coma

• ancients believed soul left body during

86:5.4The soul was thought of as be­ing re­lated to the body as the per­fume to the flower. The an­cients be­lieved that the soul could leave the body in var­i­ous ways, as in:

86:5.51. Or­di­nary and tran­sient faint­ing.

86:5.62. Sleep­ing, nat­u­ral dream­ing.

86:5.73. Coma and un­con­scious­ness as­so­ci­ated with dis­ease and ac­ci­dents.

86:5.84. Death, per­ma­nent de­par­ture.

• widow’s son at Nain was in

146:6.2When Je­sus sought to leave Cana and go to Nain, a great mul­ti­tude of be­liev­ers and many cu­ri­ous peo­ple fol­lowed af­ter him. They were bent on be­hold­ing mir­a­cles and won­ders, and they were not to be dis­ap­pointed. As Je­sus and his apos­tles drew near the gate of the city, they met a fu­neral pro­ces­sion on its way to the near-by ceme­tery, car­ry­ing the only son of a wid­owed mother of Nain. This woman was much re­spected, and half of the vil­lage fol­lowed the bear­ers of the bier of this sup­pos­edly dead boy. When the fu­neral pro­ces­sion had come up to Je­sus and his fol­low­ers, the widow and her friends rec­og­nized the Mas­ter and be­sought him to bring the son back to life. Their mir­a­cle ex­pectancy was aroused to such a high pitch they thought Je­sus could cure any hu­man dis­ease, and why could not such a healer even raise the dead? Je­sus, while be­ing thus im­por­tuned, stepped for­ward and, rais­ing the cov­er­ing of the bier, ex­am­ined the boy. Dis­cov­er­ing that the young man was not re­ally dead, he per­ceived the tragedy which his pres­ence could avert; so, turn­ing to the mother, he said: “Weep not. Your son is not dead; he sleeps. He will be re­stored to you.” And then, tak­ing the young man by the hand, he said, “Awake and arise.” And the youth who was sup­posed to be dead pres­ently sat up and be­gan to speak, and Je­sus sent them back to their homes.

146:6.3Je­sus en­deav­ored to calm the mul­ti­tude and vainly tried to ex­plain that the lad was not re­ally dead, that he had not brought him back from the grave, but it was use­less. The mul­ti­tude which fol­lowed him, and the whole vil­lage of Nain, were aroused to the high­est pitch of emo­tional frenzy. Fear seized many, panic oth­ers, while still oth­ers fell to pray­ing and wail­ing over their sins. And it was not un­til long af­ter night­fall that the clam­or­ing mul­ti­tude could be dis­persed. And, of course, not­with­stand­ing Je­sus’ state­ment that the boy was not dead, ev­ery­one in­sisted that a mir­a­cle had been wrought, even the dead raised. Al­though Je­sus told them the boy was merely in a deep sleep, they ex­plained that that was the man­ner of his speak­ing and called at­ten­tion to the fact that he al­ways in great mod­esty tried to hide his mir­a­cles.

• Jairus’s daughter in

152:1.2Since there was much ag­i­ta­tion in Ca­per­naum against Je­sus, he called the fam­ily to­gether and ex­plained that the maiden had been in a state of coma fol­low­ing a long fever, and that he had merely aroused her, that he had not raised her from the dead. He like­wise ex­plained all this to his apos­tles, but it was fu­tile; they all be­lieved he had raised the lit­tle girl from the dead. What Je­sus said in ex­pla­na­tion of many of these ap­par­ent mir­a­cles had lit­tle ef­fect on his fol­low­ers. They were mir­a­cle-minded and lost no op­por­tu­nity to as­cribe an­other won­der to Je­sus. Je­sus and the apos­tles re­turned to Beth­saida af­ter he had specif­i­cally charged all of them that they should tell no man.

• people often entombed when merely in

167:4.3The Jews were in the habit of bury­ing their dead on the day of their demise; this was a nec­es­sary prac­tice in such a warm cli­mate. It of­ten hap­pened that they put in the tomb one who was merely co­matose, so that on the sec­ond or even the third day, such a one would come forth from the tomb. But it was the be­lief of the Jews that, while the spirit or soul might linger near the body for two or three days, it never tar­ried af­ter the third day; that de­cay was well ad­vanced by the fourth day, and that no one ever re­turned from the tomb af­ter the lapse of such a pe­riod. And it was for these rea­sons that Je­sus tar­ried yet two full days in Phil­a­del­phia be­fore he made ready to start for Beth­any.