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CBN.com – 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.
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.
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! 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."
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."
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, lets 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. 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 here. 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 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!
"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.
A caring friend will be there to pray with you in your time of need.
