The Christian Chronicle: Dan Dozier, Worship Forum Review

Dan Dozier: We need to be filled up, to be comforted, to be overwhelmed with wonder, and to be lifted up in the exhilaration of praise. Many of the terms used, such as holy laughter, call for the team to produce a mild or extreme form of ecstasy. All of these are charismatic effects produced by external effects on every nerve ending in the body. These views appear in the Christian Chronicle.

If you get nothing else please grasp that not among the Jews nor in the most vile pagan temples did the musicians enter into the Holy Places. Among the Jews, the Holy Place is a carnal type of the spiritual body of Christ. No Levitical musician could enter into this type of the church of Christ even to clean out the garbage.

The temple musicians in a "religious sense" (grouped with prostitutes in pagan religions) were in the court making a loud mocking noise during the sacrifice and burning of animals.

In fulfilment of the prophetic type, it was prophesied in Psalm 41 and fulfilled in the Dead Sea Scroll translation that Judas and the military musicians would attempt to turn Jesus into a coward. Click for some examples.

The Post-Modern, Post-Biblical repudiation of Inspiration fueling your young preachers at workshops, "christian" colleges and Boot Camps For Spiritual Terrorists in your own community each year! Click for several views. Paul said in effect to the Corinthians: "Fools love to be fooled." This is why you keep paying obscene salaries to men who destroy the core document of the Christian religion?

Why Males in the Post-Biblical Effeminate Church are Disguised as Empty Pews or Hostile Masculines: it Will Get Worse! "Of the Effeminate Willow-Creek "Holy Entertainment" System: "The cost of this approach is hard work and loads of strife with church insiders." Christianity Today

<>Giving Heed to the Word was the principle "act" of worship in the Christian Synagogue. "Preaching" Narrative Theology of cut-N-paste sermons was never an act of worship. Thomas Campbell and most older scholars define how the Word is the "Truth" of worship "in spirit" or in the mind which is the only kind and place God even bothers to look for. Outrageious Biblical illiteracy "among the scholars" is explained by Paul's teaching that "fools love to be fooled." Read how two people had to abandon churches built around pagan entertainment in order to discover the Word. Click and go down to where The Devil is Laughing to see how he and the watching world is not laughing WITH the new for-hire Bible Repudiators but laughing AT them and their followers just as the Israelites became a LAUGHINGSTOCK with their musical idolatry at Mount Sinai (Now the SCHOLAR'S pattern for worship and community.)
 

From cbti.FaithSite.com

It is not being judgmental to emphasize certain words so that you can see that what is called "worship" is really a deeply felt need. Undoubtedly some are more sensitive than others but emotions created by sight or sound is a product of an attack upon every nerve ending of the body or flesh and is not remotely related to the spirit. Something like the runners high. Sure, everyone sees the mountains and understands the majesty of God but we do not try to make this into a ritualistic, "act of worship" in an attempt to move the worshipers into the presence of God.

In this piece, as usual, non-musical churches are dismissed by the swat of a glove using the term "legalistic." A legalist is one who believes that he or she can intrude into God's presence and demand something. Calling someone legalistic is perhaps the most judgmental word in the English language. Legalism, if it exists, is applied to people just trying too hard when Jesus has removed the burden of "spiritual anxiety created by religious rituals" and invites us to come rest with Him beside still waters.

The more I am freed from legalism the less I try. That just makes sense. Conversely, those just trying to hard feel compelled to claim that trying to "ascend up to Christ" or "bring Him back from the dead" is a trip into space on grace.

The Christian Chronicle invites:

PLEASE SHARE YOUR VIEWS: The Chronicle seeks responses to this essay and to last month's essay by Jack Reese. A selection of responses will run in our Part III of the series, with the bulk of the remainder posted on the Chronicle Online. Send responses to: chronicle@oc.edu with the subject line: Worship Forum.

This review will go beyond "great job" so it has been posted my review in blue.

The I-We complex is a sign of the inward turn of denominations across the country involving mild or extreme ecstasy ["to stand outside of or transcend oneself, unification of one's being or will with the divine. Music and drugs were used to achieve the ecstatic state." Britannica ], holy laughter and other signs of dissociation. I-We have replaced the Christ-O-Centric theme of yesterday which still just meant that it is the Worship-Team-O-Centric. Jesus and John would be one of those "morose ones in the first service."

Authority of women in the stand-over or nonsedentary prohibition in Paul's letters was "sexual authority" which is totally apparent in any public performance of women called "worship." Therefore, it is not legalistic to, like Joseph, not put yourself in harms way.

Jesus had John write:

"Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. Re.2:20 (A prophetess is also a poetic singer with musical instruments).

"Ephesus was famous for its shrine of Diana, where thousands of sacred prostitutes believed fornication brought believers into contact with deity in much the same way the Gnostics used authentia (authority) to bind the flesh and the divine together. When these women converted to Christianity they had to unlearn these pagan practices.

