Prayer and Revelation

Today was a very mind-exhausting day.  We started off with Nat discussing the issue of eternity and heaven and hell. 

Interestingly enough, the bible never says it in black and white the way today's church has been doing for quite some time.  Jewish people never actually believed in eternal life until Jesus started talking about it.  Even then, to them it was crazy talk.  And Paul even stated that people who are dead are asleep.  Never in the bible does Paul talk about our souls leaving our bodies and going to heaven. 

We went through a lot of nevers like this.  And then we went through the actually's, and to be honest I can't remember what they all are but I know we confirmed them through scripture and discussion.  In our conclusion to that discussion, we saw that the promise of the afterlife is that EVERYONE is going to experience some form of judgement.  When ancient Christians were dying they wished for a slow death so that they could put everything right, reconciled, and in order before they met God.  People today want to die a quick death so it will be painless. 

The ancient Christians feared God more than they feared death.

We also got talking about heaven and hell and how they exist.  The Jews never believed anyone went to heaven.  To them that was just where God lived.  They didn't even really believe in an afterlife, they just believed in the here and now.  I'm being very vague because my brain is totally fried so I apologize.  Our discussion of whether heaven or hell led to the question of why did Jesus die in the first place if it wasn't to get us into heaven when we die?

The answer is simple: to break the separation between God and man.  God wanted to bring heaven to us, and He made that possible through Jesus, and used Jesus to show us what heaven on earth looked like.  The whole heaven and hell thing isn't for us to worry about right now.  It's good to discuss, but ultimately God gets the last say in that, and He'll take care of it when we die.  Right now what we do know is that God has commanded us to love Him with all our heart soul and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourself.  That's all we should be worried about, and everything we worry about should stem from that commandment.

The thing we got into after our heaven and hell discussion was the good old hated/ignored book of Revelations.  We actually didn't get far today because we were running out of time with Nat, but just from scratching the surface we discovered that Revelations is a prophesy, and that if that prophesy had been written for modern times then it would not have been written at the time it was written.  God would have revealed that message now. 

Through out history, when God made prophesy, He made it within 50-100 years of it happening or less.  The people who heard it witnessed it--except for the prophesy of Jesus...which is why the Jews were so impatient about waiting for their Messiah. 

From what we read, and what Nat told us, at least part of Revelation was prophesy about what was going to happen to Rome, because the Romans were oppressing the Christians big time.  That's literally where we left off, so I'll keep you filled in on how that goes.

We then had someone named Richard come in and talk to us about prayer.  He talked about a lot of stuff which most of us already knew, but one thing I found fascinating was when he started talking about the authority God has given us. 

A lot of people understand that God has given us authority to pray for people who are possessed and to cast out those demons, but those people then misinterpret that as us being able to pray over the spiritual warfare that is happening completely outside of the physical realm.  Richard had several friends who would constantly pray over things like that, and they were constantly sick. 

Through prayer and careful reading of the scripture, Richard came to the understanding that God has given us authority over anything on the earth and in the physical domain.  The only time we have authority over the spiritual realm is when it is given exclusively or when a demon has possessed a fellow human.  Things in the spiritual realm are beyond our authority.

What we are supposed to do is pray for the individual, and when that individual is set free, it lessens the enemies' kingdom.  Praying against the enemies' kingdom is dangerous, because we don't have that authority so they will take advantage of us huge.

That's all for today.  My brain is fried.  Catch you tomorrow.