A Pixel in a Greater Picture: The Emerging Church of Christ: CRITIQUED

Kenneth Sublett, Piney.com, Hohenwald, Tennessee

Fred Peatross, forward by Edward Fudge. Hand Clapping is always a show of contempt for man or God, or applause to God for permitting the Jews to put their feet on the necks of the Gentiles. When people fail, they fall back to the archaic. In this case, musical worship comes from the Towers of Babylon. Hand clapping is body drumming.

Some leading misleaders about MUSIC in worship.

Isaiah 25, Isa 25: Isaiah Chapter 25: The branch of the terrible one is a song to be accompanied with instrumental music.

Dwaine E. Dunning The non-instrumental BRANCH must be cut OFF. God always hides a MARK. There are several parts of this paper.

A. Ralph Johnson in Instrumental Music, Sacred or Sinful.

1. Tom Burgess in Documents on Instrumental Music reviewed. Psallo and Instrumental Music: Proofs do not prove anything but the "music-homosexuality" connection. See more on Strabo's definition of the worship of Apollo or Abaddon or Apollyon: his MUSES are the locusts or musical performers in the book of revelation.

2. Tom Burgess More Review of Plutarch: if Psallo authorizes "church music" it authorizes a homosexual gathering.

3. Tom Burgess on Moralia confirms the "Music-Heresy-Perversion" connection which has no historical exception. 10/20/04

4. Tom Burgess on John Chrysostom: are the anti-instrumentalists ignorant rurals? 10/21/04 What about Paul and Martin Luther and John Calvin and Zwingli and--everyone who believed the Bible as authority.

5. M. C. Kurfees and G. C. Brewer on Psallo and Instrumental Music in worship. Thayer and Grimm reviewed by Tom Burgess.

Charles Daily Northwest College of the Bible Part One ..... Part One A .. ..... THRESKIA or CHARISMATIC

See how the Stoneites which gave rise to the Christian Churches adopted the Methodist Shouting as an act of worship.

Fred Peatross: The Church as Spectacle The emerging church sounds strangely like that at the towers of Babylon, neo-paganism and even witchcraft.

There is not requirement to give to or associate with or "become friends with sinners." God is against the Seeker Centers:

Give to the godly man, but do not help the sinner. Ecclu 12: 4.
Do good to the
humble, but do not give to the ungodly; hold back his bread, and do not give it to him,

lest by means of it he subdue you;
for you will receive twice as much evil for all the good which you do to him.
Ecclu 12: 5.

Who will pity a snake charmer (flute player) bitten by a serpent, or any who go near wild beasts? Ecclu 12:13.
So no one will pity a man
who associates with a sinner and becomes involved in his sins. Ecclu 12: 14.
He will stay with you for a time,
but if you falter, he will not stand by you. Ecclu 12: 15.

Fred says that Jesus was less than intelligent and "a gregarious friend of sinners" and a wine drinker and dispenser!

They will surely show contempt and pour out God's judgment against your foolishness by clapping their hands!

When you use the sinners means to attract sinners be warned that the sinners will grasp you by your heels and defeat you because you were not under the blood of Jesus:

An enemy will speak sweetly with his lips,

but in his mind he will plan to throw you into a pit;

an enemy will weep with his eyes,

but if he finds an opportunity his thirst for blood will be insatiable. Ecclu 12: 16.

If calamity befalls you, you will find him there ahead of you;
and while pretending to help you,
he will trip you by the heel; Ecclu 12: 17.
he will shake his head,
and clap his hands,
and whisper much,
and change his expression. Ecclu 12: 18.
 

Clapping never caused a probem. Rather, music, dancing and clapping (buffonery) was the MARK of God's wrath being poured out.

Fred's Book is an honest presentation of what the emerging church of Christ has become in some areas. Fred e-mailed me a copy of this chapter and I have reviewed it based on how hand clapping is seen in the Bible and history and it does not reflect on Fred's vision of a new form of worship. The book is well written, concise and defines the rise of a new form of "worship" to replace the church as synagogue or school.

I bought it and it is very precise and will not offend those who see themselves as charismatic.

A Pixel in a Greater Picture by Fred Peatross, Edward W. Fudge

We have looked at the Emerging Church which must take seriously the fleshly use of images, aound and vizualization. This is proposed as Worship as a Spectacle. We will comment on some of chapter 32. In addition, we will look at the Pharisees charge that Jesus was a glutton and a wine drinker.

We respectufully submit that this was what the Jews accused Jesus of but Jesus very pictorially called them liars. However, we understand that this is a popular way of interpreting Jesus as "all things to all people." We believe that it is wrong.

We try not to be too judgmental with Post Moderns because their Bible is not our Bible and consequently John Locke would say that their religion is not our religion. Therefore, their church of Christ is not our church of Christ. Ours emerged in the first century and has always been identifed as belonging ot Christ.

Short version Review: Clapping hands is a way to show contempt for the looser. It is not possible to "give heed" or Worship God in the spirit while giving heed to our carnal senses.

Lifting "holy" hands is always a preamble to "giving heed" to the word, commandments or oracle of God. One lifts the hands, palm up, as if reading the Word written on the palm. David "lifts my hands to your commandment."

The man is qualified to hear the Spirit or Mind of Christ by having holy hands to lift up. To encourage people with "unholy hands" to lift them to the musical performers is anti-scriptural.

The woman is qualified by her dress and spiritual disposition to pray.

Both male and female offer their own prayers: no one can "lead" another in personal prayers.

The priestly duty which required "holy hands" was teaching: the woman was not part of this public teaching. The instructions to Timothy was to "give attendance to the public reading of the word, to exhortation to doctrine."

