Paul Woodhouse - Grace Centered Magazine - Instrumental Music

Paul Woodhouse - Grace Centered Magazine - Instrumental Music

Music mark of Sorcery, Witchcraft, Perversion, the Serpent, Babylon Mother of Harlots.

2.22.20

Scripture contains nothing we can honestly label "Music."  There is no command, example or inference of God calling HIS children into assembly to engage in group singing with or without instruments.  Making unnatural vocal or instrumental sounds disturb the human spirit and is the MARK of these Demonic practices.

        Abomination, Witchcraft, the BEASTS, Sorcery, Charming, Soothsaying,  enchantment, harlots, beguile, serpents, vipers, Serpo, Herpo, inducing wine-drinking, Cunning Craftsmen or Sophists, Rhetoricians, Dogs or Catamites, magic, Voodoo in primitive America, Melodies to deceive, Deceiver, Cunning Crafts, Techne. religious craftsmen, Lucifer,  Locusts, Apollyon, Levi-Leviathan

The REST day for the Little Flock of Lost Spirit was always and is the ANTITHESIS of all RELIGIONS or Worship RitualsAny performed FACTO of self-composed songs, sermons or actions is
Plautus.Ass-Dealer. The word "Parasite" properly denotes "one person who dines with another." The name was originally given to persons who were assistants to the priests and high magistrates, and, consequently, had a respectable signification. The hangers-on, who are called "Parasites" by the Comic writers of Greece and Rome, first received that name from Alexis, the Greek Comedian. It has been well remarked, that their chief characteristics were "importunity, love of sensual pleasures," and "the desire of getting a good dinner without paying for it." They may be subdivided into the jesting, the officious, and the flattering Parasite (assentator), of which latter kind Artotrogus is an admirable specimen. From ancient writers we find that it was the
The Pattern in Ephesians 4 is that Jesus in His STATE of Holy Spirit ordered the Elders as vocational Pastor-Teacher.  The Shepherd does not manufacture the "food" nor does he force the sheep to pay him.  They are commanded to TEACH that which has been taught.  This is the frequent one-piece pattern which no literate reader can miss.

WHY NOT ASK THE WATCHING AND FLEEING WORLD?

Worship.Androgyny.The.Pagan.Sexual.Ideal.html

http://www.piney.com/John.Mark.Hicks.Women.in.the.Assembly.html

Catullus - Poem 63

9 Use a drum: The priests of Cybele, who were either eunuchs, or persons of effeminate and worthless character, walked in their processions beating a "tympanum." a "drum" or "tambourine." The Captain, by his question, contemptuously implies that Agorastocles is such a character. See the Truer lentus, l. 608, and the Note. 
        a timbrel, etc., as a figure of something effeminate, enervating: tympana eloquentiae,Quint. 5, 12, 21:in manu tympanum est,Sen. Vit. Beat. 13, 3.—a timbrel, etc., 

Clement of Alexandrian notes why emasculated men could not be priests:

"One of these charges the Egyptians thus: "If you believe them to be gods, do not mourn or bewail them; and if you mourn and bewail them, do not any more regard them as gods." And another, taking an image of Hercules made of wood (for he happened most likely to be cooking something at home), said,

"Come now, Hercules; now is the time to undergo for us this thirteenth labour, as you did the twelve for Eurystheus, and make this ready for Diagoras," and so cast it into the fire as a log of wood. For the extremes of ignorance are atheism and superstition, from which we must endeavour to keep.

And do you not see Moses, the hierophant of the truth, enjoining that no eunuch, or emasculated man, or son of a harlot, should enter the congregation?
By the two
first he alludes to the impious custom by which men were deprived both of divine energy and of their virility;

and by the third, to him who, in place of the only real God, assumes many gods falsely so called,-as the son of a harlot, in ignorance of his true father, may claim many putative fathers.

THE PERSONA OF RELIGIOUS MUSICIANS OR ACTORS ENDS THE SEARCH FOR ALL OF THOSE FLEEING THEIR CHURCHES.

Galatians 5 I.Wish.They.Would.Go.the.Whole.Way.and.Emasculate.Themselves

Brothers, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. Galatians 5:11

As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves! Galatians 5:12

Chrysostom's Commentary on Galatians:
Galatians 5:1.-"With freedom did Christ set us free; stand fast therefore.115 ."
Ver. 12. "I would that they which unsettle you would even cut themselves off." And he says well "that unsettle you."A man that is heretical after the first and second admonition refuse." (Tit. iii: 10) If they will,  let them not only be circumcised, but mutilated. Where then are those who dare to mutilate themselves; seeing that they draw down the Apostolic curse, and accuse the workmanship of God, and take part with the Manichees?

Chrysostom understood that the pagans used vocal or instrumental noise to stir up or create anxiety so that they could steal your food money. Christ outlawed this in Isaiah 55.  Christ outlawed BLASPHEMY in the modern context of saying that God commanded instrumental distractions when  He DID NOT.

But if you will not allow this,  why do you not mutilate the tongue for blasphemy, the hands for rapine, the feet for their evil courses, in short, the whole body?
For the ear enchanted by the sound of a flute hath often enervated the soul;
and the perception of a sweet perfume by the nostrils hath bewitched the mind, and made it frantic for pleasure .

David's PRAISE word threatened the same sexual proof of superiority:

Ululo
Ulŭlo  I. Neutr., to howl, yell, shriek, utter a mournful cry. B.Transf., of places, to ring, resound, re-echo with howling: penitusque cavae plangoribus aedes Femineis ululant,Verg. A. 2, 488 : resonae ripae, Sil. 6, 285 : Dindyma sanguineis Gallis, Claud. Rapt. Pros. 2, 269 .--

The Goddess Cybele (The Sophia - Zoe Usurpation)

"Here, devote to me thy manhood and become one of my faithful dogs! (emasculated priests) I shall be quick, and the cut will be clean!!!" Catullus: "Oh, Great Goddess, Goddess Cybele, Goddess and Lady of Dindymus! May all your fury be far from my house! Incite others, go! DRIVE OTHER MEN MAD!!!"


Holy Spirit
: NO prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
John Mark Hicks Refutes: "MY Journey in Interpreting the Bible."  2.Peter.1.Prophecy.No.Private.Interpretation
Mike Cope finds Cracts:  But for Hicks, and for many of US, there were CRACKS in the wall of certainty.
Rom. 15:4 For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.
God therefore says:  I am so sorry that I was STUPID and needed "A" holy spirit god to make me INTELLIGIBLE THROUGH Theologians.

SUMMARY OF RECORDED FACTS NOT AVAILABLE TO ANY "DOCTOR OF THE LAW" WHOM JESUS SAID "TAKES AWAY THE KEY TO KNOWLEDGE."

1. Israel fell from grace beyond redemption because of Instrumental-Trinitarian-Perverted Idolatry at Mount Sinai.
2. The NOBILITY turned the REST of God into a day of the Worship as the ABOMINATION they brought from Egypt.
3. The REST of God is Sabbath or the Greek PAUO and demands STOPPING anything beyond Rest, Reading and Rehearsing the Word delivered by Moses.
4. The Civil-Military-Clergy were abandoned behind closed gates to engage in the Lust of Blood and Flesh and the HOLOCAUST of INFANTS and GOATS.
5. The Godly Jews were never gathered to engage in group singing with or without instruments: this was outlawed for the SYNAGOGUE as A School--only of the Word-only.
6. Any kind of musical or theatrical performance would MARK the Effeminate and their refusal to HEAR the Word of God.
7. Even worse any kind of self-exhibition especially SINGING is that which MARKS and produces ALL of the data defining:
 

A CRACKED POT will not Ring True:

A further peculiarity of Dodona was the "bronze," a large gong set vibrating at every breeze by a scourge held in the hand of a figure standing over it;

the persistent ringing passed into a Greek proverbial phrase--Khalkos Dodones ("Brass of Dodona")-- for a continuous TALKERS who has nothing to say. Britannica Members

"A famous oracle in Epi'ros, and the most ancient of Greece. It was dedicated to Zeus (Jupiter), and situate in the village of Dodona.

The tale is, that Jupiter presented his daughter Theb with two black pigeons [Doves, Rock Pigeons] which had the gift of human speech. Lempričre tells us that the Greek word peleiai (pigeons) means, in the dialect of the Eprots, old women; so that the two black doves with human voice were two black or African women. One went to Libya, in Africa, and founded the oracle of Jupiter Ammon; the other went to Eprus and founded the oracle of Dodna. We are also told that plates of brass were suspended on the oak trees of Dodona, which being struck by thongs when the wind blew, gave various sounds from which the responses were concocted. It appears that this suggested to the Greeks the phrase Kalkos Dod ns (brass of Dodona), meaning a babbler, or one who talks an infinite deal of nothing. Bartleby

God's Word, Logos or Regulative Principle MARKS the enemies as rhetoricians, singers, instrument players, actors or fleecers of widows.

GOD GAVE US THE WORD OR REGULATIVE PRINCIPLE AS THE WAY TO MARK "THE SONS OF THE DEVIL WHO SPEAK ON THEIR OWN" AND MAKE YOU PA

Logos  computation, reckoning 2. statement of a theory, argument, ouk emeu alla tou l. akousantas prob. in Heraclit.50; logon ēde noēma amphis alētheiēs discourse and reflection on reality,
IV. inward debate of the soul, reflection, deliberation
Regulative and formative forces, derived from the intelligible and operative in the sensible universe,

Opposite to epithumia
 A. desire, yearning, longing after a thing, desire of or for it, Theaomai :--gaze at, behold, mostly with a sense of wonder3. view as spectators
Opposite Pathos  A. that which happens to a person or thing, incident, accident,  Moralizing Rhetoric
Opposite Poiein to excite passion, Arist.Rh.1418a12; V. Rhet., emotional style or treatment,
Opposite Enthousi-astikos , ē, on, A. inspired,phusisPl.Ti.71e; esp. by music,
Prose OPPOSITE -poięsis, Id.R.390a;
OPPOSITE -poiętikę, D.H.Comp.6; OPPOSITE poięmata, onomatopoeic word
OPPOSITE  emmetra Modus   2. The measure of tones, measure, rhythm, melody, harmony, time; in poetry, measure, metre, mode: Mūsĭcus a, um, adj., = mousikos.
X. the Word or Wisdom of God, personified as his agent in creation and world-government,

Theologians are doomed to call God a liar or INCOMPETENT.  If God had wanted any kind of music in the tuneful sense He was INTELLIGIBLE But denied by C. Leonard Allen.

mousikos kai melōn poētēs2. generally, votary of the Muses,  The Muses were the LOCUSTS unleashed with Apollon their "musical worship leaders." The Greek and Latin literature identifies them as dirty adulteresses

The Muses are the LOCUSTS Apollyon unleashed in a church near you. He is the only personified SPIRITUS over his prostitute WorshipTeam

http://www.piney.com/DocHesTheog.html
[25] the Muses of Olympus, daughters of Zeus who holds the aegis: “Shepherds of the wilderness,
        wretched things of shame, mere bellies,
        we know how to speak many false things as though they were true;
        but we know, when we will, to utter true things.”
            ...and they bade me sing of the race of the blessed gods that are eternally,
                but ever to sing of themselves both first and last.

pharma^kon
3.
enchanted potion, philtre: hence, charm, spell, Od.4.220 sq., Ar.Pl.302, [Circe, Church, Corinth mother of harlots]  Theoc.2.15

Leonard.Allen.POURED.OUT.The.Spirit.of.God.Empowering.the.Mission.of.God

The WORD or LOGOS is God's only Regulative and Governing principle.  God names and Defames personal opinions, personal experiences, rhetoric, singing, playing instruments, acting or "seeing godliness as a means of financial gain. Among the Greeks and others RATIONAL (Logos) are marked by SPEAK or READ identifies Disciples.  Disciples are STUDENTS of what Jesus commanded to be taught

Anything beyond being A School of Christ or those OF the World, Kosmos, Ecumenical or the kingdom of the Devil MAKING war against the Kingdom of Christ.  All Rhetoric, singing



http://www.piney.com/GraceCenteredReview.html

Grace is a word like WORD, SPIRIT, LIFE, LIGHT etc. God is the only SOURCE and Jesus is the only INTECESSOR or MEDIATOR as the ANTITHESIS of the 3 Graces or the Triple Goddesses.

You can freely comment about a Scriptural View:
The pagan GRACES were religious musicians and prostitutes. Paul denying Corrupting the Word or selling your words is defined in the CIVIL Greek World as PROSTITUTION.  When you try to SELL or recrucify Jesus by creating Spiritual Anxiety which silences the School of Christ you will never ever be able to speak the WORD.  Jesus affirmed that when the world hears the world they are angry and dangerous.



