For some time I have been warning that it is no coincidence that forms or modes of worship alien to Scripture are the same term in Hebrew for idolatry. Simply stated, unbiblical worship will ultimately result in false worship and in some form of religious idolatry. This is, of course, why God judged the sons of Aaron - Nadab and Abihu (Lev. 10) for burning "strange fire". The strange fire was not offered to a pagan idol but rather to Yahweh in a manner and substance He did not prescribe in His Word.

The pagan deities of the ancient Near East are described by both Moses and Paul as "demons" (using the Hebrew and Greek terms shedim and demonoi respectively). This is particularly difficult when the idols came in the name of the One True God. As we have often highlighted, Ba'al [Ed. Note: See Strong's H1168 - Ba`al] - being the Hebrew term for "husband" and "master" - [See Strong's H1167 - ba`al] is the rightful title of Yahweh in the Hebrew Scriptures as Israel's husband, particularly in the book of Hosea and in the New Testament where Jesus is the Bridegroom of the church. The Canannites however, also had a god they called "Ba'al" variously associated in other cultures with Marduk worship but with origins in ancient Babylon (as with all ancient Near Eastern idolatry). The Canaanite Ba'al even had a resurrection myth, arising from the dead every Spring. Following the agricultural cycle, the Canaanites even had festal holy days on the same days as the Hebrews with the feasts that God gave Israel serving as a monotheistic polemic against the pagan holidays celebrating harvests, etc. God wanted His people to thank the true Ba'al. Yet, because the pagan Ba'al had the same name and in some way mimicked Him, the two Ba'als became confused.

As we have sought to warn repeatedly, the same diabolical phenomenon transpires in the modern world and contemporary church. Allah is no more the god of Christians and Jews than is Hare Krishna; both are demon idols. The Islamic Allah (the Nabatean moon god) merely has a better disguise; he gets dressed up like the God of Israel howbeit in a badly designed costume much the same as the Canaanite Ba'al impersonated the true one. Once Israel began worshiping Yahweh as Ba'al on the Canaanite high places instead of on Mt. Zion, the two gods became convoluted and confused as being one. The seduction began with false worship.

A better disguise still is the Mormon Jesus who is the spirit brother of Jesus impersonating the real one, who is the only begotten of the Father. In fact, once examined scripturally, the Mormon Jesus in no more the Jesus of Scripture than a child dressed up for a costume party as Abraham Lincoln is actually the 16th president. Looking like it and even having the same name does not mean it is the same person.

Another example would be the Eucharistic Jesus of Roman Catholicism, which can only be derived by an utter distortion out of all exegetical context of John 6. Bread and wine, scripturally intended as a memorial, becomes a physically present reincarnation of an ascended Jesus who is to be sacrificially killed again in direct contradiction to the teachings of Peter and the Epistle to the Hebrews, and cannibalistically eaten with a vampire consumption of His imagined blood, directly condemned by the apostles in Acts 15. The Israelite Paschal meal was a refutation and alternative to the covenant meals of ancient Near Eastern Suzerainty. Any scriptural understanding of the Lord's Supper derives from the Paschal Haggadah, which makes it clear it is a memorial meal and a testimonial meal recalling the death and resurrection of Christ, but illustrating a statement of faith as to His return (become we "proclaim His death until He comes" - 1 Co. 11:26).

Yet Mormonism and the church of Rome, although having a Jesus which is in diametric opposition to the scriptural and historical one, are able to not only deceive themselves by satanic seduction into believing they have the same Jesus as saved Christians, but have even proven themselves apt at deceiving saved Christians into believing such a demonic lie. It all begins with subtle perversions of worship.

The core of worship has always been the prayer of the saints typified and illustrated in biblical imagery by incense (Rev. 8; Eze. 13). It is of no coincidence that with the strictest and most detailed of instructions, God gave a very specific recipe formula for the ingredients of the incense to be used in the Temple worship that typify and illustrate the prayers of His people. In Exodus 30 there was to be a proportioned balance of ingredients with a perfume effect with which the Levitical priests as worship leaders were cautioned against perfuming themselves. In the age in which we live, where what had once been so-called "music ministry" has now become a Christian music industry not only with pop charts, magazines, fans, and disc jockeys, but with theoretically Christian recording companies owned by secular conglomerates and run on a for-profit basis, we have witnessed the emergence of a rather sad trend. This has been what we call "contemporary Christian artists" and worship leaders perfuming themselves. They have become entertainers and the Christian music industry has become an enterprise more resembling the secular music industry than in resembling the Christian ministry it misrepresents itself as being.

