Please find below all instalments of our short series on music.

1. The biblical and spiritual significance of music

2. Western music: the sounds of Christendom and post-Christendom

3. Contemporary Christian music and the spirit of the age

4. Enjoying God's good gift of music

East-West relations hit a new low.

The attempted assassination of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury last week has created dangerous worldwide repercussions.

Theresa May’s forthright condemnation of Russia as being responsible for the attack upon British soil has quickly led to the support of other Western nations, creating the possibility of an East-West split such as we have not seen since the end of the Cold War.

There were heated exchanges in the UN Security Council in which Russia strongly denied any involvement in the Salisbury incident that also left a policeman seriously ill. Russia demanded absolute proof of the material in the attack as claimed by Britain. Speaking on behalf of the United States, US ambassador Nikki Haley said:

Let me make one thing clear from the very beginning: The United States stands in absolute solidarity with Great Britain. The United States believes that Russia is responsible for the attack on two people in the United Kingdom using a ‘military-grade’ nerve agent.

Earlier, in the House of Commons, Prime Minister Theresa May had said that there were only two possible explanations for the nerve agent being used in the UK: either Moscow was directly responsible for the attack, or it has lost control of its stockpile of chemical weapons.

A Defining Moment

This is clearly a defining moment in East-West relationships as Britain is a member of NATO and under that agreement, an attack upon one member is regarded as an attack upon the whole organisation. The four major NATO nations - Britain, the USA, France and Germany - have jointly declared Russia to be guilty of the attack.

There is mounting anti-Russian propaganda in the Western press and on social media which could get out of hand and even escalate into war with Russia. I know this sounds highly improbable but we live in unstable times, and there are some very unpredictable politicians currently leading the nations.

This is a defining moment in East-West relations that could easily escalate.

President Putin has recently been boasting that Russia’s latest weaponry is capable of detecting and destroying American Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and in an interview with NBC, and he said that nuclear retaliation would be immediate for any attack on Russia or its allies - nuclear or 'conventional'.¹ Fighting words! He has been raising the temperature of international relationships. All of this is highly dangerous in a world with so many nations having weapons of mass destruction.

Fears of Armageddon

Inevitably, fears of some kind of Armageddon are being raised. There are many warnings in the Bible of worldwide destruction. The Prophet Isaiah speaks of the earth being broken up: “The earth is split asunder, the earth is thoroughly shaken. The earth reels like a drunkard, it sways like a hut in the wind” (24:19).

In former generations, biblical scholars usually interpreted these scenes of mass destruction as being metaphorical, because it was unimaginable that destruction on such a scale could ever become a reality. Today we know that the weapons of mass destruction now in the hands of the nations, if they were actually used, could in a few minutes cause the widespread devastation described by Isaiah.

The Day of the Lord?

The difficulty we face is that there is no timeline linked to the eschatological passages in the Bible. Sometimes it is unclear whether descriptions of destruction refer to the time leading up to Jesus’ return, or God’s final act of wrapping up the whole of Creation at the end of Jesus’ thousand-year reign on the earth. This is the case for 2 Peter 3:

The day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare…That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire and the elements will melt in the heat.

Historically, biblical scholars usually interpreted scenes of mass destruction in the Bible as metaphorical – but now weapons of mass destruction have made them a distinct possibility.

Jesus himself spoke of times of great distress in the period leading up to his own Second Coming when he will establish the Kingdom. He said “There will be signs in the sun and moon and stars. On the earth nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world for the heavenly bodies will be shaken” (Luke 21:25). And this is elaborated in Matthew 24 where Jesus speaks of “nation rising against nation and kingdom against kingdom”.

What are we to make of all these predictions of worldwide destruction? The big question we have to face when dealing with biblical prophecy is whether or not the events revealed are given as foretelling facts that will undoubtedly happen, or whether they are given as signs to give human beings the opportunity of changing direction - in accordance with God’s promise in Jeremiah 18 – to avoid the massive devastation foreseen.

I personally believe that some of the threats of judgment such as Isaiah 2:12-22 and Isaiah 24 are given to us in the Bible as warnings of what could happen. My reason is because I believe in the sovereignty of God – that he holds the nations in his hands “as a drop in a bucket” as Isaiah says (40:15). Despite all human activity, God is still in ultimate control and he is “gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity” (Joel 2:13).

To the Ends of the Earth!

It may be that the times in which we are living, when there is increasing risk of the nations plunging into the horrors of World War III, God is saying something very special and very urgent to those of his people who are watching and listening.

God is drawing our attention to the warnings that he has given through the prophets and through Jesus and the apostles. And through the Holy Spirit, the Father is empowering us, his children, to warn the world of the direction in which it is heading and to bring a message of salvation that points to “a new and living way”. This is the message of the Gospel that has been entrusted to us, his people.

God’s stated intention is that his message of salvation should be taken to the ends of the earth. If ever there were a day when those who have accepted Jesus as Lord and Saviour should each be active in our own sphere of influence to declare the truth of the Gospel, it surely is today!

Author’s Note: I know that this brief excursion into biblical eschatology is far from adequate; but my major intention here is simply to open up the subject of the great threat that confronts our world today, to stimulate discussion among our readers in the hope that the Gospel message may reach many, including the leaders of the nations.

References

1 See the full interview transcript here. Excerpts are available on Youtube.

Truth and consequence.

“No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.” – Sir Karl Popper

It is an interesting time to be American. I sit, comfortably composing this article, the afternoon sunlight bouncing off my desk. I sip hot Twinings as the heater in the house where I grew up kicks on. The sounds and smells of my mother’s cooking (she is 90…) fill my senses.

This same sunny afternoon a US Marshall is shot during a standoff in a house about a mile down the road from my home near Ferguson. He is saved by his vest. A productive, long-term employee is sacked because he allegedly said something ‘offensive’. A family debates allowing their child to undergo sexual reassignment surgery. Another church closes its doors.

