What the Critics Get Right and Wrong Concerning the #WakeUpOlive Phenomenon – Regarding: Prayer – So Christians Really Are Deists

What the Critics Get Right and Wrong Concerning the #WakeUpOlive Phenomenon – Regarding: Prayer- So Christians Really Are Deists 

December 20, 2019

Several days ago, I believe on Friday, December 13, 2019, a little toddler girl named Olive died (Olive Alayne Heiligenthal). 

(Edit, Dec 21, 2019: I saw a report that the church will be holding a memorial service for the little girl, so it looks like at least some of them have accepted that the little girl is gone.

(Link): Hope for girl’s resurrection shifts to Bethel memorial service

(Link): Family giving up prayers to resurrect 2-year-old, ‘moving towards a memorial service’)

I am sorry for her passing. I am sure her parents and other family are in a lot of pain due to her passing. They have my condolences.

Since their little girl Olive has died, the parents and the church they attend – Bethel Church – have been leading a “Wake Up Olive” movement, and some of that is being carried over on Instagram and on Twitter (you can search for it (Link): here on Twitter).

These Bethel people are expecting God to raise Olive from the dead, because they are praying and expecting God to do so.

You can read more background and details about this situation and several news sites, including these:

(Link): In California, a Christian Megachurch Is Trying to Bring a 2-Year-Old Girl Back to Life

(Link): Christian Mega- Church Prays for Resurrection of Two Year Old Girl

I believe the critics of the movement, who have been tweeting regularly about this situation, are right to say that the parents need to accept that their little girl has passed on, and that no amount of prayer or faith is going to bring her back to life.

The little girl has been deceased for about seven days now.

The last I read, a baby sitter put the girl down for a nap, and the girl stopped breathing.

Other sources say that Olive is at a morgue now, has been there a few days, and an autopsy was already performed.

There are other aspects of this story I don’t care to address in this post – for example, some people suspect there is foul play in the death of the girl, and some people think the Go Fund Me set up for this family in light of Olive’s passing is suspicious.

The aspect of this story I want to address is the issue of Prayer and Unanswered Prayer and biblical promises.

I’ve actually addressed these subjects several times over in older blog posts of mine (such as in (Link): this post), but I am seeing them crop up again in light of this story about Olive’s passing.

Now, I am not a Pentecostal.

I am neither a Cessationist or an Anti-Cessationist.

If you’re not familiar with those terms, here is a web page by guys who consider themselves Cessationists who explain what some of these terms mean:
(Link): Is cessationism biblical? What is a cessationist?

So far as my understanding of the Bible is concerned, I am somewhere in the middle of that topic.

I’ve written posts on that in the past such as

(Link): Extra-Biblical Knowledge – My Thougts Expanded and Clarified – And: Christian Deism

While I absolutely do not believe that little Olive is coming back to life on Earth – no matter how much her church prays and believes for that to happen…

….I am just as much in disagreement with the number of Christians I see arguing theology about this matter, especially the ones who are denigrating faith and biblical promises in the process.

Gallup: Record Low 24% Believe Bible Is Literal Word of God

Gallup: Record Low 24% Believe Bible Is Literal Word of God

(Link):   Record Few Americans Believe Bible Is Literal Word of God

(Link): Gallup: Record Low 24% Believe Bible Is Literal Word of God by A. Cone

Excerpts:

May 16, 2017

Fewer than one in four Americans believe the Bible is “the actual word of God, and is to be taken literally, word for word” — a record low in 40 years of surveys conducted by Gallup.

The 24 percent of literal believers is a 4 percentage point drop from the last (Link): Gallup survey in 2014.

Among respondents, 26 percent believe the Bible is “a book of fables, legends, history and moral precepts recorded by man” — the first time that the biblical literalism view is not greater than biblical skepticism. In 2014, 21 percent were non-literal believers.