Most of the biblical focus on worship is not music-oriented. Hence, the balance of ingredients prescribed in God's Word has been abandoned in favor of a modality concocted by people instead of directed and inspired by God. This effect is amplified by the fact that so many people in contemporary Christian worship are people who could not be commercially successful in secular popular music due to a fundamental deficiency in talent. Hence, they use their lack of talent for the Lord where the church gives them a ticket for a level of success they could not obtain in the competitive secular industry. I use the term "ticket" as a double entendre. Where does the church get off selling tickets to proclaim the Gospel? Indeed, from the time of Charles Wesley and Isaac Watts to Ira Sankey and onto George Beverly Shea and Evie Tormquist Carlson, gifted evangelists have used musical accompaniment in presenting the Gospel. But the Gospel presentation itself was the focus, not the music, and it was never done as a commercial endeavor with performance fees and contracts as we see today.

We have also repeatedly over the years pointed to the words of Jesus in John 4 that the Father wants to be worshiped in Spirit and in truth. As I once heard a preacher in Great Britain enunciate, "There is no doxology without theology" - if the doctrine is wrong, God does not accept it as scriptural worship as it is not in accordance with His Word. Today the most conspicuous violation of this divine standard is in Pneumatology (the doctrine of the Holy Spirit). Only in the context of the triunity is the Holy Spirit ever worshiped in Scripture. Not one place is the Holy Spirit prayed to outside of the triunity of the Godhead although He is God. Scripturally the Holy Spirit rather points people to Jesus and never to Himself. Yet today in so much of the popular junk music posing as worship we see chorus after chorus that is pneumo-centric instead of Christo-centric. We see and hear more and more confused theological cacophonies instead of theologically coherent harmonies. Much of this derives from a non-scriptural view of the person and ministry of the Holy Spirit; in other words, a false Pneumatology that ultimately results in a false Christology.

In short, because people misunderstand the nature and function of the Holy Spirit as a person in the Godhead, they end up believing unscriptural rubbish about God generally and about Jesus specifically. The endless ad nauseum spiral of cliché-based lyrical themes such as "come, Holy Spirit", "good morning, Holy Spirit", and "Holy Spirit we worship you" has inevitably resulted in counterfeits of the Holy Spirit as we have witnessed in Toronto, Canada, Pensacola, Florida, and more recently in Lakeland, Florida. Although much of this finds its seminal influence in the false doctrines of false teachers and false prophets like Benny Hinn, its popular propagation has taken place through the medium of so-called worship music.

On every occasion, for instance, I have sought to reiterate that the fruit of the Spirit is egrkateia or "self-control" (as is twice taught in the New Testament) and not the lack of it. As we have witnessed in the counterfeit revivals of Toronto, Pensacola, and Lakeland, all of which categorically failed to deliver what they promised, bearing no resemblance to any scriptural or historical revival except in the hype with which it packages itself, pretending to be that which it is not. To my own shame the arch-culprits of this disgrace have been, in the main, my fellow Charismatics and Pentecostals.

If the lyrics are not biblical, it is not worship in the eyes of God. Yet from the Riversong of Wendell Cooley to the Triumphalist choruses of the Vineyard Movement and the doctrinally empty religious rhetoric mindlessly chanted out by Hillsong, we see Christians deluded theologically and seduced spiritually by something they imagine to be worship but which often is not worship at all and at best a mixture of scriptural and unscriptural words and motifs where even the scriptural elements merely serve to camouflage the unscriptural essence.

It is not without good reason that Jesus warned of "heaping up empty phrases". (Mt. 6:7) In times past, we associated this with Eastern religious incantations counted on the Tibetan Buddhist prayer wheels or Roman Catholic rosaries counted on beads. Our Catholic friends label their three categories of rosaries as "mysteries". Indeed all mystery religion emigrated from the Orient toward the West since the days of biblical Babylon. Then the spice trading troubadours transported the tabulation of repetitive prayers on beads from India, having copied it from Tibetan Buddhism, etc. to Europe where it was popularized by the Dominicans. Jesus plainly and unambiguously denounced such prayers as a heathen practice in His caveat to us to avoid doing it. Yet, courtesy of modern Christian worship music it has found its way into the church through the avenue of pseudo-scriptural doxology.

The counterfeit revivials, the Vineyard Movement, congregations such as Holy Trinity Brompton, and Word-Faith money preachers all use the repetitive singing of choruses, often with unscriptural lyrics, to predispose people to a manipulation arising from a combination of hypnotic induction and in some cases demonic deception persuading those caught up in singing these "seven-eleven" choruses (as David Hocking calls them; the same seven words repeated eleven times) believing that the sensuality they are experiencing is really the Holy Spirit. Yet instead of the scriptural fruit of the Holy Spirit which is self-control, we have seen people at Holy Trinity Brompton, Kensington Temple, London, the Toronto Airport Vineyard, and Brownsville Assemblies of God out of control, prima facie demonstrating that they are under the animation of a counterfeit spirit of some demonic origin facilitated by a sensual confusion of the purely psychological and emotional with the authentically spiritual.

