Dance
Worship Teams - Speaking in Tongues - Modern Shamans?
See that CHARISMATIC always involved SODOMY normally as PEDERASTY using young boys as "associate ministers"
A Spectacle of Worship: Fred Peatross Reviewed
Jeff Walling Daring To Dance With God: Worship Dance
- Part One
- Part Two Rubel Shelly speaks about the confessional.
- Part Three
Christian Chronicle Worship Forum Reviews: Dan Dozier --Jack Reese
Paul Woodhouse - Grace Church of Christ suggests we give up
See Theatrical (preaching or singing) performance in modern Shamanism.
See Drama and Dance "worship" Claim to be The Mediators between Man and God
See Rubel Shelly and ACU on Anti-non instrumental music.
See Rubel Shelly's Defense of Musical Worship.
Learning to Dance by Rubel Shelly quoting Max Lucado
Rubel Shelly: Holy Spirit the Song Maker
The source of the heresy about Jesus Dancing
"Many forms of dance can be used to glorify God. I am personally comfortable using interpretive movement, pageantry, ballet, lyrical and jazz / funk. Lyrical is a contemporary style of dance that combines ballet and jazz techniques with personal emotion. I extend this definition to emphasize the dancer's personal relationship with the Lord. Jazz / funk is a blend of jazz and hip hop which results in a fast-paced, contemporary form of praise.
Jazz is one of those "F" words like Rock and Roll and it is rooted in voodoo:
Jazz musicians could also be considered shamans. The musical communication from a performer to an audience can expose the audience to new ideas, emotions, and modes of thinking. "The shaman transported listeners to upper and lower worlds where they visited gods or consorted with the dead, and jazzman [sic], like other performing artists transported their audience to heights and depths inaccessible through ordinary experience" (Leonard 36).
The feeling of ecstasy which often accompanies this transcendence or transportation further intensifies the experience. "As with his shamanistic forebear, the jazz prophet's chief characteristic is his power to evoke ecstasy, the source of his charisma or magic attraction, giving him the power to legitimize his message with the sanction of a higher authority" (Leonard 36).
Music is very important in the religion of black Americans as well. James H. Cone writes that black music "tells us about the divine spirit that moves the people toward unity and self-determination. It is not possible to be black and encounter the Spirit of black emotion and not be moved." (Cone 6).
A good deal of such ecstasy--reminiscent of a shamanic seance with its rhythmic kinesis, music, words, and audience participation--carried over into jazz. And in some ways the jazzman was like a preacher. Guitarist Danny Barker noted, in connection with Bessie Smith, "If you had any church background, like people who came from the South, as I did, you would recognize a similarity between what she was doing and what those preachers and evangelists from there did, and how they moved people. Bessie did that same thing on stage...she could bring about mass hypnotism." Charles Mingus liked to think of the bandstand as something like a pulpit. "You're up there...trying to express yourself. It's like being a preacher in a sense" (Leonard 48). Resource
"There are other scriptural references to dance as a form of worship. If you are a man (or woman) after God's own heart, read 2 Sam 6:14 about David's behavior when he moved the Ark the second time: "And David danced before the LORD with all his might:" Sacred Dance
Our comments will be in black:
David's dance was identical to Saul's described as follows:
This passage 1 Sam. 19:18-24 may be called the loci classici of biblical ecstasy. Having been anointed by Samuel (v. 1), Saul was sent forth with promises that three signs ('otot) would occur, the third of which involved "a band of prophets" (hebel neb'im) i. Ieaving Samuel, Saul was given "another heart" (leb 'aher) by God and the three signs predicted by Samuel did come to pass. Thus Saul met a band of prophets who were "prophesying" as they came down from the high place (Philistine ks) with harp, tambourine, flute, and Iyre (v. 5). At that moment, the ruah 'elohlm "rushed" (tislah) upon him, and he "prophesied among them" (v. 10). The words "prophesying" and "prophesied" in this passage are either HitpaCel or NiphCal (v. 1]) forms of
which obviously mean neither foretelling nor forthtelling:
"The unusual sight of an aristocrat like Saul "prophesying" was surprising to those who observed it, evoking questions like "What has happened to the son of Qish? Is Saul also among the ecstatics [nebi'~m]?" "Who is their [the ecstatics'] father?" It is noteworthy here that
the people "saw" something unusual in the behavior of Saul.
