JESUS AT NAIN

JESUS RAISES A WIDOW'S SON FROM THE DEAD ( Luke 7, 11).

"Young man, arise!"  Would that dread monosyllable thrill also the mysterious solitudes of death? Would it thrill through the impenetrable darkness of the more-than-midnight which has ever concealed from human vision the world beyond the grave? It did. The dead got up, and began to speak.

No wonder that a great fear fell upon all. They might have thought of Elijah and the widow of Sarepta; of Elisha and the lady of the not far distant Shunem. They too, the greatest of the Prophets, had restored to lonely women their dead only sons. But they had done it with agonies and energies of supplication, wrestling in prayer, and lying outstretched upon the dead; whereas Jesus had wrought His miracle calmly, incidentally, instantaneously, in His own name, by His own authority, with a single word.

It was about this time, possibly on this same day that our Lord received a short but agitated message from His great Forerunner, John the Baptist:"Are Thou the coming Messiah, or are we to expect another?" (Matthew 11,2). The message implied no latent hesitation, but was intended as a timid suggestion that the time was now  for Jesus to manifest Himself as the Messiah of His nation's theocratic hopes. Jesus allowed the messengers to see with their own eyes some of His works and bade them take back to their master the message that blind men saw, and the lame walked, and the lepers were cleansed, and deaf heard, and dead were raised - the recent miracle at Nain would alone suffice to justify this allusion. (Dean Farrar)

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