Quote:
Originally Posted by UntoHim
I am not trying to prove everyone else is wrong. I am discussing pray-reading, a long established staple practice in the Local Church movement. I quoted one verse as PART of my argument and was not presenting the idea that one verse in the NT is a basis to reject the practice. (I do agree that Witness Lee did this very thing though) So the desire to "reexamine" the teachings and practices of one little sect is to be considered the same thing as Witness Lee's blanket condemnation of the whole of "Christianity"? Really? You may want to rethink that one.
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You asked me to "rethink" this. I went back to OBW's post, here, per your request, is my "rethinking".
This is OBW’s post #51 in black.
ZNP,
For all of your examples, I see exactly what I said. There are numerous places where as part of a prayer, passages were, in effect, recited back to God. This is the kind of praying of the word that I have seen with significant impact. Even simply repeating the "Lord's Prayer" is profound as part of a larger prayer. It fills in our poor prayers with at least generalities concerning the broad categories we were taught to pray. To pray for more than just kingdom stuff. To also pray for those "poor, pathetic" things about ourselves and our lives that Lee so despised.
But that is not the practice that was being defended by anything written by the LRC and published by the LSM. The practice being defended by Graver's little book was the one described in the earlier book in which neither true reading of the word, nor prayer that looks anything like what Jesus taught when he said, among other things "Thy will be done." Nor any of the other passages you quote in which clear, coherent sentences of profound meaning were turned into something like:
"Our Father. Oh, Lord, Amen, Our Father! Yes, Lord, our Father! Hallelujah, our Father! . . . Thy kingdom! Oh, Lord, Your kingdom! It's all about your kingdom! Save us prom prayers about anything but your kingdom! Come. Oh, Lord, Come! Come! Come! . . . "
This is not right. RG’s book did not quote this or refer to this. The context of the book was that the Mind Benders book was out accusing the LC of “chanting”. RG was proving that “praying the word back to God” is scriptural and didn’t come from the Far East. No doubt he was defending the practice in the LC by compiling these quotes. But it is a huge stretch and very unfair to him at the time to say he was defending a mindless practice of pray reading. On the contrary, there is nothing in his book that would have supported that. The most you can say is that he was saying that since these saints prayed the word back to God, so can we without being a cult. He didn’t discuss the practice of it. The practice of pray reading in 2011 can hardly be considered the practice in 1979 when he first probably started this book.
And so on. And it can be argued that simply because the actual words from scripture are in there, it is a "sound" praying of the word. But while I did manage to leave the content vaguely recognizable, the process of dealing with scripture are more than sanctified syllables that contain power in their utterance — sort of like the effects of speaking the words from the Book of the Dead in the Mummy series of semi-modern swashbuckling adventure movies. The words contained in The Word have far less meaning as dictionary entries as they do in sentences, paragraphs, and whole passages.
Correct me if I am wrong, but this sounds like mockery to me. Was this quoted from an LSM publication?
And while there is power in the Word of God, it is not from merely saying the words contained in it. It is from reading for wisdom and understanding — something that the deconstruction of sentences into snippets divorced from their companions cannot do. There is no mystical power in mashing a bunch of words together in a meaningless way. That is not "letting the Word wash over you." It is no better than sitting in a circle and chanting "om." You feel better. You have been engaged in an exercise of emotional exhilaration but with no spiritual significance.
This to me is a prime example of “who are you to judge another man’s servant, to his own master he stands or falls”. I believe Paul has drawn a very clear line with this verse and that this post has crossed that line.
And the problem is not that there is no such thing through history as what might be called "pray reading," but that there is no record of the kind of thing that the LRC pushed as "pray reading." As you point out, there are numerous examples of praying by using passages of scripture as major portions of your own prayer. Or mixing parts of passages into your coherent sentences that, joined together, pray currently in a manner consistent with the passage mixed into your prayer.
Well this misses the point. A brother asked how to respond to saints concerning the issue of pray reading. I suggested that they get this booklet and use it to fellowship. I see no reason why anyone in the LRC would have a problem with reading this booklet, and if their practice was mindless I think this booklet might help them see that. With that as the context this paragraph seems woefully out of context.
So, a little book like Lord Thou Saidst correctly points to prayer in conjunction with what we know to be written in scripture. But that book is not being used to defend the practices mentioned in it, but something different. Something that only shares the words "pray" and "reading" with the examples brought out in the book.
This is unsubstantiated. Give me a quote from the book that does this. I have already stipulated that the book was a polemic to defend the LC practice. But you haven’t provided anything that demonstrates that the practice in 1979 in Houston was drastically different from what RG wrote.
In effect, the whole premise of that book is a kind of equivocation. They make note of practices that they call pray reading (and even others have called pray reading), then assert that their practice is also called pray reading and is therefore covered. But it ain't necessarily so.
I knew RG from 1978 to 1981. I have learned things that have shocked and disappointed me concerning him on this forum. I feel he may have hid his eyes during the JI expulsion. But it is a very serious matter in the NT to accuse an elder of lying or equivocation. I find this to be very insulting, I feel you have crossed the line with this comment, and I feel you need to back it up with solid witnesses and evidence. Because based on Paul’s word in the NT I am not to receive a charge against an elder unless it is from several reputable witnesses, and this is not.
So save your dissertation on examples of praying words from prior scripture contained within the scripture. I already agreed with that kind of practice.
And for anyone who still practices that stew-of-a-prayer the LRC calls pray reading, are you empowered to go out and care for the needy after pray reading those passages? Or is pray reading them not on the agenda?
Once again, the use of the term “dissertation” is mocking, especially since both you and Awareness asked directly for references to support the statement that “the word of God is designed to be prayed”. References are asked for, I provide them, you mock. As to empowering saints to live the Christian life, let the Lord judge.
Oh, and finding places where scripture contains the recording of a prayer that we can also pray does not support the general statement that scripture in general "was designed to be prayed." A prayer was designed to be prayed. That is not a general statement about the rest of scripture. So you can correctly assert that "there is scripture that was designed to be prayed" and that would be because it was a prayer when it was recorded.
Which also misses the point, or interprets it extremely narrowly. The fact that Solomon quoted scripture when he prayed to God is an example of the practice. Of course you can pray his prayer, but you can also learn from and imitate him.
And just because the word accomplishes God's will, and the words "Thy will be done" are found in a prayer does not support a general statement that the words of scripture are "designed to be prayed." That is just nonsense.
Yes. Pray the Word. Use it all in prayer. We can pray anything (although there clearly is no purpose in praying the American Heritage Dictionary). But that does not make any of it broadly "designed to be prayed." The purpose of scripture in general was not to be prayer. It was to be God's speaking. We can pray it. It is possible to do so. In some cases it is profitable to do so. But I do not see any evidence that, as a whole, it was "designed" as such.
I responded to this already. But, I will add that this was the point of the book “Lord thou saidst”, once God says something He is obligated by his word. This is why I quoted the verse “my word shall not return void”. Since the Bible is “God’s speaking” as you point out, we can latch onto his words and pray them back to him. This aligns us with His will. This reminds Him of his word, something we are told to do, which is why I quoted that word as well in my “dissertation”. This was something that RG shared a lot in Houston, for example on Romans 10:13 he argued that if you call on the Lord, and proclaim that Jesus is Lord, you have to be saved. You could show up at the judgement seat, hold up the Bible and tell the Lord He is obligated, by His word, to save you.