I sip my tea. Dinner is served.

Realising that America is and always will be intimately connected to the UK, I do my best to keep an eye to the political horizons of each nation. As the quest to move our rational, democratic societies away from God in pursuit of some global, utopian ideal weighs on my mind, I conduct a ‘flash’ overview of the ideological war being waged against the US President.

Recipe for a Coup

President Trump’s stated agenda is to restore to Americans many of our former cultural and societal freedoms and to rebuild the US as a sovereign, national republic. Despite his personal imperfections, his ideas and consequent taking of concerted and effective action to carry out his agenda represents a clear threat to the utopian global narrative that has been gathering momentum over the last 30 years.

Among those who have openly come against President Trump’s agenda are the mainstream media, certain financial entities, holdovers from the Obama administration, and establishment Republicans, many of whom are openly left-leaning. Celebrities and media personalities have openly declared that Trump should be assassinated, to the point that the idea is becoming common parlance.

Realising that America is and always will be intimately connected to the UK, I do my best to keep an eye to the political horizons of each nation.

Since the 2016 election, Trump has been labeled a Nazi, a fascist, a racist/sexist/xenophobe and as mentally incompetent to hold his position. Almost every attempt at staffing the departments under his control has been met with resistance on a ridiculous scale. Let us not forget myriad allegations concerning Russian collusion and election fraud; the Nunes memo, the Democrat memo, the ‘dossier’ (see Author’s Note, below).

From all that I have read and studied, such actions demonstrate the recipe for an internal coup, not just against a President, but against each individual citizen who voted for him - just as attempts to throw off Brexit represent a coup against those who voted Leave.

What is Freedom?

It seems to me that, in large part, there is a great misapprehension of key concepts on both sides.

Both sides declare that the endgame is ‘freedom’. Key to the concept of ‘freedom’ are the concepts of ‘liberty’ and ‘equality’. But the concepts and the words are open for interpretation (much like ‘love’ and ‘good’ and ‘justice’). We hear these words and immediately, libraries of mental pictures, interpretations and personal experiences come to mind. Ask ten people to describe their definition of ‘freedom’, ‘liberty’ or ‘equality’ and you will get ten different answers, each evoking mixtures of learned rhetoric, emotion, anecdotal evidence and fantasy.

Why? Because we are no longer a people trained and/or inclined to think critically or truly examine what we think we know. We are too busy attending to our phones, our possessions, our jobs and the pragmatic realities of this world to stop long enough to think or to seek wisdom. Concepts such as those I have mentioned, perforce, become two-dimensional. ‘Truth’ and our desire for it fades until we barely recognise it anymore.

The ideological war being waged against Trump amounts to an internal coup – not just against him, but against every citizen that voted for him.

To the average citizen, for instance, the concepts of ‘liberty’ and ‘equality’ appear to be closely related. We hear these words used alongside ‘freedom’ quite frequently, often from people we consider possessing more authority on the subject than might we, so we think no more about it.

But the devil is in the details. “Equality of the general rules of law and conduct…is the only kind of equality conducive to liberty and the only equality which we can secure without destroying liberty,” writes Austrian-British economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek.

“Not only has liberty nothing to do with any sort of equality, but it is even bound to produce inequality in many respects. This is the necessary result and part of the justification of individual liberty: if the result of individual liberty did not demonstrate that some manners of living are more successful than others, much of the case for it would vanish”¹ (emphases added).

This is the classic liberal view: that a society must have certain freedoms in order to flourish, which must be protected by the law. But those freedoms necessarily mean that inequalities will also arise. This is a necessary outcome of people’s diversity and the world’s unpredictability – and makes space for compassion and mercy in relationships. But any top-down attempt to artificially re-balance these inequalities will inevitably lead to tyranny of one sort or another.

The Founding Fathers

The classic liberal view was where the USA started off. To broad stroke a bit, America’s founders (many of whom were of British heritage) believed that each individual was created by God, born in an imperfect state. Yet God gifted us with individual liberty. It is God’s wish that we might seek relationship with him and become reconciled with him for eternity, but liberty in this lifetime, however we choose to use it, is ours.

It was the original intent of the founders to respect and protect that individual liberty and by so doing, honour God. The US Constitution was created to express the ideal that each man (ultimately, each person) could marry, worship as he chose, own property and possessions, exercise his right to defend and protect his family, work at whatever suited him and prosper as much as he was able. The potential success of the individual was protected by general rules of law and conduct created to facilitate a stable, safe and prosperous society.

Classic liberal philosophy has very particular views on the concepts of ‘liberty’ and ‘equality’.

This Constitutional ideal has been the bedrock of our national identity since its acceptance into law. By defining equality according to general rules of law and conduct, the individual remains accountable to society for how he/she exercises that individual liberty. Societal accountability often drives the individual to recognise and pursue relationship with God.

So, for the Constitutional conservative, ‘liberty’ is defined as their God-given individual freedom, of which faith is often an important component. ‘Equality’ is defined as equality under the law of safety, opportunity and socio-economic mobility.

The Postmodern Left

However, the utopian ideals being promoted by the postmodern ‘liberal Left’ are based on a humanistic, often atheistic approach, which has Marxist origins. For them, man creates his own liberty, his own equality, and so must also control it. If that means gaining control of the liberty and equality of others through gradual, often nuanced, ultimately tyrannical means, this is a price worth paying.

For the liberal Left, enforced ‘equality’ is a way to achieve human perfection. It teaches that an individual should be free to best express their own version of ‘liberty’ by letting the state administer their foundational needs, leaving them free to explore, create, express and fulfil their ambitions – so long as the fruits of those endeavours ultimately benefit the state. Individual ‘liberty’ is encouraged if it results in ‘equality’.

