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In his Live ... Radically Saved video Carman says, “Jesus is always cool; He’s got his thing together.” Carman blasphemously imitated the Lord Jesus walking along in a hip-jive manner, doing “the Messiah walk.” In Resurrection Rap, Carman portrays Jesus as a street hippie. In The Standard album, he calls Jesus “J.C.”; and in “Come into This House” on the Addicted to Jesus album, Carman speaks of “Jammin’ with the Lamb.”
Petra claims that “God gave rock and roll to you/ Put it in the soul of every one.”
In “Party in Heaven” the Daniel Band sang, “The Lamb and I are drinkin’ new wine.”
Phil Driscoll says, “God is the King of Soul; He’s the King of all rhythm” (quoted by Tim Fisher, Battle for Christian Music, p. 82).
Messiah Prophet Band says, “Jesus is the Master of Metal,” and Barren Cross says, “Better than pot, Jesus rocks.”
John Fischer described God as puffing on a cigar and swaying to rock music.
“‘Wait a minute Kid’ [supposedly this is God speaking to Fischer]. Leave it [the radio] on. You know, I kind of like this stuff [rock].’ I watched in shock as He smiled at me through a casual puff of cigar smoke and swayed His head ever so slightly with the music” (Contemporary Christian Music Magazine, July 1984, p. 20).
J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma magazine, a big promoter of Christian rock, says Jesus enjoys dancing with the angels and “grooving to the sound of Christian R&B pumped out of a boom box” (Charisma, July 2000). He makes the pretentious claim that worship music in heaven will feature “a dozen Hammond-B3 organs and a procession of hip-hop [rap] dancers.” Not content with this brazen claim, Grady tells us that Jesus Christ “loves all music—even the funkiest” and that Jesus Christ enjoys dancing with the angels and “grooving to the sound of Christian R&B [rhythm and blues] pumped out of a boom box.” Grady mocks traditional hymns as “dirge-like,” something only for “grandmothers.”
Barren Cross says Jesus Christ is better than marijuana and invites their followers to smoke on His love! “Give it a chance, freedom at last/ Yours for free, take and receive/ Better than pot, JESUS ROCK ... Smoke on His love and you will see the rock — roll/ Believe” (Barren Cross, “Believe”).
Bride sings about “Psychedelic Super Jesus.”
The cover of Rapper Jayceon “Game” Taylor’s 2012 album, Jesus Piece, has Jesus portrayed as a gang member, complete with a gaudy gold chain and a tattoo on his face. Taylor isn’t a CCM artist. He is a secular rapper, but his philosophy is no different than that of many of the “Christian” rockers and rappers. Taylor is inventing a “Jesus” in his own likeness. He says, “Last year in August I got baptized [at City of Refuge Church in Gardena, California] and so I’ve been going to church, but I still been kinda doing me out here. I still love the strip club and I still smoke and drink. I’m faithful to my family, so I wanted to make an album where you could love God and be of God, but still get it poppin’ in your life” (“Jesus Portrayed as Gang Member,” Christian Post, Oct. 24, 2012). Taylor says his new album is intended to encourage those who “love God but are still street and wanna remain themselves.”
To the contrary, those who are “still street” haven’t been born again. The Bible says that the true Christian is “a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). Baptism is a picture of dying with Christ to the old life of sin and being raised to a new life of holiness.
The Eternal Jam Machine, which collaborated with Crystal Nicole in the release of “I’m All Yours,” is built on the concept that heaven will be an everlasting rock party. Their first song, “Dancing in Heaven,” was advertised as follows: “God hereby invites you to the biggest welcome home party the world has ever known, with DJ Jesus in heaven. ... Eyes have not seen and ears have not heard a party like this before.”
The party-dude Jesus is a false christ. This is not the Jesus we see in Scripture. Jesus is indeed a friend of sinners. He is the greatest Friend of sinners! His love for sinners drew Him from the joys unspeakable of heaven to the wretchedness of this fallen world, where He was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost, but Jesus was not some sort of “party dude.” He wasn’t worldly cool in any sense.
In fact, most of the sinners he “hung with” were not party people. Jesus disciples were not party dudes. There is no evidence that Jesus’ close friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were party people. When they were with Jesus, it wasn’t party-hardy time; it was time to be discipled.
“And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word” (Luke 10:39).
The Jesus we see in Scripture ate with sinners and spent time with the lowest of society (as well as the highest), but He was not any sort of party dude. He warned all men to repent and “go and sin no more” and spent a lot of time describing the horrors of hell and warning men in the sharpest language not to go there.
The following type of preaching would put a halt to any worldly party!
“I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:5).
“And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched” (Mr 9:43-48).
The Lord Jesus didn’t come to earth to play games and hold a cool party. That is not what we see Him doing in Scripture, and anything beyond Scripture is vain speculation. Jesus came to earth to fulfill a specific, very solemn purpose, and He was singleminded in His pursuit of that purpose. The Samaritans were offended because He wouldn’t spend time with them, but this was because He had no time for anything other than accomplishing His objective (Luke 9:51-53). When He was with His disciples, He was busy preparing them for His departure (John 16:4).
Jesus was here to defeat the works of Satan. He didn’t sit around and goof off after the fashion of this present entertainment-crazed generation. He had too much to do and too short a time to do it in. He had three short years of public ministry, and it was packed. He came to preach the gospel and to teach about the kingdom of God, and that is how He occupied His time, whether publicly or privately. That is what we see in Scripture.
