[OBW]

To respond to your post on the points I think needing response, I will simply copy and paste the whole thing in here and then edit it down to what I want to respond to.

My new comments are in GREEN.

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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,

. . . . 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.

If you start with the fist sentence I included after the ellipsis, I am giving the practice that RG is defending, not the practice he is describing in his book. I'm not sure who wrote the other book, but it really does sort of describe something like I laid out. It is not a mockery. And it is the whole of what I ever saw in the LRC from Jan 1973 through August 1987.

I really don't care what the practice in certain places in 2011 is because RG did not write about that. He wrote about what was at the time. Well, he wrote with the intent of making what he wrote about seem to be covering what was common practice at the time.

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?

No. It is a fairly faithful representation of the kind of thing that I heard and participated in over a 14+ year period. This is no quote from a 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.

I tire of your "who are you to judge another man's servant." That just makes us all into servants of Lee and therefore free from any questioning of what might be wrong there. Besides, what is the "this verse" that Paul has drawn any kind of line about? I am not referring to any verse of Paul's that I am aware of. Did you dream this part? If you don't want to "judge" anything, what the heck are you doing here??

. . . .

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.

You are joking. Right? It has already been stated that the book came out during the time of the lawsuits as a historical view of praying with the word so that the LRC practice of pray reading could be defended. Are you disagreeing with this? Are you suggesting that the method of pray reading that you see in 2011 is what was seen by observers prior to 1981? Back to the origins of pray reading. Back when Duddy and others visited LRCs to see for themselves? They may have made more out of it in a negative way than I did, but it was what it was.

But the book isn't going to quote anything that mentions what I did. That is what it is trying to hide. Trying to make go away.

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.

Equivocation can be both intentional and unintentional. But after all the stuff that Benson and Ray did in the whitewashing of JI and others, I do not have any compunction to fear saying that lies have proceeded from his mouth. I would suggest that the deception was intentional.

I would also suggest that he probably was loose in his thinking and simply thought that any kind of prayer with the Word was sufficient since prayer with the Word is prayer with the Word. And if that was as far as he thought, then maybe he wasn't willfully deceptive about it. Maybe more like he was himself deceived.

But if the purpose of the book was to defend the LRC practices at the time of those early lawsuits, and you have even pointed out within this post (a part I have not kept) that the book can be used to show how the LRC is not really engaged in the practices mentioned in that book, then how do you say that there is no equivocation of any kind if the purpose was to defend one thing by showing something else with a similar name. Isn't that the raw definition of equivocation?

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.

And, despite all of your sources and references, you actually have not established that "the word of God is designed to be prayed." It can be prayed. Some of it is already prayer. But you have failed to actually deal with the question. The question is not whether you can pray the word. It is whether it was designed to be prayed. Is there any evidence that, as a general statement, you can show that the word is designed — written with the structure and intent that it would be prayed.

You can make generalizations about where there are prayers contained in scripture. You can find that some portions of scripture were actually prayed by someone else in other scripture. But you haven't established that anything says that it was designed to be prayed.

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I could explain that finding prayers, and verses prayed, is like finding verses that say "to the church in [city]" and declaring that churches must be by city. It could be true in some cases. But there are other cases that are not that way. Just as there are a vast array of verses in scripture that are not demonstrated as being prayed, nor are they said that they should be prayed.

No one has said you should not pray scripture. But you cannot find anything that establishes that it is expressly designed to be prayed. That is the point.