But true individual liberty has the capacity to produce very different results – and so is viewed ultimately as an enemy to the cause. Anyone who is industrious, independent and successful, who demonstrates what is possible under America’s current social conditions – achievement, prosperity and fulfilment – contradicts this utopian campaign.

The Battle for Truth

The ultimate battle of Truth vs Untruth inserts itself into our lives every day, in practically every situation – though we may not notice it. Even the definition of ‘Truth’ seems to have changed from ‘that which is inerrant’ to ‘whatever will work best toward achieving an end’.

The utopian ideals being promoted by the postmodern ‘liberal Left’ view true individual liberty as an enemy to the cause.

The idea that Truth no longer really matters and that its interpretation is up for grabs, is particularly insidious. It has been introduced through lots of culturally acceptable, benign-sounding rhetoric (e.g. ‘live your truth’), and perpetuated on every frontier of media, business, and often, in the Church. Talk about ‘fake news’….

As for the war on Trump, major revelations are pending which may totally up-end the liberal Left’s agenda for the United States and vindicate embattled President Donald J Trump. It is also possible that the web of deceit will continue to grow stronger and God will allow our nation to be broken. Perhaps much of his decision will depend upon how we, his people, respond to this crisis. Where do we stand on Truth?

Tea, anyone?

References

1 Hayek, F, 1960. The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p85.

Author’s Note: For those interested in following up the issues raised in this article, I recommend the following shortlist of sound resources:

• For the circumstances perpetuating the Nunes memo: Nunez Memo and Russian Collusion: The Dan Bongino Show (Ep. 628)
• For a list of attempts made against the Trump presidency: From Conspiracy Theories to Conspiracies
• For an overview of his achievements in spite of the ‘resistance’: The Big List of President Trump’s Triumphs

The prospect of dying of thirst evidently trumps political correctness

In the face of an apocalyptic scenario, the South African Government has apparently been forced to eat humble pie in its ongoing spat with Israel.

The three-year drought that has afflicted the nation has now reached the drastic stage of a looming so-called Day Zero – 15 July this year – when Cape Town, a city of four million, will effectively run out of water: they will be cut off from running water and will be forced to line up at collection points for a miserly rationing.

Opposition MP Kenneth Meshoe revealed in the Cape Town Parliament last month that both the national and provincial authorities there had refused an offer of help from the Jewish state, which has developed an extraordinary prowess in innovative water technology.

The African Christian Democratic Party member said the aid had been turned down in the pursuit of a “narrow political agenda” focused on boycotting Israel over its alleged discrimination against Palestinians.

Accusations of Apartheid

But now an Israeli researcher who attended a water symposium in Johannesburg last month is saying that the South African Government is open to the possibility of help from Israel, and that suggestions they had spurned such aid were incorrect.

Dr Clive Lipchin, a water expert and lecturer from Tel Aviv University who grew up in South Africa, said: “ANC [the ruling African National Congress] government officials who addressed me from the audience said they were happy to look at Israel as a model.”¹

Having initially spurned Israeli aid, South Africa is now open to the possibility of accepting its help.

Whatever the truth about refusal or acceptance, I have not heard any official denial of Mr Meshoe’s damning claim. In any case, the ANC leaders have made their aggressive stance against Israel abundantly clear, accusing it of being an ‘apartheid’ state, which is obviously based on misinformation spread by the UN-backed Palestinian propaganda machine.

The Mount Carmel range, where Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal. Photo: Charles GardnerBut South Africans who lived through apartheid and know more about the situation on the ground in Israel have made their position crystal clear – for those with ears to hear – that ‘apartheid’ in Israel is pure fiction, but is very much a reality in the surrounding Arab states.

The Real Zionist Link

A further dose of reality is that Israel, a dry country with a scarce water supply, has more than it needs due to innovative programmes such as desalination. This has obviously led to the new approach in Cape Town, which has seen Economic Free Fighters (another opposition party) leader Julius Malema challenge those who “created water out of nothing” to see if it can be done in the Cape.²

But back in 2016, a Johannesburg conference focusing on the water crisis was cancelled due to Israeli participation. There are also wild claims circulating that the drought is a Zionist plot from which Jews stand to benefit. But apparently a fear of dying of thirst is trumping political correctness.

However, I believe the crisis does have a Zionist link. And it is quite simple and straightforward. The South African Government has repeatedly – and openly – spoken against God’s chosen people about whom He said: “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse…” (Gen 12:3).

South Africa’s leaders have despised the people God has chosen to be a light to the Gentiles (Isa 49:6) – yes, a spiritual light because they gave us the Bible, and they gave us Jesus, but also a practical, physical light in the form, for example, of technical expertise in water conservation. It is marvellous indeed how people living in a desert have turned their country green in fulfilment of ancient prophecies (see Isaiah 35).

South Africa’s leaders have despised the people God has chosen to be a light to the Gentiles.

Opposing Israel Means Opposing God

The Bible speaks of how there will come a time when many will acknowledge the hand of God on Israel. Isaiah 49:23, for example, says: “Kings…and queens…will bow down before you with their faces to the ground; they will lick the dust at your feet.”

But those who oppose Israel will find that they are fighting God, who brought them out of Egypt with a mighty, miraculous hand by making a path through the sea to freedom.

Why wait until the plagues have multiplied, as Egypt did, before repenting over evil plans against God’s people?

There was a drought in Israel at the time of Elijah, of similar length to South Africa’s. And it was only broken after the people turned from idols thanks to the prophet’s leadership.

South Africa’s leaders, I suggest, need likewise to repent and abandon the worship of false gods.

References

1 Tress, L. As ‘Day Zero’ looms, South Africa open to Israeli water tech, researcher says. Times of Israel, 8 March 2018.

2 Ibid.

Contemporary Christian music and the spirit of the age.