In flagrant rejection of Hebrews 4:12, the Word of God is thrown out the window along with common sense and testing by Scripture to determine if something is indeed spiritual or carnal. It is abandoned along with the suspension of any critical thought which these deluded people have been conned into thinking is scriptural and rational. In this Alice and Wonderland world of Sandy Miller, David Pytches, John Arnott, and John Kilpatrick being unscriptural becomes scriptural and being irrational becomes rational. As a result what is at best carnal and at worst demonic in their thinking (or lack of thinking) is declared to be bona fide New Testament spirituality. This is even more sad than it is sick.

The predisposition to such manipulation, auto-delusion, and demonic deception is again an unscriptural concept of worship to which music has become the central component. Instead of drawing their doctrine from the exegesis, prayerful study, and anointed exposition of Holy Writ, the doctrine of people following Hillsong, The Vineyard, Mike Bickel's International House of Prayer, and the Kansas City false prophets as well as the Word-Faith money preachers, people acquire their doctrine from repeatedly singing choruses - something Jesus warned not to do. Moreover, they do this wholly ignorant of the fact that much of what they're singing is not even scriptural. Like the rosaries, this too comes from Eastern religion. What they are doing is singing a mantra.

This abomination underscores how the same Eastern religious thought that seduced Israel (Is. 2:6) is once again infiltrating the Western church as they did with the Gnosticism of the post-Nicene church fathers of Alexandria and the aftermath of the Crusades. What spiritually and theologically demolished the Eastern church leaving it as the apostasy of Eastern Orthodoxy and the Western church leaving it as the apostasy of Roman Catholicism is now permeating Western Evangelicism. As with the Roman rosary, modern Charismatics and Pentecostals are being swallowed into the abject theology of spiritual bankruptcy via the babbling repetition Jesus specifically condemned and against which He issued a firm caveat. It is little wonder that contemporary Christian composer Darlene Zschesch saw the papal visit of Pope Benedict XVI (who issued the Criminales Solicitaciones edict instructing Roman Catholic bishops to protect pedophile priests and nuns at the expense of not protecting the children they molest) as an opportunity for Pentecostals and Charismatics to serve the Roman Catholic church that traditional Pentecostalism had been an arch-opponent of and throughout Latin America remains a nemesis of.

We have also repeatedly recognized the fact that scripturally and historically idolatry is automatically followed by immorality. The most depraved manifestation of this is today visible in the Emergent church of English teacher Brian McLaren, author Dan Kimball, and Rick Warren. In this post-Modern replacement for Christianity there is a reversion to the mysticism and gnosticism of the iconic idolatry of the monasticism of the Dark Ages as a model and guide for the new spirituality rife with everything from Lectio Divina to contemplative prayer to New Age visualization and the burning of incense and candles before graven images. Not surprisingly the door into this satanic trap is singing everything from Gregorian chants to the replacement of the Word of God with Bibles that are not actual Bibles such as Eugene Peterson's The Message and McLaren's own The Voice, pasted together with the assistance of everyone from poets and story tellers to supposed Evangelical scholars who are departing rapidly from a scriptural Evangelicism such as Allen Culpepper and Darrel Bock of Dallas Seminary. In the Emergent Church, as usual, the idolatry is always prefaced by unbiblical worship and a displacement of the Word of God followed by religious acceptance of what the Word of God denounces as gross immorality and perversion.

We see the same with the idolatry of transubstantiation and the mass, which is of no problem to Darlene Zschech, is accompanied by sexual perversion of the worst kind exploiting children on a wide scale throughout the Roman Catholic world, is of no surprise. Neither is it therefore that in Australia's Hillsong its co-leader Pat Mesiti (a motivational speaker employing Christian jargon which he somehow defines as preaching) was discovered in sexual immorality while Frank Huston the father of Hillsong leader Brian Huston was a homosexual pedophile. In addition, Brian Huston's wife Bobbie put out a series, "Christian Women Love Sex" in vogue among young Christian girls and Australian youth groups. Scripturally Christian women are to love God and their husbands with sexuality, a vehicle created for doing so. Sex itself is never the focus of God's model and ideal for romance. For God, romance is about the object of love and not primarily about a procreative and erotic means of expressing it. It is rather the world that emulates the means instead of the ends concerning sexuality.

