THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BOBBIE BATTISTA, HOST: Is a lifetime of miracles there for the asking? "The Prayer of Jabez," the No. 1 best-selling nonfiction book in the country, suggests yes. Ask and you shall receive. And it even gives you the exact words to say in the form of a daily prayer.
However, it warns, don't ask, and any blessings you might be entitled to could be withheld. Spiritual reward or hocus pocus? And what are you thinking of asking for?
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to TALKBACK LIVE.
Wouldn't it be nice -- you pray for something and you get it? Sound like magic, or the perfect prayer? A lot of people say it works, and the magic words that attract God's blessings are right there in "The Prayer of Jabez." The popular and controversial best- seller insists that you only have to ask for what's yours. Its author, the Reverend Bruce Wilkinson, is joining us today.
And before we go there, let's say the prayer for you, so you know what we are talking about. "Oh that You would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me and that You would keep me from evil and that I may not cause pain."
Dr. Wilkinson, thank you for joining us.
REV. BRUCE WILKINSON, AUTHOR, "THE PRAYER OF JABEZ": It's great to be here, Bobbie.
BATTISTA: Now, I grant you, that is not quite the same as "Oh, Lord, will you buy me a Mercedes Benz." But you say that's not the purpose of this prayer, even though that seems to be the message that's getting out there.
WILKINSON: You know, it's amazing, I have been preaching that sermon for 30 years, and in those 30 years not one time has anybody ever come to me and says you are preaching about prosperity or Cadillacs, and was selling 30,000 or 50,000 copies, nobody said a word either.
But when it became a bestseller, all of a sudden something new showed up. I remember the first time I saw this in the newspaper said: "Can you believe what somebody is saying about the book?" It was the last thing in my mind. BATTISTA: But at the same time, you do talk a lot about abundance in the book and you do talk about asking for things from God, whether they are material things or blessings in other ways, shapes or form. And that's the gist of the book, is it not?
WILKINSON: Well, there are four parts to the book, and there are four parts to the prayer. And the first part is saying, "would you please bless me," but the other three aren't. And so when people just focus on the first part of the prayer, I think they are missing the big idea. Because they're like a set of dominoes that follow one after the other, and the first one is "bless me."
It's almost like -- "bless me" means make me, in a sense, happy or fulfilled. And when a person is unhappy or discontent, then the rest of the prayer just doesn't work for them, because they're the ones who are needing to find something to make their life more fulfilled.
So, Jabez starts out and says to God something very, very unusual. He says to him: "Would you please bless me," and then he puts a period there -- actually, an explanation point -- and never tells God how to bless him. He doesn't say bless me with a red Mercedes-Benz, or a pink Cadillac or $1 million. Jabez's prayer is very different.
BATTISTA: Well, maybe -- I think, you know, some of the language in the book may be the reason why the wrong message, as you say, is getting out. Because -- let me take an excerpt here from the book. You write in there, that: "If Jabez had worked on Wall Street, he might have prayed, 'Lord, increase the value of my investment portfolios.' When I talk to the presidents of companies, I often talk to them about this particular mindset.
When Christian executives ask me, is it right for me to ask God for more business, my response is 'absolutely.' If you're doing business God's way, it is not only right to ask for more, but he is waiting for you to ask."
So this is where, I think, a lot of folks out there are getting the impression that all I simply have to do is ask for prosperity, and God will grant it to me.
WILKINSON: Well, nowhere in the Bible does it teach that I just ask and get prosper. Because when Jabez was saying "bless me," you know, you can get a tremendous windfall of money and be very unhappy and not be blessed. Blessings are not external to you. Blessings are internal to you. You and I all know wealthy people who are anything but blessed people, don't we? And we also know people who are very poor, who are blessed.
BATTISTA: But what I am not getting about this is is: why -- why this particular prayer? In other words, I think everybody who grew up in a -- in a Christian church and I am sure other churches as well, you know, from the day they started praying, asking God for his blessings is included in almost every prayer, from "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep" to -- to, you know, beyond. So why this particular prayer? Why single this one out?