One Foot in Christianity, One Foot in Agnosticism – In a Faith Crisis

One Foot in Christianity, One Foot in Agnosticism  – In a Faith Crisis

November 2016. (There is a moderate amount of swear words in the post below)

Some of the points in the post, in brief (the long explanation is below):

• I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior before I was ten years old
• I have read the entire Bible.
• I spent many years reading books ABOUT the Bible (e.g., books about its formation and history)
• I spent years reading Christian apologetic literature
  – so do NOT tell me that I “do not understand Christianity” or that I was “never a REAL Christian to start with”
• I currently have doubts about the Christian faith and/or aspects of the Bible
• I have not rejected Jesus Christ Himself
  (he’s pretty much Christianity’s only good feature or selling point, as far as I can see at this point)

• I am not an atheist
• I am not a Charismatic
• I am not a “Word of Faither”
• I was brought up under conservative, Southern Baptist and evangelical teachings and churches

• Even though conservative Christians claim to believe in the Bible, they
  • cannot agree on what the Bible means or how to apply it – this is a huge problem as I see it in the faith
  • they diminish the role of the Holy Spirit or deny Him and that He can work for Christians today, because they are “hyper sola scriptura” and have reduced the Trinity to “Father, Son, and Holy Bible,” (this is also problematic),
    they usually do this because they are hyper-cessationist and paranoid or hateful of Charismatic teachings or practices
  • they teach that most to all of the biblical promises are not for Christians today but are only for the Jews of 5,000 years ago, there-by teaching that the Bible is NOT relevant for people today  (this is also problematic)
• If you are a Christian, do not act like a smug dick about any of this and immediately disregard any points I have to make about God, the Bible, or other topics, because in your view, I am a “Non-Christian who was ‘never’ really saved” -not to mention, that is not even true.
  I was in fact “truly” saved, and I am / was, a “real” Christian.
• No, I don’t want to enumerate a detailed list of reasons why I have doubts about God, the Bible, or the faith.If I were to provide such a list or explanation, your average Christian would only want to debate each and every point to argue me back into fully believing. (A witnessing tip to Christians: doing that sort of thing is NOT an effective way of “winning back a lost sheep to Jesus.”)

---

DETAILED EXPLANATION

I find that people who are both Christian and Non-Christian (and several other categories of people I bump into on Twitter and other sites) get frustrated when they cannot easily box me in.

People seem to be more comfortable with labels, but I’m not sure what label I would give myself these days.

I have briefly tried to explain my current religious beliefs on my Twitter bio, and I explain them a little more on my blog’s “About” page and have mentioned them in a post or two over the course of the last few years I’ve been blogging here.

Here is my background:

I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior prior to turning the age of ten.

That means: I believed that Jesus took my sins upon himself, he was without sin, he paid the price for my sins, and was raised from the dead three days after having been crucified – and if I believe in all that, if I put “saving faith in” Jesus (as opposed to mere intellectual assent), my sins have been forgiven by God, and I go to heaven when I die.

I read the entire Bible through when I was 18 years old, and afterwards, I read a lot of the Bible in the years after. Prior to that age, I had read portions of the Bible when younger.

No Man’s Land – Part 3 – Liberal Christians, Post Evangelicals, and Ex-Christians Mocking Biblical Literalism, Inerrancy / Also: Christians Worshipping Hurting People’s Feelings

No Man’s Land – Part 3 – Liberal Christians, Post Evangelicals, and Ex-Christians Mocking Biblical Literalism, Inerrancy / Also: Christians Worshipping Hurting People’s Feelings

BIBLICAL LITERALISM AND INERRANCY

Another common thread I see on forums for spiritual recovery sites (or ones by ex Christians, liberal Christians, etc), is a rejection of

1. Biblical literalism
2. Biblical inerrancy

This is all so much intellectual dishonesty in another form it makes me want to throw up.

I spent years studying about the history of the Bible, Bible translation, and so forth.

I came away realizing that the Bible is inerrant and yes, we can trust the copies we have today; the Bible is not filled with historic blunders and mistakes, and all the other tripe atheists like to claim.

It is not entirely accurate for critics to paint the Bible as a purely man-made document, that contains mistakes because it was copied and re-copied numerous times over the centuries.

While there is an aspect of truth to that description, the end conclusion, or how that description, impacts the NIV or NASB Bible version you have sitting on your coffee table right now, is not how critics of the Bible paint it.

Atheists and ex-Christians who are critical of the Bible are disingenuous and duplicitous in how they paint some of their arguments against the Bible, and they should be ashamed for it, as some of them claim to be truth lovers.

