So basically we should all band together and educate people who have been exposed to the THE GREAT PRAYER MEME by people like Jack Chick, 700 Club, Billy Graham, etc., and who spread this daily and show them the true Scriptural errancy of their faith. It may not be killing the heart of the evangelical Christian movement, but it’s a damn good start. 
We do not need to kill anything, just show them the path to love and they will no longer need to preach fear. At the same time we will be following the path to love ourselves. Love trumps fear, Love trumps everything.
I bid 7 No Trump.
So I go on Wikipedia to brush up on Protestantism, and John Calvin. Maybe if I read Institutes of the Christian Religion the prayer will be in there. Anybody familiar with this work by Calvin? His only other works apparently were commentaries on Biblical books, which prob. wouldn’t contain this ‘prayer.’
Right, and I know of the concept now. Still doesn’t lead me to my answer, though. I may have to ask the mailbag staff.
And, of course, “I stand at the door and knock” was what Jesus was saying to the church - apparently, they were so busy being religious that they forgot was was really important.
Anyway, the “sinner’s prayer” is just a simplified version of a conversion experience - it briefly covers most of the points of being a Christian. (Whereas I’m still trying to puzzle out what the heck “I will dwell in him, and he in me” means. It doesn’t help that every time I read that I think of set theory.)
Yes but again, I feel the need to point out what I’ve already written. Please take the time to read what I’ve posted above. I understand it’s a simplified version- but many of you may not understand what I’m trying to convey; this thing has become VERY IMPORTANT to a certain sect of Christianity who deem it necessary for SALVATION, not just a simplified version. I apologize for sounding rude, it’s just that I really am trying to get an answer here and I am becoming frustrated with the term ‘simplified version.’ You DON’T KNOW THE CHRISTIANS REFERRED TO IN THIS RECENT POST IF YOU CLAIM THAT THIS THING IS JUST A SIMPLIFIED VERSION, AND YOU ARE LUCKY FOR IT.
Have you ever read the horrible Left Behind books? In it, the only ones who get raptured are the TRUE Christians who have accepted Jesus as PERSONAL LORD AND SAVIOR. The CATHOLICS ARE NOT RAPTURED. Neither, I’m sure, are the Mormons, Jehovah’s, or any other faith that professes Jesus w/o holding him up as PERSONAL LORD AND SAVIOR! (sure as hell not the Muslims!) THIS GROUP OF CHRISTIANS IS THE EXACT GROUP REFERRED TO IN THE POST I LINKED TO AND THE EXACT GROUP I’M TALKING ABOUT. MANY PEOPLE GO THEIR WHOLE LIVES WITHOUT KNOWING OF THESE PEOPLE, BUT THEY EXIST!!!
I can’t make it any more clear, except to recommend another book written by these people: Fast Facts on False Teachings. It criticizes any religion not accepting Jesus as PERSONAL LORD AND SAVIOR.
Why should you care what other people believe? Are you the thought police? Do you live in a country where there is religious freedom?
Actually, some Catholics are raptured in LEFT BEHIND. The presiding Pope is raptured, thus clearing the office for Cardinal Peter. Evangelicals do not believe that everyone has to pray the precise prayer, but that “the prayer” is a quick means of solidifying one’s faith. Much of classical Christian Eucharistic liturgy is an expanded version of “the prayer”.
It’s a long time since I read the Institutes, but you won’t find what you’re looking for in them. Calvin is big on predestination (in most translations this is rendered “election”). God sees into the hearts of people before they are born and elects to send them to heaven (or hell) based on what he sees. There’s no mechanism by which a person can guarantee salvation. Either you’re saved or you’re not, and the saved (or in Calvin’s terms, the elect) will behave thus and so, while everyone else will behave in other ways.
If you’re looking for the source of this particular sort of evokation, I’d suggest the early revivalists and tent meeting types. Slogging through Calvin’s Institutes won’t help you.
Please explain this in more detail- I understand how the new pope is one of the helpers of the ‘Antichrist’, so the old one had to go, but why does this happen? Here’s what I remember about Catholics in Left Behind: the husband remembers how his wife had talked to her Catholic friend about finding a personal Jesus a short time before the Rapture. This is why the friend is gone and the rest of the Catholics are not. You can’t deny it. Also, if you read other books by the two authors, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins (i.e. Are We Living In The End Times?), they predict that the number of ‘true believers’ raptured will prob. be about half a billion? I can’t find the right part… maybe it’s half a million. The point is that there are more people who believe Jesus is Lord and is raised than that. You gotta have true, personal faith.
Okay, good idea. Starting to think this is a lost cause… 
Why don’t we ask the Apostle Paul?
1 Corinthians 15:12-19
But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.