Paul said that EVE was wholly seduced and Cain (from a musical Note) was OF that wicked one.  The CAIN thread gave rise to Jubal the father of those who handle (in a sexual sense) musical instruments. He shows up in many nations as Apollon and His LOCUSTS or MUSES.  They are called SORCERERS and will be cast alive into the lake of fire.

 http://www.piney.com/Theophilus.Autolycus.II.html

This Eve, on account of her having been in the beginning deceived by the serpent, and become the author of sin, the wicked demon, who also is called Satan, who then spoke to her through the serpent, and who works even to this day in those men that are possessed by him, invokes as Eve.58 And he is called "demon" and "dragon," on account of his revolting from God. For at first he was an angel. And concerning his history there is a great deal to be said; wherefore I at present omit the relation of it, for I have also given an account of him in another place.

The word "abomination" is also key to understanding the context. In Hebrew, the word "to 'evah," (abomination) is almost invariably linked to idolatry. In the passages from which both verses are taken, God tells Moses to tell the people not to follow the idolatrous practices of the people around them, people who sacrificed their children to Molech, or who masturbated into the fire to offer their semen to Molech, for example. Chapter 20 starts off with the same warning.

"To 'evah" also means "something which is ritually unclean," not something evil in itself, like rape or theft. Eating pork or having sex during menstruation are ritually unclean.


3.Graces.Ugliness.gif Grace   In a famous New Testament passage, the quality said to be greater than faith or hope is caritas (1 Corinthians 13), translated sometimes "charity," sometimes "love."

Both translations are inexact. The word meant "grace," specifically the grace of the Triple Goddess, embodied in the boon-bestowing Three Graces who dispensed caritas (Latin) or charis (Greek) and were called the Charites. Julian said their grace was a gift from heaven: "The threefold gift of the Charites comes to us from heaven, from the circles of the stars."

1 Romans sometimes called grace venia, the divine correlative of Venus, bringing visible tokens of the goddess's favor.

2 Grace meant the same as Sanskrit karuna, dispensed by the heavenly nymphs and their earthly copies, the sacred harlots of Hindu temples (devadasis) . Their "grace" was a combination of beauty, kindness, mother-love, tenderness, sensual delight, compassion, and care. Graces were emanations of the Goddess. They danced in her shrines. They tended to her adornment. They acted as midwives to the gods.
        They were patrons of music, dance, poetry, and art.
3 They were shown over and over in the same classic pose as three naked women dancing, in attitudes strongly resembling those of the Heavenly Nymphs on the Temple of Love at Khajuraho in lndia
6 Christians took the pagan concept of charis and struggled to divest it of sexual meanings for application to an ascetic creed. "Charity" became a basic tenet of primitive Christianity, as of Buddhism before it, on the theory that a sure place in heaven could be won by giving away one's worldly goods to the poor.


NEW SundaySchoolinExilecom Update 11.8.19 There are a number of ABSOLUTES in Scripture. These absolutes are defined both inclusively and exclusively in the prophets. Jesus was "sanctified and sent" from God the Father. He and those who Hear the word are IN the World but not OF the World. ALL performance "worship" beyond the School of Christ is based on the period of the Monarchy. These were abandoned by God to worship the starry host.


Paul Woodhouse, Grace Church of Christ, Instrumental Music is Commanded by Psalmos. A review of an article appearing in Grace Centered Magazine. Grace Centered Magazine, like many others, seems to see its goal as defending the Vineyard-like "New Wineskins" dogma and denouncing those who will not get sucked into the instrumental fold.

Posted a thread on GCM Forum and then blocked me from correcting the false impression. I have posted my rebuttal of Terry Rush who insists that 'we are wrong about instrumental music.'  Like most of the band, Terry has never tested false teachings by the NACC stable of writers to see that they are lying about all of the Bible and church history.

Terry Rush Our stance on instrumental music is wrong: Discussed at Grace Centered Forum but rebuttal blacklisted. Therefore, I have posted a growing review.  Wade Hodges confesses that the Tulsa Soulwinning workshop really means WINNING for the NACC who spreads all of the false teachings at these meetings of the giddy gatherings.


        Gen 6:4 There were giants in the earth in those days;
       
and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men,

        and they bare children to them,
        the same became mighty men [gibbowr] which were of old, men of renown.

The Ghebers of Hebron 2 Hoaea, xii. 4 derives the name Israel from Sarah to contend, to fight, and El = God of Fire. — Gen. xxxii. '28. Asarians, Asriel, Israel, a name of the War god {Exodus, xiii. 21, 22, xiv. 25), Saturn and the Sun. The Fire-god Azar was the God of war, and M'irs was the Sun. — Macrob. I. xvii. OS

But these fire-worshippers carried with them the arks of Moloch and Khiun (Life-god), their Adon, and they had, like the other peoples of the Delta, their Mysteries, which the priests instituted. They took with them from Phoenicia, probably, a certain knowledge of fixed vocal signs; and it would not be safe to deny to Syria the possession of some sort of (Syrian) hieroglyph
Gen. 6:5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,
        and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Gen. 6:6 And it repented the Lord that he had MADE man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart


INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

External "grace" or CHARA is the base meaning of charismatic. Charismatic links directly to musical, homosexual "worship." Melody or Psallo is never a "musical word" but speaks of the twanging bow string and "singing" arrows of Apollo or Abaddon or Apollyon. He will arouse the MUSES or "locusts" about now to separate those with different MARKS. More later. Charismatic or threskia "worship" was highly musical and homosexual.

You must understand that Dr. Rubel Shelly intends for the musical worship team to "help lead you into the presence of God." And musical, dance or theatrical groups agree with Dr. Shelly and claim that "we are the mediators between God and man." This has always been the theme of mechanical instruments which in both Hebrew and Greek is from the same word as "weapon."

To resist this, Grace-Centered magazine and other groups seem intent on discrediting those who still believe that Jesus Christ as Spirit is in our midst and cannot, must not, be "called into His temple" with machines.

This is because you cannot create a new form of religion or cult, according to researchers, without...

First: making the old pre post-moderns disillusioned by "upsetting the equilibrium by attacking traditional religion. (This is what Hybels pushes for in his destabilization)." See Under Lynn Anderson's model which is quite identical to that used in witchcraft.

"An art so deeply rooted in the security patterns of the community should not, in theory, be subject to rapid change; and, in fact, this seems to be the case.

Musical style appears to be one of the most conservative, if not the most conservative of culture traits.

Religion, language, even many aspects of social structure may change;

an enterely new set of tunes or rhythms or harmonic patterns may be introduced;

but, in its over-all character, a musical style will remain intact.

Only the most profound social upheavals--

the coming of a new population;
the acceptance of a new set of mores--
or migration to a new territory,

involving complete acculturation will profoundly transform a musical style, and even then the process takes place very slowly." (Goldschmidt, Walter, Exploring the Ways of Mankind, p. 609, Holt, Rinehart and Winston)

Those navigating the winds of change know that as "wine may be fine but likker is quicker," if you are going to radicallty change the music, as plato says "to change the laws," you have to use prayerful brinkmanship: hoping that you can push them to the edge of emotional breakdown without getting fired. In that case, you may have to dodge and weave and momentarily retreat to "safe" preaching until it is time to give it another, below the belt, jab.

We have reviewed Rubel Shelly and John York's Narrative Theology where change is acceptable even if you have to translate the Exodus into a nation "baptized by the Holy Spirit," our "spiritual fathers" and a pattern for worship and community (commune).

Narrative Theology is defined here. If this system is going to work then the styles of music will have to be used to "break down the equilibrium" to get them to accept a new "set of laws."

Rubel Shelly and John York's retrospective see the Corinthians in danger but having been "baptized by the Holy Spirit." Like the wineskin parable, the Exodus is radically reconstructed here.

"Rising up to play" as a clear and present danger in Corinth is the musical idolatry Satan and His demons used at Mount Sinai to radically reconstruct the covenant of grace into the Law of Moses and a death sentence.

Christian Chronicle Worship Forum Reviews: Dan Dozier --Jack Reese

New notes added 6/10/2000

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.

Part Two

Part Three


The Call For Explicit Endorsement by Refusing to Teach the Truth and by merging with those with whom we disagree.

For those using psychological violence to try to force non-instrumentalists to "at least" fellowship musical groups, J. W. McGarvey is a good example of "who gets the victory over whom."

"In 1950 bro. J.P. Sewell, in a Harding College lecture, recalled the following advice, given to him by bro. McGarvey away back in 1902. Ist is advice preachers today might ponder.

"You are on the right road, and whatever you do, don't let anybody persuade you that you can successfully combat error by fellowshipping it and going along with it. I have tried it. I believed at the start that was the only way to do it. I've never held membership in a congregation that uses instrumental music. I have, however, accepted invitations to preach without distinction between churches that used it and churches that didn't. I've gone along with their papers and magazines and things of that sort. During all these years I have taught the truth as the NT teaches it to every young preacher who has passes through the College of the Bible. Yet, I do not know of more than six of those men who are preaching the truth today. It won't work. See J. W. McGarvey's battle.

While wanting to appear to be tolerant it is easy to give consent where the "musical entertainment" will always be more "exciting" and sense-satisfying than devotion to the Word without human adornment in song and sermon.


So, you can believe it, when people try to radically and instantly upset traditional music you can bet that they have underhanded goals of profoundly upsetting the equilibrium of people for the sole purpose of changing their total culture to "fit the pattern" of those acting as change agents. And they always assume a grace-centered mask of superiority.

More threatening, those intent on eradicating the total Biblical pattern of teaching as opposed to "music" you know that even the Laws of God are being attacked and the term "Post-Denominational or Post-Modern is their confession knowing that the people they have kept in ignorance will know no better.

Those making the changes resist the Biblical pattern and rather try to manipulate you to enable you to "Navigate the Winds of Change" without totally sending you into dissociation or schizophrenia.

"However, it is important to note that Jeroboam I was under no illusions regarding the nature of the images that he had fashioned, for he spoke of them as 'thy gods, Israel, which brought the up out of the land of Egypt" (1 Kgs. 12:28). That other Israelites adopted precisely the same attitude towards the calves is made plain by Hosea, who said of the Samarian idol, 'A workman made it, it is not God" (Hos. 8:6).

"The basic reason for contemporary denunciations of the religious practices current in the northern kingdom is that bull-worship encouraged the syncretism of YHWH-veneration with the depraved fertility cult of Baal, and as such posed a serious threat to the entire ethic of the Sinai Covenant.." (Harrison, R. K., Introduction to the Old Testament, Eerdmans, p.412).

Bible 101aaa knows that Amos was not condemning a "bad mental attitude" but the wholesale "navigating" Israel into the same musical idolatry which destroyed the Covenant at Mount Sinai. This put the common people, now "strangers," under the control of the musical Levites and under the sacrificial system. You cannot adopt's Israel's noise without repudiating Jesus who is not just a "burning bull."

Tolerance for those intending to destroy the eternal Christian System or to accomodate to the Baby Boomers (Infantile Drummers) shows a lack of moral courage and "aptness" to teach the word.

Because it can easily be shown that many "churches" in their present incarnation are more Greek than Biblical, it is interesting that Plato warned that music was a tool of "gradualism" used as change agent. In the Republic, Book IV he understood that those changing the musical forms intended to change the laws. Therefore --

"music and gymnastic (must) be preserved in their original form, and no innovation made. They must do their utmost to maintain them intact.

And when anyone says that mankind must regard...
The newest song which the singers have, (Odyssey)...

"they will be afraid that he may be praising, not some new songs, but a new kind of song;

and this ought not to be praised, or conceived to be the meaning of the poet;
for any musical innovation is full of danger in the whole State..

So Damon tells me, and I can quite believe him; he says that when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them..."

"Then," I said, "our guardians must lay the foundations of their fortress in music?"
"Yes," I replied, 'in the form of amusement: and
at first sight it always appears harmless'." 

Alan Morrison Notes that:

"It is important to realise that the bulk of the New Style of Worship songs have been written by people who are ardent advocates of Charismatic teachings which previous generations of believers rejected as "fanaticism" and "enthusiasm".

"These songs have been composed for the deliberate purpose of seeding their teachings in churches.
 
"In other words, the New Style of Worship is promotional -- and what it seeks to promote is another gospel and a form of Christianity which is very far removed from the Bible,
 
although the majority of professing Christians today are unable to recognise that.
 