That explains why the melody must be inward: singing was a secular or even pagan practice but chanting, reading or speaking to one another was a religious practice. Remember Ephesians 5?

'Virtually without exception,

female teachers among the Greeks were courtesans, such as Aspasia, who numbered Socrates and Pericles among her students. Active in every major school of philosophy,

these hetairai made it evident in the course of their lectures that they were available afterwards for a second occupation.

But the Bible teaches that to seduce men in such a manner was indeed to lead them to slaughter and the halls of death (cf. Prov. 2:18; 5:5; 6:27; 9:18).

The verb authentein is thus peculiarly apt to describe both the erotic and murderous." (Trombley, Who Says Women Can't Teach, p. 177).

See how they make "souls fly" or in Rubel Shelly's words "lead them into the presence of God."

It is doubly intresting, therefore, that in the new Gnosticism Sophia is called the serpent and ZOE is clled the beast. She is the "female teaching principle." She dominates little Jesus or Logos and forces the lesser jehovah into forming a musical worship team. Guess who they worship: of course they worship Sophia and Zoe as Zoe sits at the right hand on the throne doing the instructing.

This is not just later Gnosticism but the concept is documented in the Babylonian tablets which define the worship around the Towers.

Be doubly sure that you are not unwittingly being used to murder the church rather than to correct it by eliminating rituals. We should be careful about adopting those performed by what H. Bamford Parkes calls "the world's oldest profession" meaning prophets or prophetesses to lead you into the presence of God.

As prophetic of the end-times, many groups have learned how to merge commerce and religion but this Restoration theme seems clearly aimed at the musical pattern. You just cannot peddle the free Word of God.

The notion seems to be that if you are not musical, meaning sumphonia or a "concert of instruments," then you must hang yourself with the nearest harp string because you belong to that ancient tribe of legalists, and you know that legalists will go to hell.

Arnobius Against Heresies VII notes:

32. But let there be, as you wish, honour in wine and in incense , let the anger and displeasure of the deities be appeased by the immolation and slaughter of victims:

are the gods moved by garlands also, wreaths and flowers, by the jingling of brass also, and the shaking of cymbals , by timbrels also, and also by symphonious pipes? [Symphoniae . Evidently musical instruments ; but while Isidore speaks of them as a kind of drum , other writers call them trumpets and pipes.]

But, if you always wanted a chance to be a Martin Luther and put your career at risk of burning at the stake you can remember what he wrote:

"If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every part of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, then I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Him.

Where the battle rages,

there the loyalty of the soldier is proved;

and to be steady on all battlefields besides

is merely flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point." Martin Luther.

It seems time for the real minister-servants to stand up and be counted or they will be counted out.

We will leave the comments of Dan Dozier in little boxes.

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Reprinted from Faithsite.com, cbti.faithsite.com from The Christian Chronicle All Rights Reserved.

Part 2 of a 3-part Series on Worship

BY DAN DOZIER

NASHVILLE, TENN.

You cannot describe God at any level and the attempt to do so with human words is ceremonial legalism. This is why God supplied the words for our teaching one another with the poetic material of the Bible.

When you do praise rituals five times you just get bored. Someone has decided that after singing a "worship song" five times we no longer even pay attention to the words: might as well look at the dandruff on the head in front of us or admire that lady singing a four-fold type of tenor which makes flesh crawl, or decide: "Steak or catfish?"

Our God Is an Awful God: not an Awesome God in the modern teenage sense:

Pastor Mike wrote: "My God is NOT an awesome God - He is an aweful God. Get out a dictionary and use the words correctly. God is Full of Awe - not just some. Modern bible version mentality in Christianity prevails nowadays and like Rev 3 says, God wants to spue it out!"

The song leader is "awesome." The words are awesome. In the highschool chat room everything is "awesome." "This song is an awsome song. I just sang it with our youth choir and loved it" "I love this song it is so pretty i could listen to it all day long!"

God is awesome. Get the point? No?

By Biblical and medical certainty when you are singing "awesome" songs and having a MOUNTAINTOP you cannot possibly come away with a better appreciation of God. As a medical certainty you are in charismatic ecstasy and your rational (spiritual) half of your person which is controled by spirit or mind is shut down! Shut down! Shut down! And you confuse what I feel with being spiritual because God is supposed in the Vineyard New Style Songs to be reaching the PEAK when you hit the PEAK.

All praise songs are boomer or self-directed. That means erotic. We talk TO God instead of ABOUT God. I feel awesome, she feels sad:

And what I ignored, or maybe not intentionally ignored but forgot was that my wonderful mountaintop was her tragic conclusion to something.

And without the teaching, teaching, teaching, teaching, teaching, it's not their fault. It's not. And you know we need to go back and we need to say and look at her and grieve the fact you know

The NIV is written for casual reading: for the reader who wants the "story" without the facts. However, the NIV word "awesome" in the felt, climactic sense is not in the text. No. No. No. Teach all you wish but you are false, false, false.

