'Raising the Dead: A Doctor Encounters the Supernatural'
The incredible story of death and subsequent life of a car mechanic

By Dan Wooding
 

ROME, ITALY  -- The audience of more than 270 doctors from some 40 countries around the world sat in stunned silence today (Friday, May 21, 2010) in the eternal city of Rome, as a renowned heart doctor produced evidence of how, after he had prayed for a patient who had died and was being prepared for the morgue and then he was brought back to life after that prayer.

Dr. Chauncey W. Crandall IV, who serves at the Palm Beach Cardiovascular Clinic in Palm Beach, Florida, told this story during his dramatic presentation on the first day of a two-day conference at the 7th Annual World Christian Doctors Network "Spirituality and Medicine" Conference held at the Sheraton Roma Hotel and Conference Center in Rome. Photo: Jeff Markin and Dr. Crandall (Photo: WSVN TV-7)

Crandall, a born-again physician, produced dramatic evidence that was shown on big screens at the front of the hall where the medical professionals were meeting.
 

I joined the gathering and can report that you could literally feel the electric atmphosphere as it swept through the hall, as Dr. Crandall told of the day -- October 20, 2006 -- when a middle-aged auto mechanic, Jeff Markin, walked into the Emergency Room at the Palm Beach Gardens Hospital and collapsed from a massive heart attack. Photo: Dr. Crandall speaking at the WCDN conference

Forty minutes later he was declared dead. After filling out his final report, the supervising cardiologist, Dr. Chauncey Crandall, started out of the room.

In a later interview Dr. Crandall told me, "Before I crossed its threshold, however, I heard the audible voice of God telling me to turn around and pray for the dead patient."

The doctor told the audience that he had learned to "follow that impulse" even if he was embarrassed.

"Father God," he said, under his breath, "I cry out for this man's soul. If he does not know you as his Lord and Savior, please raise him from the dead now, in Jesus' name."

With that and Dr. Crandall's instruction to give the man what seemed one more useless shock from the defibrillator, Jeff Markin incredibly came back to life -- and remains alive and well today.
 

Now Dr. Crandall has been writing a book on his incredible experiences called "Raising the Dead: A Doctor Encounters the Supernatural," which will be published later this year by Faith Works Publishing based in Houston, Texas.

Like so many of the delegates at this unique WCDN conference in Rome, Dr. Crandall often prays with his patients, he says. He stated that he has seen many miraculous healings-even others raised from the dead. He's known by his patients and by a national reputation for treating people with "the best of medicine and the best of Jesus." Photo: Dr. Crandall pictured with his wife Deb during the Rome conference

But how did a Yale-educated cardiologist whose Palm Beach practice includes some of the most powerful people in American society, including several billionaires, come to believe in supernatural healing? How, as a scientist, can Dr. Crandall embrace God's power to intervene in the natural order? And why does this doctor freely acknowledge that faith does not compel God to work wonders, even though God desires that everyone ultimately be healed?

In a separate interview, I discovered from Dr. Crandall that the answers to these questions compose a story and a spiritual journey that transformed Chauncey Crandall from a self-satisfied Christian into a radicalized warrior for God against the evil of disease.

He began pursuing answers to these questions with everything he had when late at night in June 2000 Dr. Crandall received a "value alert" phone call from the hospital's lab concerning one of his patients. His patient had a white blood cell count of over 80,000. The doctor's immediate thought was, "Whoever he is, he's dead-he has leukemia."

"Dr. Crandall, I'm sorry to tell you this," the nurse on the phone said, "but it's your son, Chad. We've already run the results a number of times to make sure."

Chad was eleven years-old-a flaxen-haired tennis enthusiast, with blue-eyes, freckles and a mischievous grin. He was the fraternal twin of his brother Christian. Christian was the natural leader; Chad the shy charmer, the one everyone wanted to be around once they came to know him. How could Dr. Crandall's precious son Chad be dying? Photo: Chad Crandall

Once Dr. Crandall understood that Chad was suffering from a life-threatening illness, he cried out to God for every spiritual gift God would give him. He came to believe that Christ's healing power was not only for the people of his day but ours as well.

