ER Prayer Brings Woman Back From the Dead
During the Coffeyville (Kan.) Revival a medical doctor testified of a woman rising from the dead in an Emergency Room when an Assembly of God pastor laid hands on her and prayed over her.
Landon D. Vinson, M.D., who works in the Emergency Department at Coffeyville Regional Medical Center (CRMC), has been witnessing to colleagues of the miracle he witnessed of God raising a woman from the dead in the Emergency Room. Now, he is telling it to churches.
Rev. Randy DePriest, pastor of the First Assembly of God of Coffeyville, Kansas, and a key leader in the Coffeyville Revival, witnessed the miracle when he was called upon by the medical staff to console the woman’s husband. DePriest invited Dr. Vinson to tell First Assembly of God of the miracle that they witnessed.
On a recent Sunday morning, Dr. Vinson accepted the invitation to speak.
“I’ve seen hundreds of people at the end of their lives,” Dr. Vinson said. “I am confident of being able to determine if someone was about to die or when they were ‘gone.’ That’s part of the job description.”
During the height of the COVID pandemic, a woman was “down” and was taken to the emergency room in Coffeyville. She was receiving CPR when she was brought into the emergency room and was given CPR for an entire hour after arriving. Her heart stopped beating.
“We did get her heart beating again, but essentially the only thing keeping her heart going was shots of adrenalin in her bloodstream and putting her on a ventilator,” Dr. Vinson said, “From a medical standpoint, she wasn’t alive. She was what we call ‘brain dead.'”
He described to the congregation the numerous ways medical officials determine a person has died. In this instance, they found no signs of life. The woman’s eyes were fixed and dilated; she showed no gag reflex and her limbs showed signs of mottling, all which precede the onset of rigor mortis. Dr. Vinson, his staff and the husband decided to remove her from life support.
Feeling hopeless, as the husband’s last resort he did the only thing he knew to do. He asked for someone to call Pastor Randy DePriest to come and pray.
Dr. Vinson said, “Sure. We’ll wait for the pastor to get here.” Dr. Vinson thought that he and the nurses would simply wait for the pastor out of respect for the woman and her husband. Once Pastor DePriest arrived, he began to pray. During Dr. Vinson’s meeting with the congregation, he said, “We began to pray over her. My head was bowed. There was a nurse in the room. Maybe just a couple minutes into the prayer, a machine began sounding an alarm. I thought I would just turn it off so it would not be distracting. When I looked up, spontaneous breath began coming back. I saw a hand moving on this woman.”
As Pastor DePriest prayed over her, he began to ask her questions. She started nodding her head and responding. “This made no sense to me because she did not have any sign of life,” Dr. Vinson said. “We had taken her off all medications. We had given her four medications to keep her heart going. Those were all turned off. But now her blood pressure was strong. It was going through the roof. She was blinking her eyes. I leaned down and asked, ‘Can you hear me?’ She nodded her head ‘Yes.’ I asked, ‘Do you want us to keep going and fight?’ She aggressively shook her head ‘Yes.'”
Dr. Vinson said, “That was the first true miracle that I’ve ever seen. It was a very humbling moment. I kept hearing God saying, ‘That is My child. I decide who lives.'” It hit home for Dr. Vinson that medical doctors, and perhaps people in general, often think they are in control and call the shots. But Dr. Vinson told the congregation, “No! God will have the ultimate decision.”
Pastor Randy DePriest came to the stage stating, “I had the easy part. I didn’t spend three-and-a-half hours with the patient as Dr. Vinson did. When I walked into ER, I didn’t know that there was no sign of life. Sometimes because of what you might know, you limit God.”
When DePriest arrived, the staff asked him to console the husband since the wife was clinically dead, and they began removing all life support. But they did not inform DePriest of any of this. It was then that DePriest asked, “Before I see the husband, could I go see the patient so I could have an idea of who I’m talking about with the husband?” DePriest remembered, “The prayer of faith shall heal the sick and if they’ve committed any sin they shall be forgiven.”
The medical staff permitted him to do so; thus, he went in and laid his hand on her shoulder. He did not know her condition, or that she was clinically brain dead. He called her by name, and said, “This is Pastor Randy, and I’ve come to pray for you.” Her eyes opened, and he asked, “Can you hear me okay?” She nodded, “Yes.”
Then Pastor DePriest said, “Do you know Jesus Christ as your Savior?” Again, she nodded “Yes.” He continued, “That’s great news. Today we’re going to do what Scripture says. Where two or three agree, touching anything and believing in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, asking Him, it shall be done.
“So, I’m asking God to restore your health and to heal you. Does that sound alright?” Again, her reply was, “Yes.” One of the last things he told the congregation was, “As I prayed that prayer of faith, I didn’t know that in the other room, there were big changes in the monitor.”
As the woman began responding, Pastor DePriest described how two nurses quickly left the room to prepare her for sedation since she was becoming agitated from intense pain. DePriest noted when the medical professionals returned to transfer her from Coffeyville to another hospital for possible surgery, observation and recovery, that she was fighting to remove herself from the gurney they had placed her on.
As Dr. Vinson wrapped up his testimony at First Assembly of God, he described how he told a nurse, “This was a miracle.” As the nurse was drying her eyes, Vinson attempted to find reasons in his medical books for the occurrence, but God said, “This is My doing.” {eoa}
For the original story, visit Christiannewswire.com.
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James F. Linzey received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biblical Studies at Vanguard University of Southern California (1979), a Master of Divinity degree at Fuller Theological Seminary (1983), and an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Kingsway Theological Seminary. He hosted Operation Freedom television and radio programs worldwide on the baptism with the Holy Spirit. He authored “The Holy Spirit,” “A Divine Appointment in Washington, DC” and with Charisma author Verna M. Linzey (his mother) co-edited “Baptism in the Spirit” by his father Stanford E. Linzey, Jr. He is the chief editor of the Modern English Version Bible translation.
