Prayer and the Present Protestant Dark Age
Protestantism is often touted as the movement that brought biblical enlightenment out of the Dark Age mostly underpinned by Catholicism. There is no part of this historical fallacy that contains any vestige of truth. Beside the fact that Martin Luther and John Calvin never left the Catholic Church, they merely devised a different way of keeping the great unwashed from interpreting the Bible on an individual basis. The Catholics outlawed individual possession of Bibles while Protestants outlawed individual interpretation. The result is the same.
Either way, the authority of the institutional church whether Catholic or Protestant dictates knowledge and truth. Either way, Catholics and Protestants know what the church wants them to know…which is nothing or next to nothing. You can’t control a knowledgeable populous. Hence, until this very day, the masses are mostly ignorant about who God really is. Knowledge is personal empowerment and freedom which is counterproductive to tyranny; also, money and financial resources empower people as well which is also counterproductive to the ancient religion of tyranny. Be sure of this—this is what drives anti-capitalism. All human history is an epic struggle between individualism and social caste. It boils down to institutional ownership of truth, or institutions facilitating individual freedom and serving at the behest of the people.
Catholics and Protestants alike relegate their own thinking to the church and empower the church with their own money as well. When they stand before God ALONE without the church self-proclaimed mediators present, that will be a rude awakening inflamed by the knowledge that they paid hard-earned for the privilege to boot.
The American Revelation confused two church fundamentals: the church as a political party inseparable from the church-state model, and the foreboding of individual interpretation. These are church fundamentals that define church and always will. Those who confuse Americanism with church are just that…confused. But also, be sure of this, post American confusion is passing and the church is returning to its tyrannical roots of social caste and the institutional ownership of truth.
What is the TANC mission? To promote individual interpretation of truth. To promote individual thinking. To promote personal accountability to God, not an institution. To promote Christ as the only mediator. To promote edification in a family-of-God setting where all are free to be convinced in their own minds, not the institutional dictation of truth.
How deep is the darkness? How deep is the ignorance? Ten years later, TANC has finally developed a definitive perspective on justification that exposes the embarrassingly elementary error of the Protestant gospel. Apparently, the Bible is not deep and mysterious; it is to be taken at face value through individual study. TANC promotes a collective effort towards knowledge, and seeks to get the ball rolling in that direction. Love for THE truth will lead to a progressive consensus—not confusion and disunity. Obedience to an authority will lead to unity? How’s it working for us? And which authority? It’s funny how personal interpretation dictates the authority of choice that disavows personal interpretation.
Past a fundamental biblical understanding of justification, we believe a true perspective on God is uncharted territory in Western culture. We contend that most professing Christians are totally confused about who God is. Why? Because few Christians really study the Bible for themselves with their own minds. In the same way that the physically handicapped cannot ambulate without special equipment, the Protestant relies on scholarly commentaries and the Catholic relies on the Pope.
Personally, as one who now questions everything taught to me by Protestantism because it doesn’t even know what justification is, I suspect that I truly know very little about God. We can now hear the shrills of condemnation from those who claim to have intimate knowledge about God found in what has been told to them by mere men drunk with control-lust. After all, who am I to say that Protestants have had it wrong for 500 years because they saved humanity from Catholicism which had it wrong for 1700 years while claiming the same doctrinal father in St. Augustine? Yes, how dare I question such a firm foundation as that.
Real Christians need to get off their lazy rumps and rediscover truth and the peace of soul found there. That’s what TANC strives to promote, and it is time for many people to stop watching from afar and get personally invested in the home fellowship movement. With all of that said, what is a topic among thousands that needs to be questioned and rediscovered? Answer: prayer.
In Protestantism, prayer is one of the “means of grace.” Remember, in Protestantism, “grace” is a soft term and replacement word for “salvation.” This nuances the real Protestant gospel of progressive justification, viz, the idea that you go to church to obtain a continued “means of [salvation].” Why would you pray for any other reason per Protestantism because God is “sovereign”? Right? Hence, prayer is an acknowledgment that we are still wicked sinners who have no clue what God is up to except that it will always contrast with our totally depraved desires. Therefore, prayer is for the express purpose of confessing our own wickedness “as set against God’s holiness” and thereby receiving more “grace” (whisper, “salvation”).
But what if prayer is an actual conversation with our literal Father? If God is sovereign yet not completely defined by such because He is unlimited, and not limited by His own so-called “attributes,” does He choose to not know everything and predetermine everything for the sake of true conversation? Sorry, but from a historical-grammatical biblical viewpoint, God has changed His mind and said that He doesn’t know certain things. The Bible is replete with examples. And sorry, but on the same wise, He changed His mind on some things. Your dismay resulting from such an assertion is indicative of your Protestant brainwashing. Please note: you are not incredulous because of what you have read in the Bible yourself, but what you were told at church by some petulant adolescent who paid for his privilege to rule over your thinking.
What if prayer is a real conversation with God as we understand conversation normally? Would that enhance our conversations with God because they are real conversations?
This is one area where you can study to show yourself approved of God rather than seeking the approval of men.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
Please, someone, try to read through the following eyewash, “The means of grace; Prayer.” Here it is:
http://www.shortercatechism.com/resources/beattie/wsc_be_098-107.html
Don’t you feel just dirty after reading it? Like a worm? Doesn’t God seem out of reach of his born-again children? Indeed!
Listen, God is our Father, not our punisher; we’re not His enemy anymore. What does John 1:11,12 call us? Enemies? Strangers?
More prayer; great, Biblical idea. And let’s pray without fear.
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One interesting thing on prayer I read from an atheist, can’t remember who, was that Jesus destroyed “real prayer” by the Lord’s Prayer and his teachings in the sermon on the mount. Like no vain repetition…how can you do “real prayer” without it? Well if by “real prayer” is meant wallowing in your sinfulness repeating some debasing formula over and over because you’re praying to be saved over again (kind of like the Catholic mass, “Lord have mercy, Christ havd mercy, Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy…”) then yeah, I guess he did. But the atheist’s notion of real prsyer was obviously off.
Much church prayer in Protestantism are like that too:
“Lord we know we are sinful and vile creatures, that there is no strength in us, that there is no virtue in us, that without thy grace we would be the most vile of sinners, that even with thy grace we are just barely a notch above the vileness of Satan himself, that even our thinking that with thy grace we might be a notch above the vileness of Satan himself may be the result of our vileness and a vile vile sin on our part, yet Lord vouchsafe thou unto us more useless grace that never can render us any less vile, for vile we came into the world and vile shall we leave it, for we know Lord that we are but worms, and that if thou O Lord were to look up vile in thy heavenly dictionary thou wouldest see our pictures; yea Lord, yet have mercy upon thy vile servants whose service is nought by flinging dung at thee, and see them as a teensy bit less vile if thou canst muster up the ability so to do, for perhaps a millisecond, and send us vile servants more ineffectual grace, not to make us less vile (for we are so vile that is impossible, even for thee, O Lord), but to shew unto us just how vile we truly are, that by understanding our vileness, Lord, we mayest understand thine sovrantie absolute. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, one God in three persons, as it was in the beginning, now is, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.”
Aside from the vain repetition, of which there is a lot, particularly dwelling vainly on vileness and repeating how vile we are, I notice Protestant prayer is often a litany of “Lord we know…” followed by some misinterpretation of Paul.
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Darnit! After reading your Protestant “prayer,” I feel like yet another shower.
I heard similar ones during my time in the cult. “Oh, Father God, we deserve nothing but pigswill and flat Coke. If you can stand it, Father God, please turn just one ear to us and one eye, if you can stand the sound and sight of your wicked children.”
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