Jgnat said: 'We lost a great poster here to hodgkin's lymphoma I believe. I did not pray for a cure, but rather for an end to the estrangement with his daughters. My prayer was answered. With or without God, these prayers help.' -- So either God acted on your prayer, the result of which I won't even put into a sentence because it makes me feel ill.. Or God didn't act on your prayer, and what happened would have happened anyway.. Did your last sentence mean 'with or without God, these prayers help US TO FEEL BETTER/FEEL AS THOUGH WE CAN DO SOMETHING ABOUT A SITUATION BEYOND OUR CONTROL'? If so, that's a good point...
A Contradiction?
by Yan Bibiyan 38 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Yan Bibiyan
jgnat:
Yin, people buy lottery tickets all the time even though there is no certain outcome.
Certain outcome, no, of course. But the odds are known in advanvce. Not quite so with prayer, unless believers look at it as a gamble - throw some in and see what sticks...
I am sorry to hear about the olderly gentlemen's wife. In his case, if prayer is a conversational or emotional bridge, then yes, I understand using it for that purpose...though, the man upstairs is still ignoring it
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Yan Bibiyan
Its only about what you want as long as what you want or need is in harmony with what god wants or needs.
This has got to be the poster child example of conditional love, seriously! Think about it.
Also, to the point in my original post, if the prayer is an act of submission, it has to be a confirmation of repeated reassutrance of submission.
God already knows about your submission. Your faith is the bow of submission and worship. God knows before you even utter the words!!
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Tater-T
tater: did you or i forget about them either?
yes we did and do..
but how fiting in a thread titled A Contradiction ..
you go from, God provides to.. it's up to us..
Didn't Jesus say ASk for ANYTHING.. at one point.. or I'm I missing something
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jgnat
"with or without God, these prayers help US TO FEEL BETTER/FEEL AS THOUGH WE CAN DO SOMETHING ABOUT A SITUATION BEYOND OUR CONTROL'?" - The Quiet One
I can go along with that.
I would pray for the elderly gentleman because that is the context in which he receives comfort. I pray for those who ask. I do not pray for people who do not; athiests for instance. In that case offering prayer is an insult.
jeremiah, I have noted that my Witness husband is hesitant to pray. He is concerned about what he can pray about, the form of his prayer, and whether he is worthy to be heard. This can lead down the rabbit hole that if a prayer is not answered, it is somehow the fault of the petitioner. I'd rather trust in a generous and embracing God, who meets us at our point of need. Wasn't that the whole point of the cross?
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jeremiah18:5-10
I don't have a strong position either way on prayer. I've had times in my life that I felt that prayer helped me and to.es that I was convinced prayers were answered. Overall I always felt a disconnect towards god though, even while serving as an elder. I never felt god or holy spirit guided decisions. I did however feel prayer helped me to talk things out in my head and to identify priorities. I always dreaded public prayers, felt prayer should be personal. I used to believe it was thru prayer that we talked to god and he talked to us thru the bible, so that you take a matter to him in prayer then you ho to the bible and you would find his reply. I no longer am convinced of this. At this point I'm rather apathetic towards prayer, although I frequently meditate on god and the bible.
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Quarterback
yb: I didn't lose your point in the first illustration. I was just commenting on the way things are done in fire drills today. I seem to digress alot during my senior years. The answer to the latest illustration is of course obvious. You would save the one drowning upon first noticing the crisis.
Prayer on the other hand has had some beneficial effect in my life, and the lives of others that I know of. You need to have faith in your prayers. I don't want to make this a long thread about what prayer is.
Mankind is in a world of time and unforseen circumstances, and disasters affect each and everyone of us. One thing we are sure of is, we will live through many tribulations while we live before God's Kingdom has come, and God's will is done for our planet. We are not immune to disasters, just help to cope with them.
I know we never asked to be born into this crazy, and unfair world, but we are all part of a divine plan. There is a bigger picture to see, and our individual tribulations have to be endured. No miracles should be expected.
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Cold Steel
So, Yan, you don't believe that God has ever blessed you without you're having to ask? Yes, God knows our needs before we do.
Now you play the guy in the wheelchair. You have no way of getting to safety and you see a guy a short distance away. You know he saw you because he glanced right at you. Do you just sit and wait to be saved without saying a thing? Or do you yell, "Help!" And when you have received the assistance of your new friend, do you say, "Thank you," even if you know he already knows of your gratitude?
During the Millennium, we're told, God will hear your prayers before they're out of your mouth and will answer them. But until then, we have to struggle and live by faith.
One thing JWs don't understand or know about is one of the hallmarks of near death experiences, and that is, God answers your prayers through ministrations of righteous friends and family who have passed on and who now live in the spirit. There are no such things as angels who are not people. Some haven't yet been born, while others have lived in eras long past. Everything and everyone is linked.