Both male and female meditated on this reading as necessary to the learning (as opposed to just hearing) the message. That is, they "sang and made melody in the heart" as IN SPIRIT worship.

We believe that Fred gives authority (ex cathedra) for "acts of worship" which are intimately connected with idolatry and charismatic religion and the introduction of which is known before hand will "sow discord among the brethren." If the issue is just optional then someone is making a lot of effort to insist that the new "lawful" church of Christ which has moved out of the "ignorance" of the last century is free to sow discord any way it wishes.

Part of the problem is seeing church as "worship center" to enact rituals which have magical transforming power. However, the church Jesus died for was synagogue or school of the Bible. Singing and other "playful" instincts was part of the secular entertainment.

We all just need to relax, plant and sow and let God give the increase.

Fred Peatross: All churches want to transform people. The challenge is that the "transformational journey" of the

Christendom era that ended in the 20th century

no longer works for 21st century people.

If evangelicals are interested in reaching the largest segment of our population they're going to have to carefully consider what kinds of evangelistic approaches best work in a postmodern world. In this groundbreaking book Peatross offers practical advice to Christians who have been trained to do ministry in a world that no longer exist.

The following is a chapter in a book titled "A Pixel in a Greater Picture: The Emerging Church of Christ" by Fred Peatross; foreword by Edward Fudge.

Fred: do you still use the SAME BIBLE? Shelly gives you the right to NARRATE it. Do you still OWE for your OLD house? Do your creditors still DEMAND that you pay. Do the kids use the same MATHEMATICS, CHEMISTRY, PHYSICS? Do you still parse sentences and understand documents the same way? Have you thrown away your old car, your church "house" and on and on?

Of course not: the same method of GOING and PREACHING is the ONLY way to evangelize.

Now, if you are speaking of doing "church" in the CIRCE or holy whore way the METHODS she used (she was burried close to Patmos) was INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC and ENCHANTMENTS or SONGS administered with "drugs" and she was therefore a sorceress. Music has always been a key INSTRUMENT OF SORCERY.

First, churches of Christ are not part of the Evangelical movement. Christ is interested in only one form of transformation: "go preach, baptize, teach." Only a tiny handfull will be interested in the simple, totally verbal account of God in the flesh. Only those who are worthy of the kingdom will hear. If you are Seeking the masses you are seeking the goats and not the sheep. The kingdom is a mystery: it is within the human mind or spirit. It has no external rituals to make the Words of Christ more powerful.

I don't want to do what only God can do! Is that pre-post-modern or what? Yes, the church's preachers totally believe that by getting a Phd they have the supernatural power to construct a "sermon" ignorant of the Spirit Word which has power to "transform people." Part of this clan teaches that the musicians can help "lead the worshiper into the presence of God." That means, and is claimed, that "musicians are mediators between man and God." Yea, even "the platform upon which God lands."

This is not Post Modern but Post Biblical and Post rational. Yet, it is pre-Biblical beginning at the Towers of Babylon.

What utter nonesense: when the twin towers were attacked, people didn't turn to charismatic worship rituals (totally legalistic). Rather, the Bible has had a huge increase in sales. People have nothing from their "churchy culture" of preachers denying that for which they get paid upon which to build a spiritual foundation. Therefore, they sit down and read trying to find the Water of the Word for which they have hungered and thirsted to death because the clergy supplies the "wine, women and song" which destroyed Israel (Amos 5, 6, 8) and Judah (Isaiah 5).

The church of Christ is defined by the Bible BEFORE the latter day apostles decided that we had moved through some time warp which perhaps keeps bodies from falling from tall buildings (God's law) or people from "reaping exactly what they sow." If we sow to the flesh we will reap corruption. That is not the church of Christ which, ideally, is not pagan worship center but School of Christ.

The Post Modern, sense-sucked, do not believe what they are saying: they get their worship ritual and women's worship team right off the Towers of Babel whose temple (church) at the top was where the gods landed. And, you could be played up and down the steps to "meet the gods ascending and descending." The collection plate was at the top and the slave labor LEGALISTICALLY SERVED the gods down below.

Hand clapping and hand waving is totally documented in the Classics and church Fathers so there is nothing Post Modern or "emerging" about falling into the new winskin vat of pagan, prostitute religion.

This article defines the Biblical "church" and a faitlful church of Christ

And definition of the church as School of Christ.

Nothing has changed in the history of the world in this latter day "death struggle of an unlawful priesthood riding on the backs of widows and orphans" to justify the switch to the Mountain-Grown, snake-handling mentality, Voodoo empowered new style of praise music seeking to reach a climax with God or "making the spirit come." It can happen because music massages every nerve ending in the body and even shakes the brain in its skull.

When Israel "rose up to play" here is the picture: see how God would destroy the musical, hand clappers in Egypt who were having VISIONARY ORGASMS.

What has changed is as "post-modern" as Nimrod and the slave drivers right off the ark.

The Post-Modern "New Style Worship" is identified in every age as pagan idolatry used by the deviant to sell their abnormality as proof that the god's were speaking through them: they would tell you the secret for a price.

Jesus would define the Pharisees as Post Modern because they ignored the Word of God, in order to enforce their own word and in order to become theatrical performers and steal the houses of widows.

They, too, were excluded by Jesus from ever hearing the Spiritual message of redemption.

To their eternal credit, the Pharisees never turned to mixed-sex choirs and instrumental music as weapons against the people and tools of the tithe collectors!

It was the TEMPLE or "church house evangelists" who still BURNED animals using the LEVITICAL MUSIC as a CARNAL type of murdering Lord Jesus Christ.

Music was for animal burning times and every, even non-literate kid knew that when Christ stops the animal sacrifices, the temple servants stop the loud noise which is not called "music."