But they were disobedient and rebelled against you;

        they put your law behind their backs.

        They killed your prophets,

        who had admonished them in order to turn them back to you;

        they committed awful (hostile) blasphemies. Neh 9:26 

Senior and godly men who say "thus saith the Lord" are still speaking as prophets and those who pray for a soon death or exit of the old BUILDERS so that we BOOMERS can take over are still murdering prophets.

Killing the prophets or quenching the Spirit is refusing to listen to God who admonishes you that your climactic experience is hostility to a Holy God.

Here is that passage about the awesome God in the NIV:

and confessed my sins and those of my people. "O Lord," I prayed, "you are a great and awesome God; you always fulfill your promises of mercy to those who love you and keep your laws. Daniel 9:4NIV

Here it is in the King James Version:

And I prayed unto the Lord my God, and made my confession, and said, O Lord, the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him, and to them that keep his commandments; Daniel 9:4KJV

If you don't care about the truth you will see the "music" as God's eternal sign or MARK that you are oppressing people and it is, in the Bible, always a sin without redemption: ignorance of the Word is no excuse.

Yare (h3372) yaw-ray'; a prim. root; to fear; mor. to revere; caus. to frighten: - affright, be (make) afraid, dread (- ful), (put in) fear (- ful, -fully, -ing), (be had in) reverence (-end), * see, terrible (act, - ness, thing).

The lion hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy (teach)? Am.3:8

If the mountain happened to be God would you approve of a musical worship team or some hand-waver standing between you and the view? Or booms and clangs keeping you from hearing Him speak? God wouldn't appreciate it either. And Jesus said that He would be with us when we gather in His name without any other effort. However, when we gather in the name of the theatrical performers we can expect Jesus to be elsewhere.

"Johnson, a professor at West Texas State University, elaborates: When we speak of a mystical experience we refer to an event that is completely within the person. It is totally subjective . . . Although the mystic may experience it as having been triggered by occurrences or objects outside himself (like a sunset, a piece of music, a religious ceremony, or even a sex act), the mystical experience is a totally inner event. It contains no essential aspects that exist externally to him in the physical world . . . A mystical experience is primarily an emotive event, rather than a cognitive one . . Its predominant qualities have more to do with emotional intensity, or 'feeling tone' than with facts evaluated and understood rationally. Although this is true, it alone is a woefully inadequate way of describing the mystical experience. The force of the experience is often so overwhelming that the person having it finds his entire life changed by it. Mere emotions cannot effect such transformations.

"Furthermore, it is from this emotional quality that another characteristic results, namely, its 'self-authenticating' nature. The mystic rarely questions the goodness and value of his experience.

Consequently, if he describes it as giving him information, he rarely questions the truth of his newly gained "knowledge". It is this claim that mystical experiences are "ways of knowing" truth that is vital to understanding many religious movements we see today. [Our Sufficiency in Christ, John MacArthur, Jr., Word Publishing, 1991]

Aldus Huxley wrote: Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation. It is the rarest thing to find a player who has not had his character affected for the worse by the practice of his profession.

Nobody can make a habit of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his personality for the sake of exercising a kind of hypnotic power over others, and remain untouched by the process. From Source

One of the oldest fallacies was to worship the creature and believe that one worshiped the Creator. The emotion was created by the perception that the mountain was awesome. However, a different culture might see the mountain as Awful, dangerous and to be avoided as the abode of the gods.

The "feelings" dear friend are the same: created by endorphins or adrenalin. Endorphins produced by music are morphine-like but the high wears off. When adrenalin decays it produces something like mescaline or peyote with which the American Indians feel the presence of their gods. One "pastor" quipped that it would be much more economical to put LSD into the communion wine than do all of those musical productions.

The high was created by expectation, exhaustion or some other physiological reason.

Jesus said that "worship is in spirit" and that means in the mind. It is not possible for the priest to take along an attractive, talented praise team when he enters into the throne room typified by the mind where the Mind of Christ or Spirit of God dwells. So mountain-tops have always been favorite places to escape the rituals which Jesus warned just "create spiritual anxiety from religious ceremonial." John the Baptist was put on a rocky island to be "in the spirit on the Lord's day" and grasp the ungraspable. Obeying Christ John was worshiping or thinking about Christ "in his mind or spirit" and he was not inside of a divine person.

But Paul saw the Corinthians assembling for "me worship" with self-composed songs out of their own spirit and everyone speaking at the same time. Paul didn't use the word "worship" but that "you don't assemble to eat the Lord's Supper. It is not possible to remember Christ without using His revelation to us. It is not possible to feed on His Word and go ecstatic while singing modern songs with teams carefully calculated to "lead you into the presence of God." This was always a charismatic, sexual experience in the classics. Yes, with an acoustics background, we know that is a fact that sound tickles every nerve ending in your body!