"The New Style of Worship songbooks have been deliberately published in order to effect a change in churches to this new form of Christianity. One only has to read the books written by the major advocates and composers of the New Style of Worship to be convinced of that.

Plato again:

And, when a man allows music to play upon him and to pour into his soul through the funnel of his ears those sweet and soft and melancholy airs of which we were just now speaking, and his whole life is passed in warbling and the delights of song;

in the first stage of the process the passion or spirit which is in him is tempered like iron, and made useful, instead of brittle and useless.

But, if he carries on the softening and soothing process,

in the next stage he begins to melt and waste, until he has wasted away his spirit and cut out the sinews of his soul; and he becomes a feeble warrior.

Very true. Music has always been called "the effeminate art."

If the element of spirit is naturally weak in him the change is speedily accomplished, but if he have a good deal,

then the power of music weakening the spirit renders him excitable;

on the least provocation he flames up at once, and is speedily extinguished;

instead of having spirit he grows irritable and passionate and is quite impracticable. (The Great Dialogs, Plato, Classic edition, p. 312)

"History notes that when religion swings from repression to permissiveness,

those with mental disorders lose their emotional footing and

react by flaunting the violation of previous religious views. Karen Armstrong, A History of God.

Others have called this "the holiness of sin." By sinning, grace may abound and the thumbed-nose is given to old moral values because, in one pattern, you simply have to burn down the old world order in imitation of the Aztec jubilee before your new "lighted fires" can be restored to all of the houses (congregations).

Thus, Hitler warned that the "emotional" could be used as "human material" but if the leaders were emotion-driven then the offspring of the movement would be sterile. It is probably true that the neo-pagans, like Antiochus, will take over the temples and "drum you to death on a drum frame" if you refuse to eat a bite of their "pork." However, they will not replicate Christianity and the "assembly" will again be driven underground where it can recover its manliness and produce a true Restoration Movement without "bread and circuses." Old religious "fortresses" make great night clubs and museums. Even musical theologians are warning about the new musical sectarianizing and the erotic nature of the new praise hymns.

Wasting or melting away is the message of most musical instrumentsd:

Nebel (h5035) neh'-bel; from 5034; a skin- bag for liquids (from collapsing when empty); hence a vase (as similar in shape when full); also a lyre (as having a body of like form): - bottle, pitcher, psaltery, vessel, viol (A "famiar spirit.")

Nabel (h5034) naw-bale'; a prim. root; to wilt; gen. to fall away, fail, faint; fig. to be foolish or (mor.) wicked; causat. to despise, disgrace: - disgrace, dishonour, lightly esteem, fade (away, - ing), fall (down, -ling, off), do foolishly, come to nought, * surely, make vile, wither


In the new attack "Getting Real" seems to mean "getting non-instrumentalists." After all, they "stood in the gap" to get Jesus with musical instruments ordained by God for war.

> "Many of us need a reality check." Grace Centered Magazine Statement of faith.

> "Gospel is not a "correct" view of instrumental music in the worship service.

> "I think that sums the purpose and direction of Grace Centered Magazine. Real, core Christianity--no legalism allowed.

Paul's "Core Gospel" was called "milk" and it was fed to those "still carnal" because they couldn't advance to turning loose of self and become a suffering servant like God-Incarnate. The Corinthians never advanced beyond the Core made of Milk and are still the pattern of "unity in diversity" to those Paul would still not claim as "the perfected."

So Paul begins:

-

Let's Get Real: The Instrumental Music Issue by Paul Woodhouse

Grace Centered Magazine June 2001. Because of previous threats we are not able to reproduce the article here. Paul's quotes or concepts will be in Red, our comments in Black and other quotations in Blue:

The growing theme defending instrumental worship does not take note of the huge Biblical and historical resources which equates instruments and even complex singing to the secular or pagan world. Paul, whose words are so easily perverted, connects it to demon worship at Mount Sinai.

It is a fact that instrumental music is always ascribed to Satan teaching the Baby Boomers (Infantile Drummers) how to seduce the people away from the literal presence of the Word and down into the dark valley of the Cainites using mixed-sex choirs, wine, instrumental music and sexual perversion with Satan's elders able to image themselves as either male or female.

This is the message of Enoch quoted by Jude. But God will come with ten thousand of His saints just as He did at Mount Sinai when Israel "rose up to play" with idolatrous, musical worship.

A modern (probably musical) scholar notes that:

"In pagan traditions, musical instruments are invented by gods or demi-gods, such as titans (Satans). In the Bible, credit is assigned to antediluvian patriarchs, for example, the descendants of Cain in Genesis 4:21. There is no other biblical tradition about the invention of musical instruments." (Freedman, David Noel, Bible Review, Summer 1985, p. 51). (Proof Here).

While we are not obligated to believe all of the recorded history, it should give pause to those who proclaim that the non-instrumental churches resist because they are sectarian or Pharisee hypocrites.

Ignorance even at the highest university level may be an excuse for musical worship but one doubts that not trying to find out is excusable.

Because of his pa st experiences, Paul believes that this gives him authority to speak to the non-instrumentalists to get them to change their minds or bad attitudes and agree with the pro-instrumentalists.

However, most of our backgrounds almost guarantees that we have never truly heard the musical worship horror at Mount Sinai which lost Israel The Book of the Covenant and earned them The Book of The Law. It separated them into "strangers" and "clergy" where the Levites would kill you for trying to get into the symbolic presence of God when the music (called noise) was accompanying the slaughter of animals. Yes, Jesus did die for "A Cappella Music" because each priest is now able to come boldly before the throne of grace and no Levitical musician is allowed in the space which permits only each priest and God. Musicians claim to be "mediators between God and man." Therefore, you cannot worship to the beat of the music without denying a fundamental part of the Gospel.

Next, Paul Woodhouse identifies the instrumental music issue as a "hot button" matter in churches of Christ.

But, it seems to me that most of the hot button pushers are pro instrumental.

To the alert, the association of instrumental music and telling God: "we won't hear you" is clear.

To all of the "church Fathers" and denomination founders and theologians the non use of instruments was an absolute belief held "en toto" until the liberal 19th century among protestants.

To the alert, those who should know that the sectarians added instruments in an attempt to take over churches of Christ in the South for the larger Society, this is a hot button issue because it is a Biblical issue.

When the aggresive "evangelizing" pro instrumentalists "invade" then the button is pushed and must be met with the universally true but almost universally unknown to preachers facts.

The non-instrumentalists did not invent the new but ancient pagan "praise" concept believing, like David, that the lost gods can be called into the new but not-yet-paid-for temples or that praise jacks you up into the presence of God.

Christianity Today notes that the "praise craze" is a profound sectarianizing event even within a given congregation. When you have a song singing group but the Baby Boomers insist on "contemporary Christian" then you have developed sectarianism and it wasn't the older people who sowed the discord or divided the church. As it did in black churches and "charismatic" churches this will drive the masculine influence underground probably where God wants it.

To those wandering from sea to sea and from "christian" university to "christian" university with the mantra that legalistic churches of Christ are the unique sowers of discord, we offer the following growing table:

Some History of Instrumental music in worship 

Scholars who rejected Music

Ambrose
Arnobius
Augustine (354-430)
Psalm 149
Psalm 41
Aquinas, Thomas
Vocal
Instrumental
Basil the Great (c. 329-379)
Beza, Theodore
Boethius
Calvin, John
Campbell, Alexander
Cardinal Cajetan
Charles Spurgeon
Chrysostom
John Homily 1
Clark, Adam Methodist
The Serpent Role
Clement of Alexandria
Instrumental Music
Exhortation to Heathen
Cotton Mather
Cyprian
Dabney, Presby.
Edersheim
Synagogue
Temple
Erasmus
Gaudentius
Girardeau, John
Green, William
Gregory of Nazianzus
(c. 330-c. 390)
Guess, Jack, Baptist
Hippolytus
Irenaeus
Jerome (c. 347-420)
John Knox
Josephus
Justin Martyr
Kerr
Martin Luther
McGarvey, J. W.
Milligan
Mosheim
Neander
Niceta
Pliny
Robertson
Smith, John
Stone, Barton W.
St. Ephraim
Tennyson
Tertullian
Theodoret
Zwingli
and on and on....

Churches which rejected or reject Music

American Presbyterian Church
Baptists prior to the 19th century
Catholic church for 1250 years (The pope in 1906 outlawed most instruments)
Church of God groups
Church of Scotland
Church of the Brethren
Eastern Catholic Church
Gospel Hall
Irish Presbyterian Church
Islam
Is Music Allowed in Islam
Jews (some do not even today)
Mennonites
Methodist Episcopal Church
Old German Baptist Brethren
Primitive Baptists still do not
Quakers groups
Reformed (Calvinistic) church of North America
Restoration churches until the mid 1800's
Serbian Eastern Orthodox
The Established Church
Some modern Baptist churches
(Many other churches with denominational structures {Church of England etc.} made attempts to remove instruments from the worship services).
 
Musical Sectarians in the Restoration Movement if the "instrument becomes part of worship."

Paul Woodhouse Next, Paul identifies this as a volatile issue because of the "distinctive" restoration movement group which possibly hatched from an egg in the later part of the 19th century and invented a cappella. For some reason a new word has been coined for the old timers: "Distinctives" meaning the peculiarities of people who won't dance when the priests pipe.

We believe that the normal people speak of "congregational singing" and not "A Cappella Music." Music is not a religious word in the New Testament and A Cappella was a latter day invention of the Pope who could not allow instruments among the top powers. Nevertheless, they trained young boys and invented A Cappella which made them into an "organic pipe organ" and the singing style was "organum." The musical ritual and "young, attractive" people dressed like girls is a universal theme is A Cappella but not Biblical.

"Music" in the classics often groups "singing and dancing" where harmony was a purely physical or carnal activity. Music with song and dance was the home-coming animal sacrifice for the prodigal but music is not a Christian "worship" word as it was not an Old Testament concept.

In the 1911 issue of the Catholic Encyclopedia instruments still were not allowed in the Sistine chapel and the Encyclopedia's articles on music agree totally with the congregational singing position as the ideal. That ideal fell aside when the Cathedrals as Seeker-Centers ran short on cash and before they found out about thumb screws and the burning stake.

Therefore, the pro instrumentalists use the word "A cappella" to allow the introduction of musical worship teams as the most sectarianizing and legalistic movement in history

David Lipscomb wrote as late as 1878 that:

We do not think anyone has ever claimed authority from Scriptures to use the organ in worship. They only claim it is not condemned. It is used as an assister in worship...Prayer, praise, thanksgiving and making melody in the heart (mind) unto the Lord are acts of worship ordained of God, but no authority do we find for for the organ." (p. 78).

It was the sectarians who all began as non-instrumental Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and the Restoration Movement but changed the two-thousand year old practice of congregational singing into A Cappella (choirs) and the use of instruments. This had no claimed biblical authority but was to help pay for the new buildings and entertain the city folk made affluent by the Civil War which was more about religion than slavery.

This is the typical effort as Barton Stone declared: "They strike the blow and raise the alarm." The Zealots would stab a person in a large assembly and then cry out: "Foul murder. Catch the murderer." Judas was such a "sicarri" and his "thief's bag" was for "carrying the mouthpieces of wind instruments.

Paul Woodhouse Next, Paul Woodhouse accuses non-instrumentalists of constructing an elaborate but flawed system to defend the a cappella tradition as the only way to "express praise" to God.

First, we don't know what God will permit. However, consistent with non-Catholic theological history from Pentecost onward, what is safe and non-sectarianizing or non-divisive is to follow the Words of Christ and His apostles. If one does not believe that Christ and Paul are able to speak to the superior modern mind then that's ok. However, that does not give authority to pass judgment upon others who believe that Christianity is informed by a Book of revelation. Most of us don't care to hear about someone being a 13th apostle to pronounce Paul and Peter as divided men writing to divided churches and therefore not authoratative.

Second, we should note that there was no collective "praise service" under the Law, in the Synagogue, in the New Testament or in the historical church for hundreds of years. The practice was to chant inspired Scripture. "Praise ritual" is a distinctly pagan practice which believes that you can manipulate the gods or mankind if you praise enough. This is rank legalism.

For instance, Dr. Rubel Shelly along with the Vineyard people believe that with "facilitation" which is "manipulation" the musical praise leader can "move the worshipers into the presence of God." Paul specifically warned against the old Babylonian and Egyptian attempts to use music to ascend to God or to force him to come to them to bestow some favor.

Praise and dance teams claim the role of "mediator between God and man." That is what "moving them into the presence of God" claims.