WILKINSON: Well, there are many prayers in the Bible, and Jabez is only one of hundreds of them. And I just centered it out because I have been praying it for so long, Bobbie. I have been praying it for 30 years.
BATTISTA: But why that one?
WILKINSON: Because I was in a chapel at graduate school, and this -- the chaplain came and spoke to a whole auditorium full of the seminarian students about 1 Chronicles Chapter 4, in which he says "Jabez was more honorable than his brethren." And he preached to us, and every single one of us felt in our heart, oh, I would love to be Jabez. I would love for God to say about us, when it's all said and done, he was more honorable than his brethren.
And I left that auditorium saying to myself, oh, boy, whatever was the secret of Jabez, I wanted to find out what it was. And I went right to the library, didn't go to the next class, and got a book to study all of the verses in the Bible about Jabez, and there weren't any. It was only one verse. And that was the one that followed it. And it was this prayer.
It says: "Jabez was more honorable and than his brethren, and gave a prayer," and the next part of the verse said: "And God answered his prayer." So, I said to myself, if God said this man is more honorable than his brethren and answered his prayer, there must be something...
(CROSSTALK)
BATTISTA: ... just because he answered Jabez's prayer doesn't mean he is going to answer yours. I mean, can't God just say no?
WILKINSON: He says no all of the time.
BATTISTA: OK, so if you say this prayer for 30 days, there is no guarantee you are going to get what you want?
WILKINSON: That's exactly right.
(CROSSTALK)
BATTISTA: No you didn't -- no you didn't, because I think a lot of people are being led to believe that if they say this prayer -- and why do you have to say it for 30 days? Is that like a guarantee?
WILKINSON: No, it's not magic -- there is no magic words in this prayer. It's not like an incantation that something magic is supposed to poof up. But have you ever asked yourself a question: why is it No. 1 in "New York Times" and why is it No. 1 in "USA Today," and it's on prayer?
BATTISTA: I think is because a lot of people think that they're going to get rich if they read this book. WILKINSON: Do you know we have over 10,000 e-mail stories of people who have been reading the prayer and they e-mail us the story -- do you know 95 out of 100 have nothing to do with money? Ninety- five out of 100! That's not why people are buying this, and that's not why people are buying this as a gift. Do you know why they are?
BATTISTA: No, you tell me.
WILKINSON: It's good to be asking you one question for a moment.
BATTISTA: You wrote the book, you tell me.
WILKINSON: That's right. Well, it's surprising. The reason is because it's working. People are praying this prayer.
BATTISTA: Then you are telling people -- now you are telling people again that if they pray this prayer in 30 days, that it's going to work?
WILKINSON: No, people are finding that it works. Barnes & Noble store nearby said that the average person comes in and buys between six and 10 of these books and gives them to their friends. Why would you buy a book and give away those copies to somebody else if it wasn't working for you?
BATTISTA: Let me -- OK, let me read one critic's comment on the book. This was from the Reverend Daniel Gard, at the Concordia Theological Seminary. He says, "American culture is very oriented toward paychecks and big houses. This basically gives those same secular values a religious shellacking so that you can feel good as religious person and at the same time go after all the stuff in the world."
What you are saying is maybe there is nothing wrong with that?
WILKINSON: That's not what I am saying at all. This morning I spoke at the Hyatt Regency nearby, to 750 people from 65 countries who flew in for a week's long conference. And I asked them how many of you have read the book of Jabez, and 90 percent of them raised their hands.
They were from Botswana, they were from South Africa, they were from Ecuador, they were from Russia -- a lot of poor countries. And they all lined up one after the other and to tell me their Jabez story. Do you know not one of them talked about money -- not one person.
BATTISTA: Good, because -- I am glad to hear that because I think what was really bothering me about this and I'm sure a lot of people find this same sense of awkwardness, is why would I ask God to, you know, enlarge my territory, whether you mean that for personal gain or whatever, when there are starving children in Botswana and children dying of AIDS.