Previous instalments of this series have looked at the spiritual power of music and its biblical significance, and have argued that popular trends in music always reflect the spirit of the age.

But should this be the case for music used inside the Church? Shouldn’t this be reflecting a different Spirit altogether?

Music at the Centre

Music has always been a strong feature of Judeo-Christian worship and culture. One only has to read the Psalms of Ascent (Ps 120-134) to see how important a role it has played in Jewish communal worship, as pilgrims sang on their way up to Jerusalem for festivals.¹ Since Jesus’ time, generations of Christians have learned of the Lord through song, and rightly so, for biblical songs are vital to the health of the Church (Eph 5:19; 1 Cor 14:26; Col 3:16).

It is good for believers to strengthen their theology through music; it is one of the wonderful gifts the Lord has given to bind the Church together through the ages, encourage her and keep her on a sound footing.
However, there is something different about this current generation. It is perhaps more concerned with musical worship than any previous generation – but it is also less concerned with Scripture.

For modern Christians, our musical intake includes both worship music used in church services and what has become known as ‘Contemporary Christian Music’ (CCM), an umbrella term for songs of any modern style that are intentionally Christian in their lyrics.² As long as songs are biblical, God-glorifying, and written in the right spirit, both of these musical avenues can be great for encouragement and edification.

This current generation is perhaps more concerned with musical worship than any previous generation – but it is also less concerned with Scripture.

But some problems have started to creep in in recent years as songs have become, for many, a substitute for scriptural learning. As biblical knowledge has generally been in decline, the way has been opened for modern Christian music to be permeated not by the Holy Spirit, but by the ‘spirit of the age’.

In this article I will outline four such ways this is occurring, focusing particularly on music popular in evangelical and charismatic circles. What follows is a largely critical remark – but please bear with me as next week’s conclusion to this short series will be much more positively focused on the hallmarks of good, solid, biblical music. For those interested in my own musical background and the position from which I am offering these comments, please see the Author Bio at the end of this page.

Four ways in which modern Christian music can channel the spirit of the age

1. Entertainment

Hillsong meeting in Sydney, Australia. See Photo Credits.According to secular theorists, Western culture has developed an obsession with entertainment. Key features of this culture include preferences of illusion over truth, appearance over reality and distraction over meaningful pursuit.³ When this comes to religion, it also means a preference for an appearance of spirituality without concern to live this out fully (i.e. 2 Tim 3:5).

Christian worship meetings that look and feel more like pop concerts have long been the chagrin of folk who prefer more traditional formats. Whatever your personal taste, there is no doubt that both Christian worship music and CCM have imbibed something of the contemporary spirit of ‘entertain me’: all the buzz of a spectacle and the enjoyment of (usually) an attractive set of faces, and all the sense of participating in something that ‘feels’ spiritual, but with very little personal challenge or follow-through.

The blending of Christian music with the secular world of entertainment – whether we are talking about borrowed styles and genres, or borrowed formats of mass gigs and music festivals - “changes it subtly, for the musical and emotional [is] exploited while the spiritual [is] denied or perverted.”⁴ It is obviously possible for God to work powerfully through such forms and events, but too often it’s equally possible for nominal Christians and unbelievers to partake, enjoy, adulate the performer and leave feeling good, but otherwise unchanged.

The blending of Christian music with the secular world of entertainment is not something to be taken lightly.

Meanwhile, Christian bands and artists face enormous commercial pressure to put out best-selling albums every year and to gig their way around the globe, winning Grammy awards as they go.⁵ Part of this pressure comes from record labels, which these days include secular conglomerates like Sony and EMI, who want songs that sell. This means that trends in music are more likely to be defined by what is popular and award-winning than by theological accuracy.

Edifying, doctrinally-sound songs still ‘make it big’ today. And many Christian artists take very seriously their opportunity to give the Gospel to a mass audience. However, the taking of inspiration from the secular realm is not something that should be done lightly, and has often also popularised a Christianity ‘lite’ based on thin doctrine and transient commitment.

2. Celebrity

Western culture’s obsession with entertainment goes hand-in-hand with a fascination with celebrity which has, sadly, also infiltrated the Church. The Gospel Coalition’s Mike Cosper notes that “Celebrity culture turns pastors and worship leaders into icons. Celebrity culture turns worship gatherings into rock concerts. Celebrity culture confuses flash and hype for substance.”⁶

Gigs, popular charts and social media all naturally draw the eye not to Jesus but to the artists, with more pressure on them to demonstrate charisma than a fear of the Lord. Being in the public eye obviously affords performers great opportunity to point people to Jesus but an obvious risk here, nonetheless, is idolatry and its attendant problems.

High-profile Christian musicians also wield huge influence, especially over young people. This can be a force for good, but it can also be used to promote heresy. Consider the following examples:

Pro-LGBT

Example: song-writer and worship leader Vicky Beeching, who came out as a lesbian in 2014 and now works to further the LGBT agenda in the British Church.

Universalism/Multi-faith

With universalism and multi-faith agendas gaining currency in mainstream evangelical and charismatic circles as well as in the ‘emerging church’, several Christian musicians are endorsing this, directly or indirectly. Examples include:

• Well-known Christian artists contributing to the soundtrack of the universalist film The Shack.
  
• Hillsong’s worship pastor Carl Lentz downplaying Jesus as the only way to God when interviewed by Oprah.⁷
  

Edifying, doctrinally-sound songs still ‘make it big’ today – but so do songs promoting a Christianity ‘lite’ based on thin doctrine and transient commitment.

Contemplative Prayer

Various Christian song-writers are allying themselves with the contemplative prayer movement, which utilises prayer methods advocated by the so-called ‘desert fathers’. This movement is drawing extensive criticism for often amounting to a new age counterfeit of the true Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Examples: David Crowder, Michael W Smith, Michael Card.⁸

Dominionism

One of the main ways in which the highly influential ‘New Apostolic Reformation’ group of teachers and ministries in the USA has managed to export and mainstream Latter Rain/dominionist teachings⁹ worldwide is through music.