Paul insisted that the way to speak or teach was with one voice in order to teach (preach to) one another. The only resource is the Word of Christ which is His Spirit (John 6:63). Therefore, there is no primary command to "sing" as a legalistic act of worship. In running from "them ole legalists" the charismatic church has grown more works-oriented: needing a team to jack you up into God's presence. That is neo-tower of Babel.

We noted that the "burden" laded by the Jewish clergy on the people like a team of pack animals was "religious ceremonial." So, if Christ died to give us rest there can be no ceremonial which we define as something owed or commanded or "God-controlling." One does not love out of a command.

Music (a secular term) was the most ancient practices of ritual obligation. From all of the "non-canonical" literature even before the time of Christ (book of Jubilees) and beginning before the flood. Reciting Psalms and other inspired Biblical literature is no more ritual than "preaching to the saved." The modern church has added the power-devices, instruments or inventions of mankind to facilitate His own power. Is that legalistic or what? When Jubal handled the musical instruments for effect, "handle" means "without warrant."

How would it be possible to know that a 95 year old lady wanting to take the Lord's Supper even as she knows that she is dying does not have her heart in tune with the Father? Just how can we know that not getting a drug high in order to get "in tune" with the Father is heart felt?

By the way, instruments were not used on the Sabbath because "getting them in tune" was defined as a work of human hands. If we cannot get in tune sitting on a stump by the waterfall then we just cannot get in tune.

Nothing is more related to appeasing God and paying dues than music. According to the Book of Enoch quoted by Jude, God will come with ten thousand of His saints to execute judgment upon those who call people away from the Word with mixed-sex choirs and instruments. Yep! That's a fact. Jesus claimed parables as a way to hide the truth from commercial religion even from the foundation of the world, and Jude is speaking a parable and without Enoch, the book of Jubilees and other similar accounts you will just miss the point.

Those are old fashioned books but then so is the Bible. To exult in human songs explains why one would exult in humanistic sermons while the audience will never know the true story of the exodus even where Israel repeated the common pattern of falling back into idolatry with music.

The pattern of the Enoch story is that once you fall into the musical paradigm you have fallen and you ain't never gonna get up again. As far as we know, history knows of no one who has removed the instruments after the addiction is complete.

Now, the psychology always seems to say that "to clear away the weak-sisters who might object,

> let's define churches of Christ as preaching a legalistic theology.

> After that they cannot possibly object to the blowing winds of change

> because we have put the old legalists on notice

> everyone will think of them as legalistic if they don't attend a free church."

I know a fellow who was hobbled because the Navigator told members that anyone who objected to instruments was a racist: present, perfect tense. Now, it takes the courage of a Luther to stand up in public and object to the forced introduction of instruments after the group had been "facilitated" gradually with A Capella teams. But teams are still organic organs because the method is "organum" or "after the organ" and not truly A Capella or Ala Biblical. Therefore, a cappella as performance is a legalistic employment of the "works of human hands" or other body parts.

However, there is nothing legalistic about obeying the Words of Christ or even "singing" them. Legalism is proven when people invent and improvise believing that their own new "style" has some kind of magical power to lead the worshipers into God's presence. One could not imagine a more legalist theology than music to induce laughter and tears.

And the Lord saith, Because they have forsaken my law which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, neither walked therein; Jeremiah 9:13

But have walked after the imagination of their own heart, and after Baalim, which their fathers taught them: Jeremiah 9: 14

Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink. Jeremiah 9: 15

I will scatter them also among the heathen, whom neither they nor their fathers have known: and I will send a sword after them, till I have consumed them. Jeremiah 9: 16

> The "hand-washing" episode of the Pharisees is used as a proof-text to show that the Pharisees invented the practice and then imposed it upon the people. This, then, is used to condemn modern "sectarians" who make up their own rules.

> However, Jesus didn't condemn washing your hands before you eat. What He condemned was setting aside the Laws of God (1400 years old) in order to enforce their own worship rituals.

> Furthermore, Jesus condemned the Pharisees for actually taking the houses of widows just to get paid for their false doctrine.

And yet, they people need someone to artificially stimulate their own tears:

Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Consider ye, and call for the mourning (strike a musical note) women, that they may come; and send for cunning (artistic) women, that they may come: Jeremiah 9: 17

And let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters. Jeremiah 9: 18

Nahah (h5091) naw-haw'; a prim. root; to groan, i. e. bewail; hence (through the idea of crying aloud) to assemble (as if on proclamation): - lament, wail.