This should be contrasted with the reaction of the crowd described in Acts 2, whose amazement is four times traced to what they heard from the 120 (cf. vv. 6, 8,
"This is the first mention in the OT of a band of prophets. these were men who went about in companies and were able by means of music and dancing to work themselves up into a convulsive and ecstatic frenzy (2 Ki. 3:1-10).
Their abnormality was believed to be caused by the invasive influence of the spirit of god. The word prophesied here does not mean either foretelling the future or preaching after the manner of the later prophets,
but engaging in the ritual dance of the prophetic guild (19:18-24). Their behavior was commonly regarded as a form of madness (2 Ki. 9:11; Jer. 29:26)" (The Int. Bible, I Sam. p. 932).
David the choral or "calf-flinging" dance which helped bring on madness. This was the form of PRAISE by one mortally afraid of their "god." Therefore, to act as a madman prevented the "gods" from harming you just as we do not execute the mentally retarded. His praise was:
Halal (h1984) haw-lal'; a prim. root; to be clear (orig. of sound, but usually of color); to shine; hence to make a show, to boast; and thus to be (clamorously) foolish; to rave; causat. to celebrate; also to stultify: - (make) boast (self), celebrate, commend, (deal, make), fool (- ish, -ly), glory, give [light], be (make, feign self) mad (against), give in marriage, [sing, be worthy of] praise, rage, renowned, shine.
This "making self vile" is the source of the word for lucifer:
Heylel (h1966) hay-lale'; from 1984 (in the sense of brightness); the morning-star: - lucifer.
And it has about the same meaning as:
Chalal (h2490) khaw-lal'; a prim. root [comp. 2470]; prop. to bore, i. e. (by impl.) to wound, to dissolve; fig. to profane (a person, place or thing), to break (one's word), to begin (as if by an "opening wedge"); denom. (from 2485) to play (the flute): - begin (* men began), defile, * break, defile, * eat (as common things), * first, * gather the grape thereof, * take inheritance, pipe, player on instruments, pollute, (cast as) profane (self), prostitute, slay (slain), sorrow, stain, wound.
Since God turned Israel over to worship "the starry host" because of their idolatry at Mount Sinai, and they later "fired" God and demanded a king like the nations so that they could worship like the nations, God sent the human kings to lead the rebels into captivity and destruction.
"Most likely, Israel first became acquainted with ecstatic prophecy in Canaan, where it was connected with Baal religion. The Egyptian story of Wen Amon tells of a religious festival in the Phoenician port of Byblos where 'the god seized one of the youths and made him possessed'&emdash;that is, he fell into an ecstatic state. Centuries later, prophets of Baal, imported from Phoenicia, worked themselves into an ecstatic frenzy on the top of Mount Carmal as they danced around the altar, cut themselves with knives, and raised their cultic shouts (I Kings 18:20-29). This type of orgiastic prophecy was also known in Asia Minor, from which it spread into the Mediterranean world and later took the form of the orgies of the cult of Dionysus" (Anderson, Bernard OT p. 229).