The avenue to which these teenagers and young people were drawn into this sham with its public sex scandals (and as uncovered on Australian television-financial hype-artistry) was the music of Hillsong. The wrong worship resulted in wrong doctrine which in turn resulted in an accommodation of what the New Testament calls idolatry (Eucharistic worship) and finally the inevitable result of moral and sexual depravity. But it all began with wrong worship and music with wrong lyrics, the age-old travesty of burning "strange fire".

I have witnessed in the secular pop music industry the capacity of music to incite young people in all kinds of directions. In my own youth, the Jefferson Airplane used rock music to trigger young people into political activism against the establishment (while I liked the Jefferson Airplane and their music, the hippie counter-culture which they personified and out of which I was saved was in fact as corrupt as the establishment against which we protested).

The rap culture of the late Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur had incited urban black people from the inner cities (known as "the hood") to glorify drug-related gun crime and gang violence and the denigration of black women. While rap has accurately portrayed the tragedy of the black underclass with drugs robbing Afro-Americans of all of the gains they have made since the era of Civil Rights, I am at a loss to explain why such a social tragedy should be celebrated by popular music produced to inspire more of the same. The capacity of sexually explicit lyrics and gyrations that began with rhythm and blues and early rock-and-roll artists of the 1950's and into the 1960's is now culturally 'Mainstream'. But for us to now give testimony to a Christian church misusing music for the same kinds of purposes as the fallen world is an indictment of all of us.

Too much of contemporary Christian music calling itself "worship" is actually entertainment and indeed an idolatry which is not the worship of God but as was correctly prophesied in Pentecostal churches 80 years ago is the worship of "worship", not the worship of God. We have first of all failed our young people, failed ourselves, failed the secular culture to which we are called to give witness to Christ, but above all we have indefensibly failed Christ Himself. And it is only Christ through His Word and by the true ministry of His Spirit who can remedy that which we have indefensibly done.

I have never subscribed to theories of the beat or rhythms used in any form of music as being inherently demonic or even necessarily carnal per se. In the Psalms under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit David wrote, "Let all that is in me praise Him". Providing it is subordinated to the Holy Spirit on the basis of Scripture by definition, Paul includes all - that is our intellects, our emotions, our bodies, our vitality, and even our sexuality. But when any of these natural functions predominates to the negation of a scripturally established control of the Holy Spirit, we have a counterfeit that will ultimately result in idolatry and carnality.

Again this is not about the nature of the music itself be it in harmony, tempo, rhythm, or beat. Many of the Psalms are prefaced by the musical instruction "shigaon" from where we get the Hebrew adjective "mishuga" meaning "crazy" from where Jewish people get the Yiddish term "mishuginah" meaning "one who is crazy". Biblical scholars who are expert in linguistic morphology are uniform in understanding this as a "wild dispassionate melody". And biblical anthropologists who understand Bedouin culture in order to gain insight into the Sitz im Leben ("life setting") of biblical culture because Bedouin culture has mutated comparatively little even since Patriarchal times likewise identify wild beat patterns in ancient Near Eastern music akin to the harmonies of the Psalms. It was rather the lyrics that caused the problem.

The Egyptian Psalms of Osiris almost verbatim have parity in a number of the Psalms of David. Arguments that the beat found in music makes it wrong are largely the province of both biblically and musically ignorant. The same basic four-four beat that rock music borrowed from rhythm-and-blues and be-bop jazz can be definitively identified in the Gospel music of the American South long before it was adopted for secular entertainment. We deal with this in our teaching message of 1 Samuel 5-6, David's wife Michel did not like his manner of worship and despised him, but God' struck her barren in judgment. This is a serious caution. Our personal taste should not be confused with scriptural standards of what God finds acceptable or not (Rom. 14:4-5).

In reaction to the abuses so unfortunately prevalent in contemporary Christian worship music we have often seen a reaction that is both ignorant and often carnal in itself not founded on any biblical judgment of worship or music but rather on the traditions and tastes of its critics. Thus, at Moriel we have sought to remain determined to only evaluate worship and music on the principles of what is already conveyed in God's Word and not on fanciful theories about beats alleged to be demonic but which lack either scriptural or harmonic credibility. Having said that, purely on the basis of what is established in God's Word concerning standards and criteria for worship, it is obvious that in the church today we have a very major problem.

On a more positive note, there is a worship song I have heard in the last few years, particularly in several Calvary Chapels in the United States. The words of this song beseech the Lord to forgive us of the mess of worship and reminding the Lord and ourselves that it is about Him and not about us; once again harkening back to Exodus 30, not using worship to perfumed ourselves. The song is called I'm Going Back To The Heart of Worship (The Heart of Worship). I only pray that this song will indeed be sung as a confession to our Maker of the travesty too much of modern worship has become and an appeal that it once again be about Him.