Amen to that. He hits the nail on the head himself; I don’t want to see adult Americans who never bothered to examine Christianity handing down a golden meme of ‘Jesus loves me’ and ‘He is Risen’ and Christmas celebrations with manger decorations to a generation who could instead be taught the truth:
Jesus the rabbi is dead. Christianity was a first-century scam to make a group of mostly-illiterate fishermen-types rich and powerful (see Acts ch.4). There are real problems to deal with in this world. Let’s deal with them.
I agree. However, I find it difficult to accept people promoting their personnel beliefs {like the prayer} as the will of God for everyone. I try to find a way to at least make them consider other views by useing Biblical passages. For instance, for all the scriptures that say you must believe in Jesus to be saved there are an equal amount that say we will be judged according to our works and rewarded according to our deeds.
There’s passages like Matthew 7:21
"Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who **does **the will of my Father who is in heaven.
and Phil 2:12 “work out your salvation with fear and trembling”
theres Mat 6:27 He answered: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’[c]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”
28“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
I point out that Jesus does not take this opportunity to insist the young man believe in him as saviour .
I try to plant a seed and get them to at least consider other passages in the Bible that they may not have considered much before. I encourage them to try and see the difference between tradition and truth. I try to keep myself from becoming contenscious and argumentative. Over time I think the truth will assert itself, although it will likely take generations.
Well Andrew, I identify with your frustration about those particular religous beliefs. Some of them I find pretty offensive, like some of the things described in the link you provided. As I posted above, I try to get the well intentioned but misinformed folks to at least consider something else. For the hard core and close minded I’m not sure there’s much to be done outside divine intervetion.
From that last staement you made it seems to me you’re doing the same thing they’re doing. You’re assumeing your views on Jesus and Christianity are the correct ones. There certainly have been many scams involving the name of Christ but I see no basis to think the original apostles were out to become rich and powerful. Did you just make that up or is there some basis for that? It may come as a surprise but there are many sincere concerned citizens who believe in Jesus. They take the problems of this world seriously and are trying to do something. Some of them are evangelical.
First, I’m glad you finally show your hand in all this- whether it’s evangelical “praying the prayer” C’nity, or traditional church-based “believe & confess Lord Jesus & be baptized” C’nity- you hate Christianity & wish to see it die out. Ain’t gonna happen, dude. He’s enthroned now with the Father till He brings all His enemies to surrender to Him.
Second, the issue of “the Prayer” that seems to have you so exercised- Historic Christian evangelism linked committing oneself to Christ with entering the church & being baptized. In the 1700s, there was a great concern that many church members were lukewarm & uncommitted. Also, traveling evangelists oftimes preached in areas where no church had yet been established, so the idea was to get a bunch of people saved by committing themselves to Christ, and then they would form a church. Finally, in the 1800s, there was a growth in evangelists who were either connected to no specific church or who were supported by a variety of evangelical churches of different denominations- so the emphasis, again, was not - commit to Christ by joining a church & being baptized, but commit to Christ now in prayer & then find a local church.
Third, I couldn’t find it in LEFT BEHIND so I did some googling- apparently, the
rapturing of the Pope is mentioned in Book Two TRIBULATION FORCE, along with other Catholics who were personally committed to Christ.
Btw, while I differ with LaHaye & Jenkins if indeed they did try to guesstimate the number of true C’tians in the world (and I think they would lean to the half-billion number, about half to a third of the number of professed Christians) AND in their
disdain for a great amount of the Catholic system, I recognize there have been & still are great problems Biblically in some aspects of Catholic theology, and in the abuse of church authority. However, I also recognize our common faith in Jesus as Lord & Savior and that the authority problem is not a Catholic issue but a human issue. People abuse authority in the name of the best of causes.
And if indeed, there is a PreTrib Rapture, which I doubt, and the churches are depleted of true believers, then those who were just going through the motions will indeed have to either decide for Christ then & risk martyrdom, or side with the Beast Ruler & Harlot Church.
Finally- if the thriving active Christian community was a more historic Church-based one rather than the evangelical Prayer-Meme based one, you would be panicking about that.
So which of the twelve fishermen got rich & powerful off of the C’nity scam?
Before I get jumped on for this- Maybe I overstepped saying that you hated Christianity- but you would feel better if it wasn’t around.
Bonus: A huzzah for whoever gets the movie reference in the above sentence.
Right, another good way of showing the fallacy of the whole evangelist Christian concept. We’ve established that **A.)**The path to salvation is not clearly laid out by the New Testament authors, and B.) There are contradictory verses that show evidence of salvation by works, not faith alone. Why would the authors allow these?
Well, all of them, if you believe the end of Acts Ch. 4:
All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time ** those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet **, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.
Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means Son of Encouragement), sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles' feet.
Yeah, I bet they distributed that money REAL GOOD. Then in Ch. 5, the wonderful Lord of the Universe murders Ananias and Sapphira for not forking over 100% of their money. Yes, FriarTed, I know you can spout off the Christian explanation for why this happens; please don’t.
