Dr. Landon D. Vinson, an emergency room doctor at the Coffeyville Regional Medical Center in Coffeyville, Kansas, recounted a “miracle” he witnessed when a “brain dead” woman he had treated came back to life after a pastor prayed for her.
The incident happened in spring 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, but Vinson shared his experience at the Coffeyville First Assembly of God early last year at the invitation of the Rev. Randy DePriest, who had prayed for the woman, CBN reported.
Vinson first explained to the congregation that during the course of his medical career, he had been there when hundreds of people died. “It’s part of the job description,” he said.
In the specific instance of the woman who came back to life, CPR had been performed on her for about an hour, Vinson said.
“We did get her heart started again, but essentially the only thing keeping her heart going were shots of adrenalin in her bloodstream and us breathing for her on a ventilator,” he said.
“From a medical standpoint, she wasn’t really alive. We have a lot of different things we do to check for life, and essentially she was what we call brain dead. There were no signs of life anywhere. Her eyes were fixed, dilated. … All the things you can imagine,” the doctor said.
Vinson spoke with the woman’s husband saying it was probably time to take her off life support. The man responded asking if they could just wait until a pastor got there.
The hospital reached out to DePriest, who agreed to come in.
When he arrived at the hospital, the staff wanted him to go to the husband immediately and be with him to prepare him for his wife being taken off life support.
But the preacher asked if he could go to the wife’s room first, so he could be better informed of the situation.
Vinson remembered DePriest coming to the woman’s room.
He put his hand on her shoulder.
“He began to pray over her,” Vinson said. “So my head was bowed. There was a nurse in the room. … Maybe just a couple minutes into the prayer, the [life support] machine’s kind of alarming, and so I think I’m going to turn it off so it’s not distracting. And then I look up and the spontaneous breaths are coming back. And I see a hand moving on this woman.”
“This made no sense to me because she did not have any signs of life,” the doctor said.
“We had turned off all of her drips and sedations,” he said. “Prior to that she had three or four different medications keeping her heart going, and those were all turned off. And now her blood pressure is strong. It’s going through the roof.”
DePriest spoke to her, saying, “This is Pastor Randy, and I’ve come to pray for you.” Her eyes opened, and he asked, “Can you hear me OK?” She nodded, “Yes.”
“I understand you’ve had a really rough day, and your body needs healing,” he continued.
Do you believe in the power of prayer?
Then DePriest said, “Do you know Jesus Christ as your Savior?” Again, she nodded, “Yes.” He said, “That’s great news, because today we’re going to do as the Scripture says, and where two or three agree of touching any one thing and believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, asking him, it shall be done.”
“So I’m asking God to help you, to restore your health and to heal you. … Does that sound alright?” DePriest said. Again, a nod. “Yes” was her reply.
Vinson recounted that the woman was blinking her eyes, so he leaned down and asked, “‘Can you hear me?” She nodded her head. He then asked, “Do you want us to keep going and fight?” She aggressively shook her head “Yes.”
The hospital staff had to sedate the woman because she was still intubated and trying to get out of the hospital bed.
DePriest summarized, “We go from, ‘We have no life’ to ‘We better sedate her. She’s getting agitated.’”
For Vinson, “that was the first true miracle that I’ve ever seen,” he said.
“What I kept hearing was [God saying], ‘That is my child. I decide [who lives].’ … For me, that was kind of a gut-check moment, a very humbling moment,” he said.
“We think we’re in control. We think we call the shots, but at the end of the day … God will have the ultimate decision, and he decides.”
Vinson remembered DePriest just walking out of the room afterward.
He was “like it was completely routine business. ‘OK, I’ll see you guys later.’ I mean, he didn’t even look surprised at all that she woke up. He walked out and said, ‘I guess I’ll go get her husband,’” Vinson said.
The doctor recalled talking with one of the nurses later that day, and her asking, “What just happened?”
He responded, “I think that was a miracle.”
“She just cried. That’s all she could do. She had nothing else to say,” Vinson said.
Vinson said he did research afterward trying to find a medical explanation for what they had witnessed, but he could not.
He then felt like God spoke to his heart saying, “It’s me. There is nothing else. It’s me.”
Vinson told CBN via email, “I see no other explanation than a miracle for this phenomenon.”
“I am not claiming that a pastor raised a woman from the dead,” he said. “I am saying his steadfast faith and prayer triggered or released something spiritual that transcended realms.
“I don’t know that I’ll ever understand the mechanism, but I know she was dead before the prayer, and alive after.”
