Charlie Kirk’s execution/assassination yesterday has many people unsettled for a range of reasons, but I don’t plan to go into any of that. What the situation has done in one of my specific areas of focus is something that consistently happens almost any time some major news event that deals with death and dying occurs. And that is a focus on what I refer to as “Celebrity resurrection.” I define “Celebrity resurrection” as a focus on attempting to raise the dead specifically in the case of a high profile individual, regardless of whether that person is high-profile due to their profession, news coverage of an event, or any other cause that makes it become high-profile. What tends to happen any time a high-profile individual passes away is that for some believers it reminds them that through Christ Jesus we can raise the dead, and they have a desire to extend that offer of life to that individual. I both love that and am frustrated by that simultaneously. This is a difficult subject to navigate well because there are multiple factors in play that all stand in tension with another, and all of them have their own measure of validity. So in light of yesterday’s atrocity, keeping in mind that we, the Body of Christ, are meant to provide solutions to every problem, I want to discuss some practical thoughts on raising the dead and specifically look at the barriers that one will deal with when it comes to celebrity resurrection.
Any time we are raising the dead we will ideally look to get access to their body. Is it possible to raise someone from the dead without that? Yes. Can God re-create a body from ashes such as in cremation or a house fire? Yes. Can He teleport someone’s body that is washed away in a flood back to you so you can raise them? Yes, He both can and has done so. But that doesn’t change the fact that the predominant means of raising the dead is quite simply to command life over someone’s body. I don’t say this to create some sort of mental or theological limitation, but to recognize that the vast majority of the time that is how it will occur, and as such, gaining access to the body to pray should be a goal of ours.
In most first-world countries, we like to hide our dead. There are legitimate sanitary and legal reasons for some of this, but it does create barriers and restrictions to gaining access to a body for resurrection prayer. I had someone ask me yesterday if traveling in the spirit to pray over someone’s body is an option. Yes, that is always an option. And for those who want to understand more about what that means or what that is, I teach on the subject at length in my book The Beginners Guide to Traveling in the Spirit, so I’m not going to cover that further here. But while it is an option, as I said above, it’s not the primary option and gaining access to the body should still be a main goal/method that we use.
Where the issues of body-access comes into conflict with raising the dead as a whole, and especially with celebrity resurrection, is that we generally need family permission to gain access to the body. Obtaining family permission can be difficult all on its own without even considering someone’s potential high profile status. Most people, and even most Christians, still consider the concept of raising the dead to be extremely fringe even though it is a pivotal aspect of the Christian faith—to the point that if raising the dead doesn’t happen, Christianity has zero value as a belief system because if the dead are not raised then it would be a lie. Fortunately, God does raise the dead, Christianity is not a lie, and raising the dead is gradually becoming more mainstream as people get a greater revelation of God’s desire for abundant life for us.
Obtaining family permission is generally as straightforward as asking the family for permission. But straightforward does not mean easy. I don’t know that there is almost ever a time when asking someone for permission to pray over their deceased loved one is not daunting. Our own fears and doubts start to rear their heads and we have to militantly govern over our thoughts in those moments. Broaching this subject with someone has very real risks from being the target of ridicule and anger up to and including a complete loss of relationship with both the person we ask and others around them. Nevertheless, if we want to obtain access to someone’s body, we have to have that uncomfortable and risky conversation. And we have to have it with the right people.
Outside of situations where someone dies right in front of us, we first have to have access to the family. Then we have to have a favor with the family in order for them to say yes. Even once they say yes, there has to be follow-through on their part to actually give us the access that they told us we may have. The logistics of that follow-through may have a number of hoops to jump through as well as potential monetary costs associated with it. For example, a funeral home may charge the family each time we want access to the body to have time to pray over it, and they may have limitations on certain hours when we are permitted to do that. And at least in the United States, there is nothing illegal about the funeral home doing that. All of that can create more barriers to the resurrection effort, and at any step of this process we can lose the person’s interest or buy-in for any reason
Where this gets more tricky with celebrity resurrection is that due to the high profile nature of the circumstances, family is usually being bombarded by people. Whether it is a famous actor or singer who has potentially hundreds of thousands if not millions of fans, or something that is big in the local news and it’s getting a lot of local attention, the family is dealing both with the death of their loved one, as well as having to handle media and social media pressure and attention. Without immense favor from God in these circumstances or a pre-existing relationship, it is usually very difficult for someone to get access to the family to even bring up the request.