I mean, if a whole country gets together and says this prayer every day for 30 days, why doesn't the whole country get out of poverty? Why aren't these children saved? Why aren't -- do you see what I am saying? Doesn't it seem awkward to be asking for more material things when that's going on in the world?
WILKINSON: Bobbie, that's a good question, because whenever somebody adds something to the Jabez Prayer, it's not the Jabez Prayer anymore. The Jabez Prayer's very simple. It says, dear God, would you please bless me indeed. And there's no, how do you do that? And in a sense, Jabez is saying to God, you're the only one who knows how to make my heart feel blessed.
And would you please do that for me? Whether or not it's money, it may be money, it may be a relationship is restored.
BATTISTA: Well, what if that welfare mother is asking the same thing every day with her six children, and she doesn't know...
WILKINSON: If I was a welfare mother I would be asking God to bless me for sure. Wouldn't you?
BATTISTA: Yes, but not necessarily through this prayer. But all I am saying is that you can't make any guarantees to her in any way shape or form that her life is going to change at all, other than she may feel inwardly that she can deal with her situation or her stress.
WILKINSON: You know what takes place is, somehow we think God isn't interested in the normal parts of our life. He's only interested in church. And Jabez's Prayer is very, very broad and it says would you please bless me, and if that woman needs more food, then maybe that's how God will bless her.
But the issue isn't that there's only one prayer and it's only Jabez. Jabez is one of many prayers you should pray.
BATTISTA: Yes, I am just curious because it will be interesting, we have a lot of people in the audience here who have read it and I want to go to them for a couple of comments as to why they are latching onto this particular book. Let me go see who has read -- Margaret.
MARGARET: Yes, I did read the book, and I have given several copies to friends. When I first read the book, I had to go to the bible to see if the verse was actually there. That was my first approach. After I saw that, then I thought, well, OK, I understand that.
And the author is actually a manifestation of the verse itself, because it's widen my territory. Let me be able to talk to people all over about Christ, is what he is actually saying.
BATTISTA: So you just see it as a way to spread the gospel.
MARGARET: Yes, that's how I view it.
BATTISTA: OK, I have to take a quick break here. Here what the God's Squad has to say about the book when we come back in a few moments. And as we go to break, the question today, take the TALKBACK LIVE, online viewer vote at cnn.com/talkback. AOL keyword: CNN.
The question is, do you pray for material things? Check out my notes send us an e-mail or an instant message. Our buddy name is TALKBACK LIVE and if you are not on the AOL's instant messenger, follow the link on our Web site and watch your comments go on the air. What will they think of next? We'll be back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BATTISTA: We are back. And the audience is getting going on this and let me continue with them here quickly. Karen, question or comment?
KAREN: Well, I am just kind of curious why Bobbie is taking such a materialistic slant on the prayer when that's not necessarily what the prayer's about.
BATTISTA: Because you do walk away from the book with that sense. You know, I think that particularly if you don't have a let's say a strong religious foundation, OK, because like -- like Margaret said a few moments ago, when she read this book she, I think, interpreted it a lot differently than other people might. But I think that's because of her faith. So it all depends on where you are coming from when you read this book, too.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The book and some of the comments earlier dealt with Christian belief and belief in Jesus. What happens if you are not Christian and you are part of the myriad of other religions, how will this book speak to you as well as you own theological viewpoints?
BATTISTA: That's a good question, Dr. Wilkinson. Is the book religiously tolerant, shall we say?
WILKINSON: Well, it's interesting. I had a Jewish reporter call me from New York and she said, I just have one question. I am a Jew. I said that's wonderful. I just want to know, can a Jew pray the prayer of Jabez or do I have to be a Christian?
And she was ready to fight and I said to her, well, I think that Jabez was a Jew and he prayed and got answered it. So then I said to her, now will you pray the prayer of Jabez just as an objective test? And will you take a pad and in the next 30 days as you pray it, will you write down on your pad exactly what happens, and write an honest story about what happened to you?