The belief that these guys did the whole thing to become rich and powerful is not correct just b/c it’s the only thing that makes sense assuming Jesus wasn’t raised (that is not a safe assumption; let’s make if for this argument, though) and b/c it’s something that 99% of people who reject Christianity believe, I honestly admit. One of the arguments that Christians always make is- if Jesus was not raised, why were the 11 willing to go out and spread the news and die the martyrs death that church tradition says they did for it? That argument will never end.
I know that there is no direct proof of each martyr death, although according to a post on SDMB there is some documentation within 100 years for them. I have the book Foxe’s Book of Martyrs; I plan on going in-depth into the study. This argument, though, assumes that church tradition is correct, that the 10 died the way they are supposed to have; and Christians always try to make the disciples out to be ignorant and unaware of Jesus as they are depicted in the Gospels, and defend that they didn’t benefit from founding Christianity at all, they were completely well-meaning, they had obviously seen a risen Jesus, and thus were willing to revoke their religions and face persecution and martyrdom for God’s word. In defense of my argument, I point out:
Acts 4 and 5. These guys got rich, whereas before they were mostly illiterate dummies. I stand by that.
Why did the followers of Mohammed go out and preach that he had ascended to Allah and were martyred for their word, correct? The same reason all men do anything- MONEY, POWER, WEALTH. THE HOLY TRINITY.
There isn’t 100% proof of any but Peter’s martyrdom, correct?
The point is that I didn’t just pull that idea out of a hat, a lot of people believe it, which doesn’t make it right at all. I haven’t yet studied the accounts of the martyrs. I started this post b/c I really was curious about this significant prayer movement and where it got started, and I think you pretty much answered it, but it is true that I hope to fight against Christianity in my life. But I need at least 10 more years of study before I can do that.
James was beheaded by Herod, wasn’t he?
(At least according to Josephus, anyway.)
No, that was John the Baptist.
Of course; absolutely. This describes 99.99999% of Christians. But here’s the point that people like me are trying to make:
Untile religions die off the face of the earth, we will never make ANY REAL PROGRESS. Until this tribal division shite comes to an end, no matter how much we try to help starving kids in Africa or do anything else from a Christian stance, the only real salvation for mankind is in mankind itself. Religion is what will probably bring about the end of our species, anyways, so who even cares? Let’s all just sit back and relax until that day comes.
No thanks. He wasn’t the one who posted. Besides, Paul made a lot of mistakes. At least he admitted to it.
You also make some mistakes. For example, 99.99999% of Christians are not as you describe them.
Calm yourself. You are making a lot of assumptions. Exactly what is it you wish to debate? Can you state it more clearly? Can you back up what you are claiming with reputable cites?
I started the post in GQ originally, asking about the origin of what I saw as a significant element, the ‘sinner’s prayer’, the concept of having to accept Jesus as personal lord and saviour; how long had this prayer been around? Now it’s seen by a certain group of fund. Christians as absolutely essential to pray this prayer and accept him into your heart, or even if you believe in him, you will not be saved, as you can read in a link to a post that I put in an above post. But from my OP on, I ranted off-topic on certain subjects, which is how this got moved to GD. Eventually I moved to the topic of using our arguments against this type of personal-conversion-in-order-to-be-saved practice- as it is used by certain evangelists and normal Americans and others who have been ‘saved’ every day- as a way of fighting against Christianity. This is not the place to do that; history will not remember SDMB as the birthplace of the new secular world!
I regret some of what I’ve posted, but it’s not like I didn’t know I shouldn’t start attacking religion w/o having more to my arguments. In any case, my question has pretty much been answered:
But probably not…
So the answer as to when the idea of using a simple prayer like this to enter into a Christian life has been answered to an extent, but the concept that I stress- HE MUST BE YOUR PERSONAL LORD AND SAVIOUR OR YOU GO TO HELL, REGARDLESS OF FAITH IN HIM- who knows how long fundies have believed that? Do you think maybe that idea is a perversion of what FriarTed speaks of- like, the whole concept of an accepting prayer started out b/c of cultural disunity and b/c altar calls were going out of style fast, and over time it’s evolved into THE PRAYER YOU MUST PRAY!!! I think that idea is really cool! Please respond if you think there may be weight to my theory. And I haven’t heard from any Dopers who were around in the early 1900’s who’s grandfathers taught them anything like that…
Memes are often impossible to trace back, aren’t they? Everybody just believes what their parents hand down- use this fork, drive this car, ACCEPT JESUS USING THIS PRAYER AND GET OTHERS TO DO IT OR THEY GO TO HELL REGARDLESS OF FAITH IN HIM- and by the time it’s gone on for 50-100 or more years no one, include Dopers, can trace this thing to it’s source. Man that’s fascinating!