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Jesse James ….. Raised from the Dead
It was a father/daughter dance like nothing I’d ever seen. Angela, the bride, in a tender, expressive, funny, endearing, intimate and spontaneous dancing pantomime expressing a very tender and loving relationship with Jesse James, her father.
Jesse & Angela, in their dance
For 5 minutes they danced, first tenderly in one another’s arms, and then facing off with one another, as if they were the only 2 in the room. The other 200 or so in the room didn’t so much watch the dance, as joyfully partake of it. This was a gift Angela and Jesse were giving to each one of us. They were sharing with us the love they held in their hearts, and always would, for one another.
Tender moment
At the end, the room erupted in applause, mixed with shouts of loving encouragement and joyful enthusiasm. It had been a highlight of the day’s events thus far. We had each one of us been invited into this intimate expression of a father’s love for his daughter….a daughter’s love for her father, and we all felt richer for the experience.
As father and daughter parted in the middle of the dance floor, each walking toward different tables which were off the dance floor, Jesse’s heart suddenly stopped, and he died as he walked. I was 15 feet away from him, just off the floor, and watched a surreal tableau as he dropped as if falling from a height, his head bouncing wickedly off the floor. For 2 seconds there was no sound, and then pandemonium erupted all around me……
Let me give you a little background, before I continue. Until about 5 years ago when they moved away, Ron & Roz Greer were some of the greatest neighbors you’d ever hope to have. Ron had grown up in inner city Milwaukee, an angry child. He grew up hating whites (I’m white, he’s black). He went into the military, but ended up at Fort Leavenworth prison for trying to kill a superior officer, one of only two Marines ever incarcerated there (at that time anyway). There, he opened his heart to the gospel of the truth of Jesus Christ, and his life transformed from the inside.
Roz and Ron Greer
He came back to Milwaukee, and wooed and won Rosalyn, who was the very prim and proper daughter (at that time, anyway) of a religiously raised family. As I recall, from their viewpoint, they just wished Ron would go away. But he didn’t. And so Ron and Roz were married, had 3 boys, moved to Madison somewhere in there, and Ron became a firefighter, preacher, and politician.
He was a black Republican….an independent thinker, and not afraid to voice his views. In running for Congress the first time, he would be asked for, and would agree to, radio interviews. In that first run for Congress, he was interviewed by a black Democrat from Washington, D.C., who hung up on him when he discovered he was Republican, and was interviewed by a redneck from Idaho, who hung up on him when he discovered he was black. Ron did not fit into a mold.
The Greers – Dakari, Imani, Angela, Jamaal, Roz, Ron
He was the pastor of a small congregation of Christ-believers for a time. He worked as a firefighter, but was fired from his job, because the fire chief was gay, and Ron had been handing out anti-gay literature at the firehouse. He ran for Congress 3 times, against a lesbian Congresswoman, but lost all 3 times. Whenever the Madison newspaper wanted a provocative quote or interview from a well-known black citizen, they would call Ron. And all this time, Roz loved him, and they both raised 3 fine sons.
Ron was, and is, very strong in his beliefs. I’ve always loved him, from the first time I met him, though we agree on practically nothing doctrinally….except for one thing….we need Jesus Christ! And in the spirit of Jesus Christ we have had a fantastic friendship and brotherhood from the very first.
Jamaal and the Hartlaubs
Because of my love for Ron and Roz, I’ve always loved their boys. Jamaal, the eldest,worked for me in my painting business for a month out of high school. Though it didn’t work out, Jamaal and I have always had a mutual love and respect for one another. He moved down to Atlanta, Georgia to go to college, and there he met Angela.
We were blessed to receive an invitation to Jamaal and Angela’s wedding. It was the late summer of 2007, and my wife and I and 4 of our 5 children drove down to take part. Since Ron & Roz had moved away a year before, down to Florida, it was a reunion of sorts; not only with them, with their boys, who all had also moved down south, but also with both Ron’s & Roz’s parents and siblings, a number of whom we had gotten to know and grow close to over the years we were neighbors.
Ron & Jamaal
Ron was the official at the wedding, and the reception occurred at the same location as the wedding, after rearranging tables and chairs. There were about 200 guests, so it wasn’t small by any means. The sit-down meal was eaten, and then came a father/daughter dance I will never forget.
When Jesse hit the floor, dead, I was standing about 15 feet away from him, just off the dance floor. When he died, I did not move, but began to pray, and I didn’t stop praying for the next 45 minutes.