And if nothing happened then write then write that as a story? And she said, well, I think I will meditate on the prayer of Jabez. I says, what do you mean? She says, I am going to think about it every day. I said it's not going work.
What do you think mean it's not going to work? Because it's a prayer. A prayer means you ask God to do something for you. And if you are just meditating, he's not going to answer you. So, will you just take a risk and say, God, I am not sure about all of this, but would you bless me? And she said, no, I can't do that. You see, there's something inside of people that sometimes make them afraid of saying to God -- it happened today. I interviewed with three papers before I came on here and I asked all three reporters the same question at the end: Will you try praying the prayer? All three of them said, ah, I don't know. It makes me afraid. I says, what does it make you afraid about?
BATTISTA: Yes, I don't...
WILKINSON: And I said to them, if God decided to give you a whole lot of blessings, how would you feel? I would like that. Well, then, why don't you ask him to do that? He can always say no. And one of the women said, well, you know that part about expanding your border and asking God to use you with more and more people, what happens if he does do that? What am I supposed to do?
BATTISTA: Let me go the to the audience. One more question here and then we'll bring in some other guests. James, go ahead.
JAMES: Yes, as a person when I was in college I started wrestling with Christianity and the faith that was introduced to me as a young person. But then I learned as a started to pore completely into the faith I started to really find it, you know. This is something you have to embrace wholeheartedly, not in bits and pieces.
But if a person decides that they want to try the prayer of Jabez even if they don't consider themselves a Christian, Christian, or subscribe to the teachings of Christ, once they see that there is some results then are they also willing to say, if this comes from the Bible, maybe I should read through, all the way up to those things that I do not necessarily believe in and maybe reconsider my faith.
BATTISTA: A couple of e-mails that have come in. Tom in Alamogordo, New Mexico says, "To those who pray to acquire material wealth is not expressing the true meaning of prayer. We pray to God to be thankful for what we have been given in our lives and for others less fortunate."
Desiree in New York says, "If ever a generation needed a prayer like Jabez it is now. The foundations that made our country great have been so removed."
Let me bring a couple more guests into this conversation. Monsignor Thomas Hartman, director of radio and television for the Diocese of Rockville Center. He co-hosts the national cable TV show, "The God Squad," along with Rabbi Mark Gellman, senior Rabbi of Temple Beth Torah in Melville, New York. The Rabbi is president of the New York Board of Rabbis, by the way and he is on the phone with us because there was too much traffic to pick him up.
RABBI MARK GELLMAN, TEMPLE BETH TORAH: I prayed the prayer. The problem was that the limo guy was not praying the prayer. That is the problem.
BATTISTA: There you go. MSGR. THOMAS HARTMAN, CO-HOST, "THE GOD SQUAD": Now, Mark, if you were really a good prayer, your prayers would extend to the limo driver.
(LAUGHTER)
GELLMAN: You don't know what I was praying. I was actually praying that he would get lost so I could spend a little more time with my wife.
BATTISTA: That brings up a good point, though. You know what, if you pray for somebody to get lost, so for you to benefit from that, does that mean that someone else gets hurt or does not benefit in the process? And is that OK?
GELLMAN: Yes, that's the whole idea of praying to win a game, an athletic competition. Look, the problem I have with the prayer, I think it's not -- there's nothing wrong with praying. There's nothing wrong with praying that God help you. There's nothing wrong with praying that God take care of you and your family and give you sustenance which means material sustenance.
The idea is that there is something was wrong with that is foolish. Gandhi once said to a starving man, God is bread and so it really is not wrong. The -- my reaction to the whole thing is, it is really quite interesting for me. And that was that you know, when Christian missionaries try and convert me and it's not a lucky thing when they do try, but when they try, I always answer in a simple way, I encourage them to do their work and to witness to God anyway they want, but and I said, do you agree with me that Jesus was a jew?
