Closed the previous Forum because of just a bunch of unnecessary comments. So this new one.

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Hey! We need a group of dedicated Christians
who love Jesus Christ and have accepted Him
as Saviour, to pray to the Father on behalf
of our friend Ray Bradbury.

Asking that the Holy Spirit be sent to capture Ray's heart and soul to the realities and wonders of Salvation thru Christ.

This Forum Request is for Christian Believers. Not for those who have an argument against historic and Biblical Christianity.

Ray will be 89 in August, 2009. Ray has somehow gotten pretty far from the basic teachings of Christianity. Now he sees us as god, each a singular god. Somewhere deep inside there must still remain the residue of his Baptist upbringing, a few remaining Bible verses, a scent of truth connected with the word of God.

We can even pray simply that God will remind Ray of what he knew in truth when he was a youngster.

Thanks for all those who can remember Ray in pray thru the summer. Thanks!

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Nard, your above request has been recalled over the past few days. I kept coming back to the following inspirational verse. I believe it applies here:

"A Simple Prayer"
Lord make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow Love;
Where there is injury-Pardon;
Where there is doubt-Faith;
Where there is despair-Hope;
Where there is darkness-Light;
And where there is sadness-Joy.
Lord, grant that I may seek rather
to Comfort than to be comforted,
to Understand rather than to be understood,
to Love than to be loved.
For it is by Giving that one receives,
by Forgiving that one is forgiven,
and by Dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.
-Saint Francis of Assisi

Don't forget Ray on
this Holiday weekend.

Pray 4 Ray on the 4th--hooray!

HooRAY!

I'm new to the site, and a Christian. My question is, how do you all know if he is a believer or not? Has anyone asked him? Has anyone asked GOD? Just wondering.

quote:

Originally posted by WeeLassie:
Just wondering.

Lass, those who pray for his "salvation" do so because they believe Ray is not where he should be with God. They do this with good intentions, however.

As one who is not a proselytizer, I do not pretend to understand it, but there you go.

By the way, we shouldn't talk here - they don't like us chatting in this thread. And I respect that.

Welcome!

quote:

Originally posted by WeeLassie:
I'm new to the site, and a Christian. My question is, how do you all know if he is a believer or not? Has anyone asked him? Has anyone asked GOD? Just wondering.

As for Ray's belief in God, well, you'll just have to read comments he's made over the years, especially recently, and decide for yourself. Someone may have asked God but I don't know if He answered or if so what He said.

This thread, and the issue, is specifically about Ray's belief, or lack of it, in Christ. A believer can spot an unbeliever in five minutes by their answers to a few basic questions. Since Christianity depends on belief in the divinity of Christ, the essential beliefs are:
--The divine nature of Christ, that is, His birth of a virgin with God as his father--NOT of ordinary human origins.
--He performed REAL miracles--not just giving sermons about people getting along together and encouraging them to share.
--He rose from the dead. No, he was not just hiding out, revived from being unconscious, or "lived on through His works," he REALLY died and PHYSICALLY rose from the dead. (People who don't believe this shouldn't even bother.)
--The step to take after acknowledging the nature of Christ is to accept Him as your own personal Savior and try to live by the principles He put forth. But, a Christian life BEGINS with faith although it doesn't end there.

Someone who does not believe these things is NOT a Christian. PERIOD, DOUBLE PERIOD, END OF STATEMENT. They may believe there existed a historical person by the name of Jesus who some followers gave the title of "Christ." So, I believe there was a historical Buddha, but if I don't follow his teachings or accept him as divine, I am NOT a Buddhist. PERIOD!

These believers are not giving an opinion on Ray, they are stating a FACT about Ray given his professed beliefs. How people choose to interpret the facts (by speculating on Ray's chances in the afterlife) is up to them. His beliefs are out there by virtue of his own statements--NOT other peoples' opinions!

(Okay, so the prayer thread comes equipped with a complimentary sermon. Sometimes, that's life.)

quote:

Originally posted by WeeLassie:
I'm new to the site, and a Christian. My question is, how do you all know if he is a believer or not? Has anyone asked him? Has anyone asked GOD? Just wondering.

