Thoughts to ponder: Raising the dead

So I have been thinking about raising the dead more than normal and came across a question on an assignment for school where the topic came up. Here is my response:

"Jesus didn't command us to prophesy, yet we all can, but we are not all prophets. Jesus commanded us to heal the sick, but some will have a gift of healing, perhaps like John G. Lake, who saw hundreds of thousands of people get healed. I'm not sure how that works when you consider that we were also commanded to raise the dead. Would the person with the gift of healing just raise the dead more often?"

Just a thought.

David Hogan's ministry in Mexico has raised 300 people (approx.) from the dead. However, they have tried to raise approxiamately 2,300 people from the dead. That is a 13% success rate. For each person they raise from the dead it takes on average between 6-8 hours of prayer. So assuming that they don't spend any more time praying for the peope that don't get raised from the dead than the people that do (which I am sure they probably keep praying for the people), they spend 40-54 hours praying for people that don't get raised from the dead between times when they are successful in raising the dead. Don't like the 13% success rate? In baseball you wouldn't even make a minor league team if you batted .130 unless you are a pitcher. However when you think that they have raised 300 people from the dead and I have never done it, their 13% success rate looks pretty good.

We were commanded to raise the dead.

When you are raising someone from the dead do they have the choice of whether to come back or not?

Just to clarify, Jesus said to raise the dead, not to pray for the dead.

I am now 0 for 1 in raising the dead.

I realized that if I did raise the dead I would think that I have somehow arrived in that I have reached some cool spiritual level with God that He allowed me to raise the dead. WRONG!

We would probably see more people raised from the dead if people like myself stopped thinking that we are at a high level of spiritual maturity because it happened through us. This is probably also true when applied to creative miracles and other "great" miracles that many people would not have faith for.