Example: Bethel Church in Redding has an extensive music scene, producing songs that promote its own brand of theology and exporting them worldwide via groups such as Jesus Culture and Bethel Music. These songs are being given further credence by endorsements from big names such as Chris Tomlin and Michael W Smith, and from major conferences such as Passion in the USA (click here for a critical review).

3. Emotionalism

An important feature of postmodern Western culture is the triumph of heart over head. These days, reason and hard facts matter less than feelings. This also means an over-emphasis on experience (or, in Christian jargon, ‘encounter’).

Such a culture within the Church developed initially as a reaction against lifeless Christianity, and arguably has encouraged an honesty in music about lived, felt aspects of the Christian walk. However, it has often gone too far, with doctrine giving way to emotion. The way has therefore been opened for other spirits to counterfeit the work of the Holy Spirit, while true faith is side-lined.

Two extreme but nonetheless influential examples in Christian worship and CCM are hyper-charismatic music associated with the NAR group in America, and music used in the contemplative prayer movement (both mentioned previously). Both of these rely on repetitive rhythms and phrases, atmospheric mood music (referred to as music for ‘soaking’ or ‘meditation’, respectively) and intentionally vague lyrics.

High-profile Christian musicians wield huge influence, which can be a force for good, but can also be used to promote heresy.

The net result, in both camps, is music which draws the listener to switch off their mind to prepare the way for a spiritual encounter,¹⁰ rather than biblical music which should involve our minds as well as our spirits (1 Cor 14:15).

A brief excursion into the Bethel Music website provides some example lyrics:

• “Face to face, falling in / I surrender all again / I fall back into Your arms / I feel Your heart beating against me / Face to face, there’s no space between us”¹¹
  
• “I’m standing on the edge again / I feel Your breath coming on the wind… / It only gets stronger / It only goes deeper / My head’s underwater / but somehow I can finally breathe… / My heart is on fire / and this love is setting me free”¹²
  
• “It all starts with breathing You in / breathing You in / deeply / I’ve been drowning under my skin / no one but You can save me”¹³
  
• “Let the Holy Ghost come so close our hearts explode with your love / Let healing power come like fire and burn in the marrow of my bones… / Open the sky / Come and ride on the songs we sing…”¹⁴
  
• “The waves of your affection keep washing over me… / All those angels / they are swimming in this ocean and they still can find no shore / Day and night / night and day / They keep seeing new sides of your face”¹⁵
  

These are potted examples from one (albeit influential) source, but they show how songs utilising experiential, emotive language and lacking in clear doctrine could (at a push!) be interpreted in the light of Scripture, but could also be interpreted in all sorts of other ways.¹⁶

4. Self

The previous three points are united by a recurring focus on self. While time spent worshipping God undoubtedly leads to great personal blessing, there is a danger that this becomes imbalanced and fleshly, such that times of worship are approached primarily because of what I might receive from God. Contemporary worship music and CCM have, sadly, both imbibed this inward-looking focus on personal blessing and gratification.

Let me illustrate this briefly. The annual worship compilation albums ‘WOW’ collect together each year’s most popular contemporary Christian music. On their 2017 album of 39 tracks, just 7 songs mention the name of Jesus, 5 mention the cross and only 4 mention sin. This same pattern is repeated historically - in fact, the WOW 2015 album, also 39 songs long, boasts just 4 songs that include the name of Jesus, 5 that mention the cross and only one that includes the word ‘sin’.

While time spent worshipping God undoubtedly leads to great personal blessing, there is a danger that this becomes imbalanced and ‘me-orientated’.

Of course, not every Christian song needs to mention the name of Jesus in order to be acceptable (the original lyrics of ‘Amazing Grace’ do not mention any of the above three words either!). But there’s a broader point here: the majority of contemporary Christian music, with its positive messages of personal victory, blessing, revival and overcoming, is in danger of obscuring vital parts of the Gospel. One could easily ingest the majority of modern Christian tunes and conclude that the Good News is simply a matter of accepting that God loves you.

Christian music should rightly make space for songs about the personal and individual. But great discernment is needed to stop this going too far – especially when Western culture is infamous for its inward focus on ‘me, myself and I’.

Conclusion

In writing this study, I have not wanted to ride roughshod over the many good, solid worship songs that are being written today, nor toss away the very idea of CCM. Personally, I think there’s a place for both – and next week I hope to unpack features of good quality Christian music.

But sadly, we live in a culture that is resorting to spectacle in order to distract itself from its own deep spiritual crisis – a culture that has turned inwards to personal feelings and experiences in order to avoid confronting the One True God. Is CCM and even Christian worship music unwittingly aligning itself with this?

I am left with a number of questions, which I will list here as prompts for further discussion:

1. Has the Christian worship and CCM industry imbibed too much of the ‘spirit of the age’ to be redeemable? Should we be looking to other sources of musical inspiration for our worship (e.g. Messianic congregations in Israel)?
   
2. Is there a place for the public testing of Christian songs and/or the public holding of the Christian music industry to account? How might this look?
   
3. How can we be wise with our own consumption of contemporary Christian music, personally and corporately?
   

Next Week: We will finish up the series by looking at what makes for good, biblical Christian music.

Author Bio

Frances is 28 years old and was introduced to both piano and clarinet from early ages. She was classically trained but has dabbled in (and loves) jazz, and sings folk and gospel music regularly with friends. She teaches music privately and has been leading worship in her home church for the past eight years, having played in worship bands since the age of 10. She has a love of music of many different genres and a passion to see the church of God led well in worship.