So does that mean that because it’s hard that we simply abandoned the attempt in those situations and only try for ones that feel less-difficult? Not necessarily. However, the guidance I would give on the subject is that we need to be conscious about staying within what the Bible calls our metron, also known as our “area of influence.” I firmly believe the Body of Christ has this solution available to offer Charlie Kirk’s family on his behalf. However, on a personal level, I do not know anyone in that family and I don’t think I know anyone with even two degrees of separation to that family. So while the will of God is for him and every other person on the planet to be raised from the dead, unless something happens and God opens that door for me (which I am very open to), I will not be making personal attempts at that in this specific circumstance. And again, this is where it’s a sensitive subject with nuance. Because neither the will of God or the situation have changed. His desire is for life. But there is a very real matter of divine order in how God chooses to do things in most circumstances, and unless/until God opens things up to bring that into my personal Metron, it simply isn’t, and is therefore someone else’s job. Again, that doesn’t mean that someone shouldn’t attempt to raise him from the dead. It just means that unless things change, that person isn’t me and likely it isn’t anyone I know either. Which means if you’re reading this, unless you have either a specific leading from the Holy Spirit, a relationship with the family or the ability to get it, and divine favor for access, then it isn’t you either. And in a situation that is as tragic and evil as this one is, that’s not nice news to hear, which is part of what makes this a sensitive issue, but that’s not all.
There is a separate matter of motives and motivation. I think this is never a bad question to ask, but I think it is all the more appropriate in the case of celebrity resurrections. We each have to ask this question in our own hearts, which is “of all of the people who have died in the last week or month, why am I focusing on this one?” There are a range of potential answers, and most of them aren’t necessarily bad answers. For me, in some situations, I have directly and personally known the deceased. At times, it has been a friend of a friend or a friend’s family member. In other circumstances people have reached out to me because they have read one of my books or articles on the subject, heard me talk on a podcast, or been informed about me some other way. On occasion I will get a request from another minister who knows that I believe in raising the dead because I live comparatively local to the person who reached out to them for help. It varies from circumstance to circumstance. For me, the motivation is always that death is an enemy, grief and pain and death are evil, and God desires that person and their family to experience life. What is generally never a motivating factor for me is the level of famousness of the person involved. But that is often a primary motivator for many people who want a celebrity resurrection. And it is another part of what makes this a sensitive subject to discuss.
I don’t want to discourage people from praying to raise the dead because I firmly believe it is always God’s will to resurrect them, every single time. And yet there is also this issue of operating in our God-assigned sphere of influence, and those two can at times be in conflict with one another. How I resolve what can sound cognitively dissonant in my own mind is to recognize that while God may want someone to do that thing, God isn’t always assigning that thing to me. Nor should I necessarily assign it to myself.
I have had plenty of times in my life where I have prayed to God and asked Him to do something in a situation and His reply has been “you do something”. That might sound like a strange response to hear from God until we understand that we are collectively assigned as His change-agents in the earth. In other words, long ago, God delegated everything in the earth to us to fix, and he has never undelegated that to us. Which means it’s still our job, not His. Whether it comes to raising Charlie Kirk from the dead or anyone else, that is our job as followers of Jesus Christ. The individual details of which person does which things are largely at the direction of the Holy Spirit, but it is conclusively our collective job to do the things that remove death and decay from the cosmos and fix all creation to make it become on earth the same way it already is in heaven.
So while God has assigned dead-raising to us, God has not assigned every single one of those to me personally. This means that in every situation, whether it is raising the dead, healing the sick, speaking a word of encouragement to a neighbor, or anything else, we have to be aware of those things that are within our sphere of influence and therefore are our God-ordained responsibility, and those things that are outside our metron making them someone else’s. I believe looking at heart motivation is important in this type of situation because if we don’t look at it, we can assign things to ourselves that are outside of our metron, which is unwise at best and is otherwise fairly nonfunctional.
Why do I care more about raising someone from the dead who is on the news than I do the grandmother down the street? When the news and social media give something significant public attention, it signals to our subconscious minds that this thing is more important than all of the things that are not receiving that same public attention. And that is where the trap is. Increased public attention has nothing to do with whether something is in or outside of my metron. The two are unrelated, which is why I ask the question I did before about internal motivation. Am I motivated to do this because my subconscious has been signaled by a bunch of outside influences? Or is this because this is what God is actually saying and doing right now with me personally? I challenge myself with these kinds of questions, and suggest that anyone reading this do the same. We must be people to discern what God is saying and doing with us on an ongoing basis.
So again, any time the matter of celebrity resurrection comes up, I encourage us to look at our heart motivation and identify whether this is in or outside of our personal metron. If it is within our metron then we need to take practical steps to walk that out, which usually is going to look like contacting the family, receiving access to the body, and commanding life. If you are not sure how to go about doing any of that, or want to up-level your beliefs on the subject, I encourage you to pick up a copy of my book Faith to Raise the Dead. If you are currently in the middle of a resurrection attempt and don’t have time to read a longer book on the subject, pick up a copy of my book Practical Keys to Raise the Dead, which is short excerpts from the other book and is designed to cover just the immediate practical things you need to know in the moment. For additional resources, I recommend the books How to Raise the Dead and The Dead are Raised by Tyler Johnson, and the book Saints Who Raised the Dead by Father Albert J Hebert, a Catholic priest who chronicles over 400 resurrection stories throughout church history.
