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.

Conservatives Have Now Abandoned All Pretense of Advocating For Sexual Abstinence and They Actually Lament the Lack of Fornication – The Bradford Wilcox Piece, 2019

Conservatives Have Now Abandoned All Pretense of Advocating For Sexual Abstinence and They Actually Lament the Lack of Fornication – The Bradford Wilcox Piece, 2019

The following piece at The Atlantic (“The Happiness Recession”) was written by marriage-idolater and anti-singleness bigot of The Institute for Family Studies, W. Bradford Wilcox, and co-writer Lyman Stone.

I’d like to remind any new-comers to this blog that I am a life long conservative. I am not a liberal.

Marriage Is Not A Guarantee For Good or Regular Sex

This moronic essay actually suggests that single adults having less sex is what has led to them reporting higher rates of unhappiness, if I’m understanding things correctly.

This, astonishingly, from a right wing organization, (Link): The Institute For Family Studies, that claims to promote “strong families,” and good Lord knows they are obsessed with promoting marriage, even if that comes at the expense of singleness.

The members of this organization regularly publish materials intended to scare, guilt, shame, or pressure single adults into getting married, because this organization exists to promote the nuclear family: hetero-marriage where the couple have children.

Christian Viewer Expresses Disappointment in God, Wants To Know Why, In Spite of Years of Service, God is Not Helping Him

Christian Viewer Expresses Disappointment in God, Wants To Know Why, In Spite of Years of Service, God is Not Helping Him

I almost forgot to blog about this. I really related to this guy’s letter (which I’ve included much farther below, both in text and video format – I’ve embedded the video that contains the letter at the bottom).

This guy wrote this question to the hosts of The 700 Club – Gordon Robertson was the host.

I wasn’t too impressed by Gordon’s response – I felt his reply was just “meh” or “so-so.” It was not an awful response, but I didn’t feel it was great and really answered the guy’s concern.

My interest, though, is not in Gordon’s reply, but in the guy’s question (or maybe it was a lady). This letter resonates with me so much. Sometimes I don’t know if God exists or not, and on some days, I skip praying, because some of the same 3 or 4 things I’ve been praying for over a period of ten or more years now have not been answered.

Either there is no God to hear my prayers, or he doesn’t keep the promises he makes in the Bible about meeting our needs and so on.

Critique of Pastor Groeschel’s “I Want to Believe But…” Sermon Series (Re: Unanswered Prayer, etc)

Critique of Pastor Groeschel’s “I Want to Believe But…” Sermon Series

Christian Post recently published this summary of Groeschel’s sermons, and I take strong issue with it, which I will explain below the long excerpts from the page – but if I didn’t blog my criticisms of this guy’s sermon, I was going to go nuts -several of his points or assumptions annoyed me up the wall:

(Link): God Is Not Your Puppet, Says Pastor Craig Groeschel by A. Kumar

Here are some excerpts from that page, and I will comment on this below the excerpts, which is pretty long, so please bear with me:

Pastor Craig Groeschel, senior pastor of Life.Church, has started a new series, “I Want to Believe, But…,” to address difficulties some have in believing in God.

In the series’ first sermon on Sunday, the megachurch pastor dealt with the notion that God should give us exactly what we want and when we want it.
“God is too big to be a puppet of mine,” he stressed.

Some believe in God and others don’t, but there’s “a newer category of people that are saying, ‘I wanna believe in God but I’m struggling to,'” the popular pastor said as he introduced the (Link): series to the congregation on Sunday, the 21st anniversary of the church.

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.”)

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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.

On Not Filtering Every Choice Through the Bible

On Not Filtering Every Choice Through the Bible

This is one of those topics I’m working my way through right now. Maybe a year from now, my opinion will flip on it. But here is where I am now.

I was first made aware of this post from John Piper’s “Desiring God” web site via someone posting to SCCL Facebook group.

Here it is:

(Link):  How to Drink Orange Juice to the Glory of God by John Piper

Excerpts:

• I said that one of my reasons for believing this comes from 1 Corinthians 10:31. “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” I asked, “Is it sin to disobey this Biblical commandment?” Yes.
• …Some of you then asked the practical question: Well, how do you “eat and drink” to the glory of God? Say, orange juice for breakfast?
• ….Orange juice was “created to be received with thanksgiving by those whobelieve the truth.” Therefore, unbelievers cannot use orange juice for the purpose God intended—namely, as an occasion for heartfelt gratitude to God from a truth heart of faith.
• But believers can, and this is how they glorify God. Their drinking orange juice is “sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.”

Yes, it’s an entire post explaining why and how Christians may drink Orange Juice to the glory of God.

This is a part of Christianity that I am glad to leave behind. In my faith crisis of the last few years, there have been some advantages to ceasing turning to the Bible as an authority in decision-making in life in every area.

Mommy Blogger Confesses in Blog Post that Mommy Blogging is a Bunch of Fake, Happy-Clappy B.S. – Kind of Like Most Christian Adult Singleness Blogs

Mommy Blogger Confesses in Blog Post that Mommy Blogging is a Bunch of Fake, Happy-Clappy B.S. – Kind of Like Most Christian Adult Singleness Blogs

I first got wind of this story via SCCL Facebook group ((Link): Conversation about this topic at SCCL FB Group).

