Positive Prayer and Prospect

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Short Summary
The discourse explores the Lord’s Prayer, emphasizing honoring God’s name, recognizing the need for Christ’s perfect kingdom, and the importance of forgiveness as part of spiritual training. It addresses historical and doctrinal nuances, including manuscript variations in biblical texts and differing views within the community on issues like COVID-19 vaccination, urging patience and mutual respect. Ultimately, it highlights the hope in Christ’s reign, the restoration of humanity’s likeness to God, and the appropriateness of praying directly to Jesus in certain circumstances.

Long Summary
Detailed Summary of the Discourse on the Lord’s Prayer and Related Biblical and Contemporary Topics

Lord’s Prayer in Matthew and Luke
– The Lord’s Prayer appears in both Matthew (7 verses) and Luke (3 verses).
– Despite Luke’s abbreviation, the essential outline of the prayer remains consistent.

Opening Petition: “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name”
– Emphasizes honoring and revering God’s name.
– Gratitude towards God is foundational for happiness.
– Reflection on God’s wisdom and power in creation, especially the fine-tuning of universal constants necessary for life.
– Scientific probabilities cited:
– Q. Ross’s calculation: 1 chance in 10^217 for conditions sustaining intelligent life.
– Dr. James Tour’s calculation: 1 chance in 10^79 billion for correct protein formation in cells.
– These improbabilities point to an intelligent Creator rather than random chance.

“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”
– Acknowledges that Christ’s kingdom is not yet established on earth.
– Critique of worldly political systems: communism, socialism, nationalism, fascism (e.g., Nazism as National Socialist German Workers Party).
– Historical examples of failures and oppression under various regimes.
– Quote from a Russian professor: under capitalism one group oppresses another; under socialism, the reverse.
– The world’s solutions are inadequate and may lead to Armageddon.
– True perfect government requires a perfect ruler—Jesus Christ.

Creation in God’s Image and Likeness
– Genesis 1: man created in God’s image (physical/spiritual resemblance).
– Genesis 5: man created in God’s likeness (moral/spiritual character).
– Sin in the Garden (Genesis 3) caused man to lose the image but gain likeness in sin.
– Restoration of God’s image and likeness will take 6,000-7,000 years plus a “final exam” after Christ’s 1,000-year kingdom.
– Final judgment will result in the destruction of Satan and the incorrigible (not eternal torture but annihilation).
– Reference: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” (1 Corinthians 15:26)

“Give us this day our daily bread”
– Discussion on the correct pronunciation of God’s name: Yehovah vs. Jehovah, supported by Hebrew manuscripts with vowel points.
– The request can apply both to physical sustenance and spiritual “bread” (God’s word).
– Encouragement to ask God for needs while also doing one’s part.
– Reference to early Bible Student history and Brother Russell’s charitable attitude toward doctrinal differences.
– Examples: Brother Russell’s openness to multiple views on resurrection of Judas, tolerance of differing opinions among brethren.

Forgiveness: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors”
– Forgiveness is essential Christian conduct.
– Story of reconciliation between two brothers after hearing a talk on this scripture.
– Forgiveness is part of Christian training and priestly role (to bless, not curse).
– Even notorious mass murderers (Mao, Stalin, Hitler) shared opposition to religion.
– Biblical references on covenant and forgiveness:
– Isaiah 49:8; Isaiah 42:6 (God giving a covenant to the people, applied to the Church in 1 Corinthians 6).
– Jeremiah 31:33-34: new covenant includes forgiveness of sins and iniquities.

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one”
– God does not tempt us but invites us to pray for deliverance from temptation.
– Greek word “poneros” means “the evil one” (Satan), who tempts indirectly by whispering evil thoughts.
– Encouragement to resist yielding to temptation.

Doxology (“For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.”)
– Manuscript evidence shows this doxology is absent from earliest and best Greek manuscripts (e.g., Vatican 1209, Sinaitic, Codex Alexandrinus).
– Likely a later addition, omitted in modern translations and the United Bible Society Greek New Testament.
– Theologically consistent not to say “Thine is the kingdom” while praying “Thy kingdom come.”

