Page 7 - Imprecatory Prayer

Jim Hodges
The initial conflict experienced by the Early Church was with the
religious leaders of Judaism. This was a continuation of the conflict
the Lord Jesus had with them. Peter and John were arrested,
threatened, and released. When they came to the meeting of the
believers and gave their report, all of them lifted their voices with
the words of Psalm 2. In context, Psalm 2 addresses primarily pagan
kings of the earth; here this Psalm is prayed against the religious
system that was opposing the Early Church. Soon after, the Early
Church was opposed by both covenant-breaking Judaism and the
Roman Empire when it discovered the Early Church was not a sect
of Judaism.

A few observations:

a. When the voice of the Church, represented here by the apostles
Peter and John, is being silenced, it is time to pray prayers which
confront institutionalized evil.

b. Notice the believers lifted their voices together—this was a
corporate cry from a corporate anointing. If the Church in our day
does not get delivered from individualism and come into
corporeality, we will never be able to effectively pray against evil
which is entrenched in religious systems and governmental
structures.

c. Psalm 2 was written by David. The anointing on David to pray
this way is available for the New Covenant Church. We can
employ the Psalms as our prayer, praise, and prophecy manual (see
Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:16).

d. This kind of praying has three necessary guidelines: (1) under
apostolic oversight—Peter and John were there; (2) with prophetic
insight—they all knew to pray a certain Psalm, and (3) they prayed
6