Can we pray for shortening the days of the Second Coming?

Would you be happy if Christ should return today?

  • Yes

    Votes: 9 81.8%
  • No

    Votes: 2 18.2%

  • Total voters
    11

DennisTate

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Dear @Grandliseur
You are implying that God knowing the futures means that he didn't take into account our free will and our decisions, when taking His decisions about the future. This doesn't sound Scriptural, indeed God always wanted us to cooperate in His salvation plan.

Now here is a logical explanation of the above sentence.

Since you talk about the future, I hope you have familiarity with logical reasoning.

Premise: God created men with free will.

Now, imagine 2 possible different timelines in the history of the world.

TIMELINE 1 - what is predicted (the events are in order):

Event A: Jesus preach the Gospel

Event B: His disciples START to spread the Gospel in the whole world

Event C: His disciples prepare the bride (the Spiritual Church) by ardently desire the return of the Bridegroom, the Lord

Event D: one of the events predicted, say, a war

Event E: one of the events predicted, say, a tribulation

Event F: one of the events predicted, ecc.

Event G: The Gospel is finally spread all over the world, and all over the elects cry and shout to the Lord (Luke 18:1-8) for His return

Event H: The Lord has set the time of the End here (from the very beginning of His creation), by knowing that B, C and G would have happened and by taking into account them too.

Event I: Something else that may have happened if the Lord didn't cut short the days, but will never happen because the Lord knew that B, C and G will happen before.

Now the Lord, by knowing this timeline, have told us some things that will happen in the last days, like D, E and F that you can find forecasted in the Bible. It doesn't mean that when setting the time for H, he didn't take into account B, C and G, on the contrary, he gave importance to His people in cooperating in His salvation plan, and to their actions and prayers, and decided the date for H by taking into account them too!

Now imagine another timeline (that luckily will not happen, because the Lord has predicted that the Timeline 1 will happen)

TIMELINE 2 - what could have happened if nobody cared about the Gospel (the events are in order):

Event A: Jesus preach the Gospel

Event B: Nobody care

Event C: The few that care, think that they'd be better off to hope the Lord to return very late

Event D: one of the events predicted, say, a war

Event E: one of the events predicted, say, a tribulation

Event F: one of the events predicted, ecc.

Event G: The Gospel is still almost unknown

Event (here is where in the other timeline Jesus Return) H : The Lord could have set the time here if his Bride should have cooperated, but since nobody cared and nobody wanted His return, He delayed His return. So nothing happens here

Event I: other events that in Timeline 1 wouldn't have happen, but in this timeline happen

Event J: other events that in Timeline 1 wouldn't have happen, but in this timeline happen

Event K: other events that in Timeline 1 wouldn't have happen, but in this timeline happen (etc.)

[...]

Event V: FInally someone wake up, understand the Good News of the Kingdom, spread it and pray "Come"

Event Z: The Lord by knowing the timeline, has set the date here (from the very beginning).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In timeline 2, More events happen, so more events would have been predicted if it was what the Lord forecasted. But luckily, we are in timeline 1, because from the beginning people started to spread the Gospel;
by taking a quick look on Google by typing "Hastening the return of Jesus", looks like there are many pastors from different denominations (and non-denominational) who understood the Lord's prayer Peter and Revelation, and are teaching to hastening the Return, so the question is: who will join?

My dad died on January 1, 1990...........
I had been fasting on Yom Kippur for more than a decade before that........
so I was asking myself questions that most non Messianic Christians don't usually ask themselves.............

By Yom Kippur of 1990, (or a few weeks afterward).... I specifically prayed and asked The Ancient of Days the FAther / YHWH...... in the name of Messiah Yeshua - Jesus... if He had any use for a volunteer........... goat for Azazel........???????????


....."but the goat on which the lot fell for Aza'zel shall be presented alive before the LORD to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Aza'zel."(Leviticus 16:10RSV)



......IF....... a volunteer "goat for Azazel" would have been any use to YHWH/ The Ancient of Days the FAther.... .I said that I would do it............
and I postulated a number of variations on HOW??????

As you can guess..... all hell broke loose in my life.... but 27 years later and I know that in spite of the danger.... that was probably one of the most significant things that I ever prayed about.......

Bar Abbas / Barabbas seems to have been drafted.........
and we Canadians have a tradition that somebody should volunteer for suicide missions.......

At the time that I prayed what I prayed......
I did not expect to still be alive in 2017..... and i certainly did not expect to have received the off the scale Grace and mercy and series of miracles that I have received ...... especially since the year 2000............
 
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searcher24

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It is so wonderful to meet other Christians who know about how our prayers........ our preaching or teaching others...... or out going through the doors that are opened for us can hasten the coming of Messiah Yeshua - Jesus to fulfill Zechariah 14..... Wow!
Yes brother, we are not alone on this. In addition to the countless link above, consider also teachings like this:

Unfortunately, all these people seem to be "voice calling in the wilderness", because this intention is unknown to the majority, and even blocked by the human reasoning that God doesn't consider our prayers in His plan, while countless of worldly intentions are spread like never before and no one has any objection on them.
 
