From Charisma:
[Robby] Dawkins, author of Do What Jesus Did: A Real-Life Field Guide to Healing the Sick, Routing Demons and Changing Lives Forever, saw a resurrection from the dead at his April meeting in Northern England. In fact, he was leading the prayer.
The drama started just as he announced the title of his message. That’s when congregant Matt Catlow’s face contorted. His hands withered up and he starting twitching. Sitting next to him, Catlow’s mother started screaming for an ambulance.
…It looked hopeless as Catlow’s pupils become fixed and dilated. According to Dawkins, he heard the death rattle—the sound a dying person makes when fluids accumulate in the throat and upper chest—and then it stopped. Dawkins says the doctor was checking his pulse while he had his hand on the man’s heart. The mother screamed out: “He’s dead. He’s dead.” The doctor confirmed no pulse.
“As I continued to pray I began to bind the spirit of death and say, ‘You can’t have him!’ I began to declare the resurrection life of Jesus Christ over him. People were beginning to get a bit restless but then I could hear his breathing start to recover and his color started to return,” Dawkins says. “His lips that were purplish black started to get less dark. His eyes stopped being fixed and dilated and started to move. We rolled him onto his side at that point to allow his tongue to fall forward, but he was starting to come round.”
Dawkins is from Aurora in Illinois, and he is a pastor with the Vineyard network of “Third Wave” neo-Pentecostal churches. His ministry is endorsed by Bill Johnson, a leading figure in neo-Pentecostalism, and his book is published by Chosen Books, an imprint of Baker Publishing.
The story of Catlow’s “resurrection” has been doing the rounds for a few weeks, but a the puff-piece from Charisma has brought to wider attention. On Facebook, Dawkins boasts (and that’s not too strong a word):
So the Charisma article on the resurrection in England has official gone viral on Social media. 43,000 shares (FB alone has 24,000 likes) since it came out 24 hrs ago. My book Do What Jesus Did shot to number one in 3 best sellers categories. It’s at Number on in Evangelism.
I’ve had cessationist and atheists send messages of unbelief and hate. So everyone knows I have a full Dr.’s Report of that night in my possession (but because of threats the Dr. Received, I took it down from social media). But far out weighing that are people feeling empowered to raise the dead. Thank you Jesus!
On Twitter, Dawkins has also thanked a publicist at Chosen Books for bringing the story to Charisma.
It’s unclear what the doctor’s role could have been; clearly, he would been able to provide only a very informal assessment at the time, so one wonders about the nature of the “full Dr.’s Report”. But by invoking “cessationist[s] and atheists”, it seems that Dawkins wants to focus on the philosophical argument over whether such a story might be true, rather than the actual evidence of what occurred at the church on the night in question.
An alternative account, also on Facebook, has been posted by someone who says that she is Catlow’s sister; although her name is not given, the page includes a photo of Catlow with what appear to be family members:
…Although i wasn’t there at the meeting, my mother and many extended family and friends were. We come from a Christian background, my father is married to a pastor and the family attends church regularly….
Matthew had a stroke about a year ago….
Regarding the ‘death’… what Robby is telling everyone is not true. It has since been MEDICALLY proven that Matthew had suffered an epileptic seizure which often can display similar signs of someone dying. TWO nurse family friends of ours both had their hands on Matthew throughout and not once lost his pulse. So no, Matthew did not die…
The author also says that the pastor of the church (Inglewhite Congregational Church) has since “apologized to his congregation for allowing Robby into their church”, and so has the doctor for his part. For some reason, the Charisma report declines to mention the name of the church.
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