Facts Underlying Prayer.</u>

It will help greatly to step back and up a bit for a fresh look at certain
facts that underlie prayer. Everything depends on a right point of view.
There may be many view-points, from which to study any subject; but of
necessity any one view-point must take in all the essential facts
concerned. If not, the impression formed will be wrong, and a man will be
misled in his actions. In these talks I make no attempt to prove the
Bible's statements, nor to suggest a common law for their interpretation.
That would be a matter for quite a separate series of talks. It clears the
ground to assume certain things. I am assuming the accuracy of these
scriptural statements. And I am glad to say I have no difficulty in doing
so.

Now there are certain facts constantly stated and assumed in this old
Book. They are clearly stated in its history, they are woven into its
songs, and they underlie all these prophetic writings, from Genesis clear
to the end of John's Patmos visions. Possibly they have been so familiar
and taken for granted so long as to have grown unfamiliar. The very old
may need stating as though very new. Here is a chain of six facts:

First:--The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.[3] His by
creation and by sovereign rule. The Lord sat as King at the flood.[4]

Second:--God gave the dominion of the earth to man. The kingship of its
life, the control and mastery of its forces.[5]

Third:--Man, who held the dominion of the earth in trust from God,
transferred his dominion to somebody else, by an act which was a double
act. He was deceived into doing that act. It was an act of disobedience
and of obedience. Disobedience to God, and obedience to another one, a
prince who was seeking to get the dominion of the earth into his own
hands. That act of the first man did this. The disobedience broke with
God, and transferred the allegiance from God. The obedience to the other
one transferred the allegiance, and through that, the dominion to this
other one.

The fourth fact is this:--The dominion or kingship of this earth so far
as given to man, is now not God's, for He gave it to man. And it is not
man's, for he has transferred it to another. It is in the control of that
magnificent prince whose changed character supplies his name--Satan, the
hater, the enemy. Jesus repeatedly speaks of "the prince"--that is the
ruling one--"of this world."[6] John speaks in his vision-book of a time