For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion, How are we spoiled we are greatly confounded, because we have forsaken the land, because our dwellings have cast us out. Jeremiah 9: 19

Yet hear the word of the Lord, O ye women, and let your ear receive the word of his mouth, and teach your daughters wailing, and every one her neighbour lamentation. Jeremiah 9: 20

For death is come up into our windows, and is entered into our palaces, to cut off the children from without, and the young men from the streets. Jeremiah 9:21

The musical worship was not acceptable as long as they had a good mental attitude. Rather the ways in which they acted out their religious festivals were done unlawfully. Therefore, Amos demands:

Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken. Amos 5:14

Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph Amos 5:15 .

Therefore the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord, saith thus; Wailing shall be in all streets; and they shall say in all the highways, Alas alas! and

they shall call the husbandman to mourning, and such as are skillful of lamentation to wailing. Amos 5:16

And in all vineyards shall be wailing: for I will pass through thee, saith the Lord. Amos 5:17

When Israel went totally legalistic under the Monarchy they, for the first time, added Canaanite forms of musical guilds "under the commanders of the army" because they were building a national capital and not a local "church." Synagogues always existed where the "private" part of the economy worked and worshiped while the "public" sector, especially the Levites, kept the common people out of the symbolic presence of God. There was no "praise service in the Synagogues" or churches of Christ

Next, we notice that when you join the band of merry men intending to rob from the poor to give to the rich (a reverse Jubilee) you begin to hallucinate. Our memories are always there but bits and pieces of them are used together with new data. If you major in listening to the "old and deleterious" your memory gets contaminated and what you think happened never happened. I remember that Gallup found that 80% of our first-person examples are just fabricated. I can even see things that happened to me when I was two!

I remember a critic of the old legalists who actually claimed that where he grew up "instrumental music was equated to premarital sex!" We suggest, charitably, a false memory. It is legalistic to say, "Johnny, don't jump off the building." We do need to be right without believing that jumping will be ok if you just have a good mental attitude. Laws are to keep us safe. We don't claim merit when we don't jump and live.

Now, lets those old legalists to intimidate those who certainly don't want to be legalists.

If the "emotion" causes the lightness of human hands seeking contact with a Holy God then perhaps you have been injected with a dose of endorphins (morphine within) which chreats the impulses of fight, flight and sex. If it causes the nerve endings in the body to "feel like worms crawling" inside and you body wants to jump you are engaged in body worship: look that one up on the internet.

One truly doubts that trying to be faithful to Christ is legalistic. I will tell you what legalism is: it is trying to tickle the glands of the "audience" to make them "feel" something which can be huckstered as "spiritual." That is the most ancient form of legalism. Eve was "seduced" and the pagan women wanted to exercise authentia: "sexual authority."

Perhaps the old decadent and deleterious elders knew that "church" is really "assembly" and, in the pattern of the Synagogue and the Greek Ekklesia, it was a meeting of the local people for business and education. To that the church of Christ adds the Lord's Supper. Where, oh where and which college learned them to hate the church and rational (spiritual) meetings. Doesn't that leave 167 hours a week to violate the rules and not be legalistic?

I simply don't know where you would find a pattern for "theologically correct worship" unless it is the grace of Christ which says: "Now, you can worship in the spirit or mind." I remember hating college chemistry. But I didn't go to chemistry class to get a a genuine encounter with Rutherford. It turned out that his "atom" was not correct. Synagogue/Church is school and not pagan worship center.

If you believe that synagoguing (that is what people did when they went to the ekklesia) is SOLELY DEVOTED TO WORSHIP then you are believing someone's lie told because they see "godliness as a means of financial gain."

Worship of the Jews and worship of the Christians is defined by the word "seeking." Or it is giving heed or "give yourself to the public reading of the Word to exhortaion and doctrine. David is not said to have "worshiped" when he sang, played, dance and stripped off naked. He is said to have worshiped when he "sought God."

So, give us some examples. If you want a "false memory" about what Scripture says about "worship" you may find that when you look at the text there is no command, example or even inference that the church came together to "worship" in the pagan sense of Corinth. Someone just made that up along with the CORE GOSPEL. The church was Synagogue with the addition of the Lord's Supper.

Worship in the Christian sense is not worship in the pagan sense: we worship God when we let Him do the talking, we do the praying and we honor Him without hiding Him behind a "praise team" claiming to be mediators to help you to think about Christ. But, you cannot think of two things at the same time so the worship team has taken the place of Christ. I know from my own rotten character that when beautiful talented women get up to sing I cannot and you, male, cannot think about God. Nope! Don't add lying to lust. This is why Paul outlawed female power as seductive and murderous and women "teams" are tokenized women and are being used in exchange for money.

Come to think of it, even ugly girls suddenly become attractive if they are talented singers. Don't you suppose that Christ knew that when He inspired Paul to warn us?

"Church" and "hymn singing" was always a very private time with Christ as worship. However, the preachers were told to go out and find disciples so that preaching is not "an act of worship." All history knows that when you try to suck in seekers of music you have invited in the most ancient and Biblical description of those who will take over your "venue" and make it into theater.

