Paul Wheelhouse minored in Art in college and earned a B.A. in Education. He later earned a masters degree in Divinity. After some years of ministry, Rev. Wheelhouse taught a college Religion course as an Adjunct Instructor.
In 2009, he created the Global Praying Hands(c) with the assistance of a graphic artist and launched the globalprayinghands.com site specifically as a venue for the Global Praying Hands(s) art and products. He also launched the sister site of globalprayingservants.com (and .org) as a 24/7 top notch Interfaith prayer website. He thus became a leader in the global prayer movement. Read more below on how a Judeo-Christian minister can do an Inter-faith prayer site and the Global Praying Hands.
And in the years following since 2009, he has seen the influence of the Global Praying Hands on some ministries and even publishers of religious and spiritual books. One image seen of a Rutledge book looked remarkably similar to the Global Praying Hands. But I do not see this as competition which operates on the worldly plain. Does or can anyone control or own prayer? Absolutely not. I see all efforts of prayer around the world as supportive. Even though I not only copyrighted but trademarked the Global Praying Hands (TM)(c) in 2009 and 2010, this is not about me or the GP Hands images I produced. Its about serving the spiritual needs of humanity and helping to encourage and build them up. This is not a license, though, for anyone to take a GP Hands image for profit without permission Paul Wheelhouse of Wheelhouse Art and Wheel House Publications.
His career has richly encompassed work in the Art field, professional Ministry, as an Author and Self-Publisher, as a Religion Scholar, and and work on state and private Cultural and Heritage resources.
Paul Wheelhouse brought the Global Praying Hands® in as a division of Wheelhouse Art in 2012 with establishing of the Wheel House (& Wheelhouse) Art & Publications.
Can a Judeo-Christian minister Do an Inter-faith Prayer Site and the Global Praying Hands?
So can a Judeo-Christian minister create and manage an Inter-faith prayer website and also create the Global Praying Hands?
You weigh in on this controversary and post your thoughts on WheelhouseWrit on Facebook.
As with most things in life, it is about purpose, intent, and understanding. All three of these things are very important to maintain since our contemporary degenerating culture is quickly casting off.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, salvation, the ultimate goal, is quintessentially important. But its not salvation and yet remain ignorant. Its salvation AND understanding. The Scriptures are so rich with understanding. Both words “understand” and “understanding” each occur over fifty times in the Old Testament alone. It is enunciated in Nehemiah ch. 8. It is used abundantly in the Psalms and book of Proverbs. The Hebrew word for understanding is “byn.” Its closely related to the Hebrew word “build,” banah which in turn has the figurative/metaphorical meaning to “edify,” encourage, build up fellow believers. And teaching on the Scriptures is the number one way to build believers up, in the Judeo-Christian tradition. And the goal of teaching is also understanding, forming enlightened disciples.
Moreover, God prizes unity. “Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity!” (NKJV with modification). And the apostle Paul writes, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all” (Eph. 4:4-6 NKJV).
This in turn is based on the biblical theology that God created the Earth and the Heavens and He created all peoples of of the world. The apostle Paul evidences this powerfully and almost poetically to the Greek philosophers and Athenians in his notable speech to them, saying, “God, who make the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth…gives to all life, breath, and all things. And has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring'” (Acts 17: 24-28).
With this short biblical Scripture lesson in background, all believers should prize understanding, and become enlightened towards full disciples of God in Christ Jesus (for those who are Christians).
With all this said, we are quite aware in this global age that there are several other religions out there in the world, some of them major, such as Buddhism (most notably in Asia) and Islam. There was also the New Age movement that swept through the West in the 1970’s and had a large impact.
So can one one religion make a claim on all the global territory? I think we can agree that for any religious group to do so would seem presumptuous and likely arrogant. Ah, but the Global Praying Hands is not making a claim to any territory. Territory is earthly, mundane, and the lust for it leads to corruption. But from the beginning in creating the Global Praying Hands, it has been defined as an artistic and symbolic expression of the prayers of people of the world toward God or the Ultimate Reality. It is spiritually minded, not earthly-territorially minded. And it has been broadly defined to encompass basically the prayers of virtually all monotheists and perhaps some monists too.
So it begs the question, why would a CHRISTIAN minister want to such a thing and set up an Inter-faith prayer website? In regard to the use of the term “Inter-faith,” it may be applied to only the many traditions within the Christian tradition or the term could be used to include those in or from traditions outside the Judeo-Christian tradition such as Muslims. Here, we do not have space to explain if Islam’s Allah is the same God of the Bible (Yahweh, Elohim, Adonai, etc). And some Hindus prefer to focus on the one ultimate Reality Brahman which is would be the equivalent to the concept of “God.”
I have asked myself more than once why I created the Inter-faith prayer website and the globalprayinghands.com as a companion site. To understand this, one must understand in Life Context, which an 1800’s German scholar used the term sitz em laben (life in situation). All meaning is within context. So, to summarize my life at that time, I had set out on a quest for a search and understanding of universals in 2006, three years earlier. And in 2009, and I had a creative surge and needed an outlet of expression. Wala, the Global Praying Hands. And as the Law of Attraction would have it, the opportunity to begin teaching a college World Religions course as an Adjunct Instructor arose. Those factors combined in that year of my life.
But does Jesus teach against global prayer when He prays in His great High Priestly prayer in John chapter 17: “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world, but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours” (vs. 9). This verse needs to be understood in the context of John’s whole Gospel, particularly in seeming stark contrast to what is considered the most famous Christian verse: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, so that, whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (Jn. 3:16). And this verse in ch. 17 should be understood also in the context of the other three N.T. Gospels. What is going on? Jesus is preparing to commission His disciples to take the Gospel, the Good News, to whole world, to every creature. Jesus knows that He soon will complete His sacrificial mission on Earth as the Savior not only of the Jews, but of all Gentiles to, by His death on the cross; then, to rise from the dead on the third day, and then after commissioning His disciples, ascending back to Heaven to God the Father where He has been seated as the Righteous King of the World and the Mediator of all sin until the end of the age.
