Today was the global day of prayer, a day where Christians from all over the world gather together specifically to pray. I read that it starts from the rising of the sun in Japan to the setting of the sun in Hawaii.
Here is St. Louis people gathered in Busch Stadium at 7:00 p.m. I was going to go with someone from church but she decided not to go because she was afraid that the event would be rained out (it had been raining earlier and there was still a chance of more rain). I checked on-line and called several people to try to figure out if the event had been canceled, but I didn’t find anything out. I didn’t really care about the rain, and I didn’t think a big thing like this would be easily canceled so I decided to go anyway.
There weren’t as many people at the stadium as I thought there would be. There were probably only about 500-1000 people, which seems like very little in a huge stadium. I was not very impressed with the way that this prayer day was conducted. Nonetheless, I was blessed to be able to focus my thoughts on God and prayer for a while. It was also good to be with many other Christians, even though I didn’t know anybody.
Overall the event was OK. We sang some songs (and some not-songs–just kidding) and several people read scripture verses. They also gave some history about slavery in the United States, and then we all read a prayer aloud acknowledging and asking forgiveness for these sins of the past, which still have consequences today. Following this, we broke into small groups of 4-5 people. I had a hard time hearing what others were saying (there was a lot of background noise). Finally, several pastors and a few other people offered some concluding prayers. I was quite astonished at the prayer that one of the pastors gave. His prayer was mostly about the relationship between the United States and Israel. He quoted that part of the God’s promises to Abraham that says, “I will bless those who bless you and persecute those who persecute you.” At one point he asked God to continue to bless Israel so that the United States might be blessed, and at some point in the prayer he said “God bless America.” Maybe that is how he ended the prayer, but I am not sure. When he said these things the crowd shouted enthusiastically. There was even one lady wearing
an Israeli flag around her.
I think that the pastor placed too much importance in Israel; but is there a degree to which Israel should be considered “special”? Paul says in Galatians that the promise was to Abraham and to his Seed, that is Christ. So it seems like the promises to Abraham would apply now to the New Israel, not the old Israel; but in Romans 11 Paul does say that if the falling away of Israel resulted in the salvation of the Gentiles, what will be the salvation of the Jews but life from the dead? What are your thoughts on this issue?
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its something I’ve thought about too and would also like insight.
Sounds like an interesting experience, Seth.
(Oh, and any insight I may have had is out(of)sight–or maybe never was 🙂 )
Hmmm…truly interesting. It reminds me of a book I had to read and write a paper on for US History this past fall semester. It was very interesting, too. Maybe I will try and post this paper I wrote. The book is called “The Search for a Christian America” by George Marsden, and two other guys…uh,Knoll and Thatcher? something like that.
Far too many “evangelical” Christians put too much emphasis on physical Israel and do not think of the church as the Israel of God as they ought. Grandpa Tom
I agree with Dad. The church is the new Israel. Much evangelical thinking has been influenced by dispensationalism, according to which God has one future in mind for the church (heavenly), but another one for Israel (earthly). There is an interesting interplay between Gentiles and Jews as outlined in Romans 11. The failure of the Jewish nation as a whole to believe in Jesus resulted in the formation of the church with an influx of Gentiles. This in turn provokes Jews to jealousy, and leads to the conversion of many Jews–and their entrance into the church. This in turn produces great blessing for the church. But all this doesn’t require the existence of Israel as a nation, nor does it envision two separate destinations for the church and Israel. Below is a link to a few pages from Anthony Hoekema’s book The Bible and the Future (1979) for those who want to look into the matter in more detail.
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