Dear Readers:

The church is in the midst of a battle that will determine her future. Will she continue to be the church founded by Christ or will she become a "Christian Church" or an Evangelical denomination? Although she has many enemies in the world, the enemy in this conflict is within her own ranks. They claim to members of the Church of Christ but are working ceaselessly to deconstruct her faith, her worship, her very existence. If you find today's lesson helpful, please forward it to others.

-John Waddey

==========================================


THE WALL OF SHAME


To honor their heroes, men build "Halls of Fame." To expose rogues and rascals some have created "Walls of Shame."

Among those who deserve to have their names on a wall of shame are those who have inflicted wounds on the church, the body of Christ (Eph. 1:22). Over the years a numerous band of villains have earned a place on the Wall of Shame. Historically there have been persecutors and oppressors, heretics and corrupters of the faith. There have been factious men and schismatics. Some have been ambitious for power and recognition. Others have used the church for their own enrichment. Still others have used her as a cloak to hid their sins.

Today, we nominate those contemporary leaders of the church who have opted to introduce instrumental music into their worship of God. You might be thinking, but surely there are far worse sins than the use of an instrument of music in worship. In one sense this is true. Atheism, or denial of Christ as the divine Son, is a greater sin. To blaspheme God or to curse his name is surely worse. But comparing one sin with the other and concluding that my sin is not as bad as yours is nothing to be proud of. All sin is a transgression of God's law (I John 3:4). All sin is offensive to God. All sin that is not repented of and renounced will be punished!

For preachers and elders of a congregation of the Church of Christ to embrace the use of instrumental music is especially shameful. It is a betrayal of a trust committed to their hands (I Tim. 6:20). The Lord's church was seriously wounded and decimated by liberal-minded leaders in the waning years of the 19th and opening years of the twentieth centuries. Among their innovations was the use of instrumental music in worship. We lost some 85 percent of our congregations and members in that conflict. A valiant handful of faithful men and women stood their ground and refused to compromise. They girded up their loins and went to work to rebuild the Cause of Christ. Within 50 years, their sacrifices and struggles paid off. They recovered all that had been lost and surpassed in size and strength both the Disciples of Christ and the Christian Churches. From their apostate brethren and sectarian neighbors, they endured scorn and ridicule for their commitment to the ancient, biblical form of worship.

As that past generation finished their earthly course, they committed the Lord's church to the care and keeping of this present generation of preachers and elders. They had taught, baptized and nurtured them. But some of them have betrayed that trust and embraced the idol. If it were left to them, the Church of Christ would soon cease to exist on earth.

By adopting the use of instruments in worship they are casting aside a heritage. They do so to please the world, to gain the praise of men, hoping to attract people of the world who have little interest in conforming their worship to God's Word (Gal. 1:10). Their acceptance of instruments of music in worship implies that their fathers were wrong in their faith, worship and stand!

Most of them still cling to the sacred name "church of Christ" but they have renounced and abandoned aspects of the biblical faith, worship and practice ordained by the founder and head of the Church. They are like the unfaithful prophets in Jeremiah's day who "were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush" (Jer. 6:15). They should "bear their shame and their abomination which they have committed" (Ezek. 44:13). Their names should be known to all (Rom. 16:16). Most prominent of those who have begun to use instrumental music in their worship are:

• The Richland Hills Church of Christ, North Richland Hills, TX, Rick Atchley, minister
  
• The Quail Springs Church of Christ, Oklahoma City, OK., Mark Henderson, minister.
  
• Norway Ave. Church of Christ, Huntington, WV, Jeff Garrett, minister.
  
• The Faithcross Church of Christ, (formerly Tomball Church of Christ) Tomball, TX.
  
• Oak Hills Church (of Christ), San Antonio, TX, Max Lucado, minister.
  
• The Farmers Branch Church of Christ, Dallas, TX, Chris Seidman, minister
  
• The Northwest Church of Christ, Seattle, WA, Milton Jones, minister.
  
• The Central Church of Christ Cocoa, FL. Don Adkins, minister
  
• Metro Church of Christ, Orlando, FL, Don Holland, minister
  
• Bridgeway Church (of Christ) Flowermound, TX, Art, McNeese, minister
  
• The First Colony Church of Christ, Sugarland, TX, Ronnie Norman, minister
  
  

This list will grow as other congregations choose to walk this path. There are many leaders who really see nothing wrong with using instruments in worship. It is just a matter of time before join the pilgrimage to Baal's shrine.

