{"id":3552,"date":"2025-04-29T23:51:26","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T22:51:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parquediscovery.pt\/de\/?p=3552"},"modified":"2025-09-22T22:27:24","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T21:27:24","slug":"lazarus-effects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parquediscovery.pt\/en\/lazarus-effects","title":{"rendered":"Lazarus-Effects"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Bethany (Roman province of Judea), 32 A.D. \u2013 In front of a rock tomb, a large crowd mourns their friend Lazarus, who had died four days earlier and had been buried inside. In the warm climate, the process of decay had already begun, and the grave had been sealed with a stone rolled in front of it. There is initial bewilderment when one of the mourners demands the stone be removed. When the entrance is open and this man loudly calls out the Aramaic words \u201cElatsar tse haru-tsa,\u201d the unthinkable happens: From the darkness of the tomb, the deceased stumbles into the light again \u2013 wrapped in burial cloths like a mummy, but alive and well!<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The “Raising of Lazarus,” as recorded in John 11, continues to divide opinion. While many of the Lord Jesus\u2019 other miracles have been subject to naturalistic interpretations, this one defies explanation. A person who has already begun to decompose, according to everything reason, experience, and knowledge teach us, cannot return to life as a healthy human being. It was not magical words or a \u201cspell\u201d that Jesus used \u2013 he simply commanded: \u201cLazarus, come out!\u201d \u2013 with the authority of his divine creative power. This event caused many Jews who were expecting the Messiah to believe in Jesus (Joh 11:45). Others, however \u2013 those who had already conspired to kill Jesus \u2013 considered eliminating Lazarus as well (Joh 12:10), even though they did not deny the miracle itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just days earlier, Jesus had predicted this very reaction in a parable: In Luke 16:30, the rich man in torment begs that someone be sent back from the dead \u201cso that they will repent.\u201d No other parable includes a named character \u2013 yet Jesus calls this man \u201cLazarus\u201d!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abraham, the \u201cfather of faith\u201d (Rom 4:16), doesn\u2019t tell the rich man that raising someone from the dead would be impossible. Instead, he replies: \u201cIf they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead\u201d (Lk 16:31). Faith, therefore, does not depend primarily on whether all the facts align with one\u2019s logic and worldview, but on the willingness to submit to God and His revelation. It is, above all, a decision of the will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In biology, a “Lazarus effect” is noted when animals or plants previously believed extinct are discovered among modern species. The most famous example is the coelacanth (Coelacanthiformes<\/em>), known from fossil records from the Lower Devonian to the Upper Cretaceous. Since they were absent in later layers, it was assumed this group of lobe-finned fish had gone extinct 70 million years ago. But in 1938, a 1.5-meter-long, 52-kilogram specimen appeared in the bycatch of a South African trawler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James Leonard Brierley Smith, the scientist who identified and named the remarkable find, later wrote a book titled Old Fourlegs<\/em>. This scaly sea creature was believed to be a transitional form due to its large, fleshy fins protruding like little legs from its body. As a “missing link,” it was thought to connect fish with the first land-dwelling amphibians. It was generally assumed that it used its strong front fins to shuffle along the sea floor and might even have been able to leave the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much speculation surrounds the dead… But beginning in 1987, when modern submersibles first allowed scientists to observe coelacanths in their natural habitat, that assumption proved false. Latimeria<\/em>, the genus of today\u2019s species, swims at depths of 70 to 400 meters and shows no interest in walking on the seafloor \u2013 let alone on land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A preserved specimen of the Comorian coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae), still living in the Indian Ocean today<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By the time its genome had been fully sequenced, it became clear that the coelacanth is not the missing link between aquatic and land animals. Although it moves only by swimming and cannot be an ancestor of amphibians, textbooks curiously continue to claim that it moves its fins in a \u201ccross-limb gait\u201d \u2013 suggesting that evolution had already produced a form of \u201cwalking\u201d underwater. The transition from water to land remains one of the major unresolved questions in evolutionary theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The coelacanth highlights several broader truths about fossil records:<\/p>\n\n\n\n