![]() ![]() A person who is struggling with lust should obviously avoid certain places and activities, but he can also pray that situations beyond his control do not present themselves to him. A man who is struggling with alcohol should avoid places where alcohol will be served, but he should also pray that he will not encounter any unexpected invitations to drink during the course of his day. While we can pray for help to overcome temptation and sin, we can also pray that we will not be put in positions where we would face severe temptation. Praying “deliver us from evil” is a recognition of our own limited abilities and a means of asking for God to step in and help us. We need to rely on the Holy Spirit to help us resist temptation and overcome sin in our lives. The believer in Christ has been delivered from the penalty of sin (Romans 8:1), but we are still in a daily battle against sin and the devil. Jesus taught His followers to pray, “Deliver us from evil,” because we cannot resist the devil in our own strength. It is a request that sin never gain a foothold in our lives. In the Lord’s Prayer, we are instructed to pray that God will protect us from situations that would tempt us to sin. Likewise, every time of “hard testing” is an opportunity to trust God or to compromise and yield to sinful temptation and thus to some extent come under the control of sin and the devil. Satan is ultimately behind all evil, so it makes little difference whether we are to ask for deliverance from evil in general (sin) or from the evil one, specifically, since the two are related. Ultimately, the meaning of “Deliver us from evil” is not found in a dissection of the individual words but in the general direction of the clause. The word translated “temptation” can also be translated “hard testing” and doesn’t necessarily refer to a temptation to sin. This request also contains some difficulty. “Deliver us from evil” is tied to the request immediately before it, “Lead us not into temptation” (Matthew 6:13). The KJV, ESV, and NASB translate the last term as “evil,” while the NIV and NKJV translate it as “the evil one.” In Greek, the term is literally rendered as “the evil.” Since the term is specific, many scholars believe that “the evil” referred to is specific and personified, that is, a reference to the devil. It is translated differently in different versions. The Lord’s Prayer is also recorded in Luke 11:2–4 but does not include this final request. Unlike “The Hobbit,” you won’t find yourself checking your watch.The request that God would “deliver us from evil” comes from the Lord’s Prayer, recorded in Matthew 6:13 (ESV). Given Jackson’s involvement, it’s perhaps not surprising “West of Memphis” runs to rather extreme lengths for a feature documentary, clocking in at 2 1/2 hours. ![]() ![]() As Amy Berg’s (“Deliver Us From Evil”) jam-packed documentary shows, the teen boys’ initial convictions - largely based on “Satanic cult” scare tactics and with no demonstrable evidence - were increasingly called into question by witnesses who recanted testimony, DNA experts and even parents of the dead children, though the state steadfastly refused to revisit the case.īerg begins at the scene of the crime and takes us all the way through the confounding innocent-but-guilty plea that liberated the three last year, then rolls out disturbing new evidence, uncovered with the help of deep-pocketed WM3 supporters like co-producer Peter Jackson, implicating a different murder suspect. The film’s co-produced by Damien Echols, one of three recently exonerated men wrongly jailed for 18 years for the murders of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, Ark. Whether you’ve never heard of the 1993 West Memphis Three case or have followed HBO’s documentaries on it (“Paradise Lost,” Parts 1 to 3), this is a compelling and comprehensive guide to one of the most Kafkaesque crime stories in American history. ![]()
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