If we start the music again using the authority of the temple then we repudiate Christ and His words and Paul in Hebrews 6 calls this the unforgivable sin.

Post Modern: Right off the Ark

A new word or term pops up and we can guarantee that it will get to the pulpit faster than the book of Isaiah. "Post Modern" is what Arlie Hoover calls: "Chronological Snobbery." I am constantly astounded that the world built such highly-crafted airplanes BEFORE I was born.

Jesus knew it when He warned the Jewish Clergy:

They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept. Luke 7:32

Everyone tends to believe that "truth began with me." The charismatics at Corinth thought so but Paul asked:

Or did the word of God come originally from you? Or was it you only that it reached? 1 Cor 14:36

The Babylonian tablets tell the story of the female-effeminate worship leaders whose primary weapons were chants (enchanting) and musical instrument. Just off the Ark:

"But when all these things were done, men turned again to impiety; and on this account a law was given by God to instruct them in the manner of living.

But in process of time, the worship of God and righteousness were corrupted by the unbelieving and the wicked, as we shall show more fully by and by.

Moreover, perverse and erratic religions were introduced, to which the greater part of men gave themselves up,

by occasion of holidays and solemnities, instituting drinkings and banquets,

following pipes, and flutes, and harps, and diverse kinds of musical instruments, and indulging themselves in all kinds of drunkenness and luxury.

"Hence every kind of error took rise; hence they invented groves and altars, fillets and victims, and after drunkenness they were agitated as if with mad emotions.

By this means power was given to the demons to enter into minds of this sort, so that they seemed to lead insane dances and to rave like Bacchanalians; hence were invented the gnashing of teeth, and bellowing from the depth of their bowels; hence a terrible countenance and a fierce aspect in men, so that he whom drunkenness had subverted and a demon had instigated, was believed by the deceived and the erring to be filled with the Deity. The full account of the rise of Idolatry.

Clement repeats the story told in a dozen ancient accounts such as the Book of Enoch, The book of Jubilees and the Books of Adam and Eve. At the minimum, these documents record the views of the Jews at the time.

Reviewing the chapter:

> First, let's disable your rational mind by telling a "death bed story." We all have strong feelings about the safety of our children. However, when an accident occurs the emotion is the RESULT of reality.

> You can experience anxiety: waiting up for the late teenager. Just borrowing trouble. This is ARTIFICIALLY CREATED ANXIETY and it is irrational and unhealthy. Sometimes we have to get pills in order to survive the "worship music" in order to find the lost God Who shows up only at the building and in response to our awakening or arousal ceremonies. See how singing arousal Psalms was put down.

> Another form is "Spiritual anxiety created by religious ritual." That was the burden the performing clergy laded on the backs of the people used like pack animals. However, a fundamental part of the GOSPEL is that Jesus died to get the free-loaders and anxiety creators off our backs. He came to give us REST.

> The mandate Jesus gave the "preachers" was to "go, preach, baptize, teach" and go on to the next "threshing field." The mandate for the church was to "make known the manifold wisdom of God." The church has no role in transforming people with the works of human hands. All we are commanded to do is plant and water and leave the "transforming" to God. We are not God and we cannot put them through a transformational journey any more than men can be put through a "masculine journey" without tainting our sanity.

Worship and Emotions

Fred Peatross: Late one night, my wife was awakened by a phone call. A hospital emergency room nurse told her that our daughter had been injured in an automobile accident. She said that we should come to the hospital at once. I have to admit that I was scared. My frustration continued to build during the frenzied drive to the hospital. As we waited to consult with the emergency room doctor about the extent of the injuries, I began to notice emotions that I had never felt in the past. Eventually, the doctor came and told us that our daughter had broken three dorsal vertebrae in her spine.

Waves of emotional reactions were interspersed with periods of numbness. I felt out of control, yet I maintained my composure by taking care of the immediate needs I recognized. I talked with the radiologist and I called relatives.

We can right now relive the experience: every parent has this burden as long as they are alive. These are real bone crushing, anxiety-creating events. However, YOU MUST NOT LADE more burden on people's backs. Jesus died to remove the burden which was "spiritual anxiety created by religious ritual." Don't deny Jesus by crucifying Him after trying to MELT HIS HEART with what was always WARRIOR'S MUSIC.

Music is one of the most powerful drugs for creating "spiritual anxiety." But, wait just a second or two and endorphins come to our rescue to heal the pain from twitching, plucking, twanging, abrading and give us a little left over to be peddled as "spiritual worship."

For a growing number of people constantly under artificially created anxiety, the same drum beat with "church music" creates exactly the same life-shattering feeling the father feels when he believes that his beloved daughter is dangerously ill. Exactly. You cannot tell the difference. The hand clapping, hand waving, singing very complex praise (erotic) songs is deliberately and with a high hand "grinding to bits" (basis of melody) many of the people, making them want to run past the preacher without being able to tell you what he preached about.

The most ancient pagan "professional religionists" knew that and medical science and musicologists know it: that is why it works for those with more "anxiety reserve." Nevertheless, people are deliberately harassing the people of God because they pretend to know more than the Bible which has withstood their hammering for 2,000 years and will not even be dented by them.

Churches of Christ will survive and when the pendulum swings back--pendulums always swing--their children will rise up and call them cursed.

Fred Peatross: From early childhood, males are taught that men should protect their families. Fathers are responsible for fulfilling their wife's and children's physical, financial, and emotional needs. They are to be in control, to be strong (never scared), and capable of fixing all things. By adulthood, males are catapulted into stereotypical roles. Often they feel torn while trying to fulfill the roles expected of them. Showing emotions is labeled as weak or pitiful. They are expected to be strong under adverse circumstances, even when there's an automobile accident involving a daughter they love.