David "played" just as Israel "rose up to play" in musical, naked idolatry seen as Israel rejected God's covenant of grace and were punished with the sacrificial system and the Law of Moses. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul warned the singing and Mad or insane-looking people of this play at Mount Sinai as they were "sending across the sea to find the lost go
David was the approved king of a people
who had rejected God as their leader. As such, he would help lead them
into captivity as punishment for their sins. Because this was a
sign of sin beyond
redemption, God would refuse to listen
to them when they finally understood that they had traded grace for
law. This dance consisted of a fit or attack of madness identical to
that of the prophets of Asherah and Baal and it affected the whole
body:
Charles D. Isbell Introduction: A Working Definition of EcstasyT. H. Robinson define secstasy as follows:It consisted of a fit or attack which affected the whole body. Sometimes and wild leaping and contortions resulted. These might be more or less rhythmical, and the phenomenon would present the appearance of a wild and frantic dance. At other times there was more or less complete constriction of the muscles, and the condition became almost cataleptic.... Face and aspect were changed, and to all outward appearance the Ecstatic "became another man." An additional feature was insensibility to pain, and the extravagant activities of the Ecstatic frequently included violentslashing and cutting of his own body and limbs.
Arnobius asks: "Do they recall to memory those lamentations with which the tower-bearing Mother, along with the weeping Acdestis, wailing aloud, followed the boy?
"Or if the things which we say are not so, declare, say yourselves--
those effeminate and delicate men whom we see among you in
the sacred rites of this deity--what business, what care, what concern have they there; and
why do they like mourners wound their arms and breasts, and act as those dolefully circumstanced." (Arnobius Against the Heathen, Ante-Nicene, VI, p. 496).malakos e. of music, soft, effeminate, m. harmoniai Pl.R.398e , 411a, cf. Arist.Pol.1290a28; tuned to a low pitch, opp. suntonos, chrôma m. Cleonid.Harm.7 , etc.
mousikos A. musical, agônes m. kai gumnikoi Ar.Pl.1163 , cf. Th.3.104; choroi te kai agônes m. Pl.Lg.828c ; ta mousika music, X.Cyr.1.6.38, Sammelb. 6319.54 (Ptol.), SIG578.18 (Teos, ii B. C.). Adv. -kôs Pl.Alc.1.108d , etc.; cf. foreg. III. of things, elegant, delicate
"We shall pass by the wild Bacchanalia also, which are named in Greek Omophagia, in which
"with seeming frenzy and the loss of senses you twine snakes about you; and ,
"to show yourselves full of the divinity and majesty of the god, tear in peaces with gory mouths the flesh of loudly-bleating goats." (Arnobius Against the Heathen, Ante-Nicene, VI, p. 496).
"If any one perchance thinks that we are speaking calumnies, let him take the books of the Thracian soothsayer (Orpheus the inventor of musical soothsaying), which you speak of as of divine antiquity; and he will find that we are neither cunningly inventing anything, nor seeking
"means to bring the holiness of the gods into ridicule, and doing so: for we shall bring forward the very verses which the son of Calliope uttered in the Greek, and published abroad in his songs to the human race through out all all ages." Then follows an obscene song (Arnobius Against the Heathen, Ante-Nicene, VI, p. 499).
Israel practiced idolatry at Mount Sinai and David was performing a supernatural sign that he was separating the Ark of the Covenant from the place where God planned to meet His prophets and moving it to his new tent manned largely by the musical worship teams in roles like "flaming cherubim" in Jerusa
However, when the "root" of the cut-down tree which produced the human David produced a new Shoot from Jesse, anyone who continued this idolatry would be cut off:
IN that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. Zechariah 13:1
And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered: and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land. Zechariah 13:2
And it shall come to pass, that when any shall yet prophesy, (ecstatic tongues claimed to be from God) then his father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the Lord: and his father and his mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he prophesieth. Zechariah 13:3
Both men and women were given to "gather in workshops" and steal words from one another. Then they went home and sold them as God's revelation to him or her. Anytime we substitute our words in song or sermon for the words of Lord Jesus Christ, we are likely to get into charismatic prophesying in preaching style or singing or dancing or just flapping our arms.
This charismatic "prophesying" involved the "Lord, Lord saying" and the claim of casting out demons. Jesus said "I don't even know your name."
The following verses clearly show that this was the charismatic, musical prophesying as they claimed that God was speaking through their songs, instruments or dance.