A link to a news article about the Mommy Blogger is much farther below. I wanted to say a few things before getting to the article.

The (ex?) mommy blogger in question, Josi Denise, says in one of her blog posts that a lot of mommy blogging is fake and too happy-clappy.

Denise’s critique of Mommy Blogging is reminiscent of my views on blogs or magazine articles by Christians pertaining to adult singleness, which you can read here:

• (Link):  The Cloying Annoying Nauseating G-Rated Wholesome Saccharin Sweet Tone of Articles by Christians For Christian Singles

I find that a lot of Christian-written material for adult singles is too sickeningly sweet.

There is an absence in most Christian-penned material for singles that honestly, really gets into and grapples with, how hard, painful, or disappointing it can be to be single into your 30s and older, when you had really expected or had hoped to marry.

Idiot Christian Husband Claims He Cannot Stop Visiting Prostitutes

Idiot Christian Husband Claims He Cannot Stop Visiting Prostitutes

Some married Christian guy wrote in to Christian TV show “The 700 Club” to tell host Pat Robertson he’s been seeing hookers and cannot stop. He wants advice on how to stop. Of course, moron boy can stop any time he wants.

Let this be a lesson to you, single Christian ladies who want marriage:

Christians will tell you that you can only be married to another Christian (they base this on only one or two Bible verses that are open to interpretation), but even if the Bible did teach this be equally yoked crap, if you want marriage, you may have to marry a Non Christian because Christian females out number the males. Other than that, some Christian men are pigs.

Here you have a guy who says he’s a Christian, but he regularly visits hookers, and I think he said he’s been doing so for years.

You, single Christian woman, are just as well off marrying a Non-Christian man, because the Non Christian man just may live a cleaner life style than a Christian one. You may find a Non Christian husband who would not even dream of seeing a hooker.

I also wonder what this sort of story says about God.

If the God of the Bible exists, why would he permit well meaning, devout, sincere Christian women to end up marrying abusive men, or perverts, like this one, who visits hookers?

If this man’s wife is anything like I was growing up, she probably prayed daily for years that God send her a Christian Mr. Right who would be a kind-hearted, decent guy. I can bet you dollars to doughnuts she did not pray, “Dear Lord, one day, please send me a Christian husband who will cheat on me, and by using prostitutes.”

No, she probably petitioned God for a clean cut guy who has decent morals. So why on earth did God send this woman a man who is a serial cheater?

God is not keeping up his end of the promise, for Jesus said God will only send “good gifts” to his children. Who among you reading this thinks that a serial cheater is a “good gift?” Me neither.

To refresh your memory, from Matthew 7:

• Or if he [your child] asks for a fish, he [the parent] will not give him a snake, will he? 11 “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!

So what is the point in praying to God, or relying on him to meet needs?

God has utterly failed the wife this guy is married to, just as he has failed the many Christian women I have read about in books and other blogs who had to divorce their abusive Christian husbands.

Let this be another example as well that marriage or parenthood do not make a person more godly or mature.

Many Christians teach that singles are immature or are sexual perverts, and teach that marriage is necessary to make a person mature or ethical. Clearly, marriage or parenthood do not make anyone more mature, godly, or loving, since we have a Christian married man (who I think is a father too), who uses hookers.

The man’s letter is the 3rd or 4th one on this video:

(Link): 700 Club Video: Christian Married Man Uses Prostitutes – You Tube

(Link):  Bring It On-Line: Existence In Heaven / Married Christian Man Visits Hookers – hosted on 700 Club site

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Related Posts:

(Link): Forget About Being Equally Yoked: “My Abusive Christian Marriage”

(Link): Update on Christian Rapist Man Who Used Christian Mingle Site To Pick His Victims (he liked to discuss Jesus and the Bible with them before raping them – other details in update) Equally Yoked Teaching IS A FARCE

(Link): On Prayer and Christ’s Comment to Grant You Anything You Ask in His Name

(Link):  Blaming the Christian for His or Her Own Problem or Unanswered Prayer / Christian Codependency

(Link):  Depressing Testimony: “I Was A Stripper but Jesus Sent Me A Great Christian Husband”

(Link):   Shocking Porn ‘Epidemic’ Stats Reveal Details About Christian Consumption (2014 Study) / Nearly Two-Thirds of Christian Men View Porn Monthly; They Are Watching It at Same Rate as Secular Men, Says Study – Christian Single Women: More Proof “Be Equally Yoked” Teachings Are Pointless

(Link):  Florida Youth Pastor Is Behind Bars After Child Porn Discovery – Be Equally Yoked: What A Joke

(Link): Life in prison for Satanist who dismembered and ate mother-of-three after taking her back to his house for sex – The Flip Side to Be Equally Yoked

(Link): Conservative Jews question notions on dating, marrying only Jews

(Link): Pro Ball Player Convicted for Kid Diddling Three Kids Claims to be an Outstanding Christian (and he’s married with a kid of his own) – again, why should Christian single gals limit themselves to only marrying Christian men? The Whole “Being Yoked Equally” thing is irrelevant and unduly limiting for singles