Jacob Prasch

As a footnote I would recommend that any of our readers who may not have done so click onto these two related articles on the Moriel website by Danny Isom:

Despite his Roman Catholic funeral mass, unless he repented and was regenerated by God's Spirit at the end of his life, legislative baby killer Ted Kennedy most likely now languishes in hell forever as both the political and religious hypocrite he was, on one hand professing to be a committed Roman Catholic (which is at least ostensibly pro-life) but who politically was vehemently and consistently pro-death/-abortion yet was hypocritically given a Roman Catholic funeral. As with Boston's pedophile-protecting Cardinal Law, the Roman Church itself says one thing but does another the same as the Boston politicians. As when Boston Cardinal Cushing publicly fudged the issue when Jacky Kennedy married a divorced Ari Onassis in violation of Roman Catholic canon law, in Boston and in Rome, money talks. Whether something is really right or wrong actually depends on who does it and much money they have rather than whether it is really right or wrong in and of itself.

Thomas Moore had no problem with the divorce of Henry VIII providing the pope declared it annulled as popes often did when it was in their political and/or financial interest to do so. Kennedy practiced typical Roman Catholicism - just go to confession (quite possibly to a child molesting priest), say a ritual mea culpa and continue with business as usual. It could be making another pro-abortion speech in congress, murdering someone again as with the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland, a Mafia Don continuing to run rackets - or if you happen to be the priest whom the Boston politician or IRA killer or Don confesses the "sin" to, you might sexually violate yet another defenseless child with the assured protection of the Roman church and bishop. Just go back to the confessional, kneel down, and tell a possible pedophile what you did (he sure won't tell you what he did). It is a centuries old sick game, the hypocritical religious and political joke of Roman Catholicism that pro baby killing Ted Kennedy played well, comfortable in the solid knowledge that "as long as you have the cash, they have the absolution".

American political history saw several major Metropolitan areas dominated by less than straightforward Irish Catholic politicians. This is not to suggest that all Irish Catholics in the USA ever supported these machines or benefited from them anymore than all Italian Americans were ever involved with the Italian Mafia. It is rather a fact that in both cases ethnic members of their own communities were often disproportionately among the victims of their exploitation and corruption and the organized opposition to them often sprung from among their own kind. However, the machines were real. In New York it was the Tammany Hall of Jimmy Walker; in New Jersey it was the Hudson county machine of Frank Hague; in Chicago it was the Cook County machine of Richard Daily; and in Boston it was the Kennedys.

In each case, control of the high-density ethnic metropolitan vote (irrespective of whether it was gerrymandered or not) awarded the machine control of the state, but because they were important Electoral College states demographically in the Northeast and Midwest, these machines could control much of national politics. In each case, the police, prosecutor, and DA offices were dominated by fellow Irishman. In each case from the widely reported Bolger mob and the rum running of old man Kennedy during prohibition in Boston (which indirectly financed the founding of his political empire), to Mickey Spillane and the Westies of New York, to the criminal regime of Mickey Shaughnessy and Bugsy Moran in Chicago, to the original Molly Maguires of Pennsylvania. While not strictly speaking exclusive to Irish Americans, there was an ugly history of Irish Catholic organized crime in a situation where gangsters, law enforcement, and politicians had a very comfortable relationship - but the priest was there too. After all, not only could they all sing O Danny Boy and The Wearing of the Green but they were "good Catholics" and members of the Knights of Columbus who marched together in the St. Patrick's Day parade. Yet I suspect that St. Patrick would have been more like Jesus and less like Cardinal Law.

The apex of this "machine" power was arguably reached in the manipulated election of JFK. Yet, when JFK applauded the Earl Warren Supreme Court ban on voluntary school prayer, the Roman Catholic Church uttered not a word. It was not simply a three-legged table of politicians, gangsters, and cops and prosecutors. The fourth leg of Irish American political power was the Roman Catholic Church. Each faction benefited from what was on the table and no faction had an interest in turning the table upside down. The Church of Rome would quickly sweep the abortion issue under the table when it came to a Kennedy. With a Kennedy, a Joe Biden, and a Tip O' Neill on Capitol Hill, it was unlikely that congressional or senatorial investigations into any nationally organized protection of pedophile nuns and priests by American bishops was not likely to happen and Irish Catholic prosecutors would be as reluctant to prosecute as Irish Catholic detectives would be reluctant to investigate. While far worse examples of this politically motivated dereliction of duty were uncovered in The Republic of Ireland, it is impossible to ignore the American realities.

