The Nigerian man, pronounced dead, was brought back to life a few days later at an evangelistic meeting by Reinhard Bonnke, a German evangelist.
The international evangelist produced a fact-based documentary about Lazarus of our day. Daniel Ekekukwu’s Resurrection is so well filmed that no one can remain indifferent after seeing this film. Reinhard Bonnke’s Christ for All Nations ministry released a 45-minute video of Ekekukwu’s testimony, which shows how the Nigerian pastor was pronounced dead and had already been injected with embalming fluid, but three days later he was resurrected at a Bonnke meeting.
Ekekukwu’s wife was so confident that God would bring her husband back to life after he had been fatally injured in a car accident that she persuaded the local morgue to allow her to take the dead body to the church where Bonnke preached. There, the pastors lifted Ekekukwu’s body from the coffin and were surprised when the man began breathing again while praying for him. The video ends with Ekekukwu beginning to move and then later returning to the morgue where his body was placed in the coffin.
The documentary “Raised from the Dead,” subtitled “The 21st Century Story of Raising from the Dead,” features interviews by doctors who acknowledged his death. “It’s shocking,” one of them informs the film crew, “to see a dead man who was dead one day and then he came back to life … it’s shocking. You have to give all the glory to God. Nneka Ekekukwu says that when her husband was pronounced dead after the accident in November, she remembered God’s promise that she would suffer no more misfortune. “I said: – This can’t happen. I have to do something to experience God again.”
On the third day after her death, Yekekukwu’s body was placed in a coffin in the church in Ontish, where Bonnke preached at services. The body was taken from the casket and placed on a table in the church conference center, where several pastors began praying. The head pastor, Pat Nuachku, told the filmmakers that when church members became convinced of Yekekukwu’s resurrection, the woman dropped her crutches and began running, and her husband ran to the church altar to ask God to forgive his sins. In an interview with the filmmakers, Ekekukwu says that when he was taken to the hospital in an intensive care unit, two angels visited him and took him to heaven.
There he saw many people dressed in white robes. They sang and praised God. Then he was taken to hell, he says. The angel told him he had another chance to return. The rich man’s request to Lazarus – to warn those still alive about the existence of hell – was heard and the opportunity was “given to his generation.” In a commentary on the film, Bonnke says that the testimony that was published in the Nigerian newspapers – speaks of Jesus’ “tenacious faith and amazing power.” Ekekukwu’s story is “a sign from heaven,” he says.