Textual Analysis of Revelation 20:5 (“the rest of the dead lived not until the thousand years were finished”)
– Some manuscripts include this phrase; others omit it.
– Evidence suggests the phrase was added as a commentary in the 4th century to clarify resurrection timing.
– The earliest and best manuscripts omit the phrase, indicating it is not original text.

Praying Directly to Jesus
– Early papyri (p.66, ~200 AD), Vatican 1209, Sinaitic manuscripts support praying in Jesus’ name (John 14:14: “If ye ask me anything in my name, I will do it”).
– Revelation 22:20 ends with a prayer: “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
– Praying directly to Jesus is not forbidden and can be appropriate; however, it is not required nor should it be forbidden by others.

Contemporary Issues: COVID-19 and Vaccination Data
– Presentation of data on deaths following COVID-19 vaccination (referred to as “the jab”).
– Data modeled with three components: two exponential decays (one rapid 1.8 days, one slower 16 days) plus a constant baseline.
– Rapid deaths (~20%) possibly linked to immediate reactions; slower deaths (~78%) possibly linked to myocarditis/pericarditis.
– VAERS data reports approx. 17,600 deaths; adjusted for underreporting (factor of ~31) suggests over half a million deaths and similar numbers of permanent disabilities.
– CDC claims most deaths involve comorbidities; 6% (about 70,000) attributed solely to COVID.
– Discussion of “pandemic of the unvaccinated” critique—deaths within 14 days of vaccination counted as unvaccinated.
– Differences of opinion among brethren on interpreting this data; call for patience and forgiveness regardless of vaccination stance.
– Reminder that Christ died for all, regardless of their choices.

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Key Bible Verses Referenced:

– Matthew 6:9-13 (Lord’s Prayer)
– Luke 11:2-4 (Abbreviated Lord’s Prayer)
– Genesis 1 (man made in God’s image)
– Genesis 3 (sin in the Garden of Eden)
– 1 Corinthians 15:26 (“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death”)
– Isaiah 49:8; Isaiah 42:6 (covenant references)
– Jeremiah 31:33-34 (new covenant, forgiveness)
– John 14:14 (“If ye ask me anything in my name, I will do it”)
– Revelation 20:5 (resurrection timing)
– Revelation 22:20 (“Even so, come, Lord Jesus”)

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Summary Conclusion:
This discourse explores the Lord’s Prayer in depth, emphasizing God’s holiness, the coming kingdom under Christ’s reign, daily dependence on God, forgiveness, and deliverance from evil. It addresses textual and doctrinal nuances, historical approaches to differing opinions, and contemporary challenges such as COVID-19 vaccination debates, urging believers to maintain unity, patience, and forgiveness. The interplay of scripture, history, and science underlines the wisdom of trusting in God’s perfect plan and kingdom.

Transcript

You know, our Lord’s Prayer is given to us in both Matthew and Luke, even though Luke abbreviates it significantly. That’s from seven verses down to just three, but the outline is there also in Luke.

And as we begin, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Our first thought should be to honor our Father’s name. Now, a person without gratitude cannot be happy, who cannot be grateful that he created us. How can we not be grateful for his wisdom and power in training us to know good versus evil, good versus hurt, without causing us to lose hope of eternal life and creating the universe? How did it happen that all of the physical constants of the universe are so finely tuned? It’s been a fellow from originally Canada, Q. Ross now is in West Covina, California in our area.

And he’s calculated what the chances are that all necessary for sustaining intelligent life anywhere in the universe. One chance in 10 to the 217th power when there are only 10 to the 80th atoms in the universe. Now, Dr. James Tour Rice University, a synthetic organic chemist, calculates the chances if you got them into a cell membrane, if you get them into the right order, it’s one chance in 10 to the 79 billion power, and if you take a living cell and put it under a microscope and just pin prick it, you just watch the proteins come spewing out. So what’s the chances that they could by random chance enter back into the cell membrane?

It’s a testimony to our all wise and our all powerful.

