Question: "What does it mean to pray in Jesus' name?"
Answer:
Prayer in Jesus’ name is taught in John 14:13-14, “And I will do whatever you ask in my
name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything
in my name, and I will do it.” Some misapply this verse, thinking that saying
“in Jesus’ name” at the end of a prayer results in God’s always granting what is
asked for. This is essentially treating the words “in Jesus’ name” as a magic
formula. This is absolutely unbiblical.
Praying in Jesus’ name means
praying with His authority and asking God the Father to act upon our prayers
because we come in the name of His Son, Jesus. Praying in Jesus' name means the
same thing as praying according to the will of God, “This is the confidence we
have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears
us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we
asked of him” (1 John 5:14-15). Praying in Jesus’ name is praying for
things that will honor and glorify Jesus.
Saying “in Jesus’ name” at the
end of a prayer is not a magic formula. If what we ask for or say in prayer is
not for God’s glory and according to His will, saying “in Jesus’ name” is
meaningless. Genuinely praying in Jesus' name and for His glory is what is
important, not attaching certain words to the end of a prayer. It is not the
words in the prayer that matter, but the purpose behind the prayer. Praying for
things that are in agreement with God’s will is the essence of praying in Jesus’
name. more»
To the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information and documents that governments and corporations around the world would prefer to keep secret.
The Pentagon assessed the danger WikiLeaks.org posed to the Army in a report marked “unauthorized disclosure subject to criminal sanctions.” It concluded that “WikiLeaks.org represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, OPSEC and INFOSEC threat to the U.S. Army” — or, in plain English, a threat to Army operations and information.
WikiLeaks, true to its mission to publish materials that expose secrets of all kinds, published the 2008 Pentagon report about itself on Monday.
Lt. Col. Lee Packnett, an Army spokesman, confirmed that the report was real. Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks, said the concerns the report raised were hypothetical.
There are two subjects that one is never supposed to introduce into the conversation at any polite dinner-party: religion and politics. This chapter is all about both; or to be more precise, it is about the religion of politics. The Bible does not discuss politics in the categories of Conservative and Socialist or Republican and Democrat; instead, it speaks of the spiritual alignment of those who exercise political power. Political rulers are either for God or against him, and it is the purpose of Revelation 13 to warn us that, in the period between Jesus' first coming and his second coming, we must expect periods when godless politics manifests itself in particularly vicious ways.
First, the chapter portrays the characteristics of godless politics (1-6); then the techniques of godless politics (11-18); and finally, it presents us with what the Christian response to godless politics ought to be.
1. The characteristics of godless politics
I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name (1)
It is important to read this chapter against the background of what is said in the rest of the New Testament about civil government. In Romans 13, Paul argues that the purpose of government is to reflect the just rule of God within human society. He insists it is perfectly possible for government to exercise power in a way that pleases God, indeed God himself has ordained it in order to maintain justice within a fallen world. Civil government is meant to be God's servant for the good of human society. Paul was of course aware that often civil government did not fulfil its God-given purpose. Indeed, in 2 Thessalonians 2, he anticipates a future time of political and moral rebellion when the "man of anarchy" would set himself up against God and his people; and in this passage from Revelation, John seems to be describing that same eschatological personification of antichristian tyranny. The early church called him "the Antichrist". John here calls him "a beast".
As with all apocalyptic symbolism, John's imagery is not meant to be visualised so much as decoded. In the Old Testament, Daniel had a very similar vision, except that he saw not one "beast" coming out of the sea, but four. The first was like a lion, the second like a bear, the third like a leopard, and the fourth was a hideously powerful carnivore unlike any animal he had ever seen. In Daniel 7 we are told these four beasts represented successive world empires - probably Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. So what John seems to have done is to fuse together these four symbolic animals of Daniel to make one composite monster representing the sum total of all the godless tyrannies the world had ever known.
For John, most immediately, the monster represented Roman Imperialism; to Christians, ... more»