Again, we don't know how much one can get away with but the non-instrumentalists have constructed nothing. It simply "justifies God" by accepting the Words of Christ as the unalterable pronouncement from heaven.

Non-instrumentalists remained faithful to almost 1900 years of church history with no Biblical defense in the literature or possible. Therefore, it is a false accusation to blame continuing a 2000 Biblical practice without falling into secular culture.

Therefore, one wonders why there is so much hostility and highly-organized effort as the first principle of establishing a new religion or sect:

First, you must destabalize the people by tearing down their total belief system before you can begin again.

Rubel Shelly and Randy Harris in The Second Incarnation equate this to the burning down old structures of the Aztecs. Not to worry that up to 20,000 were sacrificed in the 52 year and 52 week "Jubilee" to help the gods prop up the sky. The keynoter was given all of the wine, women and song for a year. Then, he laid aside his flutes and harps, climbed the steps up the "tower of babel," exposed his heart and "moved into the presence of the sun god." Maybe not.

In a scholarly study of the Willow Creek Association which fuels this new antism against non-instrumentalists notes:

First: disillusioned or "upsetting the equilibrium" with "traditional religion." (This is what Hybels pushes for in his destabilization).

Lynn Anderson in Navigating the Winds of Change repeats this almost completely and this is not different from the methods of Shepherding movements, the commercial Zoe Group or even Witchcraft. Click for some references.

Next, the churches of Christ constructed nothing. There was no rationale for instruments when the Legalistic system of animal sacrifices ceased and therefore the Jews did not use instruments until A. D. 1815 in a liberal synagogue which brought lawsuits and divided the Jews.

Music has always been a most works-intensive effort to "call the gods" to their temple.

The use of the "psallo" argument was used only when the sectarians began using it because there was no other proof-text or remote Biblical authority which would have survived the scholarship of the day. Most were too smart to try to drag the Legalistic Monarchy practices into the New Covenant church. People still tell strange stories about Psallo but it does not allow instruments because it defines as one of the allowable "instruments"--the human lips and mouth.

When the Restoration Movement tried to correct many apostasies, the use of instruments was almost universally rejected by non-Catholic influenced group such as Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians.

Therefore, music was not an issue and it would have been impossible to "construct" a flawed system to defend a problem which did not exist.

When the sectarians and institutionalists added instruments while dividing churches and sowing discord, the churches of Christ did not move an inch. Any competent scholar out of the Baptists, Methodists or Presbyterians would have been fully aware that the Old Testament condemns instruments (Calvin, Clark) and why they were not used in Christianity or Judaism once the sacrificial system was dead. It was left for the Disciples whose roots are the "High Church" of the Anglican movement which gains, from the Pope, the authority to add, like the Pharisees, new traditionalism in order to ignore the commands of God.

Churches of Christ kept on not doing what it was always agreed that one should not do. I suppose the fact that they "won't move" is what creates all of the hostility toward non-instrumentalists.

Paul Woodhouse: Paul Woodhouse writes this appeal to the "non-instrumental Churches of Christ" tradition.

A tradition as among the Pharisees and Scribes required two primary things condemned by Jesus:

1. The Revealed Word of God is deliberately ignored in order to use some new "pattern."

2. The purpose was to "sell books" and "steal the homes of widows."

3. Therefore, a tradition has no Biblical foundation.

4. Instrumental "god calling or appeasing" was the traditionalism of all known paganism.

The key embodiment of a "traditionalists" were the Pharisees. Again, were specificially marked by Jesus for "adding their own practices in order to ignore the commands of God" and by doing so for mercinary reasons.

A Jew who simply stuck to the 1400 year old story of the Old Testament would never be called a traditionalist.

We are known as churches of Christ as a stable platform against instrumentalists who tried to claim everyone in their own census. The name "The Church of Christ" is Biblical and historical in all groups. Click for the proof. It was not "invented" in order to create a new sect.

Non-instrumental church of Christ is like the word "Campbellite" intended to distort and inflict damage.

A traditionalist would be one who adds instrumental music at an exploding rate simply because "the Jones are doing it." This clearly defines a tradition and people don't hesitate to panic when the bills can't get paid because the people have already been starved to death for lack of the Word (Amos 5; 6; 8).

Paul Woodhouse: Paul's goal is to get the non-instrumentalists to examine their opposition to using mechanical instruments in worship. At least, the goal is to get them to quit condemning instrumentalists as a "freedom to disagree."

We are aware of no rational effort to disturb the instrumentalists to the extent that the irrational efforts against NOT using instruments have crashed into the printed page with Jubilees and other legalistic festivals as well as web magazines. To ask for a reconsideration presumes that the issue had not been considered for 1900 years. And it pretends that the instrumentalists have the high ground which repudiates the entire Bible and historical evidence. The goal would be to get non-instrumental churches to add instruments or to agree that instrumentalists have such superior authority that it was worth using the Law of Silence to add instruments as a "law" which you followed or got out. If you got out then you were fair game to be accused with sowing discord.

I shoot at a rabbit, he runs, he is a harsh, legalistic little fellow for refusing to join me at table.

The direct command of God is to teach the Word. That does not condemn people personally but challenges their grasp of Biblical truth.

This becomes an issue only when people presume to make a denomination out of churches of Christ. Otherwise, why should there be such judgmental hostility against those who won't join the instrumentalists nor agree that "we are wrong and you are right?"

The instrumentalists sectarianized after 1900 years. Might they not want to reexamine the issue without aid and comfort from those who still claim to be members of the church of Christ but have no foundation upon which to pass judgment against non-instrumentalists?

The division and sectaranizing occurs when instrumentalist did and do forcefully introduce instruments and "steal widow's homes" by driving them out of the buildings they paid for.

Events like Jubilee and the Zoe group and other activities sow the discord by spending huge efforts to blame the guilt upon those who "upon being invaded turn hostile and mount an attack." This is known as The Guilt Clause.

We have the musical sectarian's approval to condemn any mechanical means of worship as sin just as the pro music people claimed that it was sinful when used as worship but not when used as an aid to worship.

Because worship is defined by Jesus as "in spirit" or in the mind and devoted to the truth (His words) you can turn the buildings into theaters in a fulfillment of Revelation 18 but you cannot call it Christian Worship. It is thievery to take the "logo" Christian and glue it onto our practices.

Therefore to promote instrumental music as part of worship means that even those who introduced the first ones would brand you as sinful because they denied that it was "worship" even though the judge rejected their "logic."

All of the known Biblical and historical information condemns instruments as mind control and sinful. We just don't have time to repeat all of that information here.

Paul Woodhouse: Paul's approach to show the illogic of the anti-instrumentalists. Their first argument:

"Argument #1: Instrumental music, which was acceptable under the Mosaic covenant, is not authorized in New Testament worship. This is incorrect.

The first part is certainly incorrect.

Instrumental music was continued by Israel at Mount Sinai as ongoing Egyptian worship which they always lusted to restore. This "because of transgression" lost Israel the Covenant and shackled them with mandatory animal sacrifices and a priesthood. They were conditionally sentenced to captivity and death and it was finally carried out under the Kings "like the nation's" kings facilitating "like the nation's" worship.

The instruments of David were added to a "like the nations worship" tolerated when the elders demanded "set a king over us" as they fired God. God promised the kings would destroy them and He would not stop it. However, He sent the musical prophets from the Philistine high place and the destruction of the wheat crop as signs that they were lost beyond redemption.

In the end, it was Amos who spelled out the doom because the leaders were into "wine, women and song" and the people hungered and thirsted for the Word but could not find it. As a result, they went into captivity.

Click to Read Adam Clark and others who will tell you the facts.

The instruments made noise during animal sacrifice to force the people--outside the camp-- to fall on their face. If any of the "audience" who were just incidentially in Jerusalem stumbled into the holy precincts the Levites, like flaming cherubim, would put them to death. The common people did not worship with music.

"Numbers 18: 2-7. thy brethren also of the tribe of Levi--The departments of the sacred office, to be filled respectively by the priests and Levites, are here assigned to each.

To the priests was committed the charge of the sanctuary and the altar,

while the Levites were to take care of everything else about the tabernacle. The Levites were to attend the priests as servants-- (they did not serve God)

bestowed on them as "gifts" to aid in the service of the tabernacle-

while the high and dignified office of the priesthood was a "service of gift."

"A stranger," that is, one, neither a priest nor a Levite, who should intrude into any departments of the sacred office, should incur the penalty of death. ROBERT JAMIESON

As musical worship teams and Sister Singers claim to mediate for Christ (Who had his dispensation or "Blackaby Assignment"), they intrude into the pulpit area which in Catholicism is "the most holy place." And because their authority is that of Mosaic Legalism, they incur the death penalty for which there is no redemption.

That is, according to the fall in the wilderness "standing in the holy place" and pretending to be mediators.

This was not instrumental praise. The Levitical teams praised but this was a form of boasting and it was in defense of the temple state and not for God.

The people were shut out of the Temple to protect them from the horror of the burden which had been laded onto the priests and the Levites. All of the musical affairs were ritual purification or dedication of the "like the nations temple" and never for congregational assembly at which God outlawed blowing the trumpets and making a joyful noise because the assembly (synagogue) was for instruction (Num 10:7).

Some of the "proof-texts" used to defend the "Jews always sang with instrumental accompaniment" are separated in time by up to 600 years. If we heard of a church who held an exorcism ritual in a Catholic church in AD 1400 we would not drag this up as authority for instrumental worship 600 years later.

The synagogue (under various names) was the assembly of the people using the Hebrew word equivalent to the Christian Assembly.

There was never any praise service in the people's assemblies or synagogues and assuredly no instruments.

"Music" is a secular or pagan word: it is not a Yahweh Word. Therefore, anyone who interprets "teach with Psalms" into a "music" word simply is ignoring the Word of God.

Saul and then David became human kings of a secular temple-state and thefore "bluff" or panic was one of their major weapons.

The Levites were to "excel" over all others. As a result of the musical idolatry at Mount Sinai, the common people became "strangers" and they would be killed if they wandered into the holy precincts or were not "outside the gates" or camp when the loud noise began to signal the animal sacrifices.

Halal (h1894) 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 word gave rise to the word "Lucifer."

Heylel (h1966) hay-lale'; from 1984 (in the sense of brightness); the morning-star: - lucifer.

The temple and its ritual was God's supernatural sign that He had largely abandoned Israel to captivity and destruction.

Scholars are aware that the temple "law" was a radical change from the Law of Moses. This new religion was like all of the other surrounding nations like the Canaanites and Babylonians:

"The book of Psalms contain new doctrine after the Law of Moses. And after the writing of Moses, it is the second book of doctrine... (David) first gave to the Hebrews a new style of psalmody, by which he abrogates the ordinances established by Moses with respect to sacrifices, and introduces the new hymn and a new style of jubilant praise in the worship of God; and throughout his whole ministry he teaches very many other things that went beyond the law of Moses." (Fragment of Commentary by Hippolytus, bishop of Rome, Ante-Nicene, V, p. 170)

The king of Tyre was a type of Lucifer or even Lucifer's agent. Lucifer was the fallen angel who in all of the ancient accounts seduce the people with mixed-sex choirs, wine, instrumental music and perverted sex because Lucifer was bi-sexual:

Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. Eze.28:13

When the King / Queen (Lucifer was bi-sexual) played the harp it was "the song of the prostitute."

Therefore, far from being a sign of spirituality, the Monarchy or temple-state "worship" was a profound sign to everyone of the gagging horrible nature of sin. How better to illustrate this to the leaders than let them fall totally in time.

The common people were put outside of this "worship" by the Levitical Musicians who were like the flaming cherubim who guarded the garden of Eden once Adam and Eve had forsaken God.

Paul Woodhouse: Next, the foundation is laid for instruments because Paul commanded "speaking" with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. This seems to be the major undertaking of Grace Centered Magazine as one of the driving forces for the first step to a new sect: make everyone hate their old churches and their old preachers and elders.

True. The word is speak and not sing. Noticed that, eh? Speak is the same word as preach. The resources were all inspired Biblical text. It is called the Words of Christ in Colossians and Spirit in Ephesians because Jesus said "my words are spirit and life." (John 6:63).

One of the first heresies was singing self-composed songs. The very first is defined by McClintock and Strong as the "Musical Worship Minister."

Paul showed the Orphic, vegetarian, instrumentalists how to worship with Dionysic, meat-eater, wine-drinking, instrumentalsits in Rome by using the same "singing" method:

For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me. Rom 15:3

For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. Rom 15:4

Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus: Rom 15:5

That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Rom 15:6

This is the "singing to the Gentiles" word but it is not a musical prescription.