Football or Basketball or professional wrestling is a great place to let go. Even church picnics work. However, God reserved one tiny reservation called EKKLESIA or ASSEMBLY (never church) where He as pure or holy Spirit meets us in our spirit or mind: He doesn't meet us on the dance floor. That synagogue or QAHAL as the "church in the wilderness" was for INSTRUCTION and God outlawed the Levitical warriors "making a joyful noise before the Lord."

Hand clapping is recognized in the Bible as a way to show contempt for utter losers. It is also a way to show contempt for Christ when He has come as promised to Teach us through His Words. It is also wa way to introduce the greatest amount of "spiritual anxiety." Waiting for news about our children is not the best time for show people to do a hand clapping routine.

Rather than Corinth being a "pattern" of unity in diversity, Paul clearly said:

In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good (worthless). 1 Cor 11:17

Too bad about you, Fred, I get lots of hugs and even tears. If we are traumatized it is from unlawful preachers substituting "teaching the Word as it has been taught" with "sermonizing" which they believe has extra spiritual punch power simply by the way they have composed and delivered it. Heard one billed as having rengerating power because he had trained with Zig Ziglar!

Fred Peatross: It's easy to ignore and eventually deny your feelings with the consuming responsibilities and demands of a busy life. But being the analytical type that I am (is this a male thing?), I've often wondered if this is the reason I am hesitant to show and express my feelings.

If you are the masculine, analytical type you really should be afraid of anyone trying to seduce you into connecting a phsyical act of the body with spiritual worship. Once you make the brain snapse connection between "feelings" and being "spiritual" it is likely that you will abandon the Words of Christ in favor of what "feels good to me."

If you "show emotion" which has been generated by the jungle beat then your body is just being a robot: "dancing" when someone else "pipes."

One can "feel" without expressing that feeling in public worship. For instance, what if I feel utter disgust for the Biblical illiteracy in sermon and class? Should I "let go and let God" and just vomit (parallel to clapping) up all over the place, cry, pull my hair and tell the teacher how silly he makes himself look pretending to be THE teacher?

Fred Peatross: Feelings and Worship

If worship is a response of the whole person to God, then we cannot ignore emotions. When we worship we think about Christ and contemplate His character.

We're invited to express our brokenness, gratitude, awe, fear, joy, and humility before God.

Worship calls forth a language of the heart.

It's communion with God, and our response should produce an outflow of feelings.

That is a very big If. In the Law- sense, worship was "being under bondage," falling flat on your face and daring not look up until the trumpets give the all clear.

I wonder about a religious ritual for "expressing our humility." Someone has said that: "Drama works because everyone knows that it isn't really true."

LAW (legalistic) "worship" is force-directed to the senses: singing, clapping, playing instruments, waving hands has the BODY (law) in control. If you can see it, smell it, taste it or hear it, it may be LAW worship.

SPIRITUAL worship occurs ONLY in the human SPIRIT (mind) as it "crucifies" the flesh. One can see the printed WORD or hear the read WORD. If we "give heed to it" that is SPIRITUAL worship.

THEREFORE, if the whole person is involved we are still under LAW and not under GRACE. And indeed perhaps we can never be.

 
For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: Rom 8: 3

Freedom from law is not for everyone. The law was related to the flesh and could not penetrate to the spirit. Musical rituals were rituals of the flesh.

However, there is a "species" of humanity which can find God in the mind or spirit: that is the only place God will look for our worship.

That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us,
> who walk not after the flesh, (body)
> but after the Spirit. Rom 8:4 (mind)

The test of sonship is that the Son speaks only what He hears from the Father. The test of a spiritual mind is determined by what we are concerned with.

> For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh;
> but they that are after the Spirit, (do mind) the things of the Spirit. Rom 8: 5
 
The mind and spirit are closely related. Mind in Greek is:
 
Phroneo (g5426) fron-eh'-o; from 5424; to exercise the mind, i.e. entertain or have a sentiment or opinion;... to interest oneself in (with concern or obedience)

Charismatic rituals such as singing, clapping, raising hands are shows of contempt for a Spirit God because they attempt to find Him in their own human appetites. God lives in the Most Holy place where only one worship can go unassisted to Meet Him. The Mind is the most holy place of the human spirit; if we attempt to worship God with our hands or feet we will never make contact with a Holy Spirit.

For to be carnally minded is death:
but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Rom 8: 6

There is no peace for the carnal mind; it is always looking for a bigger "fix" to give them the assurance which drained away with the musical drug high.

You strum away on your harps like David and
improvise on musical instruments. who excel in the sound of musical instruments; Amos 6:5
they have regarded them as abiding, not as fleeting pleasure." Amos 6:5 LXX

When you see it you should know that this is not just some programmed legalistic ritual in the "nulling out of all truth and certainty" as we enter the "Post Modern" era. Rather, the carnal mind really has no choice. It has carefully defined, using the Shelly Sifter and secular philosophy, its way into a dead end which, in all of the musical traps of history, it will not and can not recover.

> Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Rom 8: 7
> So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. Rom 8:8

When you cut yourself off from the Vine you are a withering branch and the drier you get the more you crackle:

Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. John 15:4

Here is the universal Post-Biblical or Post Christian test:

"Jingling, banging, and rattling accompanied heathen cults, and the frenzying shawms of a dozen ecstatic cries intoxicated the masses. Amid this euphoric farewell feast of a dying civilization, the voices of nonconformists were emerging from places of Jewish and early Christian worship ..." (Encyclopedia Judaica, 1971 ed., s.v. "Music."

The PLACE of Worship Never Changes

Once you decide that you DO worship for others, and you measure your success or failure by how many you get in your huddle circle DOING worship, you are doomed to eternally trying to find your own PostModern scheme because YOUR old modern scheme didn't work either.

