ALPHA MAAMA (A.M.)

 TUSITE ‘EPELELI 21, 2026

2 TU’I 4-5; LOMA 8:1-11

Christianity rises or falls on whether God has the power to raise the dead.

Ko e lotu faka-Kalisitiane, ‘e tu’u pe holofa ‘o fakatatau ki he mafai ‘o e ‘Otua ke ne fokotu’u ‘a e pekia.

No power can compare with resurrection power, which God alone holds. It is one of the things that separates him from everything else. We are used to death being the end. This may seem crass, but when you attend a funeral, you expect nothing from the deceased. You know that there is no life in that person, and that is that. The finality of death is why it is so painful. Nothing leaves us feeling more helpless than death. Because sin ushered death into our world, and because death is the inescapable end that every living thing eventually faces, God's power to raise the dead is the ultimate victorious comfort to his people. The apostle Paul argues that if there is no resurrection from the dead, then the resurrection of Jesus is a fake, and, if that is true, then we have been duped and our faith is in vain (1 Cor. 15:12-19). The power to raise the dead is the platform on which everything we believe rests.

Three times in the Old Testament and six times in the New, someone is raised from the dead. Each of these has been recorded and preserved to remind us of the solitary power of God over life and death.' The account of the Shunammite's son in 2 Kings 4:18-37 is the second recording in the Old Testament of someone being raised from the dead. God works this miracle through his prophet Elisha. 

These nine accounts not only remind us of the almighty power of God, a power that not even death can defeat, but they also foreshadow where the story of redemption is going. Sin will not have the final victory. The story will not end in the unmoving stillness of death. Life will triumph over death. This is the plan of God.

The stories of individuals being raised from the dead that are sprinkled throughout the biblical story predict the necessity of two resurrections to come. The first is the resurrection of Jesus, after his death on the cross. He came not only to pay the penalty for our sin but also to defeat sin and death in his resurrection. Remember that the resurrection of Jesus is not the final resurrection; it is the firstfruit of resurrections to come. There will be a day when all of the dead in Christ will be raised (1 Cor. 15:20). Death will die, and the children of God will live forever with the Lord of life, dwelling in his presence and basking in his glory.

The stories of these individuals are a promise of the greatest ending to a story ever imagined. In the dark valleys and hardships of life in this groaning world, we remember again and again that sin, suffering, and death are doomed. Someday they will imprison us no more, because with our Lord we will rise and breathe in the perfect air of the new heavens and the new earth, never again to shed death's tears.