___________________________________
John Waddey, Editor
Christianity: Then and Now
E-Mail: johnwaddey@aol.com

"For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made. So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, 'Have patience with me and I will repay you everything.' And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, 'Pay back what you owe.' So his fellow slave fell to the ground and began to plead with him, saying, 'Have patience with me and I will repay you.' But he was unwilling and went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed. So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their lord all that had happened. Then summoning him, his lord said to him, 'You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?' And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him." (NASB, MAtthew 18:23-34)

No longer worth the energy. It's a non-argument boys and girls. I'm sure God has been shaking his head in disbelief over this one for years. If you don't want instruments in your church, the answer is easy. Don't use them. Leave the rest of us out of your distractions.

All you christians are the same. You all have to be right no matter how wrong you are. I'm doing a research paper for a critical thinking class and the many of you are able to twist and distort peoples words is incredible. Then you have a list of churches that are suppose to be bad. What happened to your 'love'? Even the key that I will hit to post this little message ends with a '!'. You all say that hate is of the world, and yet you can't take two seconds to look at yourself. Why me and millions of others will continue to not believe. As I'm sure that even in peoples response to this they will curse me, or I may even be edited out. This site is too biased and overly controlled. Just like all of you. Thanks for the help with my paper. I'll make sure to so my friends this site so that they can laugh as much as I have. All Hail FSM!

PLease add to this wall
4th avenue C of C. Franklin Tx. Instruments and female leadership.

I am sure that church will be relieved to be on the list and no longer bound to the ties of the legalists that run rampant in the Lord's Church!

A musical instrument is defined as a "machine for doing hard work mostly in making war." It certainly works to chase out the owners to steal their property? But, you really have no choice: music is the MARK of God driving His enemies into hell.




So you guys are HEARING the MARK of the beast which is defined as A NEW STYLE SONG OR DRAMA.

SORCERERS BURN, BABY.

I bookmarked this site several years ago and was stunned at the time I first found it to see all of the hatred cast at one another in the name of God. What a disgrace! I haven't visited the site in a long time, simply because I found it sickening to read. But, for some reason, this morning I thought I would glance at it and see if anything had changed. Well, I guess that goes without saying because we all know that change is bad. That has been hammered into everyone who ever visits this site.

Some seem to just look for opportunities to post the same rambling rants over and over and over...Some post to show how intelligent and superior they are; how proud you must feel that God has chosen you to be his judge here on earth.

I wonder what would happen if you took this same amount of energy and put it into loving your neighbor as yourself, caring for the widows and orphans, feeding the poor, all the the things we are called to do? I see no expression of love in this site. How can you proclaim your love for God and spew nothing but arrogance and hatred?

With all of the hurt and destruction in the world, do you think God is really only worried about whether we are worshiping with a piano or not? How offended he must be to see you minimize his call to us to such trivial, petty things!

To those who think that worshipping with or without a musical instrument is "petty" or "moot" or that God couldn't give a hoot whether we worship with or without an instrument, I refer them to the following verse:

"But the very hairs of your head are all numbered" (Matt. 10:30 KJV).

Who numbered the hairs of your head? You? Certainly not. God did. What do numbers of hairs on heads have to do with musical instruments? The verse above shows just how much God pays attention to the small and minute things--things that man would consider to be "petty" and "moot." And if God is THAT aware of every hair on our heads, then He is also very aware whether we worship Him according to His commandments in the New Testament, or whether we do as we please and add anything and everything under the unscriptural excuse of "God didn't say not to." God specified vocal music (singing) in Christian worship, yet man says, "God didn't say not to add instruments." Don't you think that God cares one way or another whether man forges ahead and adds more to, or takes from, a command of God than what God specified therein (1 Cor. 4:6; Rev. 22:18-19)?

Sorry, but try using that verse in the context is was meant for. Christ was gearing his disciples up for their journies into Isreal as they will begin to do miracles and preach to those that do not believe. In chapter 10 he is talking about the truths to their mission and how it will not be an easy journey, but a hard one filled with pain and struggles. Then he says, but do not worry because you are more valuable to God than anything. He loves us all so much that in all that goes on in this world, he loves us enough to know exactly how many hairs are on each of our heads. This verse is not meant to be a warning but to be a showing of the deep love and commitment that God has for his children. Leave it to legalists to propagate a sentiment of love with a lesson of obedience to a tradition. Context people!