When other Irish American political reformers, special prosecutors, and journalists tried to expose this travesty and break up its power (as Fiorello La Guardia, Mario Prococcino, Mario Biaggi, and Rudy Giuliani would do with the Italian -American equivalent), they only went after three legs. Politicians, gangsters, and bent prosecutors and cops on the take were fair game. No one would dare touch the Roman Catholic Church. My own family is a mixture of Irish and Jewish. My mother's family is conservative Republican Irish Catholics. My grandfather was a conservative Republican (in the style of a Sean Hannity or a Bill O' Reilly) and a senior ranking Irish Catholic police officer that knew his own kind, knew the machines for what they were, and staunchly detested the Kennedys. He also understood how the "machine" (prior to civil service) routinely gave jobs in the police, fire department, transit authority etc. to Irish immigrants in order to keep a permanent underclass to vote Democrat against the Republican party of the Protestant establishment much as modern Democrat liberals use affirmative action to create a permanent Black underclass which Afro -American conservatives such as Allan Keyes, Walter Williams, and Star Parker protest because it makes upward mobility of American Blacks too much depend on party politics requiring a racial underclass as a power base. While my Irish family saw through the Irish - American political sham of the "machine" however, still - never a syllable could ever be muttered about the misconduct of the Roman Catholic Church or its complicity in the sickening evil.

It cost $660 million in settlements plus legal fees to keep everyone's favorite Irish American - discredited Los Angeles Cardinal Mahoney out of San Quinton in the estimation of many legal editorialists. Be they gangsters, crooked politicians, and dishonest District Attorneys, or church hierarchy obstructing justice to shield just sex criminal clergy at the cost of the children being molested; be it Cardinal Law or the late senator from Chappaquiddick - no matter how hypocritical or corrupt, and irrespective of how many children are molested or babies aborted - the table must not be turned over. There is money and power at stake. Jesus of course saw things differently. He went against the religious establishment of His own ethnic kind and turned over the tables because He is about God, salvation, and righteousness - not about money and politics. (Mt. 21:12). But while the College of Cardinals may remain a Sanhedrin, Boston is not biblical Jerusalem, and the pope is no vicar of Christ. It really is all about money and power in a world where "a Kennedy is a Kennedy and a priest is a priest" - so the tables must not be turned over. It will be wonderful when Jesus returns and the government will be on His shoulders (Isaiah 9:6); no more politicians and no more religious hypocrisy. That is the way it is going to be, but meanwhile that is not the way it is. No tables get turned over in Irish Catholic Boston, after all - no matter what they've done, aborting babies, molesting children or otherwise - they were all good altar boys. Mea Maxima Culpa!

J. Jacob Prasch

This entry originally posted by MORIELDANNY 03.01.2010

http://moriel.org/MorielArchive/index.php/discernment/catholicism/truth-be-told-jesus-could-not-have-been-an-irishman

 

There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven-
A time to love and a time to hate...
- Ecclesiastes 3:1, 8a

We seem to live at a time where the world's notion of political correctness has been embraced to a large degree even by mainstream Evangelical Christianity. Like all deception it masquerades the simple biblical truth by over-emphasizing what might be a truth in and of itself to the point that the whole thing is actually a lie. Political correctness loves to deploy the facade of "love", "tolerance", and "kindness" to an extreme where anything it deems to be encroaching on these noble attributes is evidence of an unloving, intolerable, unkind spirit. But just as we must embrace God's Word to the degree that we no longer love according to the world's definition but according to the way God defines love, so too we must understand, "There is a time to love and a time to hate" - not as the world defines "hate", but according to how and what we are taught to hate in alignment with God's Word.

The first and foremost contrast between the world's definition of "hate" and how it is defined by God's Word is that biblical hate is not unreasonable nor uncontrolled. As a matter of fact, it is extremely well-educated when it comes to knowing what is to be hated and why. God's Word specifically tells us not to hate our neighbor and even commands us to love our enemies. (Mt. 5:43-48) Biblically we never return "hate" for "hate" in our personal relationships. The biblical definition of proper, Christian hatred has to do with our attitude toward a person, place, or thing with which one should have no tolerance because they either openly oppose, detest, or despise God and His people or are the open proponents of rebellion against God. It has to do with how we are supposed to deal with someone or something actively opposed to God's Word and ways to such a degree that a relationship with them under any guise will corrupt us.

