According to Acts 26:23 and 1 Corinthians 15:20, Jesus was the first person to be resurrected. But actually, if you go by the bible, many, many people were resurrected before Jesus rose from the dead. I’m not here to point out another contradiction (I’ll save that for another time). I’m here to address one of the many resurrections that predated Jesus’ alleged “first” resurrection.

Open your books please to 2 Kings chapter 13.

Here we have the prophet Elisha, who, while on the battlefield (it’s always a battle with these guys), grows sick with what will prove a mortal illness. Despite his importance, his funeral is summed up in the bible as follows: “Elisha died, and they buried him.” That’s it. There’s no mention of ceremonies or location of his plot. What is interesting, however, is what happens next.

In verse 20 we find that the Hebrews are burying a nameless man. The ‘brews see a group of Moabites (their enemies) approaching and hastily throw the body into a grave… but… it’s Elisha’s grave! Essentially, Elisha’s followers decided Elisha’s grave was a good a place as any to bury a nameless nobody. And then this happens in verse 21:

“the man was thrown into the grave of Elisha; as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he came to life and stood on his feet.”

A decomposing corpse is thrown onto another corpse so sufficiently decomposed that its bones are all that’s left. And when the recently deceased man’s body touches Elisha’s bones, he springs to life. And it was all an accident!

Basically, to misuse this phrase in its colloquial vernacular, by the transitive property of whatever divine spirit guided the living Elisha, his bones sent some of that into the nameless man and restored his body to its fullest. And then the story ends with the ‘brews returning to battle

But wait a minute! That’s a really huge deal! A man came back from the dead! Seriously, why does 2 Kings 13 stop there? Shouldn’t it have dedicated at least several more pages of text to this story? Who was the returned man? Did anyone ask him what death was like? What did he do after he came back from the dead? When did he die a second time? Is he still alive today? These are questions that any reputable bible would’ve addressed. Why they left it out is testament to the ridiculousness of these stories.

But the main lesson here, guys and girls, is not that god sometimes works in mysterious ways; sometimes he does miracles by accident!