They say, yep.
Do you agree he lived as a Jew?
Yep.
Do you agree that when he died, he was a Jew.
Yep. We agree with that, that's all true. And I said, look, my view about this whole thing is that if it was good enough for Jesus it's good enough for me. So I am going to stay a Jew. And the interesting thing about Jabez, and by the way, that's the pronunciation of the Hebrew, Jabez -- Ja-bez is his name -- is that here is a who is Jewish and who prayed to God, he lived 1,200 years before Jesus.
Jesus has nothing do with this -- nothing to do with this -- he lived 1,200 years before him. Prayed a successful prayer, was answered by God, and in the whole book there isn't one, so far as I can tell, not one reference to Jews. There's no reference to any of that.
And so, the question I have is: Whether the prayer of Jabez tends to undermine the necessity of believing in Jesus? And of his atoning death and resurrection as Christians believe in that. Because here is a Jew who lived 1,200 years before Jesus who prayed a successful prayer and that prayer is being used as a model for Christians.
BATTISTA: You know, food for thought here. And I want to get the Monsignor in, but I have to take a quick break so we will and we'll continue in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BATTISTA: All right. Let me get the Monsignor in here quickly. I meant to get you in before the break. Go ahead, Monsignor Hartman. How do you feel about this?
HARTMAN: Well, I am particularly excited about the book. Whenever I used to go to visit my grandmother she had a pair of rosaries in her hand, and that was her form of prayer. People that I know who are prayerful are a people at peace, people who turned their lives over to God.
I like the idea that a person ask for a blessing. I like the idea that the person asked that their borders might be bigger than they would thought of by themselves. I like the idea that we live in the hand of God. And I also like the idea that it suggests to us that we should avoid evil and concentrate on good.
BATTISTA: Is the opposite true? If we do not pray, we are not a peaceful person? We know that that's not true.
HARTMAN: no, some people meditate. I think that almost anyone who is at peace has a form of reflection, whether it's to God or just within themselves. But it seems almost essential that a person take time out to reflect on their lives.
BATTISTA: To the audience here, because we have an amazing amount of people who have read the book. And Doctor, jump in anytime. Go ahead.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: One of the things I wanted to say is I think we want to argue with this book, or with this prayer, because it's so simple. Our lives are so complicated that we don't think anything is this simple anymore, and so we're going to argue.
BATTISTA: Well, it also make you wonder why this relatively unknown prayer, that was sort of buried in the Bible, that nobody's really drawn any attention to -- why is that one so powerful?
Rabbi?
Watching who's going to be voted off of the island is also popular too, you know.
(LAUGHTER)
GELLMAN: Yeoman's first rule of life is it if it's popular, it's bad, but I think this book is OK, except that it -- it takes the Jewish guy and turns it into a Christian book -- which we Jews are used to -- but that's just wrong. And secondly, it's way, way, way too narrow a sense of prayer. When Tommy and I wrote a book for kids on religion, we -- we told kids that there's four kinds of prayers -- my dog is praying one of them now.
BATTISTA: Yes, I can hear him in the background.
GELLMAN: And -- which is: "May I eat the guy mowing the lawn?"
And the four kinds of prayers are: Thanks, gimme, oops and wow! That is...
(LAUGHTER)
GELLMAN: This is a book about "gimme" prayers. "God, would you give me this, give me that." And there are other kinds of prayers which are, "thank you for what you've already given me," and prayers of repentance, "I'm sorry for what I did," and prayers of adoration in which we just look at the beauty of the world and acknowledge that God is the one who made it. So this is one of the those prayers.
BATTISTA: Charles?
HARTMAN: But Mark and I are certainly very enthused to hear that people are interested in the book, and interested in praying, because prayer is so important -- not only in religion but in the spiritual life.
BATTISTA: But we were saying that, you know, part of -- we have to look at the fact that part of the reason the book may be so popular is that a lot of people are buying this book and not coming at it with the same religious foundation that other people are looking at it, in which case, so we say, well, at least we're getting people interested in prayer. But is it for the right reason?