The Jews never "worshiped by singing with instruments." Instruments were "sounding devices" used to defeat the enemy and triumph over him, like David, as you had your feet on his neck. The king and "commanders of the army" reassigned the Levitical warrior musicians to the new Temple ritual which was just "like the nations" because that was their prayer and that is what God "turned them over to."

It is certain that there were no instruments or pseudo-instruments made up of a "team" in the Synagogue. It is also certain that "there was no praise service in the Synagogue."

Therefore, ekklesia and mowed were schools and not pagan-like worship centers. Education or edification is not remotely related to our feelings induced by "worship teams" as the ultimate oxymoron. In fact, connected to the "singing" law, Paul added "admonition" and no one gets "high" when being scolded by Christ. My arms don't want to levitate when I read Isaiah.

Someone has called such effort "the idolatry of talent" and talent is usually for sale these days.

Instruments to, in many cases, were the actual idols of worship. Jesus said "worship in spirit" and in "truth." That is meditating upon His words and not ours:

Woe unto him that saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise, it shall teach Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in the midst of it. Habakkuk 2:19

But the Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him. Habakkuk 2:20

Defining Voodoo:

"They developed specific sigils which they would inscribe upon the ground,

and then use the remembered dances, chants,
and sacred musical instruments to call the Deities through the sigils like gateways.

The contact is only temporary- lasting as long as the rite itself- but it was enough to evolve an entirely new tradition known to us as Voodoo.

"Remember that even Agrippa admits that the Gods are never bound into anything- but are only invited (or "born") into substances which They find agreeable.

In any case, it should be readily apparent how our procedures parallel the older pagan ways.

Where they use dance and musical instruments to call forth their Gods, we simply use the vibration of Names and invocations of certain energies. It all boils down to the same thing, after all.

Because David authorized only things with "breath" to praise God, even in Psalm 150 the church Fathers see this as a song or poetic expression rather than a prose direct command.

We understand poetry poetically. Remember?

Jesus said that the Word was spoken in parables from the foundation of the world to hide it from those who would use it commercially (Mt 12; Isa 48). Then, when they use it they should be seen as fools trying to second incarnate parables back into "commands, examples and inferences." See Augustine.

Our mind is God's only holy temple: not the Asherah pole-flanked temples.

Here is the bull idol which went into Sheol with the king of Babylon (an early and end-time Whore king/queen representing Lucifer. Sure enough, it was quite decayed upon a "bed of maggots" along with the king and the buried-alive harpist and holy whore (female):

This is Thy God Oh Israel. Let it Speak to you Because you have rejected my Covenant.

It is common these days to claim that "knowing God personally" is a sexual term. And so it was among the pagans. However, the "goddess" looked amazingly like the prophetesses who had just sung to you out front. However spiritual and sincere one might be, you must know that Christianity has been described for two thousand years based upon the Bible. If one can dismiss it except for "five facts about Jesus" with God leaving the rest to use to supersede the apostles, they you must know that history declares that what you are doing is not Christian.

This was the earliest Seeker form of religion of Apollo (Appolyon, Abbadon). Apollo also used "navigating the winds" and women music to collect his ministers who then took up collections.

It comes as no accident that the NEW STYLE WORSHIP including the Vineyard song book and most other "look-alikes" have fallen for the world's oldest legalistic superstition: that God can be approached through praise. One writer as part ot the "anti-non instrumental" Praise does its work among humans as much as it does among the heavenly host.

The modern "praise cult" of crying Lord, Lord claims to "prophesy in His name" and their praise is what ENABLE the gods to keep on giving good gifts such as "Super Sunday Stacked With Seeking Sinners." The "praise leader" is the oldest known profession. In Babylon the "team" was the second oldest profession. Therefore, listen to your latter day MOTHER:

"After she (Carol Wimber) had a dream in 1976 of standing preaching to a large crowd a seven-point sermon on the gifts of the Spirit, at the final point,  'a sensation like hot electricity' hit her head, travelled down her body, then up and out of her mouth. She awakened speaking in tongues. The sensation of heat and electricity is typical of that experienced in the current revival.  She said 'Soon God stopped showing me what he had wanted to do in the past and began to show me what he was going to do in the future.   I had a strong sense of God's desire for his bride, for the whole Church - Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox.' (Riding the Third Wave - 1987)

In the article "Worship: Intimacy With God the philosophy behind the 'praise and worship' found in the Vineyard churches it is explained that there is a 'well-thought out philosophy' guiding how God is worshipped through music and movement in order to achieve the goal through "Worship: Intimacy With God" .

"To understand how we worship God, it is helpful to learn about our fellowship's history, which goes back to 1977. At that time my wife, Carol, was leading a small group of people in a home meeting that evolved into the Anaheim Vineyard. I'll let her describe what happened during that time.