So, here is what we do: we declare God to be dead and His Word so fragmented that all we can do is try to build our own new version "which works."

However, Paul would say that you are still trying to force your body which never got crucified with Christ to rise like dry bones. And you are doomed to failure and you will lead the blind with you.

But, there is a solution. We cannot DO worship for others or LEAD them into worship or, God forgive us, "lead them into the presence of God." Jesus died to give you a solution and you have to die to learn it. That means the "praise teams" sits down as if it had been caught in the Most Holy Place and had tried to open the Ark. That means the "sermonizing" follows the direct command to "give attention to the reading" of the Word and explaining only what you know that others do not alredy know.

Dead men's hands do not keep on clapping and raising them into the face of a Holy God. Why does this insult Him? First, clapping has always been a show of contempt for the looser. Second, if you incourage people to raise "unholy" hands without the Word of God written on the palms then you are leading them into destruction.

GOD CREATED OUR MIND OR SPIRIT AS THE MOST HOLY PLACE OF HUMANITY AND PURGED IT TO MAKE IT FIT FOR HIS HABITATION.

Jesus said that worship is "In Spirit" and that does not mean "charismatically" but it means "in the human spirit" as the PLACE to replace the temples as PLACES. That is the meaning of GRACE. Here are a couple of passages to show that "in spirit" does not mean "in the hands" but in the spirit. That is why Jesus never held a PUBLIC prayer or hand clapping ceremony.

I remembered God, and was troubled: I complained, and my spirit was overwhelmed. Selah. Ps.77:3

I call (Mention, burn incense) to remembrance my song (h5058) in the night:

I commune with mine own heart:
and
my spirit made diligent search. Psalm 77:6

For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed, 1 Cor 5:3

There is difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband. 1 Co.7:34

IN SPIRIT is the only PLACE where God looks for our worship. The fact that we are willing to "crucify the flesh" and meet Him there is the greatest honor or worship we can give to Him.

Jesus said that worship is not "in body" when He defined it as "in spirit." There is a law of silence.

For we are the circumcision,

which worship God in the spirit,
and rejoice in Christ Jesus,
and have no confidence in the flesh. Phil 3:3
 
Fred puts ALL of his conficence IN THE FLESH:
 
Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit,
and watching thereunto with all perseverance
and supplication for all saints; Eph 6:18
 
Fred wants to do this FOR ONE HOUR in an Anxiety-producing RITUAL.

But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith,

praying in the Holy Spirit, Jude 20NKJV

I was in the Spirit on the Lords day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, Re.1:10

Fred wants you to be OUT OF THE SPIRIT. Paul and in all of the classics
this meant INSANITY created by music and other DRUG-INDUCING activity.

John was probably BY HIMSELF and THINKING ON THESE THINGS. God speaksto us in the Most Holy Place in darkness and silence. No light shows

in the temple without getting yourself executed.

You cannot possibly get the arms and glands and feet involved in worshiping God with Body Worship and still worship "in spirit" or in the mind. That is called "worshiping God with the works of human hands."

You cannot possibly worship in TRUTH if the message comes OUT of your own spirit. This is what Paul accused the Corinthians of doing and therefore their singing songs out of their own "spirit" meant that they were just "speaking into the air."

However, in a spiritual sense, worship is most often bowing to God by "giving heed" to His Words and thoughts. It is not possible to "praise God" by chanting "Praise God." We praise God by honoring what He has reveale of His Mind to our mind or spirit.

If we met Albert Einstein we would not honor him by having a team of 'sister singer' perform some kind of musical ritual for him: he would kill you. Rather, we worship or "give attention" to Albert Einstein by asking him if he can please explain relativity without mathematics.

In worship, we are not invited [in my Bible] to express our brokeness or anything else as self-expression: if we speak or open our mouth we are to speak as the Oracle of God. Whatever we choose to do to express our sense of awe we DARE NOT make it into a ritual and impose it on others. This is the "ME" generation which evidently did not die at Twin Towers. This is "let's discuss my belly button syndrome."

Church is synagogue or school and we come there to let Jesus express His will while we shut up and listen.

Someone said "our churches are not friendly." Next week, all over the country, preachers have introduced a "let's be friendly act of worship for 15 seconds." Is that legalistic, stupid or what?

But, for those of us still somewhat Bible-dependant, Paul said:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable (spiritual) service. Rom 12:1

That does not mean that our body is to enthuse and get enraptured (raped) or help old ladies across the street. When we "sacrifice" something we burn it up on the altar. This word means "the act of the victim" in crucifying the flesh.

If I am not "crucified with Christ" I cannot even get close to the Throne of Grace with my spirit.

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. Gal 2:20

Christ as Holy Spirit which in 1 Cor. 2 is the MIND OF CHRIST dwells in our mind or spirit. Therefore, if we want to GIVE HEED as the almost unique meaning of "worship" to Paul we will be IN OUR SPIRIT which is the THRONE OF GRACE where we meet God ONE AT A TIME.

Now, if you can figure out how to Get Christ singing, dancing and clapping His hands with you as an act of worship, you are safe from terminal sin. However, the clergy piped hoping that John and Jesus would sing and dance and clap in the Dionysus style and He refused.

Conclusion: you are implicating Jesus as the Head of the body in an effeminate form of "body worship." And He will not participate so you "Dare NOT dance with God" or you will wind up in the arms of the Devil.

Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. Ro.6:4

If you hands still want to wave and clap and your feed dance and your body sway you may need to go back for another try at "putting the body to death" as a living sacrifice offered up.

