James 5:13-20 & 1 Kings 17-19

Message, more a teaching than a sermon, from a couple of weeks ago. It is about 50 minutes long covering the question about the guaranteed answer to prayer for recovery from illness in James 5 and the story of Elijah mentioned in James 5 (which gives a clue to the real meaning of that passage). There are many ideas in the literature about how we are to interpret this passage, however I always fall back on rule #1 of interpretation – what is the context? In this case, not just of James 5, which is obvious if you look at the whole passage, especially that last few verses, but the context of the whole book of James. This discussion comes from a paper I wrote for an advanced Greek class. Some people will disagree with my assessment. However, I ask that they lay aside what they may have been taught by others and seriously consider the context before deciding I’ve missed the promise