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I didn't especially want this forum to break ranks and go into a Q&A, but since is does, let me answer your question:

I have had the opportunity to ask Ray thru the years about his Christian beliefs. On the outside, it can look complicated. Down closer to the road, the answer is less complicated. Ray does not accept Jesus Christ as God. Lately he considers himself God. Maybe large capital G or small. And he considers all of us, God. Sort of Indian mystical new age stuff.

Basic questions I have asked Ray, and there is little in the way of answers to connect to scripture. It is said of Ray that he had a Baptist upbringing. And that his search for a Christian God was thwarted on his way to a 'rapture' when he was a kid, carrying with him a lunch and a bottle of Orange Crush soda. Whatever mixed-up group he got involved with, it was enough to disappoint him one afternoon on a hill with those other followers who did not experience any of the rapture that Ray was so expecting. That may have been the final straw on Ray's holding on to some fundamental Christian beliefs as to the reality of Christ.

Christian faith says that I can have the mind of Christ and that it is the Holy Spirit, not human reasoning, that directs me. And that I am replaced...replaced by Christ Himself... so that it is no longer I that lives, but Christ in me that lives. That is how I gain knowledge of and favor with God. All fundamental, most important truths of Christianity.

When I have asked Ray about the scriptural references that God loved us before he made the universe, as it is written in the first part of Ephesians, for instance, Ray rejects that. If you heard Ray's rendition of Christ returning to heaven after 40 days on Earth, as he proposed in a movie version of Christ in King of Kings, it is, in Ray's mind, a fantasy.

In the last year, I had the opportunity to help match a meeting between Pastor Rick Warren of California, and Ray Bradbury. Warren was very familiar with Ray's writings. And Warren has written what became the most successful non-fiction book in US publishing history, 'The Purpose Driven Life'. A meeting was arranged and Warren spent a little more than a hour at Ray's home. But the feedback I heard later was that after 5 minutes, Rick Warren knew Ray wasn't a Christian.

That doesn't mean God doesn't use Bradbury. It does mean Ray is off on the basic tenets of Christianity. Christianity is all about Christ, not about self. That's the ongoing battle in each believer.

Warren is writing the sequel to his book thruout this summer of 2009. Since the entire meeting with Bradbury was recorded, I expect there will be a mention of Ray in some fashion in Warrens book. It will be interesting what he will write. Actually, I expect it to be favorable and insightful.

Ray is a magnificent talent who has used his talent to the nth degree. He has been a friend thru the years and an amazing influence. It's just that he seems but meager yardage away from the ultimate encounter with God.

So this request for prayer on Ray's behalf.

Reminder to pray for Ray's salvation during his 89th year on Earth.

Did anyone ever ask Ray what he thinks will happen to him as a person when he dies? Wake up in another dimension in God's creation where death doesn't exist? Heaven? Hell? Or nothing at all?

Someone must have asked. What answer did they get?

quote:

Originally posted by Phil Knox:
Reminder to pray for Ray's salvation during his 89th year on Earth.

Why not pray for our own "salvation", and not make arrogant, offensive presumptions about Ray?

Why not let the beginning of his 90th year on earth also be the beginning of letting him be with regards to others trying to impose their belief structures on him?

Why not love and let live?

You, Doug, continue to speak like an ignoramous. You and your acting as Spong's spokesman would stop trying to impose your ideas and beliefs on this board would be relief at least to some of us. You obviously have decided to absolutely dismiss all the previous postings concerning Bradbury's faith and act yourself like a true Spong follower!

Douglas read this! Is your ego and the ego of a Spong able to praise the Lord for salvation? From Ray's own mouth, his ego is so strong that he writes about how he looks at himself as God. How does Psalm 118 fit into your own agenda

Psalm 119, verses 19-21

"Open to me the gates of righteousness;
I will go through them.
And I will praise the Lord
This is the gate of the Lord
Through which the righteous shall enter
I will praise You
For You have answered me,
and have become my salvation."

If Bradbury says in interviews that he is God, has anyone asked him exactly what he means by what he is saying? Maybe it doesn't sound so scary when he actually explains it.