The result would be singing and making melody in the heart because "singing" was secular and "melody" means the sickening thud or twang of a bowstring aiming an arrow at your heart. Or it is the enemy "plucking out your hair." Melody means "to grind into fine powder" and is related to the SOP Jesus fed Judas. The Judas Bag was "for carrying the mouthpieces of wind instruments" because Psalm 41 prophesied that he would attempt to triumph over Jesus where the triumph which was condemned by Numbers 10:7 would not ultimately succeed.

The message is absolute: music means to silence God's Word by silencing God's Son:

The translation found with the Dead Sea Scrolls reads in part:

And they, teachers of lies and seers of falsehood,
have schemed against me a devilish scheme,
to exchange the Law engraved on my heart by Thee
for the smooth things which they speak to Thy people.
 
And they withhold from the thirst the drink of Knowledge, (Amos 5, 6, 8, Is 5)
and assuage their thirst with vinegar,
that they may gaze on their straying,
on their folly concerning their feast-days (Jubilee, Feast of Tabernacles)
on their fall into their snares.
 
9

Of Jesus it is said translating the word "triumph over" or "alarm"

They have overtaken me in a narrow pass (gap) without escape

And there is no rest for me in my trial.
They sound my censure upon a harp
and their murmuring and storming upon a zither." Ps.41:11

Anguish seizes me

like the pangs of a woman in travail, (John 16:21)
and my heart is troubled within me.
I am clothed in blackness
and my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth. (Vermes, 165f)
 
The "core gospel" goes along with trying to silence the whole word of God.

Nevertheless, In Victory, prophetic of "singing to the Gentiles" or the commanded teaching of Paul:

I will groan with the zither of lamentation
in all grief-stricken mourning and bitter complaint
until iniquity and wickedness are consumed
and the disease-bringing scourge is no more.
Then will I play on the zither of deliverance
and harp of joy,
on the tabors of prayer and the pipe of praise
without end. Click for More

So the prophecy of Psalm 41 is that Judas as Satan's agent along with the clergy would Stand in the Gap to get Jesus with instrumental music. He was seen as "among their idols."

In practice, they mocked him and played the usual musical games. Jesus said that they "piped" trying to make Him sing and dance the feminine Dionysus dance performed only by Herod's stepdaughter as prophetic of getting the head of John.

Paul Woodhouse: Next, Paul Woodhouse notes that Paul was a Jewish Rabbi and that by specifying "psalms" he was making way for instruments. However, look at the word "psalmos."

Click for some of the Classical, Biblical and other scholarly commentary on these words.

The Temple-State was under the control of the Sadducees and the priests were hand selected by the Roman authorities. This was where the instruments were found and condemned by Josephus.

The Pharisees had control of the Synagogues and there was no praise service in the Synagogue and assuredly no instrumental music. The Pharisees were moving the people away from the sacrificial system even if they were, like us, hypocrites.

The Rabbin did not "sing with instruments" in order to teach the Word. And Paul was neither a priest nor Levite.

Therefore, one doubts that saying that one is a Catholic Scholar would prove that he likes to sing, dance and play instruments.

Paul understood that because of the secular or pagan domination of the word "psallo" the word had been stripped of its instrumental part. Based on how the word is used especially in the Septuagint, modern scholars give the broad meaning of the word:

Psalmos (g5568) psal-mos'; from 5567; a set piece of music, i.e. a sacred ode (accompanied with the voice, harp or other instrument; a "psalm"); collect. the book of the Psalms: - psalm. Comp. 5603 (an ode).

Proponents of musical rituals insist that a "psalmos" necessarily includes a mechanical instrument. Many scholars note that this would imply that everyone have an instrument and would exclude theatrical performance.

However, in the Hebrew, the usage is almost if not totally universal that when "singing with melody" is meant the instrument is always defined. You cannot use the word "Zamar" without defining it.

For instance, "sing and make melody with the harp." The first lines of the "song of the prostitute" was:

Take an harp, go about the city, thou harlot that hast been forgotten; make sweet melody, sing many songs, that thou mayest be remembered. Is 23:16

The king (queen) of Tyre was an agent of Lucifer who was in the garden of Eden and came equipped with musical instruments.

However, look again at the definition from Strong's even though scholarship denies that it included instruments at the time:

A sacred (inspired) ode
Accompanied by the
Voice
Harp
or other Instrument

The Britannica notes that:

"Music, like the word, also may have symbolic meaning. The basic elements out of which musical symbolism is built are sounds, tones, melodies, harmonies,

and the various musical instruments,
among which is the human voice.

Therefore, there is no silence about this issue: Paul directly singing the inspired poetic parts of Scripture in a "speaking" sense in order to teach: speaking and melody is not silent enough to allow a Rock band.

In order to add instruments you have to:

Use the Law of Silence and go further to violate the direct command of Paul and radically destroy the purpose of the Psalms for teaching and not remotely for "music."

By defining the term "speak" rather than "sing" and by defining the voice and heart as the "instrument" the other options are excluded. Click for Bible 101aas. You have to say "Paul said the voice and heart but Paul DID NOT SAY 'THOU SHALT NOT USE A MECHANICAL INSTRUMENT.'"

Paul Woodhouse: Next, the contention is that to use psalmos is to exhort to use trumpets, lyres, harps, tambourines, flutes, stringed instruments and cymbals to praise God.

There you have it: Paul didn't really mean to pick out the "first instrument of choice" in rendering a psalmos. He simply made a terrible mistake (consistent with the Core Gospel) and Paul really said:

I command you to use trumpets, lyres, harps, tambourines, flutes, stringed instruments and cymbals to PRAISE God. I really didn't mean it when I said "to teach ONE ANOTHER."

David permits "praise" only from things which have "breath." This led most of the early scholars to allegorize instruments as the Dead Sea Scrolls do.

In explaining what Arndt-Gingrich really said, we have included a table which shows how instruments are used in the psalms.

The pro musical people always rest their case on Psalm 150 but this is the only place a cymbal is mentioned.

To warn against the unfair use of the Psalms we submit the following table which indicates by color the purpose for which instruments were used. There is no "congregational singing with instrumental accompaniment." None.

The blue text below indicates psalms which are from a person seemingly lost and often calling down God's judgment upon the enemy -- often personal enemies. The bold black text shows that these are redundant. For instance, Psalm 33 includes both the psaltery and timbrel are used. The timbrel was not allowed in the temple. Other colors indicate a processionals, new moons, symbolic, vengeance, arousal or awakening the harp, fear of being cast off, historical warning, prophetic. There is no congregational worship in these references.

Sing Only
Harp(s)
Psaltery
Instruments
Timbrel
Cornet
Trumpet(s)
Reed
Cymbal

Flutes- pipe

Drums
Tabret
Ps.7:17
Ps.9:2
Ps.9:11
Ps.13:6
Ps.18:49
Ps.21:13
Ps.27:6
Ps.30:4
Ps.30:12
Ps.51:14
Ps.59:16
Ps.59:17
Ps.61:8
Ps.65:13
Ps.66:2
Ps.66:4
Ps.67:4
Ps.68:4
Ps.68:32
Ps.75:9
Ps.92:1
Ps.95:1
Ps.96:1
Ps.101:1
Ps.104:12
Ps.104:33
Ps.105:2
Ps.106:12
Ps.135:3
Ps.138:1
Ps.138:5
Ps.145:7
Ps.146:2
Ps.33:2
Ps.43:4
Ps.49:4
Ps.57:8
Ps.71:22
Ps.81:2
Ps.92:3
Ps.98:5
Ps.108:2
Ps. 137:2
Ps.147:7
Ps.149:3
Ps.150:3
Ps.33:2
Ps.57:8
Ps.68:25
Ps.71:22
Ps.78:70
Ps.81:2
Ps.87:7
Ps.89:19
Ps.92:3
Ps.108:2
Ps.144:9
Ps.150:3
Ps.68:25
Ps. 81.2
Ps. 98:6
Ps. 149.3
Ps. 150.4

 

Ps. 47.5
Ps 81.3
Ps. 98:6
Ps 150.3

Ps. 150. 5

 

 

 

Playing the flute was always symbolic of obscenity.

Play the flute, pollute and prostitute come from the same Hebrew word. Which is almost identical to the "halal" praise.

It is bound up in the hissing or whistling sound of the serpent in the garden as a symbol of Babylonian soothsaying and enchanting.

None---

And, Paul asks, the if Paul had intended to say "just sing" without instruments why did he authorize Hebrew psalms to express praise.

A "song" means that it is metrical: it can be read, quoted, chanted, taught, sung or sung with an instrument if follow the Old Testament usage and say: "Sing AND make melody with a cymbal." If we told people to SPEAK songs we would not not expect anyone to come up with the chant: "But thou didst not say 'thou shalt not make melody with a tin can.'"

Psallo was clearly restricted, outside of paganism, to mean "sing" because you cannot sing AND play an instrument unless the instrument is named.

Unfortunately, the Koine did not benefit from our superior knowledge and therefore there was no way to say "sing Psalms" without using that psallo word. However, Paul did a flashback and defined the SPEAKING to TEACH one to another as SINGING and making melody in the heart.

We might ask in return, if he was a harp-playing rabbi without being an assigned Levitical Musician from certain families, why wasn't he violating the law?

Why didn't Paul follow Jewish practices and say: "Sing psalms and make melody with a harp?" For the Old Testament to say "sing psalms" would not include instruments unless it sayd "sing psalms and make melody with a lyre."

For instance of the three uses of "melody" in the Old Testament:

Take an harp, go about the city, thou harlot that hast been forgotten; make sweet melody, sing many songs, that thou mayest be remembered. Isa 23:16

Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. Am.5:23

The "song" could be performed without an instrument. Part of the sin was to sing the songs and make melody with a harp at the same time.

I suppost the law of silence would argue with God and say:

"But Thou did not say, 'I will not hear the melody of thy zither."

Therefore, God, I will sing and make melody with a Zither.

In the first place Paul told them to use the Psalms to "teach and admonish" and not to praise. There is no "praise ritual" in Christianity. Then by definition those who hold praise services are not engaged in a Christian activity.

Secondly, the Psalms are a poetic version of the history of Israel and as such are broken down into five books.

Numbers 10:7 forbids such instruments and a rejoicing sound when the tribes assembled which was never for worship but for instruction.

And we noted above that the human voice was always called an "instrument." It was the Harp of God.

The Jews began by chanting only the prose parts of Scripture. However, a later addition was to chant the poetic books.

The early church also used the prose sections to teach but it certainly did not teach animal sacrifices which was an essential ingredient in the instrumental noise.

We must be able to teach and learn about sacrificing babies in Molech's arms while the instruments made a loud noise without practicing child sacrifice.

If I compose prose I mean that it is not written in meter and therefore you cannot accompany it with any mechanical instruments. If I compose a metrical song then you can read it, speak it, chant it or play instruments to it. I do not by calling it a "song" authorize you to use a band when I am honored for my poetry. If you come to praise Jesus and use your words then you are not praising Jesus.

Paul Woodhouse: In spite of the table above which summarized the psalms, it is claimed that the "psalms" encourage the use of mechanical instruments of music. So, the logic is, if Paul wanted us to just "sing" the Psalms then he obviously did not intend for us to obey them.

One might read about psalm 137 and dashing out babies heads and know that Psalm 137 was hymned or chanted with the "fifth cup" as a curse.

However, we can learn from Psalm 137 or 149 but we are not commanded to obey them and hold a "Dashing Out the Heads of Babies" service.

The Psalmists speak private sentiment and do not speak of a "musical worship service." Paul recommended the Psalms as a teaching method but not as "musical worship." You cannot listen to music, sing Sister Singer's composition and learn the Word at the same time.

In Psalm 150 the psalmist is clearly speaking "poetically" as all "poems" tend to do. What was to praise God had "breath." Now, mechanical devices do not have breath except among the pagans who always believed that the "gods" lived inside of the instruments.

All of the "praise God with the harp" except perhaps Psalm 33 are very negative, judgmental songs. David would have chanted a verse, done the "selah" which meant "stop and think about it," and then chanted another stanza. Combining the voice and instruments was a distinctly feminine practice and in the classics often intends to show contempt to the poet where musical festivals were contests. To have involved Jesus in the lament songs and dancing while the clergy piped would have polluted Him as a worshiper of Dionysus.

Consistent with all ancient poetry or songs, they were the exclusive property of the composer as long as they lived:

"The very oldest of these psalms, a number of which point to David as their author,

are not liturgical congregational hymns,

but were originally individual prayer-songs, which emanated from personal experience,

but were, in later times, employed for congregational use..." Int Std Bible Ency., The Religion of Israel.

