Page 16 - Prayer Ascends - English

for a child when he was ministering in the temple that day.
But I don’t believe that was the case at all.
The truth of the matter (seen in verse 18 from Zacharias’s
question where he disbelieves the message of the angel) is
that Zacharias and Elizabeth are very old and they had long
forgotten their own prayers.
The phrase, “Your prayer has been heard” is very interesting.
In the Greek, it is a timeless aorist tense and is a rare word
with a prefix attached to it, occurring only five times in the
New Testament.
It should be translated, “your prayer was heard to do when
you first prayed and so is being performed now.” Or an even
better translation, “your prayer was granted to do when you
first prayed, and so the giving is now.”

Let me give you my - Karl Silva amplified paraphrased version
- “Zacharias, your prayers had ascended as incense before Me
and was heard in heaven, and granted to do twenty years ago
when you first prayed. .... But now 20 years later God is giving
you the answer in a way that will blow your mind!!”

You see, God had heard their prayer and granted their
request years before. However, for His own glory, He had
delayed the answer till it was the appropriate time.
This brings us to the third amazing truth....

The Third Truth Is - OUR PRAYERS ARE AN-
SWERED IN A WAY THAT BRINGS GOD GLORY

Well, as we see in the rest of Luke chapter 1, Zacharias and
Elizabeth had a child in their old age, which they named
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