December 19, 2001 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org) - When Beatle George Harrison died of throat cancer on Nov. 29, he told his friends to "love God and love one another." What God was he referring to? Sadly, it was not the Lord Jesus Christ who claimed to be the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to God. Rather, Harrison promoted the false Hindi-New Age god of self. In an interview he said, "The Lord, or God, has got a million names, whatever you want to call him; it doesn't matter as long as you call him. . . . Every one of us has within us a drop of that ocean, and we have the same qualities as God, just like a drop of that ocean has the same qualities as the whole ocean. Everybody's looking for something, and we are it" ("George Harrison's Credo," The Himalayan Times, Kathmandu Nepal, Dec. 17, 2001).

The Beatles generation, while rejecting the gross rituals of Hinduism, has adopted its core philosophy, which is self choosing its own way and being its own god. In Hinduism, God is like a smorgasbord, and the individual picks and chooses his favorites from among the myriads of gods, all the while also believing that himself is god, too.

George Harrison spoke frequently about Jesus, but he did not mean the Jesus of the Bible but rather "another Jesus" (2 Cor. 11:4). Harrison's 1971 song "MY SWEET LORD," which he published the year after the breakup of the Beatles, is a song of praise to the Hindu god Krishna. It mentions the long process of achieving Nirvana through meditation and mysticism. At the end of the song, there is a little ruse, when the words "hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah" cunningly and almost imperceptibly merge into "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama." Thus the song transforms from a form of Christian praise to the praise of the Hindu god Krishna. In fact, Harrison admits that he did that to trick people. In his 1982 interview with the Hare Krishna organization he said, "I wanted to show that Hallelujah and Hare Krishna are quite the same thing. I DID THE VOICES SINGING 'HALLELUJAH' AND THEN THE CHANGE TO 'HARE KRISHNA' SO THAT PEOPLE WOULD BE CHANTING THE MAHA-MANTRA BEFORE THEY KNEW WHAT WAS GOING ON! . . . My idea in 'My Sweet Lord,' because it sounded like a 'pop song,' was to sneak up on them a bit. The point was to have the people not offended by 'Hallelujah,' and by the time it gets to 'Hare Krishna,' they're already hooked, and their foot's tapping, and they're already singing along 'Hallelujah,' to kind of lull them into a sense of false security. And then suddenly it turns into 'Hare Krishna," and they will all be singing that before they know what's happened, and they will think, 'Hey, I thought I wasn't supposed to like Hare Krishna! . . . It was just a little trick really" (Harrison, Krishna web site, http://introduction.Krishna.org/Articles/2000/08/00066.html). The trick worked, because when it first came out, many Christians thought Harrison was glorifying the Lord of the Bible. Harrison said, "Ten years later they're still trying to figure out what the words mean" (Ibid.). The song was immensely popular. The album on which it appeared, All Things Must Past, remained the top selling album in America for seven weeks straight. Another song on that album, "Awaiting on You All," also deals with Hinduism and chanting.

When John Lennon blurted out in 1966 that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, he might have been right. The Beatles have had a vast influence upon the hearts and minds, not only of the unsaved, but also of professing Christians, and have helped to create a corrupt form of Christianity which merges paganism with Christ, a Christianity which believes it is wrong to judge sin and or to live by strict biblical standards or to say that there is only one way of truth. The average Christian today thinks nothing whatsoever of going to church on Sunday and then watching R-rated movies and listening to R-rated music the rest of the week; and he knows far more about Harry Potter and rock stars and sports idols than he does about the Bible. Indeed, 2 Timothy chapter 3 is upon us.