The simplest explanation as to how it happened is our intelligent, wise Creator. So our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, We pray. Next Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth now today in this age, it is not Christ’s kingdom. I think most people would agree to that.

Now there have been several remedies proposed and we see them in volume four, that study number 10. They’ve recommended communism, Socialism, nationalism and Fascism.

Nazi, for example, is an abbreviation of National Socialist German Workers Party. It’s been evident that over a thousand years of papal rule was pretty horrid. So what happens if you choose one of these alternatives and they’re all pretty much associated just with little variations. When I was born, the.

Nazism and fascism were called progressive. Of course when they lost World War II, then about 1954 they changed the terminology to say they’re not hard left, they’re hard right. But I don’t think we want either hard left or hard right.

When we see what happens when the evils of capitalism are replaced by the evils of some socialism. The idea is supposed to be that we’ll make everybody level, everybody equal for that matter, whether they work or not, and what does it mean in practice? It means, yes, they take the rich and bring them down to your level, and then they bring the rich and you down to the level of everybody below you, and what happens to all of the money they take away?

Why they share it among the rulers who have done the redistribution.

So that is the way people come to think of things. But what happens in practice?

There’s a saying in that’s told in Russia, was told to us by a professor, Russian professor, who left the Soviet Union when the getting was good, and they asked the question, what’s the difference between capitalism and state socialism or communism? And the answer was, under capitalism, one group oppresses the other. Under state socialism, it’s the other way around.

So people look for an opportunity to change things, but somehow it doesn’t seem to work the way they say that it’s going to, and we need to recognize that this world does not have a solution to its problems.

When they discover that, what instead happens is it will bring about Armageddon, then perhaps they will learn to listen that Christ has a solution. If you want a perfect government, you have to have a perfect ruler that is our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, man is made in God’s image, but not in his likeness. In Genesis chapter one, but we find the beginning of Genesis chapter five. Man was made in God’s likeness, but not in his image. How can that be? Well, what happened in between?

There was the sin in the Garden of eden in Genesis 3. So what happened was man was created in the image but not the likeness. But when man sinned, he gained the likeness, but lost the image, and now it will take six to 7,000 years from then to regain the image and the likeness, and yet there will be a final exam after that.

At the end of the thousand year kingdom of Christ, Satan will have a little season or short time into it which he administers the final exam before he, and whatever incorrigible there may be will be destroyed once and forever. Not in eternal torture, but simply in oblivion, out of existence, and the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

Okay, so next, give us this day our daily bread. You may wonder about the Yehovah rather than Jehovah, but it turns out that they’ve looked at some Hebrew manuscripts, something like 7000 of them, and at least 1700 of them originally had the Vowel points, and so the original pronunciation of the name was Yehovah. So the vowels given in Jehovah are actually accurate.

Now, in some of those manuscripts afterwards, they scratched out the vowel points, but not completely. So 1700 Hebrew manuscripts are known to preserve the vowel points. YHVH well, that’s a little minor thing we might want to consider. In the 1913 October 1st Watchtower, there’s an article on doctrines more or less important.

Now, give us this day our daily bread, or our bread for the coming day, or our needful bread.

Now our God is glad to feed us, but should we not ask him first? And should we also not do our part for it?

Now, if this request may be applied also to the spiritual bread, the truth of the word of God, what should we do about it?

Well, what was Brother Russell’s attitude towards those who differed with him on one or more things? That’s what’s shown in the article, doctrines more or less important.

Lest the history be lost, I’ll mention two or three things from past that illustrates how Brother Russell took care of it in his day. It was in 1915, in the middle of the year, that Brother Russell made his last visit to Vancouver, Canada, and at that time Brother Russell Pollock was there, still part of the family in Vancouver before moving to Los Angeles.

And he told of his father asking now, Brother Russell, are we in the thousand years or were we mistaken about the chronology? And as nearly as I can reproduce the emphasis, well, Brother Pollock, I think we are in the thousand years, and that’s all there was to it. They went on to another subject.

