John 11:43-44 Now when He had said these things, He cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!” And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Loose him, and let him go.”

The raising of Lazarus from the dead was an incredible miracle … Greater than any Jesus had performed before. There had been two other instances in which Jesus had raised someone from the dead … The widows son in Luke 7 and Jairus’ daughter in Luke 8. In both of these instances they had been dead only a short while and there could have been those who said they had only been in a coma or in a deep sleep. In the case of Lazarus, we know that he had been dead four days, that his body had been prepared and entombed and that his body had begun to decay. There could be no doubt that Lazarus was quite dead and all it took was a command from Jesus to restore his body and raise him from death.

When Jesus called him forth, Lazarus was resurrected into a body that would die again later, but there remains a promise for all who receive Jesus that we will be resurrected into bodies that are incorruptible and eternal. The Hebrew word for Dead is Met and it is composed of the Hebrew letters Mem and Tav which are the middle letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the last letter of the alphabet. The Hebrew word for Truth, is Emet, adding just one letter to the word for death, that letter being the first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet, Aleph. Jesus referred to Himself as the Aleph and the Tav, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, just as the word for Truth, Emet begins with the Aleph and ends with the Tav, so also Jesus Who is the Aleph and the Tav said He was the Truth. Those who deny the reality of Jesus, deny the Truth, Emet and so, denying He who was from the beginning, the Aleph, and rejecting the truth, they are left only with Met or death.