References

1 See also comments on the biblical role of music made in the first part of this series.

2 These genres overlap, but both stand relatively distinct from the liturgical music of established denominations. The CCM industry grew out of the Jesus Movement in the late 1960s/1970s and has since become a highly commercialised, near-billion-dollar industry that in the USA has outstripped the classical and jazz market combined. It has moved to overlap with ‘worship’ music (i.e. used in church services) much more since the millennium, after suffering something of a decline. Read a brief history here.

3 Read more here.

4 Wilson-Dickson, A, 1992. The Story of Christian Music. Oxford: Lion, p203.

5 Grammys for Best Contemporary Christian Music Song and Album were introduced in 2012.

6 Kill Your (Celebrity Culture) Worship. The Gospel Coalition, 29 January 2016.

7 See coverage here.

8 See here.

9 For more information, please see our ‘Blessing the Church?’ series.

10 I will not go into detail here, but there is considerable research elsewhere about how these two streams represent a deviation into the occult rather than biblical worship. One resource is the Lighthouse Trails Research website.

11 First Love by Jonathan David Helser, 2016.

12 It Only Gets Stronger by Jeremy Riddle and Ran Jackson, 2017.

13 Save Me by Steffany Gretzinger, Amanda Cook and John David Gravitt, 2017.

14 Wrecking Ball by Jonathan David Helser, 2010.

15 Endless Ocean by Jonathan David Helser, 2009.

16 Bethel’s Brian Johnson has gone on record saying that “I honestly think that people freak out too much about whether [worship music] is biblical or not.” Do you agree? 

David Noakes begins his chapter, offering a personal and biblical perspective of renewal.

This article is part of a series, republishing the 1995 classic ‘Blessing the Church?’ (Hill et al). Click here for previous instalments.

The history of Israel tells us that again and again the Hebrew nation, despite the Law, despite the warnings of the prophets, walked in ways of their own choosing and not in the ways of God.

They chose the way of the flesh, the way of self-will and disobedience, in preference to the will of their God; they chose to compromise and to make an accommodation with the spirit of the world in which they lived, to worship not only the God of Israel but also the false gods of the surrounding Gentile nations, and to walk in the ways of the world from which God had called them to be separate.

The final outcome we know: disaster and exile, from which the promised return is only now taking place.

The Church, likewise, in every era of her history has faced the same basic problems and the same moral choice. The pressures and the subtle attractions of the world-system which surrounds God's people confront us daily with the need to distinguish the ways of God from the ways of the world, and to make the choice to walk according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh; to walk in the will of God to the exclusion of the clamouring demands of the flesh in the form of self-will and self-indulgence.

The climate of the present age in which we live is, however, perhaps, the hardest to withstand which the Church has yet encountered.

The Spirit of the Age

In the society of the Western nations, the spirit of this age is one which seeks and demands the instant and the spectacular. The world's heroes are those who display outward charisma; their often morally bankrupt character is regarded as irrelevant. Instant success in the forum of materialism or of entertainment guarantees a man wealth and the status of a celebrity.

The pressures and the subtle attractions of the world-system which surrounds God's people confront us daily with the need to distinguish the ways of God from the ways of the world.

The achievements of electronic circuitry and other scientific advances have made commonplace instantaneous results in many fields of daily activity, and have brought intolerance of all that depends on plodding, painstaking labour to achieve its results.

In this disposable society, enduring results are not necessary; all is ephemeral. Tomorrow we will throwaway yesterday's wonder and get the new and better one which will by then be being offered.

Such attitudes, and the spiritual atmosphere which they engender, bring only death to the church which begins to accept and to embrace them. No longer is it seen as acceptable that “through faith and patience [we] inherit” the promise of God (Heb 6:12); we must have it all now. No longer is the discipline of waiting upon God and waiting for God regarded as relevant, but instead we want to be like the world. We crave for instant and spectacular results.

The spirit of the age has deluded us into thinking that the Church ought to be experiencing heaven on earth, here and now, forgetting the plain teaching of Scripture that this cannot be until the return of Jesus (1 Pet 1:3-7). We are encouraged to live in expectation that all problems should be speedily swept away, that financial hardship and ill-health should be eliminated; to believe in a magic-carpet type of Christianity in which we may rub the Aladdin's lamp and summon forth the genie who will do all our bidding for our comfort and prosperity, forgetting the teaching of Scripture that “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).

As Clifford Hill has stated in previous instalments of this series, it was into an age in which this sort of spirit was coming increasingly to hold sway that the charismatic renewal movement was born in the years leading up to 1960. The fear of the Lord was being replaced by contempt and disregard for the moral law contained in his word, which was coming to be seen as an unnecessary restriction upon a society which had never had it so good.

The spirit of the age has deluded us into thinking that the Church ought to be experiencing heaven on earth, here and now, forgetting the plain teaching of Scripture that this cannot be until the return of Jesus.

The British Charismatic Renewal Movement

The beginning of the charismatic renewal movement in Britain can be dated to the conferences convened by Arthur Willis and David Lillie, the first taking place in 1958.

This new move of the Holy Spirit had the potential to revitalise and revolutionise the Church, bringing about whole-hearted repentance, a return to the ways of God as revealed in his word, and a thoroughgoing and radical revolution in church life bringing back a quality of Christian corporate living scarcely seen since the 1st Century. Or, alternatively, it could fall under the influence of the spirit of the age and the ways of the world in which it found itself.

Sadly, the evidence tells us that the latter tendency has largely prevailed. In few places has the self-sacrificing quality of life of the early Church been re-established, and there has been nothing which could be seen as having the character of revival.

In the Church as a whole, numbers have continued to decline, biblical standards of morality have been abandoned wholesale, and the British nation has turned farther and farther away from God, while the Church has embraced the spirit of the world and has been sapped by it of spiritual vision and vitality.