The "authority" people use for using any form of music in the "school of the Bible" is David and the Levites. What most preachers missed is that it was because of musical idolatry at Mount Sinai that God abandoned the NATIONAL system to the tribe of LEVI and the SPIRITUAL PEOPLE attended The Church of Christ in the wilderness QUARANTINED from what was pagan and evil

Gen. 49:5 Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations.
Gen. 49:6 O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly,
......mine honour, be not thou united:
......for in their anger they slew a man, and in their selfwill they digged down a wall.
Gen. 49:7 Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel:
......I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.

It is a fact that after the last blasphemy which brought on the conditional sentence at Mount Sinai was carried out, was by David. David had sinned so that he could not go to the designated place of the Tabernacle. Rather than kill David, God gave him a Jebusite High Place where he built an ALTERNATIVE tabernacle. He was now 100% one of those kings God gave in His anger. Samuel records God's abandonment of the national system to a NATIONAL (Canaanite, Egyptian, Babylonian etal) Civil-Military-Clergy complex to carry out the captivity and death sentence. This was not irrational because the musical idolatry at Mount Sinai caused God to ABANDON the Civil-Military-Clergy over to worship the starry host. Christ PRESERVED the Spiritual Thread from that with the Church of Christ which was to Rest, Read and Rehearse the Word of God and was EXCLUSIVE of vocal or instrumental rejoicing. THAT is the patternism of Christ and that never changed.

Acts 7:43 Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the STAR of your god Remphan,
......figures which ye made to worship them:
......and I will carry you away beyond Babylon.

That is where the Babylon mother of harlots resurfaces in the END TIME using "lusted after fruits" or performing the roles of women as speakers, singers and instrument players John called SORCERERS who HAD deceived the whole world.

Stephen (Acts 7 you missed in sermons, songs and classes) says that:

God gave (by Grace) David a TENT which permitted the "worship of the starry host"
But, David built God a HOUSE
But, God does not LIVE IN nor is worshipped in houses built by human hands: God is worshipped IN the place of the human spirit which ALL forms of "music" intends to shut down so that you watch THE EFFEMINATE performance and therefore worship THEM.

David was the king of the Civil-Military-Clergy complex worshiping the STARS and SERPENTS: Christ in the prophets (for the Spiritual thread) calls the robbers and parasites. Not surprising since God WARNED the elders when they demanded a SENIOR PASTOR to rule them it would be terminal.

"David succeeded in transferring the traditions of the Confederacy to Jerusalem: the Ark, the Tabernacle, the priesthood. But in this change something happened to the character of 'Israel,' to the structure of the community.

No longer was Israel, the people of God, bound together on the basis of covenant allegiance to Yahweh at the central sanctuary;

Israel was now bound together politically, on the basis of a contract between king and people (II Sam. 5:3). As citizens of the state, the people of Israel owed allegiance to a king who could take a census, exact forced labor, and require submission to his power...

As Israel became a state modeled after other oriental monarchies, more and more she lost her distinctive character and faced the danger of being swallowed up in the power struggle and cultural stream of the Near East." (Anderson, p. 188).

That is repeated in the TURF BATTLES by preachers and elders which makes church--like the monarchy--a 100% political institute with no connection to the Qahal, synagogue or Church of Christ in the wilderness where Christ OUTLAWED vocal or instrumental rejoicing.

"There is incontrovertible archaeological evidence for the antiquity of the musical guilds themselves. The Phoenicians (Canaanites) outshone their contemporaries in music, and the Israelites were early influenced by them.

......Musical guilds of the Hebrews may be traced back in some instances,
......to old Canaanite families whose designations, such as Hemen the Ezrahite (I Chron. 2:6),
......became a part of later Hebrew family names." (Unger, Merril, Archaeology and the Old Testament, Zondervan, P. 216-7)

"The trained musicians which eventually appear around the time of David and Solomon mark a distinctive change in the history of Jewish music. Before this time much of the music was made by women." (Zondervan Pict., Music p. 313).

"In an inscription from Cyprus, in one from Rhodes and in several from around the district of Carthage, [The Source of Molech Worship]

there are references to important personages who bear the title Mqm'lm which we can translate as AROUSERS of the god.'" (de Vaux, Roland, The Bible and the Ancient Near East, Doubleday, p. 247).