HARTMAN: Well, I'd have to say, having read the book, I like the story of Mr. Jones who went to heaven and he found a room with God that had an envelope that had things that God intended for him to do. And he looked at it and said, "I realize now that I should have asked for more." Prayer is not only what's going to happen for me, but prayer also means that you're willing to be of service of God. And if this book helps people to become more of service to God, then it's a contribution.
(APPLAUSE)
BATTISTA: Charles is on the phone from the Virgin Islands. Charles, go ahead.
CALLER: Good afternoon, Bobbie.
BATTISTA: Hi.
CALLER: We live in the Virgin Islands, we have for a number of years, and there is rarely a year that goes by that we don't have a hurricane of one magnitude or other. And I'm not speaking only about the Virgin Islands, I'm speaking about all of the Caribbean, from Trinidad to Cuba and everywhere else that up way.
And I am kind of confused here that -- I'm led to believe that if we, that is, all of the millions of people that live in the Caribbean, pray for 30 days that we're not going to have another hurricane this year -- and I -- you know, it's a little hard to believe. And I just kind of have a funny feeling that this is -- this kind of another feel-good thing, and I don't think it's coincidental that there's a money-making aspect to it as well.
BATTISTA: Dr. Wilkinson.
WILKINSON: You know, it's interesting. When I wrote this book, the publisher and I thought we'd sell 30, 000 copies and that was it. It certainly wasn't a money-making deal.
I think the other thing that perhaps is a misunderstanding is nowhere in there are we talking about, in the book, that Jabez prays for money or prays that a storm changes. The prayer of Jabez is very specific and very unique. He says four things, and they're very much open-ended, and we want to put a closing part at each part of it.
He says, would you please bless me? How?
Any way you want to bless me is fine with me, because you know what will make me feel blessed and be blessed. Would you please give me more ministry? How?
Any way that you want to. Nowhere in there is it a prayer to ask God it move the weather. That's fine, but that's not a Jabez prayer. That's a personal prayer.
BATTISTA: All right, I have to take a quick break here, and when we come back, author and doctor, Larry Dossey will weigh in on the book and he'll talk about the power of prayer when we come back. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BATTISTA: Lee, that's a good question from the audience. I want to come back to that, but let me bring another guest in first, OK? Joining us now is Dr. Larry Dossey. He is a retired internist who left his medical practice to study the healing power of prayer. He is the author of "Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine."
Thank you very much for joining us.
DR. LARRY DOSSEY, AUTHOR, "HEALING WORDS": Bobbie, thank you.
BATTISTA: You had some problems that you e-mailed to us. You have some issues with this book. What are they?
DOSSEY: Well, I agree with the God squad guys. I also am glad people are interested in prayer, and I'm sort of glad that this book has floated into prominence. But I have to say that I, in my views on prayer, am influenced by a lot of the studies and the experiments in prayer that have gone on the past 20 years at American medical schools, colleges and hospitals and clinics. And we have enough of these studies now that we can, I think, form a pretty good picture of what constitutes an effective prayer. I have to say, it the doesn't look like the Prayer of Jabez at all.
For one thing, some most effective studies involve people who don't pray for anything. They don't spell it out or try to make it happen as in the Jabez Prayer. For example, one of the most effective prayer strategies that we've identified is when people in these studies simply pray "May thou will be done," or "may the best thing happen," or "may the best outcome prevail."
And if people pray in this way, with the requisite love and compassion and empathy, the prayer seems to be effective. So I just want to say that this idea of a formula that one ought to follow is just something that we cannot confirm when you take prayer into the clinic and the hospital and put it to the test.
BATTISTA: Let me go up here to Lee's question before I forget. It was a good one, go ahead.
LEE: I wanted to know if it is that God would bless us according to our needs as opposed to our wants, then why would we spend time praying to him addressing our wants?