To watch the unfolding of the history of the charismatic renewal movement has been for me a matter of great personal sadness. Having spent the early years following my conversion under the influence of sound evangelical doctrine, a foundation for which I shall ever be grateful to God, I received the baptism in Holy Spirit in 1967 as a result of a sovereign action of the Lord on a train travelling to Brighton to transact some business!

The charismatic renewal that started in Britain in the 1950s had the potential to revitalise and revolutionise the Church.

Following this unlikely-seeming event, I was introduced to the supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit, all of which I believe wholeheartedly are not only valid today, but will become of increasing importance to the Church in the days which are to come: days not of comfort, but of pressure; not of dominion, but of conflict and persecution; not of ease, but of the refiner's fire; days of turmoil and upheaval when God will be shaking all that can be shaken, both among the nations of the world and also in the professing Church. 

Days of Preparation

Believing this to be so, I perceive the times in which we are living as being, for the Church, days of preparation. I have come to understand God's purposes in renewing the activity of the Holy Spirit among us as being to strengthen the Church for the days to come, re-establishing our foundations upon Scripture, teaching us again how to live corporately as the early Church did, renewing the closeness and intimacy of our relationship with himself, and empowering us to be fearless and unshakeable witnesses to the truth of his word.

Possibly the most important single purpose of God in this visitation of his Spirit was to renew our understanding, and hence our outworking, of the corporate life of the Body of Christ. The Church has for generations been crippled in her functioning by our Western-style individualistic way of life, which has been such a feature of Protestant Christianity.

Vital though the Reformation was, it brought with it also this disadvantage: rooted in the Renaissance, with its rediscovery of Greek classical thought, philosophy and literature, the Reformation brought into the Protestant Reformed churches a Hellenistic view of life which is profoundly different at many points from that of the Hebrew.

To the Hebrew minds of those who formed the early Church, corporateness was instinctive; it was a concept built from the very beginning into the structure of the Hebrew nation descended from Jacob. Hence to them, the concept of the Church as a corporate entity presented no great problem of adjustment in their thinking; it was easy for them to understand its structure in the light of concepts such as that of the Body of Christ, or the corporate Temple made of living stones. They were able to understand their oneness in Christ in a way which the Greek-thinking mind does not easily grasp.

I believe we need urgently to let God renew our Western way of thinking in this whole matter, for it is only in the context of the commitment to one another which is established by a corporate understanding of the Church as the Body of the Lord Jesus that we shall be able to stand firm and glorify him when the days of testing are upon us.

God's purpose in renewing the activity of the Holy Spirit among us has been to strengthen the Church for the days to come.

It is significant that the chief purposes of the five-fold ministry appointments of Ephesians 4, and of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit specified in 1 Corinthians 12-14, are to build up the corporate Body of Christ in such a way as to bring strength and unity and to equip us as members of that Body to be able to carry out the purposes of Jesus, the Head.

By the late 1990s, more than 35 years after those earliest beginnings of the charismatic renewal movement, this had really not happened. There were a few notable exceptions, but most of the Church had made little or no progress towards the corporate unity in Christ which brings forth the quality of Body-life of which we read in the early chapters of the book of Acts.

Ishmael or Isaac

In the mid-1970s, during a time of heart-searching and of questioning over the developments of the newly-introduced doctrines of discipling and shepherding, which had operated to destroy a beautiful work which God had been doing among a group of deeply-committed Christians, I sought God for enlightenment and found that I was being drawn in the scriptures to the account in Genesis of the activity of Abraham in bringing forth first Ishmael and then Isaac.

I began to realise that embedded in that story was a great spiritual principle. Both Ishmael and Isaac were born as a result of Abraham's faith in believing God's promise that from his offspring would come blessing to the nations of the earth. The initiative in the whole matter came from God; of that there was no doubt. Abraham's response was one of faith. Yet the end result brought not only fulfilment and joy; but also tragedy and sorrow, heartbreak and strife, and an enmity which continues to cause conflict in the Middle East to this very day between the descendants of Ishmael and those of Isaac.

Why did this mixed result emerge from Abraham's belief in a promise of God which was intended only for blessing and not for evil? The reason lies in Abraham's failure to understand that the Lord who had made the promise had also already chosen the method of its outworking.

When we receive revelation from God of his intentions and purposes, there are two possible ways of responding: the way of the flesh, which seeks to work out God's purpose as quickly as possible in the ways of human wisdom and ability, or the way of the spirit, which hears from God but then waits for him to reveal further his chosen time and means of fulfilling his intentions.

Abraham, then, was faced with the option of these two different types of response to the revelation of God's purpose. God was going to do what he had said, and he was going to do it in his own time and in his own way; but how was Abraham going to co-operate? Would he “by faith and patience inherit the promise”? Would he display the maturity which he later showed when he was willing to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moriah, believing that God would still fulfil his word even if humanly that had been made impossible? Would he be willing to wait in faith for a further 14 years until God's appointed time for the birth of Isaac, the promised heir?

Abraham did not wait. How much strife and suffering could have been avoided if only he had! Instead, he and Sarah applied their human wisdom and understanding and decided how, since Sarah was barren, they could accomplish the purposes of God and bring his promise to fruition. They decided how best to help God out in the doing of his own work.

When we receive revelation from God of his intentions and purposes, there are two possible ways of responding: the way of the flesh, or the way of the spirit.

In spiritual terms, they were deciding how the flesh could achieve the Spirit's work. But this is by definition impossible: nothing which is of the flesh, of man's self-will, can ever please God or accomplish his will. What Abraham and Sarah were planning was an unholy mixture of the revealed will of God with the activities of the flesh in seeking to bring the revelation into being.

At Sarah's suggestion, Abraham acted on human initiative and sought, successfully, to produce offspring from the body of Hagar, Sarah's maidservant. This offspring was, of course, Ishmael, who was to be the root from which sprang the Arab nations; but he was not the heir whom God had promised.