Paul Woodhouse: Paul notes that this is flawed because it bases its authority on early church practices and not biblical intent.

That is a "filler" argument: non-instrumentalist can hear the clear direct command to speak or teach with Biblical resources and understand the word psalmos and the Old Testament practice of specifying the instrument and therefore just don't go looking for a LAW to get around the direct commands.

Well, we don't have any Christian assembly singing Psalms with instruments. Romans 15, Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3 define a form of "teaching" which would replace the pagan or secular singing.

1 Corinthians 10 implicates instruments when he warned against "rising up to play" which was singing with instrumental music and more. 1 Corinthians 11 speaking of "uncovered prophesying" implicates instruments which were common to the woman oracles (tongue speakers) in and around Corinth. Some of them might have worked the oracle of Apollo just up the coast.

Chapter 13 implicates instruments as military and pagan soothsaying: Sounding gongs were a hi-tek model of the witch's familiar spirit which was an old, hollow, emptying and therefore echoing wineskin.

1 Corinthians Chapter 14 alludes to speaking to God which was "speaking into the air" and this was the practice of Juno or other "goddesses of the air" worship.

Revelation speaks of harps in heaven but the Greeks saw this as symbolic of the luxury reserved for the dead. The angelic message for those still alive was to "preach the gospel." Revelation 18 repeats the Lucifer connection between the kings/queen of Tyre and Babylon and music with the end-time Babylonian harlot religion. Again, the instruments will go into hell with the kings and queens.

If Paul had said "make melody with a harp" we would logically exclude "make melody with a flute." Now that he has said "make melody with the voice and heart" he has used the first Psalmos options and eliminates a mechanical instrument. This is consistent with the Old Testament practice.

However, the legalist would insist: "But, Paul didn't say not to add in drums."

Paul Woodhouse: Early Christians were entirely Jewish and they gathered often in the precincts of the temple in Jerusalem for worship and witness (Acts 2:46; 3:1; 5:42; 21:26; 22:17).

They gathered outside the priestly, Levitical, musical noise, animal sacrifice area. They were excluded when the sacrifices began. We have no hint that the believers gathered for the purpose of participating with the clergy which always excluded the common, non-clergy people.

They might hear the music during animal sacrifices but this was the command to worship which meant "fall flat on your face." "Worship" does never meant sing and play instruments. Therefore, if the Levitical "police" found you on your feet "singing praises" and holding a Christian worship assembly by "hitchhiking" on the Levitical music they would at best think you crazy for trying to keep in step with a "great crashing noise" and at worst run you through with a sword.

Jews gathered in the people's courts because that was its purpose. It kept the not-commanded but incidentally present Jews outside "the church building." If you want to find Jesus He will be "outside the camp" or gates.

See an illustration on this review of Olan Hicks Temple connection to see that Solomon's porch was the gathering place for common people in all of the national temples.

Paul Woodhouse: "Temple worship was a multimedia expression of praise to God, complete with animal sacrifices, trumpets blaring, and priests in their vestments (Ps. 150; Ezra 3:10).

"Secondly, a child who is genuinely regenerated will surely not subsequently become an adolescent rebel, with a tendency to partake in "the cynicism of the time", as Kendrick puts it. It seems to be taken for granted in so many evangelical churches today that even youngsters who profess Christianity will still go on to be teenage rebels who need to express themselves in rock music, foppish clothes,

and the raucous multi-media experiences of the world. But such out-and-out rebellion belongs to the fallen nature and should not be a feature in a believer's life of any age.

In many churches, this idea of 'performance' is enhanced by the fact that the congregation/audience "is encouraged to applaud -- something which one cannot imagine happening in the Early Church era under apostolic authority. We seem to have forgotten that extreme simplicity in worship was the order of the day in the Early Church.

The gaudy spectacles we see today, with their vast choirs and orchestras, complex musical arrangements, multi-media happenings, multiple participation, and varying degrees of hype are very far removed from what was practised in the first couple of centuries of the New Testament Church, and are at odds with the spirit of worship portrayed in the New Testament. Alan Morrison

This is the Zoe Concept:

"Gifted worship leaders and resource people, multi-media presentations, great communicators and innovative worship activities will lead those who attend into deeper levels of worship. Activities will include: Uplifting music Stirring drama Individual worship and meditation Choral reading and singing Concerts of prayer Small group interaction Communion Proclamation of the Word Models for worship renewal Classes and worship instruction Books, recordings and resources Interaction with other worshippers.

"Secondly, a child who is genuinely regenerated will surely not subsequently become an adolescent rebel, with a tendency to partake in "the cynicism of the time", as Kendrick puts it. It seems to be taken for granted in so many evangelical churches today that even youngsters who profess Christianity will still go on to be teenage rebels who need to express themselves in rock music, foppish clothes, and the raucous multi-media experiences of the world. But such out-and-out rebellion belongs to the fallen nature and should not be a feature in a believer's life of any age. From

If this authorized instrument then it authorizes animal sacrifices. Every Jewish kid knew that when the temple ceased, animal sacrifices ceased. And when sacrifices ceased the instruments were silent for 1800 years because instruments without sacrifices without Jerusalem had no rationale. If the Christians had the remote possibility of using the Levitical sacrificial noise to "accompany" their own songs then they would have participated in animal sacrifices and repudiated Lord Jesus Christ.

The temple area was animal sacrifice center (not worship) while the synagogues were the places of instruction. The temple was headquarters for the Jewish authorities. It was bank and repository of document. However, the "sacrificial center" was closed to the public during sacrifices.

The temple area had been turned into a giant Jubilee or a fertility ritual. Jesus refused to go up to the opening ceremony to sing, dance, play instruments, market speeches or to perform his miracles which would have "made Him a man of note" and got Him on the lecture circuit.

While the musical "multi-media" presentation was going on the clergy was plotting to murder Jesus. As prophesied, they were "standing in the gap" to triumph over Jesus with instruments.

Paul Woodhouse: Paul noted that these Jerusalem Christians praised God for Messiah where instrumental music was prominent.

I don't know that this means that they "sang psalmos" in the temple. However, if so, they were singing songs when the animals were being sacrificed to repudiate Jesus.

No. This is simply invented and has no factual basis. There is not a hint that the Christians praised God for sending Messiah while the mechanical instruments in the temple were prominent.

Music is a secular or civil activity and was often pagan idolstry. Music was not what they did for burning animals but it is called by God "noise." You could chant a prescribed song of holocaust but you didn't sing congregationally to teach and admonish when the animals were dying.

Jesus had already identified the Jewish clergy as "children" who "piped and tried to get He and John to join in the Dionysus, female, dance." They were trying to triumph over Jesus with mechanical machines which were not truly musical but were to panic the enemy even to the point of death by suffocation. You can see the clergy trying to seduce Jesus as part of the Judas triumph over prophecy of Psalm 41

Jesus promised that the temple would come down again. Hardly an endorsement of the praise power of machines.

One of the continuing mysteries is "where did the instruments go?" Perhaps, like the king of Babylon and Tyre, they went with the Jews into Sheol or Topheth named after tambourine, the erstwhile king's music grove, which became a symbol of hell itself. That was where they burned babies to the beat of musical instruments. Perhaps we are still doing that.

Paul Woodhouse: Paul notes that mechanical instruments had been used in temple worship for centuries and that there is no direct command for prohibiting their use. The "Christians were quite accustomed to instruments in worship" and that centuries of theological inertia would keep the practice going.

I don't know about that. He did say that we don't come to the sound of the trumpet anymore.

Well, didn't Jesus fire the clergy? Didn't He in Matthew 13 exclude the clergy from understanding Him? At the first temple destruction there was absolutely no theological inertia. As soon as they were away from Jerusalem and the temple, musical noise ceased as totally unlawful.

Again, when the temple ceased for the last time, theological inertia again totally stopped instruments for almost 1800 years.

Josephus warns the musical Levites that they had destroyed the nation once (confirmed by Ezekiel 40f in the Idealized Temple), had been demoted back to servants but were again wanting to don the female linen garments and bring honor to the king. This same document defines an early Seeker Center which involved usurping the priesthood. Josephus warned the musical Levites that they would destroy the nation again.

About 10 to 12 thousand clergy were involved in the Saducees temple which was the civic or governmental century of Judaism just as the original temple had been.

However, among perhaps a million Jews who later died in Jerusalem, they may have participated in the synagogue and we have noted that the synagogue had no instruments and no praise service.

Again, the Jews who had become Christians were never included when the musical worship began. We have linked proof above.

If they had participated in "singing with instruments" and if anyone approved we would find a tiny shred of information in the New Testament or secular history. There is none because Christians did not, had never worshiped with instruments except those "just out of paganism."

Paul Woodhouse: Yet, Paul is looking for a legalism which prohibits instruments. Perhaps: "Thou shalt not use instruments" would do. He then quotes an elder to say:

"It is a mystery to me why we have made the music issue such a big deal when it is nowhere specifically condemned in the New Testament."

We have collected dozens of instances of the use of instrumental music from the Bible and secular literature which existed perhaps two thousand years before Moses was born. There is not a single one of them connected to "congregational worship" with instruments.

They are always identified with "polluting God" or of animal sacrifices for temple dedication or purification but never for the worship of the people. The Biblical passages associate instruments with ignoring the word of God. And they are twice associated with Lucifer's agents as king of Tyre and of Babylon. It even sentences the harps to "hell" along with the king to rot on a bed of maggots.

And yet there is not law which says: "Thou shalt not worship with machines or the works of men's hands." To ask for such a law seems to be the definition of legalism.

But we just reject the idea that instruments are not specificially condemned. It misses most of the life-shattering events of Israel's history such as "rising up to play" with Egyptian instrumental worship. God then sentences Israel to destruction and later the temple system for their sin. They polluted God's spaces where pollute includes play the flute, pollute or prostitute.

And yet, God never says: "Thou shalt rise up to play with instrumental worship."

Paul reminds the Corinthians and Romans about this event before defining "speaking or preaching" the revealed Word of God and defines the instrument as the first choice in psalmos: the human voice.

And yet, Paul never says: "Thou shalt not rise up to play with lifeless instruments related to warefare or speaking in tongues.

Revelation 18 repeats the warning issued to the king of Babylon and Tyre as the "harp-playing prostitute" and warns that the musicians and their instruments will again go into hell or the grave. John speaks of instruments for the dead who no longer have earthly responsibilities while the alive people are to preach the gospel. The existing tombstones showed the dead enjoying music, the mourners are bringing instruments to the grave but the living are never playing the harps.

And yet, John never says: "Don't be caught in the Babylonian Whore worship with instruments when Jesus comes."

Why is that? That is a fact because if God made a law which says: "Thou shalt not attempt to reach me in the Spirit world with lifeless instruments at any time and any place" you know what would happen. Why, the doctors of the Law Jesus fired would just spend millions of dollars finding a loophole.

It is legalistic to demand that something be prohibited before one can not use it.

If instruments had been specifically prohibited by a law: "Thou shalt not use instruments" then the "doctors of the Law" would still return to the assumptions about temple worship to authorize what they already planned to do.

The total logic of the historical theologians and denomination founders is that one must find authority before one can added it to worship. This is especially true when the elder knows that to add instruments automatically "sows discord among brethren." They cannot therefore add instruments without seeing "sowing of discord" as collateral damage.

Paul Woodhouse: So, Paul Woodhouse wants to know where there is "biblical intent" to ban instruments from Christian praise. He rejects the "silence of scripture" as authority.

Non-instrumentalists do not use the law of silence. The evil practices were with instruments but the "antitype" under Christ there are no animals to slaughter and burn and therefore no logic for the instruments which made noise and not music.

Instruments were never used for "singing congregationally with instrumental accompaniment." The worship of Israel was "like the nations" under the Monarchy and even then the instruments were used in connection with dedication or purification in Jerusalem, in Canaan and were never used for "worship."

Therefore, there is not instrumental worship for the people and therefore no need to "ban."

The Scriptures define that one is to teach and admonish one another with the Biblical resources. We have noted that Psalmos allows the voice as a musical instrument and that is the one Paul prescribed.

Silence of Scripture is not, as consistently claimed, the invention of The Non-Instrumental Churches of Christ." It has always been a Biblical and the historical scholars acknowledged it.

After Israel failed to listen to God through the Covenant and fell back into musical idolatry, God promised that in contending for the faith in the time of Jesus:

I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them

all that I shall command him. Deut 18:18

And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him. Deut 18:19

But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name,

which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. Deut 18:20

Silence filled in by instruments would speak where God has said, "Don't do it." It deliberately replaces the words of Christ with those of Sister Singer because she is here and more attractive.

