Pray As If ...

If you have been a returning reader, you have gotten used to more of a blog that looks more like a bible study. This isn't one of them. It's about something a video seen, and I did make biblical connections, I just haven't had time to really look into it. I will study it, look for these connections, and  write about them in another blog. In the mean time, I wanted to get this out there so that you can look into it for yourself if you want.

Yesterday evening, I was listening to a video podcast. I was away from my phone as the video finished, and the next one started to play. Me, being curious, I took a break from what I was doing, and walked over to see what this video was. This man was talking about a monastery they had visted. Once in the monastery,  a locked door was noticed. He asked about it. At first, the host denied that anything was in that room. That didn't make any sense.  Why lock a empty room? He kept pressing about the room, and he finally learned that it was a secret library.  Understanding that these people threw nothing away, they kept every piece of literature ever collected.

The visitors was eventually granted access to the room, the only condition was, they weren't given permission to take pictures. Agreed. Once inside, they were amazed at what they seen. A fully modernized room with lots of computer, and wall to wall books. They were amazed at the computer because, although this monastery had access to things like electricity they didn't rely on it for light.

 When asked about the moderneration of the library,  the answer he got was that they belived that something was going to happen in their lifetime that would destroy the monastery. They were scanning every word, from evert page in every book onto the computer to preserve the scared text for future generations.  

As this vistor is browsing through the books, he notices, the book of Thomas. In Christianity,  Thomas is known as doubting Thomas, the disciple that would only believe that Jesus resurrected,  if he could feel and touch Jesus.

He was allowed to take it out and scan through it. He read 2 of the verses from two different places. I could tell by just those 2 verses that while they were food for thought, they really didn't fit with the overall biblical theme. Also judging by those two verses, and that it was penned by the doubting disciple,  I could definitely seeing it being written by Thomas, it just didn't pass muster for biblical text.

Now, this man is now finished his tour of the monastery,  back state side, on a stage giving a lecture,  wich is this video I am writing about.

He then starts speaking of a time a friend called him to invite to somewhere he was going to, "pray rain."  "That's an odd way of saying it", he thought. "Isn't it, pray for rain?" He excepts the invitation,  for the experience of it. Once at the location, the "pray rain" man, takes off his shoes, steps in this circle,  closes his eye's for about 20 seconds, and it's finished. He steps out of the circle, puts his shoes back on, says to his friend, "I'm hungry. Let's go eat." Confused, the friend that was the invited guest asked about what he just witnessed. Don't you "pray for rain? Why did you say, "pray rain"? So he explained that praying for rain is an acknowledgement that rain hasn't happened yet, while, pray rain as if it's  already raining. He said, inside of that circle with bear feet, I was feeling the cool damp, rain soaked mud between my toes. I could feel the rain drops as they feel on my skin.

I got ahead of the story. Before the "pray rain" experience,  he spoke of a woman, who had (past tense) a fairly large tumor, and without judging the tumor as bad, or not belonging, a group of people, including the speaker, "prayed healing". And the tumor disappeared. It didn't show up on scans. It was gone! He, as a man of science admitted  that they couldn't prove scientifically  that prayer had anything to do with the tumor disappearing,  but the could show correlation.  Same thing with the pray rain. No scientific evidence of the prayer as the reason for the rain, but the correlation could not be denied.

Then he used a final example of a war torn area. People got together to, "pray peace" and the war stopped. Once again, no scientific proof, but an undeniable correlation.  

As he continues, he talks about now universities are now conducting studies on this, and time and time again, without fail, whenever they prayed something, as if..., 

sure enough, what they prayed happened.

I know. I know. This all sounds, new ageie. Mystical  even. The bible doesn't speak of that kind of praying. Oh really? Are you sure about that? Maybe it's something we should be examining more closely. 

If you not ready to do that, you could start with evening re-examining this blog. I haven't been doing it long I know it says I've been a member since 2018. Seems like I rememer creating the account, but for some reason, never did anything with it. So you don't have to go back 7 years to find the first one., just about 2 weeks, as of this blog.

It's not like there are hundreds of blogs to sift through. I think this will make my 13th blog. They are all there for the viewing. The first 3 was all about me. The things that were happening to me, and how it made me feel. I think it's in the fourth one where you start to see a change in how I was blogging. It was no longer just about me, and what was happening to me. How do you explain that big of a change that quickly? I sure can't,  and I'm the one experiencing it. All the blogs are there. You can read everyone of them. You can clearly see that something changed. Maybe it's focusing more on God, and less on me and my situation.  

Let's go back to the lecture. He used a calculation of how many people it would take, all praying in unison to see change.

He used the example of a population of 1 million people.

Calculate 1% of a million people, then find the square root of the 1%. That's how many. I think that calculation equals 100. Several 0's shy of a million.