Getting High on Worship Music
May/21/13 06:03 Filed in: CCM
On a research visit to City Harvest Church, the largest church in Singapore, on February 8, 2003, I was reminded of the power of rock music to create the emotional high that contemporary worshipers are seeking.
On Saturdays, City Harvest has two services, one at 4:30 p.m. and one at 7:30. I attended the 7:30 session. The music was pull-out-the-stops rock & roll and was the loudest I have ever heard in a megachurch church or Christian conference, even though I have attended many of them for research purposes. City Harvest’s music featured two drummers, electric guitars, a keyboard, and a powerful brass section. Several worship leaders, both male and female, swayed and pranced at the front of the stage.
The several-thousand-seat auditorium was almost full and the people were very, very exuberant. As best as I could tell from my vantage point, almost every person joined in enthusiastically during the worship time, singing, clapping, jumping, swaying to the potent music.
When I walked out of the auditorium and got away from the sound of the music, I actually felt a little lightheaded from not being accustomed to such loud, sensual music. It had been more than three decades since I last heard music that loud in an enclosed environment, and that was at a rock concert before I was saved. It was such a relief to get away from the relentless pounding.
I am convinced that if you took away the rock music, churches like this would lose their large crowds almost instantly. Rock music is a drug in itself, and this generation is high on music.
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Friday Church News Notes, Vol 14, Issue 20
May/17/13 06:01 Filed in: Friday Church News 2013
>> Graphical Edition
RICK WARREN UNCERTAIN IF HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR IS SINFUL (Friday Church News Notes, May 17, 2013, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Rick Warren Says ‘Gays’ Go to Heaven,” Christian News, Nov. 29, 2012: “Controversy is stirring over recent comments made by Rick Warren, author of the best-selling book The Purpose-Driven Life and megachurch leader of Saddleback Church in California, who stated that homosexual behavior ‘might be’ sinful, and that he believes homosexuals go to Heaven. ... During an interview this week with the Huffington Post, Warren was asked by Marc Lamont Hill if having romantic feelings for a member of the same sex is a sin. ... ‘No, it’s not a sin to love somebody,’ Warren said. ‘It might be a sin to have sex with them,’ he added. ‘It might be.’ ... Later during the interview, when Hill asked Warren if he believes homosexuals will go to Hell, he replied that they will not. ‘No, not because they’re gay,’ he said. ‘We go to Hell because we choose to reject the grace of God.’ When Hill asked what happens to a homosexual that accepts Jesus, Warren responded enthusiastically. ‘He’s going to Heaven!’ he declared. ‘Without a doubt.’ ... Peter LaBarbera, the president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality ... stated that he was shocked at Rick Warren’s comments. ‘You don’t want to give the impression that it’s fine and dandy to live the homosexual lifestyle and as long as I believe in Jesus, I can still go to Heaven,’ he said. ‘It’s one thing to have attractions and [fight] that, [and another to embrace homosexual behavior].’ ... ‘When you accept Christ, your behavior changes,’ LaBarbera said. ‘And the attitude is [people like Warren] don’t want to talk about changes. … We know that God changes homosexuals, so why isn’t Rick Warren saying that?’ ... What part of Romans 1 doesn’t Rick Warren understand? It’s so clear,’ he said. ‘When you make statements like these, you end up losing the Biblical sense, and the Biblical sense is that this is an abomination.’ ... LaBarbera said that Warren should not only have called homosexual behavior sin, but should have gone deeper to the root issue. ‘It’s also sinful to lust after another man,’ LaBarbera said. ‘We can’t advocate sin as believers, and we have to think about how that the person that’s struggling with homosexuality is going to hear this.’”
PENTAGON MAY COURT MARTIAL SOLDIERS WHO SHARE CHRISTIAN FAITH (Friday Church News Notes, May 17, 2013, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Pentagon Confirms May Court Martial,” Breitbart, May 1, 2013: “The Pentagon has released a statement confirming that soldiers could be prosecuted for promoting their faith: ‘Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense ... Court martials and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis...’ The statement, released to Fox News, follows a Breitbart News report on Obama administration Pentagon appointees meeting with anti-Christian extremist Mikey Weinstein to develop court-martial procedures to punish Christians in the military who express or share their faith. (From our earlier report: Weinstein is the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and says Christians--including chaplains--sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ in the military are guilty of ‘treason,’ and of committing an act of ‘spiritual rape’ as serious a crime as ‘sexual assault.’ He also asserted that Christians sharing their faith in the military are ‘enemies of the Constitution.’) Being convicted in a court martial means that a soldier has committed a crime under federal military law. Punishment for a court martial can include imprisonment and being dishonorably discharged from the military. So President Barack Obama’s civilian appointees who lead the Pentagon are confirming that the military will make it a crime--possibly resulting in imprisonment--for those in uniform to share their faith. This would include chaplains—military officers who are ordained clergymen of their faith (mostly Christian pastors or priests, or Jewish rabbis)--whose duty since the founding of the U.S. military under George Washington is to teach their faith and minister to the spiritual needs of troops who come to them for counsel, instruction, or comfort.”