In all of the passages falsely identified as "musical," the way for radically different but musicially-dependant Orphics and Dionysics in Romans 14 to meet in love would be to "sacrifice" their old MUSICAL TRADITIONALISM which was always pagan and "speak that which is written" (the Spirit of Christ), the Word of Christ (Col 3) or Spirit (Eph 5). The external function is not "singing" or making music but teaching or preaching the revealed Mind of Christ. The result of such worship or "giving heed" to Christ rather than beating our own nerve endings to get enrapturted (raped) is:

In Spirit: And be not conformed to this world: but ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,

In Truth: that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God. Rom 12:2

The word is "Metamorphose." YOU can do nothing to change a grub into a butterfly.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 2 Cor 3:17

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. 2 Co.3:18

But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but, by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every mans conscience in the sight of God. 2 Cor 4:2

We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: 2 Peter 1:19

It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. John 6:63

Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. 1 Pet 1:11

The Word is the "seed." We plant the seed and water but the church as an institution cannot make the transformation. The most ancient pagans believed that

"According to the system which Nimrod was the grand instrument in introducing, men were led to believe

that a real spiritual change of heart was unnecessary, and that so far as change was needful,

they could be regenerated by mere external means.

Consistent with the old "modern" religion, we believe that Fred is promoting a system of "body worship" or worship directed at creating a "spectacle" to impress all of the senses. However, this contradicts the message of Jesus that Christians worship IN THE SPIRIT and this cannot happen when the body is still dancing.

When pagan Israelites PLAYED or SPORTED at Mount Sinai they "rose up" in charismatic, musical idolatry of the old Egyptian TRIAD. For that mortal sin God conditionally sentenced them to captivity and death. It would ultimately be the chosen kings who would LEAD them to destruction.

When the Jews PIPED Jesus compared them to "MARKET PLACE CHILDREN" who piped trying to seduce Jesus into the Dionysus singing or lamenting and dancing. This was part of homosexuality worship as part of the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION when the Greeks controlled Jerusalem.

"Looking at the subject in the light of the Bacchanalian orgies (Read Ephesus and Corinth), which, as the reader has seen, commemorated the history of Nimrod, it is evident that

he led mankind to seek their chief good in sensual enjoyment,

and showed them how they might enjoy the pleasures of sin, without any fear of the wrath of a holy God. (Voodoo, Rock, Boogie Woogie becomes Contemporary Christian Music)

"In his various expeditions he was always accompanied by troops of women; and by music and song, and games (ritual drama) and revelries, and everything that could please the natural hearts,

he commended himself to the good graces of mankind." (Hislop, Alexander, The Two Babylons, p. 55, Loizeaux Brothers)

Charles Spurgeon: Feeding the Sheep or Amusing the Goats

Charismatic Wolves Steal in on Little Lambs Feet Wearing Sheepskins

But, Fred repudiates that message from Paul (who just made it up according to the Post-Modern, 21st century, latter day apostles):

Fred Peatross: All churches want to transform people. The challenge is that the "transformational journey" of the

Christendom era that ended in the 20th century
no longer works for 21st century people.

Since we are not God, He gave us a way to transform ourselves. The only part of the transforming or regenerating journey humanity can participate in is to plant the seed and water it.

If you are planting the sentimental seed of a sentimental poet then you are not planting the Divine seed and you will reep corruption.

If you are not watering people with the water of the Word then you are allowing them to dry and die of hunger and thirst for the Word. That was the result of the musical sin of Amos 5, 6 and Isaiah 5.

The era after the Christendom era is the Millenium: it is Christ-rejecting premillenialism. Are we in the millenium? Did the Jubilee really usher in the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. If not, then we are in the same era of Christendom one second after midnight as we were one second before midnight.

Based on the meaning of Post Modernism the Bible was part of the Modern era and Christendom was part of modernism.

Therefore, it is not stretching the facts to say that to most Post-Modern philosophers, CHRISTENDOM ALSO ENDED. The DEATH OF GOD and a move into schizophrenis are tenets of the Post Modern views of unoccupied philosophers who use the Shelly Sifter to strain out everything from the Bible but a few bare facts.

Nothing, but a brain-warp, has happened between the church of my youth and the church of today. Every self-centered generation sees itself as THE focal point of all history: all that went before me were barbarians. However, God has reserved "MY" clan to tell you that 2,000 of church history is AT AN END and the "one true church" is emerging to let you express your emotions in clapping hands.

This generation is absolutely so certain that God reserved the GRACE word for them to discover that they, as Paul warned, see liberty as license.

Fred is recommending a counter-Paul, counter-Spiritual method of letting the "church" transform people by a contrived "transformational journey" which we once sold you but now we want to sell you the 21st century, latest model which obsoletes what we told you last century. But old Paul is right there saying that Fred and all of the preachers and programs and "works of human hands" cannot transform the "spirit" which is approached only by Spirit word:

Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration,

and renewing of the (OUR) Holy Spirit; Titus 3:5 (Our spirit made holy)

Clapping hands is the "works of human hands." Waving hands over the head is not the lifting of the PALMS UPWARD as a sign that one was giving heed to the Word of God. If the arms swing loose while the performer manipulates every nerve ending in the body, you are lifting unholy ARMs.

Contrary to the Grace-Centered species of human kind, the emerging church does not now give you permission to "become as much like the world as possible to attract the world."

In the old, pre-Grace-Centered era the Bible "sifted through philosophy and the writer's personal agenda" once said after we "crucify the flesh and burn it up on the altar."

Now, let's say it again because some things don't stick to the emerging group who just discovered grace ant the Towers of Babylon:

And be not conformed to this world:

but ye transformed

by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God. Ro.12:2

Does God still have a will? Is that expressed in commands? How do we know in the Post-Modern, Post-Biblical era?