"After we started to meet in our home gathering, I noticed times during the meeting -- usually when we sang -- in which I experienced God deeply... occasionally we sang a song personally and intimately to Jesus, with lyrics like 'Jesus, I love you.'

Those types of songs both stirred and fed the hunger for God within me... Thus we began to see a difference between songs ABOUT Jesus and songs TO Jesus. "About that time we realised our worship blessed God, that it was for God alone and not just a vehicle of preparation for the pastor's sermon. This was an exciting revelation. After learning about the central place of worship in our meetings, there were many instances in which all we did was worship God for an hour or two.

"At this time we also discovered that singing was not the only way to worship God. Because the word worship means literally to bow down, it is important that our bodies are involved in what our spirits are saying. In scripture this is accomplished through bowing heads, lifting hands, kneeling, and even lying prostrate before God. ... we are blessed as we worship him.

He visits his people with manifestations of the Holy Spirit. "Thus worship has a two-fold aspect: communication with God through the basic means of singing and praying, and communication from God though teaching and preaching the word, prophecy, exhortation, etc. We lift him up and exalt him, and as a result are drawn into his presence where he speaks to us."

"In the Vineyard we see five basic phases of worship, phases through which leaders attempt to lead the congregation.... as we pass through these phases we are headed toward one goal:

intimacy with God.".... The fourth phase is described as "God Visits His People when "Expression then moves to a zenith, a climactic point, not unlike physical lovemaking... We have expressed what is in our hearts and minds and bodies, and now it is time to wait for God to respond.

Stop talking and wait for Him to speak, to move. I call this, the fourth phase, visitation:"

[See Huxley's comments about emotional masturbation above. Like the "Holy Whores" in all paganism, these people actually believe that they have seduced God into fornicating with them.]

God's "song" in Isaiah 5 gives WINE from the near-exhausted Vineyard which God planted along with MUSIC as the cause of thorns which resulted in their being burned up with "thirst for the Word" so that "she was dead even while living." If you have sex in church with the "team" then you will surely get pregnant but:

You conceive chaff, you give birth to straw; your breath is a fire that consumes you. Is.33:11

The peoples will be burned as if to lime; like cut thornbushes they will be set ablaze." Is. 33:12

The sinners in Zion are terrified; trembling grips the godless: "Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who of us can dwell with everlasting burning?" Is. 33:14

He who walks righteously and speaks what is right, who rejects gain from extortion and keeps his hand from accepting bribes, who stops his ears against plots of murder and shuts his eyes against contemplating evil-- Is. 33:15

this is the man who will dwell on the heights, whose refuge will be the mountain fortress. His bread will be supplied, and water will not fail him. Is. 33:16

All your pomp has been brought down to Sheol, along with the noise of your harps; maggots are spread out beneath you and worms cover you. Is.14:11

At that time Tyre will be forgotten for seventy years, the span of a king's life. But at the end of these seventy years, it will happen to Tyre as in the song of the prostitute: Is.23:15

"Take up a harp, walk through the city, O prostitute forgotten; play the harp well, sing many a song, so that you will be remembered. Isa 23:16

At the end of seventy years, the LORD will deal with Tyre. She will return to her hire as a prostitute and will ply her trade with all the kingdoms on the face of the earth. Isa 23:17 [Become ecumenical]

Yet her profit and her earnings will be set apart for the LORD; they will not be stored up or hoarded. Her profits will go to those who live before the LORD, for abundant food and fine clothes. Isa 23:18

The king/queen represented or was Lucifer. Lucifer is quite identical to the ZOE "beast" who led the lesser "jehovah's" into musical worship. Lucifer was bisexual and could be "loved" by both males and femalses as he/she became their "female instructing principle."

The king/queen of Tyre was literally male but he/see while singing the song of the prostitute--which meant with harps--wanted to be "remembered as a male."

The king/queen of Apollo's Seeker Center (Abbadon, Apollyon) could, like Satan, make himself attractive by transforming himself into whatever form he/she needed. He/she set up the Seeker Center at Delphi with instruments, song, dance,theater, swimming pool, gymnasium, private rooms where the "priestesses" worshiped and everything the heart could desire. The errected phallic columns was the symbol of his theatrical power.

He/she, as in Tyre, claimed to be religious and of course the huge income was "dedicated to the Lord" but it wasn't dispensed to the poor. It was stored up and, in Hebrew became "Corban." However, part of the "overhead" was a huge salary which the Seeker Sire used for his own food and clothing.

Therefore, and naturally, the final phase of the Seeker Center is callled "tithing" or even MORE!

The fifth phase is called "Generosity "The fifth phase of worship is the giving of substance. The church knows so little about giving, yet the Bible exhorts us to give to God. it is pathetic to see people preparing for ministry who don't know how to give. That is like an athlete entering a race, yet he doesn't know how to run. If we haven't learned to give money, we haven't learned anything... " From Source

Therefore, along with the legalistic urge for music (of all forms because "music" is not a Biblical worship word) must come the urge for tithing to provide VENUE for REVENUE.

