Good Reason

It's okay to be wrong. It's not okay to stay wrong.

By all means, continue.

Thank goodness these people are off the streets.

Praying perpetually to save society

In 12 years, the music has never stopped at the International House of Prayer — a leader in a small but growing movement dedicated to perpetual prayer.

Young people have flocked here from as far away as Britain and South Korea, convinced that their prayers, joined in a never-ceasing stream, can push back evil forces that threaten to overwhelm society.

“It’s probably one of the fastest-growing movements within the broad evangelicalism,” said Brad Christerson, a professor of sociology at Biola University who studies charismatic Christianity. “They’re really engaging a new generation of young evangelicals.”

IHOP, as the church is known, sees prayer as a form of “spiritual warfare,” battling demons who keep a constant hold on parts of society. Continuous prayer is a way of extending that struggle around the clock.

“What we do opens and shuts doors to angels and demons,” founding pastor Mike Bickle said recently.

I guess it makes more sense than the typical view of prayer, which is that you’ve got a sort of inept god who can do anything, but still needs a steady diet of increasingly desperate coaxing and prodding to get him to do the things he already knows he needs to do.

This Dominionist view of prayer, though, seems to be that god’s more powerful than society-destroying demons, but you need to keep feeding him prayer energy to help him level up or something.

Never mind. I don’t get it. The whole idea is weird, and I’m very glad these people are off together in a building somewhere, doing effectively nothing for long periods of time.

2 Comments

  1. Prayer's not really a reminder. It's more of a request I'd say.

  2. I hope they get sued for using the acronym, as IHOP is the International House of Pancakes, which probably has a deeper more intelligent dogma than the International House of Prayer.

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