WILKINSON: That's a great question. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach to us to pray, he said pray this way, and then part of the prayer was "and give us our daily bread." That's a need, isn't it? That's not a want. And Jesus is teaching us you need to pray for your needs, not just your wants.
And as you study the Bible, you will find out some prayers are for healing, some are general, but this one is kind of a broad picture. It's not the only prayer in the Bible, it's just one that made such a difference to me, Bobbie, that I began to pray it and I shared it with other people what happened to me. Then they prayed it.
BATTISTA: But it's based on your interpretation of that particular passage as well, we might add.
WILKINSON: My interpretation? I just encourage people to pray it.
BATTISTA: Right, but that's the thing about the Bible. There are so many interpretations of so many verses in the Bible, and you are basically passing on your interpretation of this prayer.
WILKINSON: My interpretation is to ask God to bless you.
BATTISTA: It's pretty vague. I mean, the language in it is fairly vague.
WILKINSON: It is vague. That's one of my reasons why I believe it's so applicable for everybody. It doesn't say "bless me in this way," it just says "bless me."
BATTISTA: Dr. Dossey?
DOSSEY: Yeah, I think that I get a different reading of the prayer of Jabez from Dr. Wilkinson's interpretation. Part of it is extremely specific. Jabez says "enlarge my territory." You know, that's not a general sort of request.
And I think that's one thing that accounts for the incredible runaway popularity. People do see this as a specific way to acquire what in the book, Dr. Wilkinson calls "abundance." And for most people, the term "abundance" implies material gain. So, I don't think that you can explain away Jabez's prayer as something that's really general and nonspecific.
(CROSSTALK)
WILKINSON: In all this time, of all these people speaking with me, yet there has to be one person to come to me and say: "I gave this book away because it made me rich." Not one person! Or to say: "Let me give you a book, this will really make you wealthy." This is straw man out here that just isn't in the marketplace. People who pray this prayer aren't getting rich nor are they praying to get rich.
DOSSEY: I would really doubt that very seriously, because there's something inherent in the American psyche, when you hold out to them a promise of abundance, what they are going to want is not something metaphorical or poetic, Dr. Wilkinson, they are going to see dollars and they are going to see raises at work. They are going to see winning the lottery, they're going to see getting the -- you know, the last remaining parking lot in downtown Manhattan. They are going to see something really tangible...
(CROSSTALK)
WILKINSON: You know, it would be very interesting for you to go back to Prayerofjabez.com, and read a few hundred of the testimonies of people and just get a pad out and count how many of them have to do with money.
DOSSEY: Let me quote your own words here. You know, I think that you are misleading people. You say on page 84 and 85: "But I promise that you will see a direct link, and the only thing that can break this cycle of abundant living is sin, because sin breaks the flow of God's power." And in other places of the book, you say that God has favorites...
WILKINSON: Well, go ahead and read the rest of that then. The favorites are people...
DOSSEY: Well, let me quote you: "Simply put, God favors those who ask. He holds nothing back from those who want..."
BATTISTA: I've got to jump in. Dr. Wilkinson, I will let you answer this as soon as we come back in a moment. "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" sold its 10 millionth copy last month. The book by Christian Science Church founder Mary Baker Eddy was published in 1875 and sold more than a million copies in the past five years. The last two years marked the highest sales in the book's history.
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BATTISTA: Couple more e-mails that have come in. Gloria in New York says: "The Bible is full of the Lord fulfilling material needs -- the fishes and the loaves -- what is required is the spiritual understanding that God is love." Oh, Gloria is busy up there on her computer. Gloria says again: "Material things should never be requested in prayer, they are the results of hard work and honesty."
Let me go here to the audience quickly. Rick, you are a rabbi, by the way, we found out.
RICK: Yes it's true. As I spoke to you earlier about -- in Judaism, whenever we do a request, we pray in the plural, and we have all been concentrating in the last 45 moments, especially Jabez, I, I, I. But what about we, like we as the community? Whenever we pray to heal someone in Judaism, we pray in the plural, and I want to know how to bring more community into it rather than the selfish materialism that we've commented on today?
