U.S. evangelist raises the dead - is ‘Pastor Matt’ the New Messiah?

By DEREK CLONTZ
Your World Report

They say he heals the sick. They say his words bring hope and comfort. They say he has raised the dead.

And now, some even insist that he is the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

The soft-spoken itinerant preacher known only as “Pastor Matthew” has stirred up a controversy in Christian communities throughout the Southeast, where hundreds of true believers say that all signs point to the possibility that he is, in fact, the Savior - sent by God to save souls before these tumultuous and terrible times we live in end suddenly … on Judgment Day.

It’s not just laymen who think Pastor Matthew is something special. Respected clergymen are listening, too, with some telling their congregations that the preacher is either divinely inspired, or, possibly, utterly divine - the Son of God.

“I was skeptical at first, but having seen Pastor Matthew bring a dead man back to life in a morgue … it’s hard to deny that he has powers that are beyond the reckoning of men,” said the Rev. Dr. Peter Sanderzon, a Bible scholar in Dallas, Texas.

“After spending hours in earnest prayer, I am convinced that God has chosen this time and place to send His Son back to Earth.”

Pastor Matthew’s background is a mysterious as his reported power to raise the dead. By most guesses, he is in his early to mid 30s, but nobody knows for sure because he won’t say.

“He appeared in Austin, Texas,” as Sanderzon puts it, “seemingly out of nowhere in December 2007. That’s where the first reports about his ministry surfaced.”

Since then he is said to have visited small churches - unannounced - in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina, spreading the gospels to congregations ranging in size from five to 75 people.

Wherever he goes, tales of miracle healings follow: a Macon, Georgia blind man’s sight restored  … a crippled teenager in Birmingham, Alabama,  given back the use of legs she hadn’t walked on since she was 7 years old …  a paralyzed Gulf War veteran in Jackson, Mississippi able to feed himself and move again.

Pastor Matthew’s words are powerful, too, say those who have heard him speak.

“When he talkes it changes you,” said a woman who attended one of Pastor Matthew’s impromptu revivals at the 17-member-strong True Believer Church of God and Christ near Chiefland, Florida.

But most amazing are reports that the mysterious preacher has raised the dead. In each church he visits,  he emphasizes that no Christian has ever died, not really, and that God, through those who believe, can raise true believers - the saved - from the grave.

Sanderzon says he saw Pastor Matthew “command a dead man to rise up from a morgue slab 24 hours after doctors had pronounced him dead.”

 The man, says the scholar, “blinked his eyes and sat up, and he was fully aware of what had happened, not confused or disoriented in the least.

“He very calmly said, ‘Praise God.’

“Then he stood up and said he wanted something to eat and a drink of water. The hospital has no explanation. The doctors have no explanation. The only possible way to make sense of this is to accept the fact that Pastor Matthew is doing the Lord’s work with the Lord’s blessing.”

In another instance, 17 seemingly rock-solid men and women - all members of the True Light of Jesus Christ church in Jackson, Mississippi, claim to have seen Pastor Matthew invoke the power of God Almighty to raise a 6-year-old child from a coffin two days after she fell off a backyard sliding board and snapped her neck, as one emergency room nurse reportedly told a relative, “like a twig.”

And not only did the preacher bring the child back to life, say the eyewitnesses, the little girl is walking, talking and once again in good health.

One of her doctors is on record as having told church member and a blood relative of the child, Ken Alfert, that she has examined the girl’s CAT and MRI scans “and can’t find evidence of any trauma whatsoever - it’s as if her neck had never been broken.”

This is the same doctor that pronounced the child dead at the hospital 46 hours before Pastor Matthew brought her back to life. The child’s parents are writing a book on the miracle and spoke through Alfert, although, he says, ”they are considering an invitation to appear on 60 Minutes and possibly Oprah” before the book is finished.

He insisted that the parents have pledge “every penny of profit” to their church.

Pastor Matthew reportedly has said that the plans to raise 144 Christians from the dead before Judgment Day.

He has spoken, too, about the Rapture, and has said that he will “gather 144,000 Christian saints” to be delivered up into Heaven alive, without ever having died.

Several witnesses say Pastor Matthew has mentioned Hartford, Connecticut, as the spot where the Rapture will take place, but Sanderzon can’t confirm that.

The Bible scholar pointed out that, to his knowledge, Pastor Matthew has never claimed to be Christ returned to Earth.“Neither has he denied it,” he said.

In a rare interview with a freelance reporter, he said “I am who I am,” echoing God’s words to Moses as noted in the Old Testament.

As you would expect, there are Bible experts who think Sanderzon “is jumping the gun” and giving Pastor Matthew “more credit than he deserves without further investigation.”

“The Bible warns us to ‘beware false prophets,’” said one preacher. “The jury is still out on Pastor Matthew.”

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