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 (spirit) 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
Because the Jews were afflicted with the religious beliefs of Babylon or the Chaldeans, they clearly believed that their musical instruments (or speakers) contained the "gods" or demons who were aroused by blowing the musician's foul breath into them. The sounds which came out was peddled (for a price, always for a price) as the voice of the gods, but it was ventriliquism as the Jewish spiritual writers about the time of Jesus understood:
"Yobal (Jubal). (Note: Jubilee or "a blast of trumpets" is from Jubal which means "to lead with triumph or pomp.") and Tobalkin (Tubal-Cain), the two brethren, the sons of Lamech, the blind man, who killed Cain, invented and made all kinds of instruments (or metal weapons) of music.
"Yobal made reed instruments, and harps, and flutes, and whistles, and the devils went and dwelt inside them.
"When men blew into the pipes, the devils sang inside them, and sent out sounds from inside them. Tobalkin made cymbals, and sistra, and tambourines (or drums). And lasciviousness and fornication increased among the children of Cain, and they had nothing to occupy them except fornication--now they had no obligation [to pay] tribute, and they had neither prince nor governor--and eating, and drinking, and lasciviousness, and drunkenness, and
"dancing and singing to instruments of music, and the wanton sportings of the devils, and the laughter which affordeth pleasure to the devils,
"and the sounds of the furious lust of men neighing after women. And Satan, finding [his] opportunity in this work of error, rejoiced greatly, because thereby he could compel the sons of Seth to come down from that holy mountain. There they had been made to occupy the place of that army [of angels] that fell [with Satan], there they were beloved by God, there they were held in honour by the angels, and were called "sons of God," even as the blessed David saith in the psalm, "I have said , Ye are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High." Ps. 82:6 (In Rev 18 the craftsmen and musicians will go with the demise of Babylon)
Is Dancing Speaking in Tongues?
The movements of the dancer are purely out of their own head. It has been noted a form of ecstasy must begin before the dancer presumes to speak for God, or the musical worship team presumes to be the mediator between God and the audience. This charismatic fit continues as a physical form of "speaking in tongues." No one can interpret musical instruments or dance unless the performer says: "When I sashay in jazz to the left and raise my pinky to heaven I mean: 'look at me! Look at me'!" No other dancer could possibly interpret for them unless the "language" is translated. Therefore, Paul would say "In church I had rather speak five words with my mind and in your language than 10,000 words in dance language."
This is the contrast of what you can see as a form of madness contrasted to what you can hear with your God-given ears Who has already spoke to you and lives in your midst.
Five words involving both fortelling or forthtelling is what you can hear while the ten thousand words in an unknown tongue was with the mind deranged so that the observer would see you as mad or insane.
This number is ten times perfection. Therefore, esctatic or dance "words" have zero value in the church. However, the dance teams who "provide a platform upon which God lands" have no shame. Using Paul's warning about speaking in tongues in church one dancer notes that:
"I believe most Sacred Dancers, like musicians, require training to effectively minister to others. While dancing unto the Lord with an untrained, natural talent may edify the dancer, and perhaps a few who have the gift of interpretation, the majority of people will not be edified. Those who dance with a clear message speak to others for their strengthening, encouragement, and comfort. He who dances with an unclear message edifies himself, but he who dances prophetically, or with a clear message, edifies the church (1Cor 14:1-25). A Sacred Dancer must also learn what God's word says about dance. "It is not good to have zeal without knowledge" (Prov 19:2 NIV). This spiritual understanding combined with technical training prepares the Sacred Dancer to dance for the Lord. Sacred Dance
Not only is charismatic estasy necessary for anyone in their right mind to presume to teach or mediate through dance and to actually perform the thing, theatrical experts note that the "audience" must also fall into a form of ecstasy before the rational mind is shut down and they can appreciate this physical "speaking in tongues".
"EVEN this must have a preface-that is, a literary preface," laughed Ivan, "and I am a poor hand at making one. You see, my action takes place in the sixteenth century, and at that time, as you probably learnt at school,
it was customary in poetry to bring down heavenly powers on earth. Not to speak of Dante, in France, clerks, as well as
the monks in the monasteries, used to give regular performances in which the Madonna, the saints; the angels, Christ, and God Himself were brought on the stage.