WILKINSON: That's great. There are thousands of churches today whose pastors are preaching through the prayer of Jabez, either on a Sunday or on Saturday and so forth, and asking the whole church to pray as families, as individuals and as churches, and I have heard of six churches that have doubled their size in the last six months. And when you talk to the people, how did this happen? The answer comes back, you should hear what God is doing because of prayer of Jabez. So, it's not just personal.
But in Jabez, Rick, it was -- an individual never expected somebody to write a book, I'm sure, on his prayer. Like if you were to get my journal and you were to write a book on a one-sentence prayer I wrote, I would think I can't believe you did this about one of my prayers. I'm sure Jabez is getting more popular in heaven today. Hey, you're Jabez! I've never heard about you before until that book was written.
So, I believe it is corporate. Many families are praying it. Many couples are praying it, many churches are praying it, and God does answer it. It is -- that's why the book is selling to be -- my own read about this, it isn't because of any other reason besides it's working. People are praying. Something happen that makes their hearts so overflow, they say: "I'm going to buy one for you, you got to read this!" That's how it's happening.
BATTISTA: Dr. Dossey, you talked about being able to confirm something like this one way or the other. I'm sure that was intriguing to people, because you -- tell us what you have confirmed about how prayer works. DOSSEY: There are now, Bobbie, a couple of dozen studies that have been done in mainstream medical schools and hospitals in the country where people come together outside the hospital and they pray for people with certain conditions. Studies have looked at patients with advanced AIDS, the most high-profile study in the country currently is at Duke University Medical Center, where a universal worldwide prayer effort is being dedicated to people who come in with heart disease and chest pain and angioplasty need.
And so what we find in these studies is that people in these double-blind control clinical experiments who receive the prayer do better than people who are just treated conventionally. This Duke study is going to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal -- the most famous heart journal in the world, which is "The American Journal of Cardiology."
So this gives us a chance to look at whose prayer works, what kind of prayer works, and something about the mechanism of prayer. And what we see in these studies, just to repeat, is that prayer is universal. In the Duke study you have Hindus and Buddhists and Muslims and Jews and Christians praying, and it doesn't seem to matter how they pray, specifically, or which religion they belong to. This suggests that God does not have favorites and one doesn't have to spell it out as Jabez did when he asked for something specific, such as "enlarge my territory."
A simple prayer of "thy will be done" or "may the best thing happen," as long as it's offered with love and compassion, seems to be all that's required.
WILKINSON: You know, it's interesting that Jesus has a comment about what you're saying here, and he couldn't agree any more, but here's what he said. He said, in Matthew, Chapter 7, he says, "if you," talking about adults being evil, "know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him?"
And Jesus made a condition that some things in life need to be asked for to us have them. If we don't ask, we don't get them. Other times, God just gives them, not because we ask. Sometimes you have to act a certain way to get a certain blessing. But in Jabez Prayer, he basically just asks God in a sense, to be giving his will, because he says would you bless me but he doesn't define it in any particular way.
DOSSEY: Yes, he does. He says "enlarge my territory."
BATTISTA: But I guess a lot of people would say that's open to interpretation, those couple of words. I have to take a quick break here. We'll get the monsignor and Rabbi Gellman's final thoughts when we come back.
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BATTISTA: We are completely out of time. We could go a whole other hour on this, but we'll quickly check the online viewer vote. The question was: "Do you pray for material things?" And it looks like 44 percent of you are saying yes, you do and 56 percent of you are saying they do not.
The Reverend Bruce Wilkinson, thank you very much for joining us today. Appreciate it.
Dr. Dossey, thank you for joining us, Monsignor Hartman and Rabbi Gellman, good to see you both, as always.
And we will see you again tomorrow for more TALKBACK LIVE. Free- for-all-Friday, join us then.
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