Never mind that only Israelites living in Canaan on fully developed free-rent land tithed and then only food produced on the free farms: rent. No wage earner tithed. Furthermore, Jesus paid the temple tax and Paul said that giving was not a command but an exercise in "in spirit" free-will giving.

Is it logical to claim that wanting to please Christ by doing it according to His will is legalistic? No. then is it logical to believe that not imposing our desires means that legalistic churches of Christ have no feeling about their worship. No. Clearly, this is passing judgment upon people and this, too, is the common psychological device used to navigate people from "your group" to "my group." I can really get excited by the Word of God but no one on the face of the earth could get me excited enough to go charismatic. Does this mean no feeling? Of course not. I strongly suspect or perhaps know that the most feeling people in the brotherhood are working outside the magical circles centered on Nashville or Dallas. Perhaps they are in a country where they don't know whether a rebel will kill them or kidnap them. I bet they cry a lot. Do you suppose that they have no feeling?

If you will remember, David could not return to the Tabernacle to inquire of God so he brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem where he built his own, new tent. David introduced the plague stopping ceremony repeated by Hezekiah using animal sacrifices and music. Therefore, in his lostness he cried out:

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?

Later, when Solomon became king he went to Gibeon to the tabernacle to inquire of God. So, David was usually lost and in despair; constantly afraid that God would take His spirit (life) from him.

In Amos, the spiritual hunger and thirst was created by lack of knowledge of God's Word. David's first musical ark movement clearly shows that no one had consulted the Law.

In Philippians Paul knew that he wasn't going to ascend into God's literal presence until he died.

Nor did five contemporary songs with teaming up on God to create passion. We suggest there are probably easier and cheaper places to find passion. But then, so what? A pagan-like passion was in Paul's mind when he told the Corinthians: "Your assemblies do more harm than good." Why? Because they all tried to sing their own compositions which were out of their own spirit or mind.

Remember, we said that synagogue/church was for education and later observing the Lord's Supper and not for "worship" in the "meets my needs" or "rouse me to the top of the mountain" or "having sex with God" (Actually heard that once and had to follow it and make announcements! Oh, the shame of it all). So, the solution might be to make "church" into a school of the Bible so that our kids don't do time for 18 years and go away Biblically illiterate without knowing the grand Music-Versus-The-Word themes throughout the Old Testament. Going musical is just the obverse side side of the same old, self-invented system and is nothing new. It began in the garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel. It is a drug fix and when the fix wears off, churches under the domination of "women and children ruling over you" runs its course, you will be left unable to drink the water of the Word and be filled.

I don't think one can find a Biblical example of worship in the meet-my-needs with music sense. If you really look you will find some NEW WORSHIP CONCEPTS under "seeking God through His Word."

The problem with going ecstatic is that you feel no need to support your views with Scripture for mortal fear of going legalistic. The congregation of the people did not worship on the Sabbath with singing Psalms to instrumental music. It just did not happen. So it is high time that people in high places quite proof-texting the Monarchy. Under its Hebrew word, the synagogue always existed to meet the demands of teaching the Law of God.

When the elders repudiated God and demanded "set a king over us" instruments were added to the "like the nation's" sacrifices which were dedication or purification ceremonies for the temple-state. The people were put "outside the camp" to find God.

The Monarchy and the temple were central headquarters for a secular, like the nations temple-state. God assuredly authorized it but only after the elders had "fired" Him and demanded a king like the nations so that they could worship like the nations. God warned them that the kings would destroy the nation and they would go into captivity. Amos 5 and 6 shows a "contemporary" style of worship with wine, women and song but Amos 8 promises that the songs in the temple will cease, there will be wailing and the people captured by the nations (another denomination?) because the commoners hungered and thirsted for the Word but could not find it. They still cannot in most either musical or non-musical churches.

Don't you get it, the musicians never got into the temple proper but stood by the altar to make a great crashing sound while the animals were being sacrificed. In the "like the nations" sacrifices this was believed to keep the evil spirits from attacking the priests. The Levites served the priests and not God nor the people. Israel's priests even did the same thing while offering children to Molech at Topheth -- the king's music grove. If we are going to find Jesus we are going to have to "go outside the camp" to find Him. Except the stationary men representing the people, the true spiritual congregation would be off to the left outside the gates. They prayed to God while on their face and God, surprise, surprise, surprise, heard from heaven and did not "land on the musical worship team."

In: Lucian Syrian Goddess: Jesus only spoke parables to the "multitudes" who are never interested in Spirit.

50 - And on set days the multitude assembles in the sanctuary, and many Galloi (emasculated priests) and the religious men that I spoke of perform their ceremonies; and they cut their own arms and beat one another on the back.

And many stand there playing flutes