In those days it was done in all simplicity. In Victor Hugo's 'Notre Dame de Paris' an edifying and gratuitous spectacle was provided for the people in the Hotel de Ville of Paris in the reign of Louis XI. in honour of the birth of the dauphin.
It was called Le bon judgment de la tres sainte et gracieuse Vierge Marie, and she appears herself on the stage -and pronounces her bon judgment. Dostoyevsky
The Zoe Group concept, however sincere, is very similar to secular change agent Zoe Groups but is quite identical to neo-pagan and even witchcraft groups in their urge to communicate some feeling from the performing Shaman or Soothsayer to the paying customer. (ie witch of Endor with her empty wineskin as a drum or musical instrument in which the gods lived). Performer
"Through music, a performer communicates new ideas to his audience. If a performer is ready to create and the audience is open to new ideas, the culmination of this communication, ecstasy, could occur. This ecstasy can be a very powerful feeling,
so powerful that some performers believe they are prophets, preachers, or shamans.
"The comparison of musicians to religious mediums is an apt one, given music's close ties to religion.
"Successful religious prophets view themselves not as the deity, but as its agent, and jazz luminaries are no exception. As drummer Billy Higgins put it, "Music doesn't come from you, it comes through you." Singer Abbey Lincoln agreed, "Sometimes I hear the sound coming from me and I know I'm not controlling it. It's like being a medium. It uses me" (Leonard 41).
"The idea that musicians were vessels through which the gods communicated was often reinforced by the "otherworldliness" of the musicians. "Perhaps the best example is Bix Beiderbecke, whose young face had the look of a consumptive Romantic poet...and who often seemed totally preoccupied with transcendent concerns. 'Everybody loved Bix,' said fellow bandsman Russ Morgan. 'The guy didn't have an enemy in the world but he was out of this world most of the time'" (Leonard 39).
"The process of creation is inextricably linked with the process of communication. When a musician communicates, she creates new ideas and emotions in the members of her audience. When creation occurs to its fullest extent, the performer and audience experience ecstasy.
"Rollo May believes that artists "create the conscience of the race." May writes that "by communicating their new ideas, artists can move their cultures in new directions." A creative musician can have a strong impact on her audience, because when she creates new ideas, she can use music to communicate those ideas to her audience.
"Jazz musicians could also be considered shamans. The musical communication from a performer to an audience can expose the audience to new ideas, emotions, and modes of thinking. "The shaman (as change agent)
transported listeners to upper and lower worlds where they visited gods
"or consorted with the dead, and jazzman [sic], like other performing artists transported their audience to heights and depths inaccessible through ordinary experience" (Leonard 36). The feeling of ecstasy which often accompanies this transcendence or transportation further intensifies the experience. "As with his shamanistic forebear, the jazz prophet's chief characteristic is his power to evoke ecstasy, the source of his charisma or magic attraction, giving him the power to legitimize his message with the sanction of a higher authority"
Of creating or teaching new ideas:
Music is not, however, useful for communicating complex ideas, like how to drive a car. Roger Hyde writes that music "is not a substitute for verbal quantifications" (Hyde 99).
Music lies in the domain of abstract thought.
When one wishes to communicate concrete ideas, one must utilize verbal communication instead of, or in concert with, musical communication.
"In many religious contexts, music is less an expressive 'art' than a technology applied to produce practical results, from the storage and retrieval of information contained in religious narratives and teachings memorized in song to the attraction of animals in hunting, increase of harvests, curing of diseases, communication with the divine, supplication, and control of the various levels of psychocosmic experience. While aesthetic beauty may or may not be integral to such technologies, individual self-expression plays little part in them and may be detrimental to their intended results (Ellingson 164).
"Ecstasy is not quantifiable, but it is very powerful. A performer's ability to produce ecstasy in her audience makes possible a profound communication.