The silence of Scripture is so profound in the mind of the Infinite God Who gave it that to try to legalistically add where God has been silent is worthy of death.

The Peter Slogan

And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount. 2 Peter 1:18

And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 2 Peter 1:19

Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. 2 Peter 1:20

For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. 2 Peter 1:21

In 1 Peter 1:11 Peter declared that the Spirit of Christ is the Spirit of the prophets.

As Jesus fired the "doctors of the Law" for taking away the key to knowledge, Peter warned preachers or "mediators" for all times that they have no right to explicate or applicate the inspired Words of the Spirit of Christ (1 Pet 1:11) without endangering their own souls and the souls of the church for which Christ died. Private interpretation is really contemporary preaching:

Epilusis (g1955)ep-il'-oo-sis; from 1956; explanation, i.e. application: - interpretation.

Epiluo (g1956) ep-ee-loo'-o; from 1909 and 3089; to solve further, i.e. (fig.) to explain, decide: - determine, expound.

Clement of Alexandria.

What, then, the Master desires and declares, and how He is disposed in deed and word,

how He commands what is to be done,

and forbids the opposite, has already been shown.

Now, it is incumbent on us to return His love, who lovingly guides us to that life which is best;

and to live in accordance with the injunctions of His will,

not only fulfilling what is commanded,

or guarding against what is forbidden,

but turning away from some examples, and imitating others as much as we can,

and thus to perform the works of the Master according to His similitude, and so fulfill what Scripture says as to our being made in His image and likeness.

For, wandering in life as in deep darkness, we need a guide that cannot stumble or stray; and our guide is the best, not blind, as the Scripture says, "leading the blind into pits."

John Calvin

For, if we would not throw everything into confusion,

we must never lose sight of the distinction between the old and the new dispensations,

and of the fact that ceremonies, the observance of which was useful under the law,

are now not only superfluous, but vicious and absurd.

But in regard to the former, it is plain that

they are destitute of authority from the scriptures,
as well as of any approved example of such intercession;

while, as to the latter,

Paul declares that none can invoke God, save those who have been taught by his word to pray. On this depends the confidence with which it becomes pious minds to be actuated and imbued when they engage in prayer.

And on and on and on and on. Click to read the facts.

Paul Woodhouse: Next, Paul Woodhouse asks:

"Where is this word to ban the trumpet, the lyre, the harp, the cymbal? The apostles and prophets are deafeningly silent.

"Legislating doctrine from biblical silence is presuming to speak where God does not.
I will speak where God speaks, not where He does not.

That is a fact: there is no legalism to keep anyone from playing their hearts out. God has spoken in a negative sense about instruments and Christ ordained Paul to tell us how to "speak" the words of Christ so that we would not sow discord. If Jesus had written a law code and said: "I want you to assembly from time to time. And I want your assembly to be like the Synagogue or a school. I want you to teach one another with the Biblical material I have inspired. And because this is the only way to unify diverse people, you will just naturally sing and make melody in the heart."

We would still never hear Jesus say: But I issue a law code against playing instruments.

And instrumentalists who are the ones using "the law of silence" would still sectarianize, sow discord and prevent the harmony of a peaceful assembly and judge or eject those who wouldn't take the liberty to go ahead and add instruments."

Why would they do that: "Because there is no law which says 'thou shalt not'."

Isn't this the meaning of legalism?

But Paul wrote:

For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, Hebrews 12:18

And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more: Hebrews 12:19

(For they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart: Hebrews 12:20

In 2 Corinthians 3 Paul says that when people turn to the Lord then the veil is removed and we can again listen to the Word.

Christ nor the Apostle-prophets commanded instruments how can you add them except by the law of silence?

Why is that? Because God never commanded instrumental music in connection with animal sacrifices as an act of worship. The law was "added because of transgression" and did not replace the spiritual worship of Jewish individuals who walked by faith.

It was David and the Commanders of the Army who assigned the out of work Levites to serve the central sacrifices to which only "muster age" males were required to attend.

Therefore, if there is a command to use instruments to praise God then young males, old males and all women are excluded.

Now, if we are going to restore sacrificial rituals to which instruments were attached the law is silent about these people.

All women were commanded to be silent in the churches and there is no hint of a "children's worship hour." So, to include anyone but military-age males is making a law based on silence. Shame, Shame, Shame!

Paul Woodhouse: The early church's apparent nonuse of instruments may be based more on the home-centeredness of its ministry.

This was also true of many synagogues and we know that there were no instruments in synagogue "school" nor was there any pagan-like praise service. Therefore, there was no tradition for instrumental use for the common people who were excluded from all pagan temples.

Everyone had musical instruments and the servants played them in private homes because playing was a demeaning work effort which must be left to the slave girls.

Clement of Alexandria absolutely prohibited instruments in church and severely restricted them in the home.

Our notes on Psallo gives the primary authority which says that the people did not sing but chanted or as Paul said, "spoke" the Biblical material. If one is going totry to imagine some non-Biblical and non-hisorical example to use as "proof" then adding Sister Singer teams and instruments is to labor from silence. It might be that some church actually saw David's Naked Dance with instruments as a direct command even as some do today.

But, we have been told that the early Christians always worshiped around the temple with instruments.

"It might have been" is about the deepest you can go into the law of silence. It might have been but it wasn't.

Why wouldn't it be possible to play the lyre, clang the cymbal and boom the gongs right there in a private house? You don't need a "church house" in order to play instruments.

If they did not and Paul Woodhouse is right then they disobeyed Paul's direct command to play instruments and, you know, sinners go to hell.

Lacking TV or the internet many people had instruments. The flute was most powerful if you made it from the bone of a dead animal. I made mine out of a deer's bone. In the words of Paul, it was therefore "a lifeless instrument" or a "carnal weapon."

And harp? My dad made a bow twanger out of string and bamboo. Still gives pretty good twangs.

Paul Woodhouse: It is quite possible that early house churches used mechanical instruments in their praise and we simply do not know about them.

If so, it escaped the notice of everyone who claimed that they did not. And would this "might be" be authority to "sow discord among the brethren" or to "offend one of these little ones?"

Wouldn't someone have taken notice? Sure, groups sang with the lyre or other instrument just like people do today in their homes. Because people tended to meet for long periods but go into a private place while the members observed the Lord's Supper it might be that someone brought along a lyre.

The Jews grasped that without Jerusalem, the Temple and animal sacrifices there was no other rationale for instrumental noisce. Therefore, we know that the synagogues did not use instruments nor did they "sing praise songs" until AD 1815 to compete with Christians.

The altar had rationale only in connection with sacrifices. When sacrifices cease we just don't need a law which says "thou shalt not erect an altar in thy church." The same is true of instruments: there is simply no Music-God-Worship connection and therefore no need to make a law against the Law of Silence.

You would need a direct command to restore animal sacrifices before you would have authority to restore Levitical musicians.

It is likewise possible that they burned babies in red hot idols (as at Jerusalem or Carthage). We just don't know do we? They might have sacrificed animals but we just don't know. however, those who lived at the time of then-alive believers say that they did not use instruments.

Furthermore, the scholors living closest to the apostles claim that if they did use instruments they would have turned back to paganism

And based on Paul's not-too-difficult-to-understand terms we can understand the pagan practices at the local shrines and oracles. All knowledgable people knew that instruments had nothing spiritual to offer but were for the "pride" of the performer or the entertainment or seduction of the "audience."

Aristotle Politics 1341b said long before Paul or Christ:

and all the instruments that require manual skill.
And indeed there is a reasonable
foundation for the story that was told by the
ancients about the flute. The tale goes that
Athena found a flute and threw it away. Now
it is not a bad point in the story that the
goddess did this out of annoyance because of
the ugly distortion of her features;
but as a matter of fact it is more likely that it
was because education in flute-playing has no
effect on the intelligence, whereas we
attribute science and art to Athena.
 
And since we reject professional education in the
instruments and in performance
 
(and we count performance in competitions as professional,
for the performer does not take part in it
for his own improvement, but for his hearers'
pleasure, and that a vulgar pleasure, owing
to which we do not consider performing to be
proper for free men, but somewhat menial.

Instrumental performance is the most works-intense legalism we could offer God. The Jewish idolaters who rose up to play with instruments at Mount Sinai made themselves into a laughingstock. And it was great fun to ridicule the looser in musical contests. Hand clapping was often a show of contempt.

Plutarch (de Musica 1141C:30; 1142C:31) often mentions the two most well known kithara virtuosos Philoxenus of Kythera (c. 436-380 BC) and Timotheus of Miltetus (c. 450-360 BC). In his nomos the Persae, Timotheus claims to have invented "eleven-stroke meters and rhythms" on the kithara (Timotheus fr. 15, 229-33).

The meaning is rather obscure, and some scholars believe that Timotheus added four more strings; it seems more likely, however, that Timotheus was an innovative player who embellished the melody with intricate rhythmic ornamentation.

The great kithara soloists were sometimes ridiculed in comedies (e.g. Aristophanes. Wasps 1275 f.).

That is why God didn't immediately destroy the Temple. It became an open invitation for a hostile takeover by the Egyptians who returned to get their gold. This was much like the musical idolatry at Mount Sinai where Israel became a laughingstock to the natives. Or to Corinth where the outsider would see them as mad or insane, just like the pagan temples.

The destructions of the temple is God saying, three times, "I do not live in boxes or houses and if I get hungry I wouldn't tell you." If He depended so heavily upon the "praise" to enable His works--as is the fact in all paganism--the first temple would still be standing.

Paul would have assuredly known about Apollo's Oracle at Delphi which connected music with deception. They did what Paul outlawed at Corinth. He intimately knew the connection between musical instruments as "homes of the gods" and all pagan religions.

Paul Woodhouse: Argument #3: The Bible is silent, therefore, prohibits their use.

Paul Woodhouse notes that silence as prohibitive has been the source of lots of contention. That Ephesians 5:19 commands psalms which commands our using mechanical instruments in our praise

But direct commands are permissive and inclusive?

John Locke and Thomas Campbell pleaded for everyone to restrict themselves to the commands during assembly so that diverse opinions could assemble in peace.

Silence is used to add instruments because the Old Testament and the Intertestament and all of the Jews except the small temple sect understood that Psalms were for teaching and not for musical performance.

Jesus and the apostles and the early church continued that practice.

Therefore, there is nothing but silence as authority for worship with machines.

Paul Woodhouse: Paul Woodhouse has also said that: This means that Paul directly commanded the Colossians and Ephesians to use mechanical instruments. I think not.

Because the command is not to sing but to teach and teach means preach, then next Sunday all of the neo-musical group must have someone playing the banjo and drums while they preach. Why not? Well, if we can do it to Jesus while He is trying to speak then why is the preacher better?

We have already noted that the Bible and theologians recognize the meaning of silence. The rejection of the law of silence comes primarily out of people educated at "church of Christ" institutions and that is what they get for making "preacher" into "profession."

Paul Woodhouse: Then the old tired one: churches of Christ are inconsistent because we permit buildings, pews, song books, song leaders and lots of things not mentioned in the New Testament.

Not too many church splits and sowing discord over providing shelter for "church."

I always thank God for giving me credit for enough brains to get in our of the rain. Therefore, He didn't have to make me legalistically obey Him with a command. I am absolutely positive that if God had said: "Thou shalt always worship in a building," that doctors of the law would scratch their knees looking for a loophole. "But does always always mean always?" Or "That dependes on what the meaning of building is."

I can worship without a building, without pews, without song books (poetic bibles) and without song leaders busting my deaf ear. So can everyone else but many cannot worship "in spirit" while someone is "humming" up a god or goddess while I am trying to think about the sacrifice of Christ.

Surely, women and children rule over you.

"Houses" have ever been a curse and God cannot dwell in one. They are for human convenience. Jesus didn't have one and He is the "pattern" for evangelists. There is no silence about the "oxen" who deserves a food allowance that he had better be out threshing or harvesting when Jesus comes because he is presently "violating the law."

I certainly hope that Christ doesn't catch a "located evangelist" playing with the Sister Singers in the place of the Lord's Table which is the "holy place" in cathedrals.

Song books are commanded: Paul defined the only authorized one when he used the term "Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs." That leaves out Twila Paris unless she is inspired.

Nor, is it said that thou shalt not consistently imitate David and strip off naked in front of the servant girls while playing and making animal sacrifices mortally afraid that God was going to destroy Him. David's playing was identical to "they rose up to play" which was the Egyptian idolatrous musical worship of Osiris as Apis the golden calf. God warns about "rising up to play" even as David gets away with it.