This becomes clearer if we shake the dust off our concordance and look up all the Scriptures which employ a variation of the word "hate". (And there certainly are quite a few.) We quickly begin to see a pattern by which God is making a distinction between those merely acting in ignorance of His Word from those proactively working against Him. And up front I'm going to let it be known that the greatest object of biblical hatred is not the general sin and fallen nature of the world at large. No, the primary target of "hate" in alignment with biblical teaching has much more to do with those claiming to be part of the Kingdom but who teach and live as diametric opponents of it. The roots of biblical hatred can be characterized as an extreme intolerance for hypocrisy, backsliding, and false teaching.

Those in the World Who Hate God

To understand what we are called to hate it might first be helpful to understand something of the nature of the hatred that already exists where God is concerned. The human pursuit of idolatry - to make something or someone else the object of worship in the rightful place of God - is one of God's first definitions of someone who God says hates Him.

"You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
- Exodus 20:4-6

From the outset and throughout the whole of God's Word the repeated evidence of "hate" is disobedience to God's Word and the proof of "love" is obedience. Just as biblical love can never be proven by just the confession of our mouth alone but must be backed up with our actions, so it works in reverse to prove someone "hates" God.

This is verified over and over again in Scripture by showing that the proof of someone who "hates" God is provided by their consistent refusal to listen to Him and put His Word into practice in their life. The proof that someone "hates" God?

• They hate biblical knowledge. (Prov. 1:22, 28-30)

• They hate to be reproved by God's Word. (Prov. 5:12-13; 9:8; 15:10; Amos 5:10)

• They have trouble speaking the truth. (Prov. 26:24, 28)

• They hate Christians who serve as reminders to them of what it means to walk in faithfulness to God's Word. (Prov. 29:10)

• They have trouble treating other people fairly. (Micah 3:1-2)
  

These are all different aspects of rejecting God's Word not just casually, but completely from the heart, mind, and soul. They have such a revulsion to the Truth of God's Word that they most often express their hatred against Him by how they treat others, especially believers. Not wanting to be reminded of it, they want God's truth - and those of us acting as examples reminding them of it - to just go away.

"For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
- John 3:20

Toward God personally they embrace some form of idolatry in attempt to displace Him from their life. Toward us who have chosen to instead cling to Him regardless such people express their hatred for Him through their mistreatment of us.

"The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it, that its deeds are evil.
- John 7:7

"You will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved.
- Matthew 10:22

"But you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death, and you will be hated by all because of My name.
- Luke 21:16-17

"If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.
- John 15:18-19

No, we are not called to hate such people back. We are to recognize that they are in rebellion against God and in reality the only pitiful little things they can even attempt against Him is to focus that anger on us. To such people we are called to be living, earthly examples of His love so they will be reminded that their rebellion is actually against God's Word and what awaits them if they will choose to instead reconcile with Him.

"I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
- John 17:14

Things God Generally Hates

Across the board there are characteristics in man that God abhors as a rule. Whether someone is a believer or unbeliever, there are behaviors which God simply does not tolerate. Understanding these things provides a foundation for what God expects from everyone.

• "...You hate all who do iniquity." (Ps. 5:5)

• "...the one who loves violence His soul hates." (Ps. 11:5)

• "...since you have not hated bloodshed, therefore bloodshed will pursue you." (Ezek. 35:6)

• "All their evil is at Gilgal; indeed, I came to hate them there! Because of the wickedness of their deeds..." (Hosea 9:15)

• "...let none of you devise evil in your heart against another, and do not love perjury; for all these are what I hate..." (Zech. 8:17)

Note that the object of God's intolerance is most often defined in terms of how people treat each other. This is probably best exemplified in Proverbs...

There are six things which the LORD hates,
Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him:
Haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
And hands that shed innocent blood,
A heart that devises wicked plans,
Feet that run rapidly to evil,
A false witness who utters lies,
And one who spreads strife among brothers.
- Proverbs 6:16-19

We can really see the biblical roots of the old yarn, "Hate the sin but love the sinner". There are those who actively reject God in their pursuit of worshiping someone or something in His place, and there are those who actively reject God's Word and ways in their pursuit of earthly relationships with other people. In such cases the word "hate" is describing something more akin to a deep, personal disappointment that people choose to go their own way and are blind to the destination to which sin is ultimately going to take them. It is particular noteworthy that God judges such people not so much by their mistreatment of Him, but according to how they treat others.

The one who says he is in the Light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now.
- 1 John 2:9

Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
- 1 John 3:15

If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.
- 1 John 4:20

Those in the Church Who Hate God

There is a different category of person however, of whom we are supposed to remain keenly aware. There are those who claim the label "Christian" but whose behavior betrays the fact that just like the unsaved they are not putting God's Word into practice in their life either. But whereas the unsaved make no pretense of believing in the One True God, hypocrites and heretics try to twist the very Word of God so that it justifies their outlandish, unbiblical lifestyle.

