Apostle Malm, the gift that keeps on giving! Today the Apostle has an article about prayer. While some of his comments about deacons and elders getting up at church services and saying long and boring prayers is half way right, the rest of his article is full of some of the stupidest things I have seen come from Armstrongites.
What he does get half way right:
Those who pray to be seen and thought righteous by others, are using God for their own purposes and will NOT be heard by him. That includes all such prayer, including starting church services with a long and flowery prayer meant to impress the brethren.
While prayer should be made to God to open a Holy Convocation; it should be a sincere prayer to our Father with no thought of what the people will think of it.
One more thing that is ofter overlooked is the attitude of GRATITUDE for all of our blessings. When we feel oppressed and feel down sometimes we just need to count our blessings to stabilize our mood and get back to reality. In the face of trials and persecution we need to stop, take a deep breath and remember how very much God has done for us, we need to remember his promises for those who overcome, and we need to remember that he will deliver those who are faithful to him and who call upon him.
Then stupidity reigns supreme.
Communal family prayer leads to sin:
Some evangelicals recommend family prayer, where the whole family gets together and prays together. It is good to teach our children to pray, but when they are ready, encourage them to pray on their own. This communal prayer can lead to sin, for persons will drift into speaking to influence or impress the others and so misuse prayer and lose contact with the Father.
Holding hands in a circle is a sign of witchcraft:
Most certainly, do NOT hold hands in a circle to pray as that is a witchcraft teachnique intended to focus the people and aritificially psychologically unite them together with the leader; in opposition to each person independently uniting with God. Always watch for such manipulation techniques, that replace unity with God; with a unity around any person or group!Public prayer can be embarrassing and offensive: (half of this is right, I have heard many public prayers where the speaker should have kept his mouth shut!)
Therefore, it is far better to hide ones self away in secret and to pray in private where we can pour out our heart to God in honest sincerity without fear of embarrassment or offending others.
One hour prayers taught by HWA wastes God's time. (Again, half way right. A one word prayer such as "Thanks!" is just as valid as a one hour prayer that most times was filled with fluff. If you are sitting there with a clock trying to fill time in for an hour then it most certainly is a waste of time.)
In the HWA WCG we are told that we should pray for at least an hour a day, and people often were using repetition and inventing things to pray about just to fill in time. This is also a great evil. It is wasting God’s time, so to say; and it is making a mockery of prayer and communication with the Father.God's will is defined by the law:
We are told to seek that the Father’s will be done on earth as in heaven; that means that God’s commandments be obeyed without compromise as they are in heaven: for God’s will is defined by his law.
This is a request that God’s Kingdom come NOW in spirit with the writing of God’s law in our minds and hearts so that we may have a place in that Kingdom.
Apostate Malm talks a lot about "vain repetitions." He talks about law so much as part of prayer that it has become a vain repetition. The law has nothing to do with prayer. Only in the mind of legalists is the law important to prayer. To a legalist a sick person is sick because they broke the law. A person with cancer in the hospital is sick because they broke the law. A child is killed because of some hind of sin of the parent or child. People suffer because they broke the law.
Malm's god offers no hope for either sinner or saint.
9 comments:
Well, in my personal experience, while corporate prayer leads to sin and witchcraft, personal prayer has lead to being lead down a terribly long and useless path.
How often, when young, did I pray to be used for "your work as a good help," or "please help me be making the right decisions." How often, "bless" this or that person who turned out to be less than needing it. How many times guilted or sincerely wanting to give a bit more of what I did not have to give but knew it was what God wanted because I prayed about it? How many times could a God have intervened and really "lead", "Directed" "inspired" or just plan answered but did not? Hundreds if not thousands!
Oh me of little faith. Is it any wonder few find the Bible or the men who think they know how to use it or teach it credible or even interesting anymore?
The Malms, Packs, Hinns, Weinlands, Flurrys, Hagees etc of this world are actors in clown costumes
So, does it lead to sin and witchcraft if people pray that Malm gets a new laptop so he can better tell me and others how wrong we are?
Norm
This is ridiculous, as it indicates a total lack of trust in God's Holy Spirit! Who is Malm to judge the motives of others? How does he know that a person with good vocabulary is trying to impress everyone else around him? And, how would he suggest that you teach your children to pray if you don't have family prayer?