There’s a question, will Jesus, will Judas be resurrected? Brother Russell’s thought was that Judas will not be resurrected, that his sin had been too great, even though he had not yet been begotten of the Holy spirit. Yet in 1898, that’s April 1st, and that’s not April Fool’s Day. For then look on page 102 to find it that he publishes an article that a brother had written, short one as to why Judas would be resurrected. Afterwards he gave his thought and why.

But Brother Russ was not averse to having more than one side be presented. I can add one more thing from personal experience. I didn’t know Brother Russell, in spite of what my grandchildren might think. But I did know his nephew, Brother Joseph Russell Land, who lived in Atascadero, California, and was part of the San Luis Obispo Ecclesia. One time, coming home from the Bay Area, I asked stopped by his home and I asked, how did Brother Russell handle it.

When there was a difference of opinion in the Ecclesia, he said, well, there were brethren back east who knew my uncle better than I. But I’ll tell you what I remember. He’d let this one have a say with his Scriptures, and then he let that one have a say with his Scriptures, and he might let the first one have additional say with more Scripture and the other have additional say with more Scripture, and then he’d cut it off and summarize, and they go on to another subject, one that surprised me.

Apparently it was Brother Horace Hollister that observed it. There were two brothers in the Pilgrim service in 1908, twin brothers that were. They called them Ed and Fred Williamson. A E or Ed Williamson, came to Brother Russell and said, now, Brother Russell, I cannot agree with covenant. Should I resign from the pilgrim service?

And Brother Russell’s answer was, absolutely not. So Brother Russell was quite charitable towards others who had a difference of opinion. Now, there’s a question in the question book, and you can find that in what Pastor Russell said on page 349. If I am in harmony with present truth, what would I gain by coming out of the out into the International Bible Students Association? His answer was, you cannot join the IBSA in the same way you join anything else.

You simply can’t keep out. They won’t need to receive you in. You become a Bible student just as soon as you become free. The difficulty all along was that your mind was fettered and you did not know how to study the Bible and you were afraid of it, and just as soon as you get free, you are an IBSA member.

Further on that, one can look at volume six, page 314. That’s easy to remember. Think of PI. 3.14. It’s page 314.

And then also that’s item number three, which is there should be regular, frequent meetings at which brethren would have an opportunity to present their best understanding of the truth, even, or the Bible, even if it is not that of the majority of the ecclesia, and he goes into more detail just four pages later on page 318.

And this may have come as a result of the Christian connection which was formed right after the French Revolution. Formed in North America, they had just two fundamentals. The Bible was their only creed, and the test of fellowship was living a good Christian life. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

Now, there was a brother in western New York, we’ll call him Brother O for short. Was giving a talk one time when he quoted this from the Lord’s Prayer, and then he got down a couple verses later. For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses.

And he said, and which one of us can afford to say, father, don’t forgive me?

At the end of his talk, a brother comes up to him, says, you don’t realize what you have done. He’s thinking, oh, dear, what was it that I said? It was so bad. The brother told them, there are these two brothers in the back of the auditorium that haven’t spoken to each other for 10 years, and when you said that, they looked at each other and they made up on the spot.

To me, that’s a characteristic of good talk.

Now, there are other things here. We must learn to forgive, forgive others.

Now, our training is to be priests. That’s to bless and not to curse. We must first learn, learn to forgive. Even the greatest mass murders of all time, which would be Mao, maybe as many as 50,000, 50 million. Joseph Stalin is number two.

And number three was Hitler. The one thing they had in common was they were all against religion.

Now, there have been among the brethren some definite differences on major world events, and one of them has to do with the COVID COVID 19. That some brethren have viewed things one way and some another, and let’s take a look and see what we can find. This now is data.

The number of deaths since the vax was given.

Or the jab, if you prefer to call it the jab. If you see the wavy red line, that’s the raw data from the day of the jab all the way up to day number 75 or 76. Now, that can be resolved into three components very nicely. Two exponential decays and one horizontal straight line. Now, most biomedical data cannot be reproduced as closely as the green line does.

That’s the sum of the three. But there are some interesting things about it. We have the horizontal line, which doesn’t change. It’s 35 deaths per day after the vax. If it isn’t changing, then it’s not caused by the vax.