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searcher24

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AnticipateHisComing

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Can we pray for shortening the days of the Second Coming?
3) What if the Lord is waiting for people, at least His elects, really wanting and ASKing for His return, to shorten the days?
As some have already posted, we may pray for Jesus to come and in fact do this in the Lord's Prayer, but we will not change the day of Jesus' coming through prayer. You are delving into understanding God's plan which is really above our pay grade and a difficult thought exercise for even "meat eaters". I will offer my thoughts though.

Prayer does not change the future. Prayer does not change anything in God's plan. Read Romans 9 to see that God is the potter and we are clay. So why are we here?

Romans 9:22 What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory—​

We are here to learn of God's power, glory and mercy/love. But, God told us to pray and ask for things. Do we need to pray for God to know what we need? No.

Matthew 6:8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Romans 8:26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.​

So why do we pray if it does not change anything? Things may change after we pray. People are sick, they pray and get better. We think we contribute to a change in the future. What changes is the present condition of being sick. God knows the future and knows we will be healed. The prayer does not change the future that God knew would come.

Many people add these words to the end of each prayer, thy will be done; and in here is the answer to the question of why we pray. It is aligned with Romans 9:23. We pray so that we align our thoughts and actions to God's plan/will. The prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective because they are aligned with God's plan. The rain did not stop because Elijah wanted it to stop. It stopped because God wanted Israel to come back to him. Elijah, the prophet, was the voice of God's plan making it known to his people.

I will give a recent example of this in my life. A new neighbor of mine is very troubled dealing with "ghosts" in his life. He said he has been praying for years that God would take these haunts away, but God was not answering his prayer. How many people have the same thought that God does not answer their prayer? I asked him to think about who is concerned about this problem he was dealing with and he easily answered naming people that he never thought would be there for him. I said, God answered your prayer, you just did not recognize his plan of using these people to help you. The light went off and he was comforted because he could now identify God's plan to help him in action. His prayer did not change the help he was getting.

So, what about praying for the end to come? Yes we should to align our thoughts and actions with God's plan that the end will only come after the full number of saved have come to salvation, Romans 11:25. We do this by spreading God's word to the world, Matthew 24:14. And in the mean time God is patient, 2 Peter 3:9.

So many don't realize the point to prayer being self reflection more so than petitions to God to snap his fingers at our command. How many times do we pray for God to help someone? What we need to think about is if you care for someone, we need to act to help them. The concerns we pray for that are out of our hands, we need to learn what happens is God's plan.
 
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AnticipateHisComing

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Premise: God created men with free will.
The concept of "free will" is really a convenience and not exactly stated in scripture. Scripture does speak much about making choices though. I just want to say the two are not the same. People often use "free will" to explain why Adam and Eve sinned, but scripture says Jesus was destined to die for us since creation and it was God's plan. So, it was no surprise that we sinned. The choices we make do not change the future that God envisioned. This is really too much for us to comprehend.
 
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searcher24

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Hi @AnticipateHisComing and thanks for your answer!

You are making a bit of confusion on a very basic theological concept, that's explained in the other posts above.

If you are not convinced by Luke 18:1-8, read

Boethius's Views | a2-level-level-revision, religious-studies, philosophy-religion, attributes-god, boethiuss-views | Revision World

Think about it for a moment, is really that simple, no need to complicate it, as simple as the parable of the widow and the judge!

And btw, if you pray by thinking that your prayer will have no effect and it's just for yourself to convince yourself (basically the negation of the parable of the widow and the judge), then you are not taking any responsibility for your request and it becomes vain repetition.

So in this you are right, that without the right intention and responsibility we are not anticipating anything.

Cheers.

Ps you can also find the topic discussed here:

Do prayers have NO practical effect, since the Father knows the future?

Funnily enough, for some weird reasons some people can hold contradictory beliefs when answering on that linked thread, and on this current thread.
 
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searcher24

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So many don't realize the point to prayer being self reflection more so than petitions to God to snap his fingers at our command.

Looks like with some convoluted human reasoning, thinking to understand everything in God's plan, and borrowing overly-complex and ambiguous words from Paul, we are reverting some very simple words from Jesus.

Jesus words are simple and straightforward, and can only be accepted with Trust and by not thinking that some other human has better teachings than Him. It takes a child to understand Jesus. Jesus said " I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children."

Now take for example the parable of the widow and the Judge. The parable is taught by Jesus when he talks about the last days.

"18 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. 3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’

4 “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”

6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes (to remark that is a parable on praying for Jesus' return), will he find faith on the earth?


Now this is a simple, straightforward parable. A little child who listen to it, understands "ok, our prayers have an effect, the Lord wants us to pray and really desire good things with undivided heart before giving them to us. In particular, as specified in this parable, He wants us to ask for His coming and His justice. I won't trust anyone who tells me something different, because there is no ambiguity in this parable".

Instead, a "learned man", who maybe think to be wiser than Jesus, could be able to "rewrite" the parable and its meaning this way:

[warning: not really from Scriptures:]"There was a widow who asked day and night to a judge to make her justice. The judge didn't listen to her and did what he had decided to do anyway. But by asking many times, she convinced herself to accept Judge immutable will. END OF STORY."

This is how the parable would be rewritten according to the reasonings you have presented.

Now it's up to us if we want to listen the simple words from Jesus, or some convoluted human "teacher" who think he is wiser. Whoever doesn't hasten His coming, is slowing it down.
 
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