of skeletal remains, levitated just above the surface of the deep.

Then, tendons and tongues and tonsils appeared.  Muscles materialized!  Skin stretched over these bodies. Hair erupted from their scalps and faces.  Hey…nice goatee!

They lay there, each one naked as the day they were born and yet clothed in the brightest heaven-sent light.   But as yet…there was no breath in them.  So no life in them.  Just like Adam and Eve at creation.  Body perfectly formed…but lifeless without God’s breath.

Then God spoke to me again.  “Preacher, now I will show you what will happen when the Son of Man shall come even closer to the earth…when He speak from the clouds.   He shall say ‘Awake, Awake.  You who have returned to the dust from which you came…ARISE!  David, Arise!  Johanne, Arise!  Reinhold, Arise!  Josephine, Arise! (My grandparents)   Elmer, Arise! (My father).   Elaine, Maureen, Ron, Greg, Barry, Thad, Waldo, Stu, Cindi, Derek, Danica, Lilia, Jose, Shamus, Benjamin, Adeline, Nadine, Neville, Harry, Harley, Tabitha, Olympia, Fritz, Modell, Thelah and Lowell – ARISE![1]

“Preacher…so now... speak to the air.   All the air shall be My breath of life.   Inhale.  Exhale.  Speak to the air.  ‘Come air!   Come from the four directions: Up, Down and Side to Side.  North, South, East, West.  Come breath!  Come Oxygen.  Fill these bodies.   Breath life!’”

I knew not to question Him this time.   “Come air!”  I continued.

And it was amazing.  Wind blew around me.  It came from all the directions at once…and I saw chests rise and fall.  Breath entered them.  Like a divine C-PAP machine!  They all took one collective gasp – the gasp heard ‘round the world. They came alive!   They stood to their feet!   A numberless multitude of humanity…long dead, now alive!   The mortal had at last put on immortality.  And then I saw them rise off the earth…higher and higher…into the air…into the clouds.  

Then God said to me, “ Preacher, the bones your saw here in this place are but a small fraction of those persons who have lived on the earth – from Adam and Eve…to today.  Humanity sighs -  “We are dried up.  Our bodies are dead.  Our corpses have rotted.  Our bones are crumbled.  Our ashes are scattered.   There is nothing left of us.  There is no hope!”

So, Preacher, be sure to speak over every body you stand beside.  “The God of Heaven, the Lord of Creation and Resurrection ….  The Resurrection and the Life says…..  “I WILL dig up your grave and bring you out alive.   You are my people.   When you live again, I will take you straight to the holy city – the New Jerusalem.  When I have dug up your grave and put you back together and given you life….then you will know that I am God.  I will give you a new body.   I will give you new breath.  My breath, my life – back into you…and you will live.    I have said it.   I will do it.   This is the decree and promise of the most high God.”

And then I found myself sitting once again at my computer keyboard.




[1] This is but a small portion of the list of names of dead family or friends, as well as funerals I have done in Gospel ministry.

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