In one account, a man explains how he left his body during emergency surgery. He wandered the hospital and later recorded all that he saw and heard. Just before returning to his body, he was comforted by three ministring angels. In the spirit, he explains, one understands things one doesn't in the flesh. Part of this is knowing things about people and spirits by simply looking at them.
As I was looking at them I was given to understand that it is a family responsibility to serve as ministering angels. It is a family responsibility to heal, teach, minister to, protect, and preserve the family connections and covenantal relationships in the spirit realm and in the mortal world. This is their first responsibility as departed spirits. ... They were at the hospital to assist me because my mortal work was not finished, and in a way that I could not understand until much later in my life, my continued life was important to our family and to them personally.
Further, he explains what he learned about the purpose of life:
All things on this earth are placed here for the purpose of bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. Some things are here to feed us, some to comfort us, some to create beauty, shelter, even medicine. Some things are here to bring opposition, pain, and discomfort. But they are all here to create this world that exalts man. All of it is God’s plan, and no part of it is dispensable. Pontius, Visions of Glory: One Man's Astonishing Account of the Last Days (p. 32). Cedar Fort, Inc.
I recommend that you do some research on near death experiences and I think things will become a bit clearer. The Adversary whispers that we never asked to be born and that God did this horrible thing to us. And if we don't tow the holy line, he'll toss us into a pit of fire and brimstone for a neverending period of time. The thought that God will do this to people eternally is what keeps many of them from moving on once they depart their bodies. Instead, they choose to remain in the world they knew in mortality.
A great book to start out with is Return From Tomorrow, by George Ritchie. Others are: I Stand All Amazed, by Elane Durham and The Message, by Lance Richardson. Durham's book is very well documented, but currently out of print.
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Cold Steel
If one understands the nature of God and the Fallen World, one understands why Epicurus' words are non sequitur.
First, God cannot, and will not, abbrogate free agency. If evil, poverty, disease, famine exists, it exists for a reason. In some cases it exists because of the wickedness of the people suffering these things. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is meant to lead people out of sin and the effects of sin. In some cases, such as extreme poverty and famine throughout Africa, it is because of the wickedness of the leaders and political systems. When food, medical and other relief from the United States and other countries go to such regions, corrupt political despots rip off the U.S. information and sell it on the black market. God is omnipotent, but this doesn't mean unlimited power, but rather, all powerful. But this isn't the first earth He's created nor is it the first to have fallen. To bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man, God works under certain restrictions which, if not complied with, would not bring about His desired purposes. In certain cases such as turning to God and prayer, and through repentance and living God's laws, God is able to negate evil and bring about good. If He sends people prophets and they reject them, kill them, stone them or ignore them, God allows them to suffer the consequences. If He destroys the despots and circumvents His own law, eternal justice is denied and God would be unable to retain the respect of His Creation and He becomes captricious, arbitrary and unpredictable. After all, He sends no one to this earth against his or her will. That, too, would be arbitrary and caprcious.
Every man, every animal and everything intelligent existed before this earth was created. The reasons are many and varied, but in some cases extreme suffering and evil is necessary to bring about perfection and eternal life and God's end purposes. When men submit to God, they prosper, but when they submit to Satan, they suffer. I can't explain this in one message, but it's the closest I can come.
Finally, God does not see the ending of human life with our perspective. When innocent victims pass on from this world, they are freed from all pain, all disease and all evil and they are healed and are made to understand their suffering (as we all do) in the context of the Gospel. If men are wicked and cause such suffering, they pass through an excruciating torment in which they are caused to suffer that which they inflicted. This is not done for retribution, but to put things into their proper context so they arrive at an understanding of their own wickedness and evil. But they are their own tormentors, something most don't understand. This isn't to say there's no eternal consequences for being wicked. There are. But we all have to pass through the fire to become fully tempered. In studying Roman history, I became familiar with the suffering that the Romans inflicted on the people of Carthage, Rome's trading competitors. Rome was good at that and they made the Carthaginians suffer their full and sustained wrath. But later I discovered how the Carthaginians murdered their own infants in the fires of Molech and engaged in other dispicable practices. It was thus little surprise to me that their cities were leveled and their fields sowed with salt; also, that the men were put to the sword and their women and children sold into slavery.
The people in Africa who are ravaged by hunger and withering disease have also lived in gross wickedness in many cases. I've spoken to people who have returned to the U.S. from the Peace Corps, and have heard some incredible stories of how these people beat their families, kill their enemies (many times neighbors) and take from others. Their lives won't change until they do. We won't escape, either, as long as we continue in our own iniquities...such as abortions, which is one of the crowning evils of our age.
So with all due respect to Epicurus, he just wasn't plugged into the system, nor did he have any idea what he was talking about.
