“Do you realize that there are really only two powers in all the universe?All of our differences between nations and differences between each other and all the rest of the little minor things are connected with one or the other of those powers. And those powers are God’s power and Satan’s power – the power of life and the power of death. Satan’s power is only a perversion of God’s power. Death is only a perversion of life; a lie is only the truth mis-told; adultery is a righteous act misused. Everything that Satan has is something that was perverted, but it’s a power.”54
Man’s first approach to God through specific conduct and ritual was in the substitutional offerings of Cain and Abel. Cain sought to breach the gap between the known and the unknown worlds and to petition the spiritual realm through beauty and the physical senses. Abel offered a blood sacrifice as atonement for his sins. God accepted one, and rejected the other, for only one was made by revelation, and the other was a carnal (perverted) impersonation.
Since God is, by very definition, unchangeable, we can, on the basis of both His character and His past performance, have complete confidence in what He will do in the future. Although man continues to make offerings based on aesthetic principles, the precepts of God can never change. “Years ago we use to find the people in deep sincerity and worship. And today, it has become a big glamour of Hollywood, just some kind of train music. Women are up on the platform with their cloth tight enough than their skin is on the outside, almost, and dancing around the platform. There is no sincerity, making it just an outright ridiculous shame, while professing Christianity. I wonder if our offerings haven’t become a kind of stench in His nostrils again?”55
Thus that mean that as believers, we should restrict the music we hear and perform to only the old, classic hymns in order to avoid the negative message of unsound music? Absolutely not. One style of music will never please everyone, however there are objective principles that are based on truth and not on taste by which we can judge what we listen to: Rhythm, lyrics, and life styles.
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In the jungles regions of the world there is a form of communication that is called ‘talking drums’, and by beating out certain rhythms messages are sent back and forth between the villages. The music which Satan has perverted for his own use performs that same role in our society, as “…they call in the spirit by the rhythm of the music.”56 You must learn to identify the rhythm of rock, so that before you pick up the telephone, you know whose number you will be dialing!
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Listen carefully to what the lyrics are saying. Are there unscriptural doctrines being thought? Is immorality being subtly endorsed? Is the message one of holiness, or is New Age love and peace being promoted? “ Cease, my son, to hear the instruction that causeth to err from the words of knowledge.” Proverbs 19:27