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.