One of the absolute certainties from the Towers of Babylon down to modern medical science is that you cannot do anything with your rational mind (nous) while music and body worship has totally shut it down.

For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish,

yet the inward man is renewed day by day. 2 Co.4:16

And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: Col.3:10

Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. 2 Co.3:6

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 Co.5:17

And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. Ep.4:24

When you go Post Modern, you are forced to repudiated the Word of God. And when you do that you may attempt ancient "body renewing" out of a sense of lostness. However, Paul said that you will never be renewed again:

If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. Heb.6:6

Hand waving or clapping is "stirring up the fesh" to life again.

This is more proof: Jesus said that God does not even look for us in the physical PLACE. Rather, the PLACE of meeting God in the Most Holy Place (naos) is in our spirit or mind which is the nous.

If you attack the body you are, according to Aldos Huxley reaching all of the way to Babel, engaged in emotional masturbation. See Lynn Anderson: Dancing on the Rim.

Once you reject the Words of Christ, there is no renewing and the eternal "patternism" is to take as many with you as possible.

For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and

were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, Heb 6:4
And have tasted the good word of God,

and the powers of the world to come, Heb 6:5

If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. Heb.6:6

If we are "in Christ" and He is he Head of the Boby and we fornicate, we force Jesus to participate. If our "bodies" and "hands" are not dead in a self-elevating way, then the death of Christ hasn't worked for us.

If you sell people hand clapping as an emerging way to transform people's lives then you HAVE fallen away from the Word (Post-Modern Confesses the guilt) and YOU WILL NEVER GET UP AGAIN: THUS SAITH THE LORD.

Contrary to Fred, the church as spiritual kingdom which none of its enemies can see because it is "within you," is warned against being contemporary with the culture:

Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, 2 Pet 1:2

According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: 2 Pet 1:3

Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. 2 Pe.1:4

Jesus has told us He will meet us individually or by "twos or threes." However, when we make a public, body worship performance out of our worship we are putting outselves and the Spirit God on display publically:

Paradeigmatizo (g3856) par-ad-igue-mat-id'-zo; from 3844 and 1165; to show alongside (the public), i.e. expose to infamy;- make a public example, put to an open shame.

The body worship claiming to represent Christ is putting Him to an open shame because He would not participate and had the fact recorded. Furthermore, you put Him to an open shame by trying to use Him like a puppet speaking your words.

The only thing which has happened is that preacher's programs like the pyramidal ministry curse imposed by God upon the monarchy period to destroy them, didn't work.

Why didn't it work? Because of the sermonizing and versifying of Bible and sentimental thought. This caused spiritual blindness and in Amos and Isaiah, music gives rise to "hungering and thirsting for the Word."

The same people who repudiate the Word of Christ in Song and Sermon, feeling their "place" slipping away.

Therefore, they will always promote 'holy theater' to fool the fools so that they can remain on the payroll for which the Bible has no "office."

The radical OBSOLETING the preaching task (which was never part of a "worship" ritual is a valid part of Post-Modernism. Preaching is an "outreach" effort but it has been transformed in the 'modern' era as a denominational "dominant pastor" role and evangelism has been replaced with a restored pyramidal ministry system.

As the scribe grew obsolete when people learned to write, public cut N paste preaching became more than obsolete when people learned to read their $2.00 Bible.

Arnobius writing (A.D. 297-303) Ridicules instrumental music in worship notes the ongoing "Patternism" of the Pharisees:

Nay, rather, to speak out more truly, the augurs, the dream interpreters, the soothsayers, the prophets, and the priestlings, ever vain, have devised these fables; for they,

fearing that their own arts be brought to nought, and that they may extort but scanty contributions from the devotees, now few and infrequent,

whenever they have found you to be willing that their craft should come into disrepute, cry aloud,

the Gods are neglected, and
i
n the temples there is now a very thin attendance. For ceremonies are exposed to derision,

and the time-honoured rites of institutions once sacred

have sunk before the superstitions of new religions.

And men--a senseless race--being unable, from their inborn blindness, to see even that which is placed in open light,

dare to assert in their frenzy
what you in your sane mind
do not blush to believe. (Arnobius Against the Heathen, Ante-Nicene Fathers, VI, p. 418).

Arnobius also wrote:

35. But is it only poets whom you have thought proper to allow to invent unseemly tales about the gods, and to turn them shamefully into sport? (Hand clapping is making sport or reveling)

What do your pantomimists, the actors, that crowd of mimics and adulterers? Do they

not abuse your gods to make to themselves gain,

and do not the others find enticing pleasures in the wrongs and insults offered to the gods?

At the public games, too, the colleges of all the priests and magistrates take their places, the chief Pontiffs, and the chief priests of the curiae; the Quindecemviri take their places, crowned with wreaths of laurel,

and the flamines diales (specialists of one god) with their mitres; the augurs take their places,

who disclose the divine mind and will
and the chaste maidens also, who cherish and guard the ever-burning fire;

36. But this crime is not enough: the persons of the most sacred gods are mixed up with farces also, and scurrilous plays.

And that the idle onlookers may be excited to laughter and jollity,

the deities are hit at in jocular quips, the spectators shout and rise up, the whole pit resounds with the clapping of hands and applause.

Fred Peatross: These feelings can be expressed in various ways. Some Christians clap their hands in rhythm to the music; although, those of us who are rhythmically challenged would rather sit on them. Some raise their hands when they pray or worship. These are but two of the ways we express our feelings toward God.

Let us make it clear to the foggy: there is no connection between "music" and the worship of a purely (holy) Spirit God in the entirety of God's dealing with mankind. Blowing 120 trumpets in unison is not music. Music is for the secular parties and includes dance and the end-time Babylonian Harlot worship of Revelation 18 -- emerging in a church in your neighborhood.