He was surprised to find that few other Christians shared this faith, many believing that God stopped performing miracles during the apostolic age. Belief in healing through prayer was far more common, though, among missionaries. So Dr. Crandall began taking journeys to such places as remote Indian villages in Mexico where he witnessed many healings through prayer. This built-up his own faith and taught him how to pray effectively for his son.

Dr. Crandall also made certain that Chad received the best conventional medical care possible, visiting Dana Farber Hospital at Harvard, Duke Children's Hospital, and finally The Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Oregon, where Dr. Brian Druker informed the Crandall's of a miracle drug that might soon be on the market, Gleevec. Partially as the result of Dr. Crandall's advocacy, which included persuading President Bush to write a letter on Chad's behalf, Gleevec was fast-tracked by the FDA. After a year of keeping Chad alive with prayer and lesser drugs, Gleevec reduced his counts to normal within 4 days.

But Chad's journey through illness was not over. Three years later his leukemia was back and had metastasized into other strains that produced tumors. In the fall of 2004 Dr. Chauncey Crandall and his wife Deb lost their son.

At Chad's deathbed, Dr. Crandall felt he must decide, right then and there, whether to abandon Christianity completely or commit himself unreservedly to God's service. Before he left Chad's hospital room, he committed the rest of his life to going wherever God led and doing whatever He asked of him. But Dr. Crandall made one demand: "In exchange for Chad's life, Lord," he prayed, "let me win 1 million souls to you."

Dr. Crandall had wanted "every gift God could give" him, but the gift God gave Dr. Crandall then was one few Christians want-Christ's cross. By joining his grief to Christ's sacrifice, his passion, and "filling out the sufferings of Christ," as the Apostle Paul felt privileged to do, Dr. Crandall came to know in a far greater measure Christ's resurrection power.

Much of charismatic and Pentecostal teaching implies that faith compels God to act according to our desires. Dr. Crandall found that God uses miracles as signs of the world's ultimate restoration-the defeat of every evil, including death. And at times we are the instruments God uses to produce such signs. At other times we are warriors in an epic struggle with evil whose destructive effects claimed God's own son. But it is through joining Jesus Christ in this battle-whatever the costs-that we participate in God's victory. Our ultimate security is to be found in radical obedience.

These truths were confirmed for Dr. Crandall when shortly after his son's death "the heavens opened," as he says. Within a matter of weeks Dr. Crandall was being invited around the globe to share his hope in Christ.

He began to see miraculous healings among the patients in his practice.

When he prayed for people at mass evangelistic meetings they were often touched by the Holy Spirit and were healed of their diseases.

Dr. Crandall became the kind of Christian who would turn around at God's prompting and pray for a man to be raised from the dead, because he had become convinced that nothing is impossible with God. Christ's resurrection power is as available today as it was in the time of the Apostles. The believer has God's own life within him, in the here and now, and for eternity.

As it happens, Dr. Crandall was not the only one praying for Jeff Markin the day he came back from the dead. Jeff's long-estranged wife had been praying for many years for Jeff. His daughter, who was just arriving in the hospital's parking lot when her father died, was praying for him as well. Dr. Crandall's prayer was but one of many that together became the means God used to bring Jeff Markin back to life.

A life that had not been committed to Christ, as it turned out. Jeff told Dr. Crandall that when his heart stopped he briefly visited hell-or received a vision of it. He saw himself as someone thrown away, isolated for eternity, unloved. Once he had sufficiently recovered Dr. Crandall was privileged to lead Jeff to a saving knowledge of Christ. While Jeff still struggles with his faith, as we all do, his life is now more and more a sign of the transformation God wants to bring about in all of us. Jeff has progressed from a man who cared about little but pleasure to one committed to sharing God's love with others.

"Raising the Dead" shows that the work of healing, as part of Christ's epic struggle with evil, is not only Dr. Crandall's task and those of similarly gifted individuals; it's the task of the reader as well and of all Christ's people as we join together in bringing about God's rein-his Kingdom-wherever we find ourselves.

Working with Dr. Crandall on the book, has been Harold Fickett, the author of many books, including "The Holy Fool" (Crossway, Hodder & Stoughton, Northcote), "Flannery O'Connnor: Images of Grace" (Eerdmans), and "The Living Christ" (Doubleday). He is Charles Colson's longtime collaborator, making major contributions to "Loving God" and "How Now Shall We Live", and co-authoring "The Good Life" and their recent bestseller, "The Faith".

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