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Eric Wyse and Contemporary Praise Music
May/15/13 21:31 Filed in: CCM
Wyse served as organist at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Nashville from 1993 to 2001, when he was named music director. This church’s 2012 Summer Movie Nights features such filthy fare as the R-rated film “Knocked Up,” which “follows the repercussions of a drunken one-night stand that results in an unintended pregnancy.” The church also hosts Jazzercise classes in its gym.
As a producer and consultant, Wyse has worked with ecumenical rockers such as Keith and Kristyn Getty, Amy Grant, and CeCe Winans.
Wyse is a one-world church builder who sees music as a major aspect of this endeavor. One of the web sites most highly recommended by Wyse is Internetmonk.com, which promotes such things as handmade Franciscan-inspired rosaries, the blogs of apostate emerging church leaders Shane Claiborne and Scott McKnight, and the Merton Institute for Contemplative Living, which is dedicated to the philosophy of the Buddhist-Catholic monk Thomas Merton.
In his blog Wyse published a statement by Steven Harmon promoting ecumenical relations with the Roman Catholic Church. Note the following from Wyse’s web site:
“In a previous post I expressed my my appreciation for the Baptist-produced Celebrating Grace Hymnal (2010) in light of the implications for receptive ecumenism of the Baptist practice of hymn singing that I noted in my 2010 Lourdes College Ecumenical Lecture (subsequently published as ”HOW BAPTISTS RECEIVE THE GIFTS OF CATHOLICS AND OTHER CHRISTIANS” in Ecumenical Trends 39, no. 6, June 2010, pp. 1/81-5/85). BAPTIST HYMNALS ARE ARGUABLY THE MOST SIGNIFICANT ECUMENICAL DOCUMENTS PRODUCED BY BAPTISTS. They implicitly recognize hymn writers from a wide variety of traditions throughout the history of the church as sisters and brothers in Christ by including their hymns alongside hymns by Baptists…[In addition to numerous] patristic hymns, Baptists receive through their hymnals the gifts of Francis of Assisi and Teresa of Jesus, Martin Luther, the post-Reformation Roman Catholic author of ‘Fairest Lord Jesus’ from the Münster Gesangbuch, the Methodist Charles Wesley, and more recently the Pentecostal pastor Jack Hayford, to name a few hymn writers whose ecclesial gifts Baptists have gladly received with their voices and hearts” (“Baptist Hymn Singing, Receptive Ecumenism, and the Nicene Creed” by Steven Harmon, published by Eric Wyse at HymnWyse, March 14, 2011).
This statement reflects the spiritual blindness that permeates the contemporary praise music movement, and fundamentalist, Bible-believing Baptist churches that are messing around with this music by “adapting it” are building bridges to this extremely dangerous world. The adapters, who are trying to take the rock out of Christian rock, argue that since Baptist churches sing some Lutheran or Methodist hymns from the past, it is inconsistent to reject music written by contemporary worshippers today. This is a foolish argument used by people who are following their feelings and lusts rather than living strictly by God’s Word. I don’t know of one Baptist church that became Lutheran by singing Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress,” but I know of dozens that have become contemporary by messing around with contemporary worship music. Further, I don’t know of any teenagers in Bible-believing Baptist churches that became rock & rollers by listening to Fanny Crosby’s hymns, but I know of many that have become out-and-out worldly rock & rollers by messing around with Christian rock. Whatever Luther was, he left Rome and was not trying to yoke together with the Harlot to build a one-world church, but playing footsie with Rome and building the one-world church is exactly what contemporary worship musicians are doing. We have documented this extensively and irrefutably in The Directory of Contemporary Worship Musicians, which is available in print or as a free eBook from Way of Life -- www.wayoflife.org.
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Red Blood Cells
May/14/13 19:03 Filed in: God's Creation
The following is from SEEING THE NON-EXISTENT: EVOLUTION’S MYTHS AND HOAXES. See information at end of article.
The human red blood cell (erythrocyte) is perfectly designed to carry oxygen throughout the body. Even evolutionary writings use terms such as “highly specialized” and “nature’s design” to describe these amazing things.
The blood cells flow in plasma through the body’s breathtakingly complex circulatory system, which is used to maintain the body’s temperature, regulate the body’s pH balance, provide communication, transport oxygen, nutrients, hormones, clotting agents, and immune defense mechanisms such as antibodies, white blood cells, and platelets, and remove waste. Blood flows everywhere in the body, from the roots of the hair to the toes.
The red blood cells are formed in the marrow of the ribs, pelvis, and some other bones. They are 1/25,000 of an inch in size. There are about 25 trillion of them in the body, and they live only 100-120 days. They must be replaced because they are unable to synthesize new enzymes to replace those lost during normal cell metabolic process due to their lack of organelles. The body replaces the blood cells at the rate of about 2.5 million per second, but that rate can be increased if the body needs more blood cells due to heavy bleeding or a reduction in oxygen content of the air at high altitude.