In Justin's Dialog with Trypho the Jew he translates Amos:
 
Who applaud at the sound of the musical instruments;
they reckon them as stable, and not as fleeting.
Who drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief ointments,
but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph.
 
We do know that Jesus read the Septuagint which reads:
 
who excel in the sound of musical instruments;
they have regarded them as abiding,
not as fleeting pleasure." Amos 6:5 LXX

The external "melody" with the clapping of hands is to fortify the false teaching. The feelings induced by the clapping and not the result is a drug high and not caused by a "holy" spirit.

True, there is music but it always says: "We will not listen to the Word of God." Sure, there is the music of the warriors blowing trumpets, twacking harp strings and twanging bow strings. However, consistent with all that we know in the modern age about such noise (as God calls it) it is "lading the enemy down with the spiritual anxiety" in order to make them turn into cowards. Outside of warfare, those who wanted to get your carnal lust flowing by doing the "works of human hands" in clapping or lifting, this was the powerful weapon of the prostitute. Both the king/queen of Tyre and Babylon were harp-playing prostitutes because music could and can seduce you out of your entire bank account: it happens in may "temple building programs."

This artificial "worship" uses the manipulation of the body and its senses to get into the Voodoo-derived rhythm and this changes the emotions without letting your rational (spiritual) mind know what is taking place.

Preachers love music because a bit of drug-injection through music can hide a multitude of sins and silly exegesis in sermonizing which is just as unscriptural as "versifying" our human sentimental feelings: using our personal experiences to set people up with a non-Biblical authority: "Me."

Fred Peatross: The raising of hands is certainly one of the biblically sanctioned postures of prayer, but not the only one. There are numerous positions that the Bible acknowledges as appropriate for prayer and worship. One can sit, kneel, stand, lie prostrate, or raise hands receptively toward God while realizing that none of these postures makes one more spiritual or his worship more acceptable. These are simply human ways of inclining ourselves to the living God, a way of bringing our physical posture in line with our spiritual desire. Such actions can be helpful for us in our prayer lives and worship experiences.

That is true, but raising my hands in prayer is not for me to display my more spiritual feelings than others. Lifting up the palms of the hands at about belt level is the preamble to reading or reciting the Word of God.

If you are singing Sister Sally's latest "inspiration" which is erotic because it drives you into physical reaction, then you don't grasp the meaning of "lifting holy hands."

Contrary to the new "grace removed" movement, Jesus said as Incarnate God that this repudiates grace. Making worship TIME AND PLACE specific in non-Biblical acts repudiates Christ who died to tear down the walls and allow each individual to come boldly before the throne of Grace. That time and place is the human mind or spirit.

> Prayer and opening the innocent palms toward God is symbolic or a prelude to hearing directly from God through His inspired Word:

> And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God. And all the people answered, Amen, Amen, with lifting up their hands: and they bowed their heads, and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Neh 8:6

> > Also Jeshua, and Bani, and Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodijah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, and the Levites, caused the people to understand the law: and the people stood in their place. Neh 8:7

So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading. Neh 8:8

Hymn I. Ephraim Syrus

1. On a certain day a pearl did I take up, my brethren; I saw in it mysteries pertaining to the Kingdom; semblances and types of the Majesty; it became a fountain, and I drank out of it mysteries of the Son.

I put it, my brethren, upon the palm of my hand, that I might examine it: I went to look at it on one side, and it proved faces on all sides. I found out that the Son was incomprehensible, since He is wholly Light.

2. It was greater to me than the ark, for I was astonied thereat: I saw therein folds without shadow to them because it was a daughter of light,

types vocal without tongues, utterances of mysteries without lips, a silent harp that without voice gave out melodies.

The trumpet falters and the thunder mutters; be not thou daring then; leave things hidden, take things revealed. Thou hast seen in the clear sky a second shower; the clefts of thine ears, as from the clouds, they are filled with interpretations.

This was a restoration of the "synagoguing" function in the land. If you read or sing your own silly, erotic praise songs and perform what Aldos Huxley called "emotional masturbation" with clapping or raising of hands you cannot appeal to the "hand raising" without grasping that this is "lifting my hand to the Oracle or Word of God."

Please don't ever quote Paul about raising HOLY hands without grasping that "worship" to him meant the same thing: To Timothy: "Give attendance to the public reading of the Word, to doctrine to exhortation."

> I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting. 1 Ti. 2:8

Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. 1 Ti. 2: 11

But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence 1 Ti. 2: 12

The hand lifted high is a sign of usurping authority over the masculine component of the congregation. And it usurps authoriity from God.

> > Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. 1 Ti 4:12

Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching (exhortation) and to teaching (doctrine). 1Ti.4:13

Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all. 1 Tim 4:15

Meditate means to "revolve in the mind."

This has no "Christian" connection to singing human compositions (the Pharisee pattern), clapping hands or waving hands in the air as we are "lifted up" or carried beyond ourself in charismatic madness.

Paul does not define a ritualistic Act of Worship where everyone lifts holy hands. Notice that all texts have a context:

> Whereunto I am ordained a preacher (herald), and an apostle, (I speak the truth in Christ, and lie not;) a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity. 1 Ti 2:7

Paul says: "Because I teach the truth as a herald, I would be unholy if I 'opened the message and changed it.' Therefore, the teachers of the flock are not Ministers of Raising hands. Rather, they are "orthodox" and repeat what they have been taught.

I will therefore that men pray every where, holy hands, without wrath and doubting (debate). 1 Ti. 2:8

Lifting up HOLY hands is from the Greek word:

Hosios (g3741) hos'-ee-os; of uncert. affin.; prop. right (by intrinsic or divine character; <