At first came shrieks, from family, from friends, from daughter, from brothers, from wife. Ron, having had emergency medical training as a firefighter, arrived at Jesse’s side rather quickly, and upon determining the lack of heartbeat, he began doing chest compressions
The newlyweds and their parents
immediately. Another woman, who was and still is our neighbor, has a nursing background, and so did mouth to mouth resuscitation, at least for 10 minutes or so.
The ambulance and paramedics arrived 10 minutes after Jesse died. All the time, Ron continued doing chest compressions. Once, then twice, they applied the electrical paddles to Jesse’s chest. “Clear!” they would yell, and then, just like on TV, Jesse’s chest bounced up slightly, but his heart wouldn’t start. And all the time, Ron straddled his legs, pumping his chest.
I read about the heart stopping, in a TIME magazine article the month after this experience. In essence, the article stated that when the heart stops, and stays stopped for any more than
Steve, Jamaal and Angela
5 minutes, there is virtually zero chance that someone can be resuscitated and stay alive. Rather, even if such a one is revived, because of a kind of necrosis (death) that invades the blood, that person will just die again the next day, this time for good.
That stopping of the heart is what happened to Jesse. As if his heart had skipped a beat, but after the skip had forgotten how to beat. Now the whole time Ron and the paramedics were working on Jesse, about 100 people who still remained in the reception hall (many had been herded outside) prayed. We were a praying lot of people that day. After those first 5 minutes of pandemonium after Jesse’s heart stopped, it was mostly quiet as those few with training attempted to save Jesse’s life. Once in a while a son or daughter or Jesse’s wife would wail….but it was pretty quiet for the most part.
A full half an hour after Jesse had died, with Ron compressing his chest during that whole time, and after the paramedics had tried the paddles on two different occasions, they wheeled Jesse out on a stretcher, now with a mask over his nose and mouth, the paramedic squeezing a big bulb, which drove air into his lungs, and another paramedic walking beside, continuing to do compressions.
Our prayer leader, Elward, and his wife
After they left, Elward, a pastor of a local congregation of believers in Jesus Christ, gathered us all in a big, oblong circle, holding hands, and began to pray. And we prayed, for Jesse. But something happened that I can’t to this day explain. After about 5 minutes of praying for Jesse, we stopped praying for Jesse and instead began to simply praise God. We extolled the glory of God and of His Son Jesus Christ. We thanked Him for what He’d done, we bragged of His excellence and power and strength and might. We praised Him for His greatness. We spoke and sang and chanted of the greatness of God.
After 5 or 10 minutes of doing this, of praising God. God spoke to me…..whether to anyone else I don’t know, but I know He spoke to me……and this is what he said…simply, powerfully, knowingly. “Now I am free to act.” That was all.
And God did act. As near as I’ve been able to figure, it was at that time (probably at that exact moment), in the ambulance, that Jesse woke from the dead. Just woke up. He was raised from the dead with no lasting ill effects. No brain damage, no heart damage.
Of course we didn’t know this at that moment in the reception hall. We went on for another half an hour, singing and praying. Ron & Roz were in the center of a most wonderful circle, singing (Ron) in his rich baritone, songs like Negro spirituals, which emoted from the depths of his soul, and person by person came and leaned over and hugged the back of the person in front of them, until we had formed a huge circle, each in close contact with the others in the circle. And the music that came from the depths of the souls in that circle….the sounds, the feeling, the stirring of the depths!!!….like nothing I have ever heard the like of, before or since.
Well, that is the record, from this witness, of how Jesse James was raised from the dead by God, in the back of an ambulance, after having been dead for approximately 40
The newlyweds
minutes. How he was not only raised from the dead, but preserved from damage to his heart or to his brain during the time he was dead. This is a miracle of the power of resurrection. Praise God through Jesus Christ our risen Lord, by Whom and through whom everyone will be raised from the dead, at one time or another!
Jamaal and Angela now have a son, Christopher. They live and work in the Atlanta area. When they bought their first home, Jamaal called to get painting advice……and we still stay in touch. If you think of it, say a little prayer for them, would you?
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If you enjoyed this story of God’s divine providence, see
The Miracle of the Norwegian Bus
MMFN – The Man No One Knew
The Miracle of Corkscrew Mountain
A Few Miracles
Some More Miracles
And these miracles.