Hagar was Egyptian. We must not miss the significance of this, for in Scripture Egypt is a type of the world-system out of which the Christian has been saved. Abraham, acting in the flesh, had employed the ways which the world could offer in seeking to carry out God's purpose but it was to no avail. Ishmael was not the fulfilment of God's promise. When the fulfilment, Isaac, was manifested 14 years later, he would come as the result of a miraculous sovereign work of the Spirit of God. God would not use the methods of either fleshly wisdom and endeavour, nor would the ways of the world be involved in any way. It is always so with God.

He would visit Abraham and Sarah in their extreme old age and by the power of his Spirit, having waited until humanly it was beyond possibility, he would bring forth Isaac from their marital union.

A Parallel in Today’s Church

From this account, contained in Genesis 15-18 and 21, I began to understand that God was speaking of a parallel which was and is taking place within the charismatic renewal movement.

Ishmael stands for that which men's wisdom and activity can bring forth in the flesh by way of fulfilling God's purpose. Isaac, however, represents the true fulfilment of the Lord's revealed intentions, a work which his Spirit alone can accomplish, for which men must wait for God to act at his own time and in his own way.

The principle embodied in the account of how first Abraham produced Ishmael and then God brought forth Isaac remains true today. God asks us to cooperate with him in the outworking of his purpose through our exercise of faith, patience and humble obedience, refusing to fall into the trap of supplementing or even replacing God's work by our own human efforts.

The alternative course is that of human endeavour, prompted by a degree of awareness of what it is that God purposes to do, but with insufficient knowledge of his chosen method and too much haste to await his further revelation.

The first way of responding brings blessing and life.

The second has within it from the beginning the seeds of its own demise because that which is born of human striving and wisdom is of no value in accomplishing the purposes of God. To seek to organise God's work for him leads eventually to failure, disillusionment and confusion, and finally even to deception and error.

God asks us to co-operate with him in the outworking of his purposes – not to supplement or even replace his work by our own human efforts.

I believe that since the 1970s, God has been indicating that within the charismatically-renewed churches we have in various different ways been producing Ishmael and not Isaac. God gave in the late 1950s to David Lillie and Arthur Wallis a vision of how the fresh visitation of the Holy Spirit was intended to bring about a return of the Church to a structure and a way of life which we find revealed in the pages of the New Testament, particularly in the books of Acts and Ephesians.

It was of a corporate body of God's people functioning together in such a way that through them, by the powerful working of the Holy Spirit, would be brought glory to God in the Church (Eph 3:21) and a revelation to the world of the true character of the Lord Jesus; a body of people separated as the early Church was, neither relying upon the world nor compromising with its ways. That was the vision which was communicated to the key leaders who attended those early conferences.

Sadly, what we now see is so far from the purity of vision as to be almost unrecognisable, and the reason is that the ways of the world have infiltrated deeply into the charismatic renewal movement. We have been invaded in a variety of ways by the spirit of the age in which we live.

Next week: How the world has infiltrated the Church.

Charles Gardner reviews 'Gospel Witness' by Joseph Boot (Wilberforce Publications, 2017).

The Gospel of Christ is what the West needs now more than ever before. As with the threatening colossus of the Greco-Roman culture that cast such a dark shadow over the early Church, today’s Christians face a similarly stark challenge in bringing the unchanging truths of the Bible to a world no longer believing it has any need for God.

In the second volume of his Cornerstones series, Gospel Witness (Wilberforce Publications), Joseph Boot reminds us that there is nothing new in the many 21^st Century substitutes for traditional Christianity.

Everyone, he writes, is basically religious, in that their worldview is driven by what they believe (even if it’s atheism, which simply amounts to saying, ‘I believe there is no God’).

The Christian Faith Has No Equal

In addressing academics, intellectuals and theologians, none of which I claim to be, the author nevertheless draws me into his conversation, profoundly arguing the case for a divinely-inspired Christian faith that has no equal, and which is the only means for changing a troubled world for the better.

This was the unambiguous claim of Jesus, and was powerfully vindicated when his resurrection was witnessed by more than 500 people at the time, and by millions over the succeeding centuries who have been able to testify to his very real presence in their lives.

Boot profoundly argues the case for a divinely-inspired Christian faith that has no equal, and which is the only means for changing a troubled world for the better.

And he concludes with an example, perhaps unequalled in Western history, of a man who made the world a better place because his heart was changed. William Wilberforce worked all his political life for the emancipation of slaves, but it would never have come about without the freedom he discovered through an all-embracing commitment to his Saviour, once convinced of the truth of his claims.

The Exclusive Claims of Christ

Perhaps as never before since the Reformation 500 years ago, the exclusive claims of Christ are being hotly challenged by a society in which truth is being ‘redefined’ and re-invented on an almost daily basis. Boot writes:

Today we live in frightening and challenging times requiring new fathers in the faith ready to follow the example of Wilberforce and be a prophetic voice to the nation…It is safe to say that the depth of need and religious apostasy in our present culture easily rivals that of Wilberforce’s era, since our age is marked by a self-conscious and deliberate rejection of God’s creational order, scriptural faith and our Christian heritage.

For individuals today therefore, as with Wilberforce, the Gospel must penetrate and encompass every facet of one’s life and ambitions. It is not just an argument to be debated in rational terms, but an experience – and a person – to be shared!

“Jesus Christ is not merely a conclusion at the end of an argument. He is the argument and the conclusion…if we rest on our arguments and abilities, we will utterly fail, for it is Christ alone who is the wisdom and power of God (1 Corinthians 1:22-25).”

'Gospel Witness: Defending and Extending the Kingdom of God' (Cornerstones Vol 2, 139pp) retails at £5 for the paperback and less for the ebook. Find out more here.