"We even have a mention at a later date of a similar custom in connection with the cult in Jerusalem, where certain LEVITES, called me'oreim, 'AROUSERS,' sang (every morning?) this verse from "Ps 44:23: "Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever." The Talmud tells us that John Hyrcanus suppressed the practice because it recalled too readily a pagan custom." (Roland de Vaux, p. 247).

So, you see, the Levites cursed by their father, were the PRIESTS offering sacrifices to MOLOCH: especially in Tyre and Jerusalem whose temple was built by the same architect. Just AFTER Hezekiah's plague stopping BURNT OFFERING where the INSTRUMENTS were played and which GOD DID NOT COMMAND, the burning of infants was restoredd.



The Levites cannot be used as authority for "musical worship teams": Christ reserved that as a MARK. They were an old guild and that is why Molech worship or burning infants to the beat of all kinds of loud singing and playing instruments was common in Jerusalem. In Isaiah 30 Christ in Spirit uses this Molech worship as a PATTERNISM of the MARKS and SOUNDS of God driving His old Assyrian/Egytian enemies into HELL. The PROOF that God is carrying out the final judgment causing all of the squirming and clapping will be be SINGING and playing wind, string and percussion instruments. Isaiah 30. This is repeated for the end time (now) when the church of the Babylon mother of Harlots (Inanna, Lucifer, Zoe) (Rev 17) uses lusted after fruits (same ones in Amos) as SELF-speakers, singers and instrument players whom John calls SORCERERS. Those with the DOGS (Cynic howlers), liars and are also destined to the Lake of Fire. We are to see the Lying Wonders of deluded people before Jesus returns as a MARK and SOUND to flee Babylon.

If you care enough to quit singing and clapping and become A School of Christ through the Bible, you will discover that the GUILD NAMES, the names of the instruments, the term prophesying, the dress, the dance and the style of singing (falsetto or a cappella or CCM) were all done PLAYING THE PART OF WOMEN.

"Before the establishment of the kingdom under Saul, it was the women who, as in every young civilization, played a major part in the performance of music. Such figures as Miriam, Deborah, Jephtha's daughter, and the women hailing the young hero David have become almost archetypes of female musicians. Characteristic of all these cases is the familiar picture of a female chorus, dancing and singing, accompanied by frenzied drum-beating [hand clapping]. This is the scene known to the entire Near East, and not even the severe rule of Islam could wholly suppress this age-old practice." (Int Dict of the Bible, Music, p. 457).

Including the Levites who "performed the role of women", the Babylonian Tablets, all of the contemporaneous literature, the Classics and church fathers PROVE that when you turn from SPEAK or SAY to SING or PLAY it is both the mark and producer of the effeminate. The Zoe Group had to bring in an expert to assure them that the Platonic Fallacy was not true.

SO, it is a fact that the Ark Moving slaughter and Vileness was the MARK of the first use in the MONARCHY used by almost all people who impose any kind of performance music. The FIRST folly was in trying to involve EVERYONE who could get there. In the second fearful ATTEMPT only those connected with the Civil-Military-Clergy and their camp followers who were involved. It was PERMITTED only because it was the role of the old LEVI tribe already abandoned to worship the starry host. AFTER God has removed His candlestick (seven spirits of Divine knowledge) THEN you are in fact COMMANDED to impose worship teams with or without instruments: you have lost your right to choose.

David as a King to carry out the worship of the Starry Host did not follow the Law of Moses intended to protect the weak from the strong but ENSLAVED the weak and stole their property and gave it to his MINISTERY TEAM including the Levites where in the Greek sacrificial system they were called PARASITES.

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

Yes, instruments or any musical form is DIRECTLY COMMANDED for any church which has replaced the TEACHER with sermonizers and "made the lambs dumb before the slaughter" which was THE purpose of EXORCISM noise in the killing of innocent animals to eat their flesh and to fleece the dumb. In fact, you probably DO NOT HAVE ANY CHOICE in the matter just as the Israelites were ABANDONED to worship the starry hosts. These stars always carried the meaning of performing STARS.

Since a musical instrument is a "machine for doing hard work mostly in making war and creating the shock and awe of religious rituals" (Outlawed by Jesus as the laded burden) is the ONLY meaning of LEGALISM<.b> in the Greek literature. That was always teaching the LAWS of Apollo (Abaddon, Apollyon) by the muses or musicians in Revelation 18 identified as dirty adulteresses and SORCERS who burn in hell. That is why LEGALISTS always point the gun in the wrong direction.