The main function of the red blood cell is to carry oxygen throughout the human body, and it is perfectly designed for this. First of all, its shape, which is biconcave and looks similar to a donut, allows more surface area to facilitate absorption and diffusion of oxygen. The shape of the red blood cell also allows it to contort through minute blood capillaries that are smaller in diameter than itself, and it can spring back to its original shape. Further, it can carry more hemoglobin molecules because it loses its nucleus, and its internal organelles (cell organs) are degraded soon after it is made, and it thus has more storage capacity than other types of cells in the body. Each red blood cell carries about 300 million hemoglobin molecules.
The hemoglobin (or haemoglobin) molecule that is carried within the red blood cell (and that gives the bright red color) is a miracle of design in its own right. It is an iron-containing protein that allows oxygen to be picked up from the lungs and carried through the fluid of the circulatory system. The hemoglobin molecule has a single atom of iron at its center, and in the lungs this iron atom combines with oxygen to create a compound called oxyhemoglobin. Oxygen by itself is not very soluble in water, but the hemoglobin molecule binds four oxygen molecules to itself, “consequently hemoglobin permits human blood to carry more than 70 times the amount of oxygen that it could have carried otherwise” (http://help.com/post/202779-are-there-any-parts-inside-a-red-bl).
Do We Have the "Right to Die?"
May/14/13 06:03 Filed in: Euthanasia
• In 1985, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that all life-sustaining medical treatment can be withheld from terminally ill patients, whether incompetent or competent. In that ruling the court included feeding tubes as “medical treatment.”
• In 1985, a Virginia woman who killed her cancer-ridden husband with an ice pick was sentenced merely to two years’ probation and psychiatric treatment.
• The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in 1986 to allow a woman to stop the feeding of her comatose husband.
• In 1987, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled unanimously that an alert, mentally competent but dying woman, suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease, a fatal nerve disorder, should have been allowed to order her respirator disconnected. The woman had died a few days before her case reached the Court. The same court ruled to allow a man to remove the feeding tube from his 32-year-old wife.
• A U.S. District Court in Rhode Island ruled in 1988 that the feeding tube could be removed from a 49-year-old woman. The woman was in a coma as a result of a brain hemorrhage, and since she could not swallow, she received nourishment and liquids through a feeding tube. Her family had sued in court to compel the hospital to terminate her food and water. The medical workers who were caring for the woman were unanimous in opposing the action, but the court ordered them to remove the tubes so the woman would starve to death.
• A man severely crippled by a 1985 motorcycle accident went to court in an attempt to gain the “right” to kill himself. In 1989, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously ruled that he could kill himself by shutting off the breathing apparatus that kept him alive.
• The parents of Nancy Cruzen, a young woman who suffered severe brain damage in a 1983 car crash, spent three and a half years in court in an attempt to remove the feeding tube which was keeping her alive. Though severely disabled, Nancy was not comatose nor did she require any life-support equipment. She even smiled at funny stories and cried when visitors would leave. In spite of this, on December 14, 1990, County Circuit Court Judge Charles E. Teel, Jr., ordered Nancy’s caregivers to withhold all food and water. Twelve days later, the 33-year-old woman died of dehydration.
• On June 4, 1990, Jack Kevorkian claimed his first victim when he assisted in the administration of a lethal dosage of drugs to 54-year-old Janet Adkins. She was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and her own doctor said she had at least ten years of productive life ahead of her. She had never met or talked with Kevorkian until she arrived in Michigan two days before her death. All arrangements were made by her husband, Ron, (64) who subsequently became president of the Oregon Hemlock Society. In the year before her death, Janet Adkins and her family were counseled by a family therapist who was coordinator of the Oregon Hemlock Society. According to an aunt, “She did not want to be a burden to her husband and family” and a friend explained, “She felt it [her death] was a gift to her family, sparing them the burden of taking care of her” (“The Real Jack Kevorkian, International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force, http://www.iaetf.org/fctkev.htm). Kevorkian, who went on to participate in a reported 137 assisted suicides, does not have a license to practice medicine. His Michigan license was suspended in 1991 and his California license was suspended in 1993. According to the California Attorney General’s office, Kevorkian is “fundamentally unfit to practice medicine” (California Medical Board, Complainants Brief, 12/28/93, p. 19). Kevorkian proposed a “auction market for available organs” taken from “subjects” who are “hopelessly crippled by arthritis or malformations.” Part of the money from the dead disabled person’s auctioned organs could go to relatives whose financial burdens would be eased and “their standard of living enhanced.”
• A poll of adults conducted by CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll published January 1991 found that 58% believe doctors ought to be allowed to help terminally ill patients die if the patient asks for assistance.
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