But we also have the two exponential decay components. The first one to the left there, the violet one, corresponds to a decay with a mean time of 1.8 days, and the other one, the longer one, the yellow line, a decay of 16 days, quite different from one another. Now, the first one starts with over a thousand deaths per day. This is in the US that we’re talking about the data.

And the data is to the end of the year 2022 to December 30th. Okay, so one of them does its dirty work in a hurry and the other one takes a lot longer. Now, I’m not one to know a lot about the medical consequences here, but there is, there are those things that happen when somebody gets the vax and maybe he’s an athlete and he goes out on the field the same day or the next day, and it’s witnessed that there are a number of athletes who simply went out, started exercising and dropped dead on the spot, and that probably would correspond to the violet line that where it happens in a hurry. But that violet line only accounts for a little over 20% of the total deaths due to the vax.

The yellow line takes a lot longer, corresponds to the remaining approximately 78%, and because myocarditis and pericarditis are thought to represent about a quarter of the deaths, that’s a little bit more than the violet line can account for. So that would follow the yellow line or golden line, if you prefer.

Now, my expertise is in the math more than in the biomedical.

But the total number of deaths accounted for by JAB according to the VAERS data, that’s Vaccine Adverse effects reporting system, which the CDC is required by law to maintain, the total is about 17,600. Now, the CDC says the various data is only a small fraction of the total. So there’s Dr. Jessica Rose in Canada who has taken the V safe data to find a underreporting factor of about 31. If that’s the case, then the total number of deaths due to the jab is a little over half a million, maybe 550,000, and there’s almost an equal number due to the equal number that results in permanent disabilities.

Now, some brethren will have one view of what that means and some have another view of what it means. So will we be patient when what with one another?

Now, of course, of the 1.2 million deaths that are at least claimed to be Due to the VAERS, the CDC says only 90 that 94% of the VAERS deaths are with comorbidities. That is they were going to die anyway.

The remaining 6% then would represent something close to 70,000 deaths due to the COVID alone. So now then there was an additional problem, and that is that the CDC reckons those that have had the jab, but the jab hasn’t taken effect fully. So that supposedly takes 14 days. Now, of those that die within the first 14 days. If you look at the graph, that actually represents about 60% of the total deaths due to the vax itself.

And they defined the period in the first 14 days as unvaccinated, and that permits them to say that it is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, because it means it’s a pandemic of those who have been jabbed, but they haven’t survived 14 days. Now, different brethren have had different takes as to what this data means.

So how should it affect us in forgiving others? If you got the jab, did you resent those who declined to get the jab? If you declined the jab or refused it, did you resent those who demanded that you go and get it anyway?

Well, let’s remember Christ died for each one of them too.

Now we are to be in training to be priests for the coming age.

Remember how it says in Isaiah 49, 8, I will give thee for a covenant of the people? Paul applies that in Corinthians chapter 6 to the church. If we go back to Isaiah 42, 6 the same I will give thee for a covenant of the people, and Simeon at the temple applied this to Jesus.

We share with him then in being given and given as a covenant for the people, and Jeremiah 31, 33 and 4, after those days, I will give them a new covenant, and it says, I will forgive their iniquity and their sin will I remember no more. There are two parts to that. Their sin will I remember no more.

That’s the Adamic sin, because that has been covered by the ransom. But also I will forgive their iniquity, the iniquity which they commit the resurrection during Christ’s thousand year kingdom. So if we are being training to become the priests, are we learning to practice? I will forgive.

Now bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Now, God does not bring us into temptation, but he wants us to appreciate it enough to ask him not to bring us into temptation. Is there anything in the Lord’s Prayer he doesn’t want to do for us? But he also wants us to ask for those good things.

Now, is it deliver us from evil or deliver us from the evil one? The Greek word is pony rose. That’s the evil one. Now, he’s not the sort of fellow who goes and does the dirty work. Now he tells you, he whispers in your ear, is one way one brother put it, he whispers in your ear to go do the dirty work.

And then as you go to do the dirty work, he goes and hides, does that sound like the evil one.

And can we try then not to yield to temptation?

