A Resurrection Mindset: Waking the Sleeper

My very good friend Kyle died on June 19, 2021 in a motorcycle accident. The entire situation was (and is) heartbreaking, and I did pray for resurrection. At the time of writing this he hasn’t returned back to life yet, but my job is to pray, not to decide the timing of things, so pray is what I do and I let God work out the rest of the details. I have said before that in almost every situation where I step out in faith to raise the dead God teaches me something whether someone returns to life or not, and this time was no different, albeit it was harder on my emotions than most other situations. The morning of Kyle’s funeral I had a dream that I want to share with you because it spoke to me a little differently about raising the dead than I had ever experienced before. In fact, the dream was so real that I recognize I wasn’t simply dreaming, but had a spiritual encounter with Kyle as he is now part of the Cloud of Witnesses (For those who are unfamiliar, I cover encounters with the Cloud of Witnesses in my book The Beginner’s Guide to Traveling in the Spirit). This encounter challenged me with the idea that having a resurrection mindset is really about learning to wake the sleeper, not raise the dead. I want to share with you what happened and what I have learned from it.

In the physical I was staying in Portland at a friend’s house in one of their guest rooms. I had lived with them for multiple months while we made our family move to Texas and this had been “my room” during that time, so the room itself was very familiar room to me. This matters only because in the dream encounter I began in this same room.

In the dream, I woke up laying on my bed at my friends’ house where I was physically staying the night. It was morning, and Kyle’s body was on the bed on my right, and his wife was standing at the end of the bed. I reached over and lightly nudged him to wake him up—the same way I might if I was waking someone who was sleeping. And he woke up. It was so incredibly easy—like I imagine dead raising is supposed to be, and like the Bible seems to suggest it was for Jesus.

I was overjoyed when he woke/returned, and somehow Kyle and I were now in this large building, almost like the middle of a rotunda of a massive building, complete with huge pillars. The building seemed like it was old but didn’t feel old. Standing there with Kyle next to me, I called Tyler Johnson (founder of the Dead Raising Team) on my cell to tell him that the DRT had another successful resurrection, and then Kyle and I hung out for a while. It was really nice.

And then I woke up.

It took me a minute to realize that what I had experienced before was a dream encounter. You have to understand that because in the dream I was laying in the same place on the same bed in the same room that my body actually was physically, and the dream had felt so real, it was very disorienting. And, as one can imagine, when I realized that Kyle was not in fact next to me and alive because it had been a dream encounter, I began to cry.

While there are a number of potential takeaways from this encounter, I want to focus on a key lesson I believe the Lord wanted to teach me. The dream showed me something I suspect is meant to be a reality for us, and gives me a new target for my faith—that raising the dead should be as simple as waking someone up from sleep. There is scriptural precedent for this concept (not that precedent is required, but it’s still there nonetheless) found in something Jesus said, as well as some things the apostle Paul mentioned:

— When Jesus raised Jairus’s daughter from the dead, he mentioned that she was not dead, but rather she was sleeping. (Matthew 9:18-26; Mark 5:21-43 Luke 8:40-56)
— When Jesus spoke of Lazarus to his disciples, He initially stated that Lazarus was sleeping, but later had to clarify for them that Lazarus’s body was dead because the disciples didn’t understand (John 11:11-14)
— In Ephesians 5:14 Paul writes, “This is why it is said: ‘Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’”
— Paul states in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 that those who have died are asleep, and they will wake when Christ comes again.
— In 1 Corinthians 15:6 Paul wrote about Jesus appearing to the disciples and again referred to those disciples who at the time of him writing the letter had died as being “asleep”. He goes on to reference this idea of death being sleep again in the same chapter in v18, 20, and 51 as well.

Even in the Old Testament we find this concept:
— Job speaks of death being a place where he would finally get sleep (Job 3:11-17)
— Daniel 12:2 says, “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.”

When we understand the our spirits are eternal and immortal, it brings clarity to some of this. When we incarnate into the earth and our spirit inhabits a body, I believe it is at that moment that something of the interaction between spirit and body births the soul and the soul realm. When someone dies, the body is clinically dead, the eternal spirit is still alive, and the soul is in an unclear state that I suggest is probably the part that is asleep—unable to function properly until it is rejoined with the body. That specific part about the soul being what sleeps is supposition, but the Bible is incredibly clear that those who die do enter some degree of sleep-like-state, and it does not expound in-depth on what that looks like or what portion of the human being enters that sleep-state, so educated guesses are what we are left with.

Now, where this matters for us is that if we are praying to raise someone from the dead then on some level we need to change our view of death from being this massive mountain we have to overcome, and instead simply acknowledge that the person has entered a transitional state of “sleep”—and it is our job to go wake them. I don’t pretend to have it all worked out as far as what that looks like, but I do believe that God was showing me something of importance during this dream encounter. What difference in results would we see if we learn to shift our mindset from seeing death as a mountain to climb and instead we view it as a defeated foe who can at very best put someone to sleep for a bit. And if all death can do is put someone to sleep, then all we have to do is wake them back up and we’ve solved the problem. 1 Corinthians 15:25-27a says of Jesus, “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he ‘has put everything under his feet.’” Jesus is the head, we are the Body (1 Cor 12:27, Eph 5:23, 29), and as such if we put everything under His feet then we, the Body of Christ, are all collectively taking dominion over it and placing it under our feet as well.

According to Hebrews 6:2, raising the dead is a foundational teaching of the faith, so I believe it is important we not only have a clear theology on what this looks like, but also practical application—a way to actually “do the stuff” and not just talk about it. To that end, I have written a book series called the Abundant Life series, of which the first book is Faith to Raise the Dead. This book is a shortcut—and that is precisely the point. This doesn’t have to be hard for everyone, and my goal in writing it is to make this a far easier journey for you than it has been for me. Faith to Raise the Dead will give the reader a great deal of wisdom and insight on raising the dead. It lays out what the Bible says on the subject, and answers many common questions and concerns. In some places I share a few perspectives and/or thought processes for the reader to consider on matters that don’t have one clear and specific biblical answer, but even things that don’t have clear-cut answers are discussed. At the end of the book there is also a list of scriptures that one can reference to encourage their faith and, if someone prefers to pray the scriptures when praying, that appendix can be used for that as well. The goal was to write a comprehensive book that prepares the reader to go out and raise the dead—and I believe I accomplished that. I encourage you to pick up a copy of the book today. While my friend Kyle has not yet returned, I believe that with the resources this book holds, the future can be different for another family—and maybe you will be the next one to give someone back to their family, brought back to life by the power of Jesus Christ.