"...the sacred or magical nature of jazz expressed itself in ecstasy, which liberated the self from the confinements of ordinary space and time and aroused feelings of supernatural vitality or power. Ecstasy is related to many emotions, most obviously those linked to sex, art, battle, and sports, (proof of the morphine-line endorphins)
and it can be induced with the help of hypnosis, drugs, hyperventilation, and other agents that detach consciousness from the senses.
But essentially it is something "other," incomprehensible to ordinary understanding and experience, and as such has important religious ramifications, its most powerful and enduring forms
providing the prophetic sparks which ignite sectarian beginnings and
stimulate concern in established circles about its blatantly irrational nature (Leonard 56).
Breaking Away: "Much apostasy from religion is strongly related to conflicts with one's parents. Many of those who think they are breaking away from their church in the name of enlightenment and freedom actually are at least partially working out conflicts with their mother and father. Andrew Greeley, Unsecular Man
"Shamanism is classified by anthropologists as an archaic magico-religious phenomenon in which the shaman is the great master of ecstasy. Shamanism itself, was defined by the late Mircea Eliade as a technique of ecstasy. A shaman may exhibit a particular magical specialty (such as control over fire, wind or magical flight). When a specialization is present the most common is as a healer. The distinguishing characteristic of shamanism is its focus on an ecstatic trance state in which the soul of the shaman is believed to
leave the body and ascend to the sky (heavens)
"or descend into the earth (underworld). The shaman makes use of spirit helpers, with whom he or she communicates, all the while retaining control over his or her own consciousness. (Examples of possession occur, but are the exception, rather than the rule.) It is also important to note that while most shamans in traditional societies are men, either women or men may and have become shamans.
The musical worship of Apis at Mount Sinai was a "sending across the sea" to bring the lost gods into the presence of the worshipping audience. They, too, had musical worship facilitators to mediate between man and God. Both the Corinthians and Romans were in danger of this form of soothsaying:
For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them. Romans 10:5
But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) Romans 10:6
Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) Romans 10:7
But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; Romans 10:8
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Romans 10:9
For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Romans 10:10
For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. Romans 10:11
A society may be said to be Post-Shamanic when at least 6 of the following 7 conditions have been met:
Shamanic ecstasy is still present, but light trance techniques are also used to access the Otherworld.
The society has developed a highly stratified social structure and very specialized occupations.
Religion and spiritual methodology has become more fully developed and can no longer be properly referred to as 'archaic'. This is expecially important for rituals, ceremonies and ecstatic techniques which had traditionally been the domain of the shamans.
Mystical ecstasy and unitive visions have become at least as important esoteric experiences and doctrines as shamanic ecstasy, ascension and descent in the religious and spiritual life of the community.
The shaman is no longer the primary escort for the souls of the dead into their place in the next world (psychopomp). This role generally either passes onto the priestcraft or clergy to perform through ritual, is an object of individual or group prayer, or is beleived to be done by gods of guardian spirits, angels or demons.
A professional clergy is present which regulates the religious life of the community.
Other forms of healing, divining and counseling are present have replaced shamans as the primary source of such services.
We respectfully submit that there is no Biblical evidence that God commanded or desires people to worship Him with the work of their hands or other body parts. While token incidents are used as proof, the authority is, without hesitation, taken from rituals identified with early Babylonian rituals identified with Lucifer. While we believe that David had no authority to create Israel into a "like the nations" civil-religious state, his musical instruments had no authority:
"Similarly, the instruments of the Bible have their names, and these often betray their origin. Perhaps the sh'phar, or ram's horn, is the most well-known instrument associated with ancient Israel. Scholars have traced the Hebrew name for this instrument back to an Akkadian word (the language of ancient Babylon), and in turn to an even more ancient Sumerian word (the non-Semitic precursors to the Semites in Mesopotamia). Animal horns have been played by many peoples in islands, jungles, and other regions the world over. This was an instrument that Israel also learned to play, and it became associated with the holiest convocation of all, the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). Here was a "devil's instrument" that was used in the most holy worship of Yahweh.