This guy not only appears to be way off base to non-believers, but also to Christians who can cite results to the effectiveness of their group prayer.
Because of my WCG background, I am still a bit shy about group prayer with other Christians, and tend to be more reserved and private because that's what HWA taught us. I've since learned that HWA was wrong! When people pray together, powerful results transpire.
This is yet another example of the lameness of Armstrongism. They find ways to question or outlaw all of the good things about Christianity that have been proven effective for a couple thousand years now!
BB
The pharisees also thought that god’s will was defined by their interpretation of his law. See what nonsense that idea leads to? The rest is even more ridiculous ranting.
But, hey, see now, I took this Diversity Class. No, I don't remember which one it was.
Anyway, we were supposed to guess from pictures what the people were really like to show how ineffective "profiling" is.
This one dude who looked like he might be Byker Bob in a suit, turned out to be a Realtor Catholic Wiccan.
So why not?
Why can't an Armstrongist church of God member be a Wiccan?
This is the best of both worlds: The love of the earth as Mother Gaia in a coven of believers while being a member of UC Gaia (the only church of God to be named after the goddess of the earth).
Just can't see the downside, since there are elements of pagan style worship in both of them (although the major difference is worship on the New Moon vs the glorious light of the Full Moon, but see, both the Days of Unleavened Bread and the Feast of Tabernacles begin on the full moon -- or they should if you do the calendar right!). There's a lot the Armstrongist Churches of God can learn from the Wiccans, so don't knock it!
Well, I guess the downside is in the Armstrongist churches of God all full of anger and fear. Wiccans give up such things and live in peace, I understand.
There used to be a nature store run by a Wiccan on 6th Avenue. I hear she's very intuitive and a really nice person. I wonder if it's still there.
[Confidential to dum-dum: Just how is it you think you know I don't keep the Sabbath?]
And just to extend Mr. Malm's discomfort with the practices of those infidel Armstrongist churches of God, how many of the Armstrongists are observing Saint Patrick's Day?
Saint Patrick's Day is one of those Roman Catholic holidays gone commercial, what with shamrocks, green beer and such, celebrating a time when one of their Bishops drove poisonous snakes out of Ireland. Supposedly.
Wonder how he did it.
Would the same method work for Australia?
Legalistic thinking tends to stick in my craw because of the damage it does. Classic WCG was always good at lifting the physical aspects from Jesus' deeply spiritual lessons, and turning it into a legalistic paradigm.
That's why they use "let the dead bury the dead" to justify not helping or even praying for anyone outside of their little group. And, if we carefully consider many of the root precepts of Armstrongism that differentiate it from conventional Christianity, this type of legalistic thinking is nearly always the cause of unChristlike behavior.
Jesus was cautioning the disciples against behaving as the public praying Pharisees did who were motivated by vanity, and a desire to make sure that everyone knew they were in compliance with the law. What Jesus did say was never intended to prohibit any kind of sincere Spirit-led prayer, whether it be private or public. His objective was to make sure the one praying remembered Who he was praying to, and to pray in such a manner that it would please God, and not make an idol out of self.
Armstrongism always discouraged and disparaged corporate prayer, except in their own approved settings, depriving members of a very powerful tool. That could only be described as spiritual error.
BB
Don't Theil and Malm participate in Pharisee white sepulchre vanity through the flowery writings on their blogs? Maybe they should be keeping their thoughts private!
~Miguel de la Rodente
Douglas Becker said...
"Well, I guess the downside is in the Armstrongist churches of God all full of anger and fear. Wiccans give up such things and live in peace, I understand."
You do NOT understand at all. Just because the so-called COGS have serious faults does not mean that every other crazy group on earth is better.
One fat-assed, wicked, old Wiccan with a man's haircut dyed black was anything but peaceable. What a crazy, backstabbing, brown-nosing, unstable FREAK. All the insanity of her witchcraft and illegal drugs were ~sort of~ held back a little bit by a relatively thin line of meds. The day she forgets to take her meds: KA-BOOM!!!
Stop praising evil things like Wicca as if they have any worthwhile answer to anything.
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