Now we have one more thing that’s in the King James, at least. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Well, the manuscripts differ on Matthew 6, 13. That last part of it there, you could see this in the rvic New Testament appendix.

And it shows the capital letter B. It shows the Hebrew, first letter of the Alphabet, Aleph and a capital letter Z, and then Cop, Bo, that stands for Coptic. Boharic, that was an early translation into the Coptic language of Egypt, and it’s Boharic, which is the northern part.

And they omitted. They never had. So what’s B? Well, that’s the Vatican 1209. If you think of B and V together, that helps to remember Vatican 1209.

The Aleph represents the Sinaitic manuscript. Z is a manuscript in Dublin from around the 6th century. All three of those manuscripts are good grade A quality. None is perfect, but all qualify as being grade A, and then among grade B manuscripts we have D, which is a codex B.

It was used by early Calvinists and also the Latin Vulgate. Now, there are those that add it. In the Coptic, it was the Saic, which is southern, and Faomic, which is to the west of the Nile River. They’re grade A translations.

And then among grade B evidence,892 is good grade B manuscript, and so is El, the regius of the fifth century, and we have some others which are translations. But what is our conclusion? There’s no grade A Greek manuscript that makes this addition.

There are two grade A ancient versions that add it, but in somewhat different form. That’s why it’s in parenthesis. Therefore, the evidence would be that the sentence should be omitted, and in that, the United Bible Society’s Greek New Testament omits it with full confidence. Bruce Metzger, in his little companion volume, explains why.

And most of the modern translations also omit it, and for us that’s a good thing. How can we ask thy kingdom come and say thine is the kingdom at the same time?

I think we have just about enough time here to look at another example. How about that expression in Revelation 20:5, the rest of the thousand years.

Let’s see the rest.

I’ll have that here in just a moment.

Here we have it. The rest of the dead lived not until the thousand years were finished or were finished. A thousand years is the word order in the Greek. Now it’s the same last two words as they are in the preceding verse. So there’s who say that it was just an accidental omission.

The scribes eyes went from thousand years to thousand years, and so they figure that’s the case, and there’s a couple of good grade A manuscripts that include it. That’s the Alexandria and the a and the 1611 which is more than 10th century and 105 manuscripts total and additional 13 unnotable manuscripts that insert the word again. Now there are only three manuscripts that omit the connection connecting word at the beginning.

And that’s the oldest form of that sentence, but without the conjunction. It looks like a comment after all, is the first resurrection, the absence of a resurrection.

So of those manuscripts, or Romana, there’s again the Sinaitic manuscript, and then there are two interesting manuscripts, ecumenious manuscripts from 2053 and 2062 that actually preserve the commentary and the text and repeat the text from a 6th century manuscript text, and there are 70 manuscripts total of those. So the later the manuscript it is, the more likely it is to add the sentence, and it goes from a 51% around the 10th century to greater than 69% when you get to the 1600s.

So what we conclude is the sentence was probably added maybe as early as the 4th century when it became a heated subject of discussion when they were saying, well now that we have Constantine, now that we are in Christ’s kingdom, where is the resurrection? And so it looks like this was a comment that was added to explain, well, the resurrection doesn’t occur yet, it waits another thousand years. But these good evidence there, and the Sinaitic is in fact the oldest, and the 2053 and 2062, although written centuries later, preserve the earlier text. It’s interesting, it’s in the commentary but not in the text.

So that’s the evidence behind Revelation 20:5. Now one more thing, and that is, is it ever right to pray directly to Jesus? We do have a limited amount of evidence in favor of it that kind of surprised me. But the readings of too early papyri p.66 around 200 AD 75 because of the room available is early.

Then you have the Vatican 1209 and the Sinaitic manuscripts which are in the mid 4th century. They’re all grade A manuscripts and they say if you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

So even the Bible itself ends Revelation 22:20. Even so, come Lord Jesus. It is a prayer to our Lord Jesus. So it is not forbidden. In fact it says there are certain circumstances, at least when it can be appropriate.

We are not required to do so, but neither should we forbid others to do so.

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