Paul warned about "rising up to play" in 1 Corinthians 10 and in Romans 10. Paul knew that "play" meant the same thing that it meant to David and the idolstrous Israelites: it included singing, dancing, playing musical instruments and having fun with the Sister Singers.

> Paul warned about "play" and implicated the demons or bull gods.

> Paul knew that "play" was the Egyptian idolatrous musical worship. (1 Co 10; Rom 10)

> Therefore, if Paul didn't condemn musical worship then he didn't condemn the naked dance at Sinai or by David separating the Ark of the Covenant from God's ordained Tabernacle to his "own new Tabernacle."

> If we cannot get it then we just can't get it.

> > Peter warned that people easily pervert Paul's writings to their own destruction.

> > There is nothing destructive or divisive or discord-sowing nor "perverting" by simply teaching the Word of Christ or spirit. Both Saul and David are said, based on the definition of the Hebrew, to have become perverted when they danced or sang with instruments.

> > Instrumental music and wine are universally the symbols of God pouring out His wrath on those who reject His Word -- as it has been delivered to us. It is also destructive to peace and harmony and human health.

Here is a psalm:

The saints shall rejoice in glory; and shall exult on their beds. Psalm 149:5LXX

The high praises of God shall be in their throat, and the two-edged swords in their hands; Psalm 149:6LXX

to execute vengeance on the nations, and punishment among the peoples; Psalm 149:7LXX

to bind their kings with fetters , and their nobles with manacles of iron; to execute on them the judgment written: this honor have all his saints Psalm 149:8LXX

This and Psalm 137 issues a direct command to dash out little baby's heads and commit literal vengeance with a literal sword with the "high praise" or polluting, self praise like that of professional wrestlers to panic the enemy, OR, as we might expect, poems are poetic as songs are symbolic and not literal.

Augustine notes:

they shall rejoice in their beds:" not in theatres, or amphitheatres, or circuses, or follies, or market places, but "in their chambers."

What is, "in their chambers"? In their hearts. Hear the Apostle Paul exulting in his closet: "For this is our glory, the testimony of our conscience."

Therefore, there is a warning that people who jump off tall buildings get hurt. Rational people do not expect God to issue a law: "Thou shalt not jump off tall buildings" or "thou shalt not play music while naked." So, be my guest but don't accuse me of silliness because I won't jump.

If one cannot see the demon worship, judgmental sense in which instruments are revealed then Jesus isn't speaking to you (Matthew 13)

Paul Woodhouse: It's time to get real. Biblical silence is silence.

And as authority to ignore Biblical silence the more pressing issues are injustice, sexual purity, collapse of family, grinding poverty and on and on including the "lostness of the Word." We have more important things to do than not use instruments apparently.

It is hard to find any thing more damaging to the church or human culture than preachers (priests) repudiate the Word by giving divine permission to do anything unless "we can find a law of God written in the Bible against it," or declaring that there is now just a Core Gospel (milk to Paul) and that the Epistles are confused writings of confused Apostles.

Now, Rubel Shelly has gotten off the Jubilee horse and mounted the Narrative Theology or Liberation Theology which propelled the Catholic Jubilee as a communist call to redistribute the wealth. C

If the children are taught Lazer Tag rather than the Bible then their values will and have come crashing down on our heads. If the women who have "ruled over" the males from birth during the time the Jewish lads were under male tutelage will rise up to play music with the same women Sister Singers who presume to "rule over" the flock as long as she uses a tune.

If a quarter of a million dollars is spent to promote book writers and instrumental music around the "Asherah poles" and insisting that Paul was mistaken in his prohibition of Sister Singers then the blame may be found by looking in the mirror rather than placing it on the heads of those who simply won't play instruments during their "human sacrifice" at the pulpit which, in the Cathedrals, is "The Most Holy Place."

If what is defined as The Non-Instrumental Music Church of Christ is destroyed, as planned, there will be more of the fruit which the instrumentalist try to fix with a bigger and bigger injection of "self" or the morphine-like drug, endorphins from music which produces the impulse for "fight, flight or sex."

However, what earthly and rational connection is there between "not using instruments" and "sexual impurity." History knows that Sister Singers had a place in ancient paganism where they plied their trade in the outer precincts. In all temples they were "the harem of the gods" with the priests being the god's agents. They were not allowed in the Jerusalem temple.

Paul Woodhouse: Let's drop the instrumental music issue.

It is irrelevant to the poor single mother,

the aborted infant, the divorcee, and the prison inmate.

If instrumental music is irrelevant to the poor single mother why is there such an effort to ply instrumental music which clearly induces more "spiritual anxiety from religious ritual" as the laded burden Jesus died to remove?

This sounds so profound: equating not using instruments to despising poor single mothers. Rubel Shelly is an expert at equating non-instrumental use to being fratricidal and Joe Beam makes them into Zealots who were back stabbers.

If instrumental instruments are irrelevant to the aborted infant then why do we use instrumental music which is known to induce a chemical which enhances labor. Music is used in labor rooms to hasten the drug-production and therefore the birth. Musical sounds can boil an egg on the edge of the stage and it vibrates every nerve ending in the body and rattles the brain in the skull. How do we know that we are not aborting the fetus?

The following quotes are from a larger article on the damaging effect of music. That is why music and wine is man's symbol of refusing to her God and God's symbol of pouring out His wrath:

"Music is used everywhere to condition the human mind. It can be just as powerful as a drug and much more dangerous,

because nobody takes musical manipulation very seriously." (Family Weekly, January 30, 1983, p. 15)

"music is more than a language. It is the language of languages. It can be said that of all the arts, there is. . .

none other that more powerfully moves and changes the consciousness." (Tame, David The Secret Power of Music, p.151)

"Music is a curiously subtle art with innumerable, varying emotional connotations. It is made up of many ingredients and according to the proportions of those components, it can be soothing or invigorating, ennobling or vulgarizing, philosophical or orgiastic. It has POWERS FOR EVIL as well as for good." (The American Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 99, p.317)

"Another neuropeptide, enkephalin--one of the endorphins, a coined term meaning "morphine within"--has nearly miraculous powers. It relieves pain and also produces euphoria, mimicking the action of opiates... this natural painkiller is released in large doses at times of extreme stress, as in battle or in childbirth"

"It's really a powerful drug. Music can POISON you, lift your spirits, or MAKE YOU SICK without knowing why." (Family Weekly Magazine, January 30, 1983, p. 12, article by David Chagall)

"In conclusion, we can say that insofar as the physical body is concerned, the notion that music has no effect upon man, or that all music is harmless, is absolutely in error." (Tame, David The Secret Power of Music, p.141).

"Drs. Earl W. Flosdorf and Leslie A. Chambers found in a series of experiments that shrill sounds projected into a liquid media coagulated proteins. A recent teenage fad was that of taking soft eggs to rock concerts and placing them at the foot of the stage. Midway through the concert the eggs could be eaten hard-boiled as a result of the music. Amazingly few rock fans wondered what that same music might do to their bodies. (Larson, Bob The Day the Music Died, p.116)

[Churchy music multiplies 300 or 3000 powerful voices each of which is capable of inflicting damage on an ear drum. If OSHA visited our church they might put us out of business. But "hurt" is absolutely necessary before you generate the morphine-within to soothe the damage and give a "high" feeling. Add a bunch of Sister Singers with high powered amplifiers and you have the "machinery" for inflicting unknown pain. But the "feel good high" becomes addictive and they return in increasing numbers for the legal drug pushers doing Satan's work.

If your serotonin level has ever been upset, and perhaps 25% of your family are on some anti-anxiety drug already, then what sounds "spiritual" to some can drive most older people "over the edge." This horrible infliction of anxitey as the "laded burden" Jesus came to remove as part of the "gospel" actually makes the Pastor Person and Sister Singers jump up and down with glee because they have hooked the suckers and they will be back "dead or alive." This is why music and especially instruments have always been known as the Devil's Instruments.]

If you don't believe this then you are not supposed to believe it.

"This protective old brain (neo cortex) response (survival response) causes the blood pressure to increase and heart to beat faster so blood (oxygen) can be pumped to the muscles to fight off the perceived saber tooth tiger. The blood thickens so that if scratched or bitten in the battle, you won't bleed to death (cholesterol increases since it is thickening agent to stop bleeding), we experience hyper brain wave activity to be more vigilant, the palms of our hands get sticky so we can hold the club to beat off the beast and the bottoms of our feet get sticky, as well, so we can get traction to run away and escape the attack.

"But we aren't fighting a saber tooth tiger, but merely listening to music (the old brain only reacts to protect the body to survive).

If we aren't physically fighting or fleeing, then what happens to our body when all of this physiology is occurring and we are sitting inside a car (listening to HI/LF sound), sitting in a concert or home environment?

"What is happening, to varying degrees, is the body is responding in a way that may be adverse to your health. To paraphrase the words to an old song, "Killing me loudly with his song, killing me loudly" is a reality that is not far from the truth.

No. Let's not drop the instrumental music issue. We will not drop the "rising up to play" issue because that is an instrumental music issue. We will not drop David's "naked, musical dance" because that is an instrumental music issue. We will not be cowed into silence over the temple issue because that was always a "like the nations with instrumental music" issue.

Paul Woodhouse: Paul the asks if there is not enough reasonable doubt on institutional certainty in not using instruments?

One powerful Baptist voice muses: "It might be possible that Acts 2:38 does not mean what it says." Reasonable Doubt does not appear in my books on hermeneutics.

No. There is not a shred of doubt about the instrumental music issue. The extant documentation universally condemns it as Satan's use of the Baby Boomers to defeat the people still depending upon the Word.

"Doubt" would not be good enough legalistic authority to abandon the "one another" teaching or preaching with Biblical resources in favor of a truly embarrassing spectacle of theatrical performers doing the worship and actually claiming to be "mediators."

The "doubt" cast here is based on the Old Testament sacrificial "added because of transgression."

It assumes falsely that the Jewish people "praised God with instruments." That is false.

It assumes that the Synagogue which the early Christians came out of was musical. It clearly was not and did not even have a "praise service" because "praise" was an ancient Babylonian superstition when "performed as a ritual."

Again, A Cappella was mandated by the Pope using castratos to make the Sistine Chapel exciting because you couldn't play instruments in the face of the Pope (Jesus?). But they always loved effeminate boys or man-boys.

It is called "congregational singing" of the Biblical text and this was always the practice until Rome took it away from the people.

Theatrical performance as priestly musicians is called "the world's oldest profession" because the pagan priests stole it from the women and children.

Paul Woodhouse: It's time to get real and move on.

"Getting real" is a Grace Centered code word to surrender and add instrumental music to your new pagan "praise craze."

Let's the musical dope pushers get real and quit trying to prop up their dying churches by calling in Lucifer who came equipped with musical instruments and was "the tallest tree in Eden" who seduced Eve who is the new ZOE feminist goddess taking over the preside over roles in your church. Next, you will, as at Willow Creek, have to affirm feminine leadership in order to rise above being a Complimentarian or, as Hitler would say, "human material."

Paul Woodhouse

Grace Church of Christ

Not using instruments doesn't inflict you with the inability to understand grace. "Grace" is the new legalistic weapon used to convince you that you must get out of your old movement and get into mine because I am the grace dispenser and anyone older than 30 (raised to 50 because of the Baby Boomers [Infantile Drummers]) by definition is legalistic.

The purpose of Grace Centered Magazine seems focused upon branding those who won't worship with instruments as legalistic and sectarian. However, as far as this writer is able to detect, all of the hostility toward the non-use of instruments is based on a few well-worn proof-texts which do not remotely fit the clear Biblical statements.

The mind control experts clearly understand that the first step to seducing you into a new religion or cult is to radically and with hostility attack your old religionl. When it comes out of places like Oklahoma Christian University and its featured writers and speakers you will believe what you are told.

But you are not being told the truth. God didn't send me to convert you but to witness to you because not even Paul could get beyond the Core Gospel to the Carnal Corinthians practicing disunity in diversity.

Short of making a law: "Thou shalt not play instruments" Paul teaching rather than legislating presented all of the arguments against musical worship by pointing to the musical idolatry at Mount Sinai and the pagan oracles where the uncovered, female prophesing with instruments too place.

Peter warned you to "look out or Paul's message can destroy you spiritually."

 

Olan Hicks on the Silence Issue

Olan Hicks of the Pharisee-church of Christ connection

 

Kenneth Sublett

Musical Worship Index

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