"Another instrument that is associated with David is the lyre or harp (Hebrew kinn'kinn™rr). But here again, this is not an invention of Israel. The word kinn'r (or forms of it) have been found in texts from the mid-third millennium B.C. at ancient Ebla, as well as among the Canaanites (attested at Ugarit) and the Babylonians (Akkadian again). "David's harp" has a long history of (mis)use in pagan circles before it became so dearly associated with the making of music to the Lord in ancient Israel. See the Devil's Instruments.
Nevertheless, this writer believes that the devil's instruments were stolen with God's authority!
We should note that this was not "congregational singing with instrumental accompaniment." Rather, it was music associated with the burning of animal sacrifices in dedicatory or purification sacrifices associated only with Jerusalem and only in leading up to and in the Jerusalem temple. The 'congregation' did not participate in this except to fall on their face until the all clear blast of sound was heard.
Other than in his naked dance we have no evidence that David sang and played his harp as the keynote performer for a religious festival.
Only the Levites performed this and part of their task was to keep the common people out of God's presence. Since they have been outlawed (Ezekiel 40f) we may come boldly before the throne of grace and anyone who stands between the congregation and its God is a usurper.
Lord Jesus Christ has gone into the "most holy place" of which the tabernacle was an earthly model. Only one person at a time can be in that room with God and the Ark. The Ark was covered with the mercy seat and it contained the Word of God. This explains Jesus satatement that we must worship "in spirit" and "in truth." No other person can do that for us or even lead us into the presence of Godd Who is not far from all of us.
Aristotle Politics 1339a notes that instruments add work of the human body to singing and that:
"it is wrong to work hard with the mind and the body at the same time; for it is the nature of the two different sorts of exertion to produce opposite effects,
bodily toil impeding the development of the mind and mental toil that of the body.
"About music on the other hand we have previously raised some questions in the course of our argument, but it is well to take them up again and carry them further now, in order that this may give the key so to speak for the principles which one might advance in pronouncing about it. For it is not easy to say precisely what potency it possesses, nor yet for the sake of what object one should participate in it--
whether for amusement and relaxation,
as one indulges in sleep and deep drinking(for these in themselves are not serious pursuits but merely pleasant, and 'relax our care,' as Euripides says;
owing to which people actually class music with them and employ all of these things,
sleep, deep drinking and music, in the same way,
and they also place dancing in the same class;"or whether we ought rather to think that music tends in some degree to virtue (music being capable of producing a certain quality of character just as gymnastics are scapable of producing a certain quality of body,
music accustoming men to be able to rejoice rightly;
"or that it contributes something to intellectual entertainment and culture (for this must be set down as a third alternative among those mentioned).
"Now it is not difficult to see that one must not make amusement the object of the education of the young;
"for amusement does not go with learning--learning is a painful process.
Instead of learning to enjoy it rightly and be able to judge it when they hear others performing, as the Spartans do? for the Spartans although they do not learn to perform can nevertheless judge good and bad music correctly, so it is said.
And the same argument applies also if music is to be employed for refined enjoyment and entertainment; why need people learn to perform themselves instead of enjoying music played by others?
And we may consider the conception that we have about the gods: Zeus does not sing and harp to the poets himself.
But professional musicians we speak of as vulgar people,
and indeed we think it not manly to perform music,
except when drunk or for fun.
We don't much care what people do to attract people who have no spiritual handles by which God may take hold of them. We do, however, care very much about those who deliberately or in the worship of pure ignorance force God to lie in giving them authority for music and dance as a way to "lead the worshippers into God's presence." We hold this to be despicable blasphemy -- the performers are standing like closed doors between Christ and His Redeemed who have been given the right to come boldly before the throne of Grace. Only two are allowed in the Most Holy Place: the worshipper as priest and God in Jesus Christ. Do not try to "make three into one spirit."
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Counter added 9.12.05 9p 4410
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