Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever.
Remember it is the same bunch who taught the rapture would happen any moment and all that goes with it a also taught that the Lord's Prayer has no place in the church.
WOW !!!
If you're going to believe a lie and promulgate it as fact, you may as well pick a big one. Joe Stalin and Mr. Hitler would be proud of you, not to mention all the folks on Madison Avenue and in the Pentagon.
In the days when Jesus Christ walked the earth, it was the custom of those who learned (disciples) from their betters (Rabbi-teacher) to ask how to pray. The followers of Jesus were no exception.
The answer to the question as to how to pray were very often different. Some were erudite and others were very convoluted and ideologically precise. None were as poetic and earnest as the one Jesus taught his crew. "Teach us how to pray," they asked Him. He did, and in the process gave the world a blended standard of the needs and answers to the spiritual and physical life that is unequaled anywhere.
Nineteen centuries later, the convoluted religious and political environment in post-civil war America gave birth to a need to describe what it meant to be Christian. No straight forward statement of faith or logic resulted. The words of Jesus had been recorded and memorized ages before on the far shores of an ocean of time, but in America at the beginning of the industrial revolution, it was thought something more should be added. When man decides to add to the Word of God nothing good ever comes of it.
Beginning with John Nelson Darby's Dispensationalism (mid-1800's - same time as Darwin's work BTW) and his published effort to clarify the muddy waters of Millenialism, we first discover the ideological fetus of rapturism. The twentieth century began with the publication of twelve tracts defining the "fundamental" precepts of protestant Christianity. Each tract was a volume that could match the current New York City telephone directory in size and weight. In the end, the Niagara Conference, which was meant to serve as a rubber stamp for these doctrines, served only to grant a perverted sense of legitimacy to a series of predictions of the future; the great tribulation and the rapture of the saints. It should be noted that all of this angst was a purely American adventure into a sort of religious/spiritual fetish about matters and times and events that no one really had any control over. No other nation or group of Christians gave so much as an ounce of credibility or attention to any of this. It didn't matter, though. Like apple pie and the striped flag it was All-American and therefore a gift from the very throne of God.
Whether you believe that the fantasy of the rapture is something that your very life and salvation hang upon or whether you believe that the Lord's prayer is a true work of literary art is irrelevant. They are two very dissimilar things separated by centuries and cultures that no longer exist except in history books and the memory of those who hold them dear.
To say that the prayer of Jesus and the idiocy of the rapture was invented and published by the same group of people, or 'bunch' as it were, is to demonstrate illiteracy and inconsideration for historic fact that can only be attributed to one who is more mentally challenged than those that are being accused of it.
but that's just me, hollering from the choir loft...