Not too long ago, an ex-Christian woman at another site was declaring that Christians cannot “trust” the Bible because the originals (called the Autographa) do not exist.

Oh please! I pointed out to her that is not so: as far as the New Testament is concerned, scholars have many thousands of copies of the Autographa (some dating within decades of the originals), and by use of lower textual criticism, they can reconstruct the READINGS of the Autographa.

It is not necessary to have “the biblical originals” themselves to know what they said, as she was dishonestly arguing (but she later accused me of being dishonest!).

I pointed this FACT out to her (about it not being necessary to have the autographa to know what the autographa said), where upon she shot back the falsity that one cannot trust the translations anyway because they are done by “conservatives.”

Oh, but she is willing to grant liberal scholars or liberal theologians the title of un-biased, as though they do not have an ax to grind against the Bible and dating its documents and so forth?

Because the liberal scholars do in fact start out their examinations of the Bible from an anti- Christian bias.

The woman with whom I was corresponding on this matter doesn’t seem to understand that the practice of lower textual criticism is a science – a liberal who uses that methodology would come to the same conclusion as the conservative who uses it.

So here we have an example of one type of ex-Christian I am talking about:

This woman claims she was a Christian at one time, now fancies herself atheist or agnostic (and some kind of expert on the Bible), but who now spews inaccurate or untrue things about the Bible, because she disdains all of Christianity in general.

My view: Do not lie about the Bible’s history, accuracy, and textual evidence just because “Preacher Fred” at your old church was a big meanie to you X years ago (or insert whatever other emotional baggage you carry against Christians that now colors all your other views about the faith and Bible here) – please!

Give me a freaking break.

I am genuinely compassionate towards people who have been hurt by churches, but not to the point I cover for their dishonesty about how they discuss church history, the biblical documents, etc.

Because some of these folks claim to have been hurt by Christians in general, or a particular denomination, or what have you, they feel fine now rejecting biblical literalism and inerrancy.

No Man’s Land – Part 2 – On Post Evangelicals or Ex Christians or Liberal Christians Ignorantly Hopping Aboard Belief Sets They Once Rejected

No Man’s Land – Part 2 – On Post Evangelicals or Ex Christians or Liberal Christians Ignorantly Hopping Aboard Belief Sets They Once Rejected

✹ What follows is actually the heart of my “No Man’s Land” view. This is what prompted me to write it: ✹

✹ TAKING THE OPPOSITE POSITION OF WHAT YOU USED TO BELIEVE BUT NOW HATE – DUE TO EMOTIONAL REASONS OR A KNEE JERK RESPONSE OR FROM SPITE – IS JUST AS WRONG AND MISTAKEN ✹

As to the forums and blogs by ex Christians, liberal Christians, self identifying post-evangelicals, or those still Christian who expose spiritual abuse…

I notice a number of the regular visitors to these sites – the ones who left an abusive or legalistic church or denomination – simply now operate in the reverse in their thinking, which is, IMO, just as bad or wrong as the thinking they are leaving.

There are different types of ex-Christians one must take into consideration when discussing this topic, so I shall present some sketches of them first.

IFBs (Independent Fundamentalist Baptists)

For example, there are ex IFBs (Independent Fundamentalist Baptists).

IFB preachers and churches are ridiculously legalistic. They make up rules that are not in the Bible, or twist or exaggerate the rules already there to the point those rules then become unbiblical.

IFBs are the contemporary, American versions of the Bible’s Pharisees: nit picky, anal retentive, legalists who make up man-made rules but insist they are “biblical” and thus binding on all believers.

IFBs concoct man-made traditions they expect all IFB members to adhere to, just like the Roman Catholic hierarchy does towards Roman Catholic members.

For example, IFB churches are legalistic about secular entertainment and clothing and physical appearance.

IFB churches teach their congregations that women should not wear pants but only skirts. And the skirts should be only so many inches above or below the knee.

According to IFBs, men should not have hair that touches the back shirt collar – not a mullet to be found in IFB, which may be a good thing. Secular music and television is sinful and should always be avoided.

IFBs have other legalistic rules for just about every aspect of life.

IFBs are vehemently anti-Roman Catholicism as well as anti-Calvinism.