"Those who hate the LORD would pretend obedience to Him,
And their time of punishment would be forever.
- Psalm 81:15

One of the chief, repeated biblical characteristics about these people is that they "pretend obedience to Him". In spite of God's repeated attempts to reprove and discipline them, they remain unresponsive and continue to act however they want. (Prov. 5:12-13, 12:1, 15:10; Amos 5:10) It is clear from God's Word that those who continue down such a path will eventually arrive at a time when it is too late to turn back.

"Then they will call on me, but I will not answer;
They will seek me diligently but they will not find me,
Because they hated knowledge
And did not choose the fear of the LORD.
They would not accept my counsel,
They spurned all my reproof.
- Proverbs 1:28-30

And there is a special category of Scriptures devoted to addressing a problem that can only be brought about by people falsely claiming Christ's name in the course of their unbiblical pursuits: wrong worship. Yes, the Bible defines wrong worship not simply as a "mistake" or an "accident", but as something so willful and planned as to constitute the very definition of what it means to "hate" God.

"When the LORD your God cuts off before you the nations which you are going in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land, beware that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, 'How do these nations serve their gods, that I also may do likewise?' You shall not behave thus toward the LORD your God, for every abominable act which the LORD hates they have done for their gods; for they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods.
- Deuteronomy 12:29-31

"You shall not set up for yourself a sacred pillar which the LORD your God hates.
- Deuteronomy 16:22

"I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts,
They have become a burden to Me;
I am weary of bearing them.
- Isaiah 1:14

For I, the LORD, love justice,
I hate robbery in the burnt offering;
And I will faithfully give them their recompense
And make an everlasting covenant with them.
- Isaiah 61:8

'Yet I sent you all My servants the prophets, again and again, saying, "Oh, do not do this abominable thing which I hate." But they did not listen or incline their ears to turn from their wickedness, so as not to burn sacrifices to other gods.
- Jeremiah 44:4-5

"I hate, I reject your festivals,
Nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies.
- Amos 5:21

I know there are those who think the continuing discussion about the Church Growth Movement, the Purpose Driven agenda, the Emergent Church Movement, the march toward Ecumenism and many other related "approaches" to how a church should operate is nothing but one man's opinion versus another man's. Is it really? When God Himself despises wrong worship and in turn fosters in us an equal response of hatred for it, is it just a "difference of opinion"? Every historical and biblical instance of a false movement gripping the very innards of God's people all began with a corruption of worship. And God Himself defines such people as hating Him because if they loved Him they would...

"...worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."
- John 4:23

How tolerant of alternative worship approaches should we be when God Himself considers it an act of hatred?

The Example of David

One of the highest examples of biblical behavior is stated to be David. Perhaps we can learn something about the proper application of hatred from his own example.

I do not sit with deceitful men,
Nor will I go with pretenders.
I hate the assembly of evildoers,
And I will not sit with the wicked.
- Psalm 26:4-5

I hate those who regard vain idols,
But I trust in the LORD.
- Psalm 31:6

I will set no worthless thing before my eyes;
I hate the work of those who fall away;
It shall not fasten its grip on me.
- Psalm 101:3

A worldly bit of wisdom we are familiar with intones, "You are hardest on your own kind." I see that in David's teaching because the ones with whom we should draw the deepest distinction are those claiming to operate under the same church roof as us. The harshest and most inflexible stands we are to take are with the "pretenders" - "those who fall away". If the biblical definition of "hate" is to be intolerant of something, then there is no room for political correctness where the corruption of the Body of Christ is concerned.

I do not believe this gives anyone a license to scream uncontrollably at people, I do not believe we are given leave of the boundaries of love to pursue expressing hatred, nor do I think this opens the door to open persecution of those working internally against the Word of God. But at the least it calls for us to stand firm in what we believe, to unflinchingly remain true to God's Word, and in the most loving way possible confront such people with our resolve to not allow their false teaching and false practices to continue. Anyone can calmly and confidently look them in the eye and sincerely admonish and rebuke wrong behavior within the Body of Christ. This is not a call to violence in the classical sense, merely an encouragement to take a stand and not back down. (If you want another useful word study, look up the scriptural uses of any variation of the word "tolerate" - its not a Christian trait to be cherished.)

'You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him.
- Leviticus 19:17

However, "There is an appointed time for everything...A time for love and a time for hate..." (Ecc. 3:1, 8a) The biblical object of our hatred and intolerance is come, and if we allow political correctness and a false understanding of "tolerance" to win the day, we are in danger of losing the day to a false love in the name of that political correctness.