The fact that the CCM crowd typically worships a different kind of God than the God the “old-fashioned” biblicist Christian worships is why they are perfectly comfortable using music that has been identified as sexy by the secular world. Gene Simmons of KISS says,
“... that is what rock is all about--sex with a 100-megaton bomb, the beat” (Entertainment Tonight, ABC, Dec. 10, 1987).
Note that Simmons was not referring to the words of rock music; he was referring to the music itself and particularly to its backbeat party rhythm.
Music researchers Daniel and Bernadette Skubik, in their study on the neurophysiology of rock music, warned:
“Whether the words are evil, innocuous, or based in Holy Scripture, the overall neurophysiological effects generated by rock music remain the same. There is simply no such thing as Christian rock that is substantively different in its impact” (“The Neurophysiology of Rock,” an Appendix to John Blanchard’s Pop Goes the Gospel, pp. 187ff).
The reason that statement doesn’t bother a CCM defender is because he sees Jesus as a rock & roll party Dude who loves a good time.
Rob Williams of the Eternal Jam Machine describes the philosophy as follows:
“Just because you are a Christian does not mean that your life has to be boring as though everything cool about you should be held back or denied. The truth is that your life should be the complete opposite of boring. God has a desire for his children to know that they are made in HIS image which means you ARE cool. God created cool and He gave each of us gifts to use and not to keep hidden for ourselves. God’s ‘cool’ is limitless and as His children we can inherit the character of God. He wants us to have fun and celebrate life in relationship with HIM, our Creator” (“Vision behind Eternal Jam Machine,” eternaljammachine.com).
We don’t see a hint of this in the New Testament, not in the life of Christ in the Gospels, nor in the book of Acts, nor in the Epistles. Jesus never hosted a dance party for the disciples. The disciples didn’t celebrate Christ’s resurrection with a dance party. They didn’t have a dance party in the upper room while waiting for the coming of the Spirit. They didn’t celebrate Pentecost with a dance party.
What we see in Scripture is the call to walk as pilgrims in a fallen world filled with spiritual and moral danger, to separate from the evil things of the world (1 Jn. 2:15-17), to avoid being a friend of the world which is called spiritual adultery (Jam. 4:4), to avoid even the appearance of evil (1 Th. 5:22), to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness (Eph. 5:11), to live a life of self-denial (Mat. 16:24), etc.
At the heart of the battle about music in the churches is the very character of God. Our concept of God will determine what kind of music we use to worship Him and the manner in which we worship Him. If we think that God is a cool dude who hip hops to modern rock music, we will worship him with such music and our lifestyle and very appearance will reflect this concept of God. If, on the other hand, we believe that God is a fearfully holy God before whom the hosts of heaven fall in awe and reverence, our worship music and our very lifestyle and appearance will reflect holiness and separation from the world.
“Those who envision God as a special friend, a kind of lover, with whom they can have fun, see no problem in worshipping him by means of physically stimulating music. On the other hand, those who perceive God as a majestic, holy, and almighty Being to be approached with awe and reverence will only use the music that elevates them spiritually” (Samuele Bacchiocchi, The Christian and Rock Music).
Those who mix the holy Rock Jesus Christ with the unholy rock of this world are worshiping a false god.
Contemporary Christian Music is permeated with false christs and false gods, and that should be sufficient reason to have nothing to do with it.
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The above is excerpted from INDEPENDENT BAPTIST MUSIC WARS. This book is a warning about the transformational power of Contemporary Christian Music to transport Bible-believing Baptists into the sphere of the end-time one-world “church.” The author is a musician, preacher, and writer who lived the rock & roll “hippy” lifestyle before conversion and has researched this issue for 40 years. We don’t believe that good Christian music stopped being written when Fanny Crosby died or that rhythm is wrong or that drums and guitars are inherently evil. We believe, rather, that Contemporary Christian Music is a powerful bridge to a very dangerous spiritual and doctrinal world. The book begins by documenting the radical change in thinking that has occurred among independent Baptists. Whereas just a few years ago the overwhelming consensus was that CCM was wrong and dangerous, the consensus now has formed around the position that CCM can be used in moderation, that it is OK to “adapt” it to a more traditional sacred sound and presentation technique. The more “conservative” contemporary worship artists such as the Gettys are considered safe and their music is sung widely in churches and included in new hymnals published by independent Baptists. As usual, the driving force behind this change is the example set by prominent leaders, churches, and schools, which we identify in this volume. The heart of the book is the section giving eight reasons for rejecting Contemporary Christian Music (it is built on the lie that music is neutral, it is worldly, it is ecumenical, it is charismatic, it is experienced-oriented, it is permeated with false christs, it is infiltrated with homosexuality, and it weakens the Biblicist stance of a church) and the section answering 39 major arguments that are used in defense of CCM. We deal with the popular argument that since we have selectively used hymns by Protestants we should also be able to selectively use those by contemporary hymn writers. There are also chapters on the history of CCM and the author’s experience of living the rock & roll lifestyle before conversion and how the Lord dealt with him about music in the early months of his Christian life. The book is accompanied by a DVD containing two video presentations: The Transformational Power of Contemporary Praise Music and The Foreign Spirit of Contemporary Worship Music. 285 pages. Available in print and as a free eBook from www.wayoflife.org
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