Tag Archives: Christian Music

News

Christian band member convicted in murder plot was actually an atheist

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From the Christian News Network.

Excerpt:

A so-called Christian heavy metal band whose frontman was convicted of attempting to hire a hitman to murder his estranged wife has admitted that it duped fans into believing that they were Christian in order to sell their music.

“Truthfully, I was an atheist,” Tim Lambesis, the lead singer and founder of As I Lay Dying told theAlternative Press in a recent interview. “I actually wasn’t the first guy in As I Lay Dying to stop being a Christian. In fact, I think I was the third. The two who remained kind of stopped talking about it, and then I’m pretty sure they dropped it, too.”

The publication noted that his wife, Meggan, had likewise divulged in divorce papers that Lambesis had become an atheist. Lambesis, in admitting his atheism, outlined that he turned away from Christianity as he majored in religious studies while attending college through a long distance program.

[…]And one sin led to another, turning his renunciation of Christ into justification for his actions.

“The first time I cheated on my wife, my interpretation of morality was now convenient for me,” Lambesis explained. “I felt less guilty if I decided, “Well, marriage isn’t a real thing, because Christianity isn’t real. God isn’t real. Therefore, marriage is just a stupid piece of paper with the government.”

But he continued to profess to be a Christian, as did others in the band, in order to sell records to Christian music fans.

[…]He said that during his tenure with As I Lay Dying, he realized that a number of bands that professed to be Christians were faking their faith just as he was.

“We toured with more ‘Christian bands’ who actually aren’t Christians than bands that are,” Lambesis stated. “In 12 years of touring with As I Lay Dying, I would say maybe one in 10 Christian bands we toured with were actually Christian bands.”

This is why my heroes in the faith are not athletes and artists. It’s possible for athletes and artists to be as solid in their faith as a J. Warner Wallace or a Tim McGrew, but scoring points on a sports field or singing songs on a stage is no guarantee of that. Biblical faith is about knowledge – justified true belief. Nothing about sports or music helps you to know whether your beliefs are true. Period.

News

Can prayer, Bible reading, church-singing and charismatic preaching stop Katy Perry’s apostasy?

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I received an e-mail from a woman who was telling me to drop my list of 10 worldview questions and just look for a wife who reads the Bible and has feelings about Jesus.

She wrote:

My suggestion to you is to consider a top-down approach.  Just pray for God to send you your wife and pray that you recognize her immediately.  You don’t seem like you really want to remain single…and your children are missing out on having you as their dad.  Marriage is for children, remember?  I know several young ladies who know their Scripture and who love Jesus but who, I don’t think, would pass your test because, in my perception, they aren’t cerebral enough.

I get this e-mail a lot, especially from women who have married non-Christians or who are divorced. Now the whole point of the list of 10 questions is to detect women who are not going to help me to produce effective, influential Christian children. If I am going to spend north of $100,000 per child + tuition, then I expect to get some sort of return on that investment for God. That money doesn’t earn itself, and it needs to be well-spent serving God.

It’s my wife’s job to help me to do that. My goal in choosing a wife is to find a helper to make the relationship serve God. Otherwise, it’s better for God if I give that money that I worked very hard to earn directly to effective Christian scholars. I don’t have money to burn “playing house” with someone who is guided by her feelings. I can just give the money to Reasonable Faith or Discovery Institute instead.

Let’s take a look at two parents who aimed at nothing and hit it with their daughter. The two parents run a ministry that is based around passionate preaching, prayer and Bible verses.

Excerpt:

The Lord spoke to Arise International Conference host Mary Hudson to encourage women to reach their full destiny in Jesus Christ. He wants women to rise up as trailblazers, to think outside the box and be bold in Him, of course putting God first, your husband second and then your family!

Mary’s ministry of Arise! International holds annual women’s empowerment and leadership conferences in Hawaii, Belgium, Colombia, France, Switzerland, Denmark and the USA. The river of glory is rising and we must flow with it.

2012 promises to be a break-through year to Arise! in who you are in Christ. Lean on Him for direction, don’t look to man. Knowing the signs of the times and hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit will be vital to being at the right place at the right time to reap the harvest of souls coming into the Kingdom.

Pray about being a part of Arise! this coming year. It just may be the meeting that propels you into the next level for your life. Remember, you are equipped with everything you need to fulfill your purpose. God’s assignments reveal your abilities and your capabilities, and He will provide both the potential and the provision to meet every assignment.

We call you blessed and highly favored!

I noticed that their “book store” offers nonsense books like this:

Keith Hudson “Looking and Seeing”:

Like this disciplined athlete, you need to learn how to look beyond your present situation and keep your eye on His Presence. God is ready to display His glory in your life as well in these last days, but it is going to take boldness for you to take the mask off and look at people and situations the way God sees them, not how man looks at them. What may stand in front of you may look too big for you to grasp; that what you see now is the way it’s always going to be. Or you look at the dream God has given you and think, “there is no way I can ever accomplish this with my resources at my age…” That is the moment you have to flip the switch from looking to seeing.

Mary Hudson “Smart Bombs”:

Smart Bombs is a book which will show you practically and with true life examples how to take God’s Word and let it explode strongholds in your life. When you read the Bible, He quickens particular passages or verses to your heart. You know it is God talking to you about your situation. Or when you receive a prophetic word, you sense in your heart this is speaking to you. But what do you do with these words when they bear witness with you? Let them fade away and disappear off of your memory? No, Smart Bombs shows you how to go on the offense with the anointed word of God, how to demolish strongholds and take back everything the enemy has stolen from you.

This easy read is a must for anyone who is looking for clarity on their destiny.

Keith Hudson “The Cry”:

The Cry will reignite you with new fire. Christians lose their passion when they let go of their zeal for God. We come into prayer meetings and we are so polished and perfected. But the Lord wants to hear the cry of your heart. The church has lost its cry: God is about to restore it. Why did the thirty people gathered for the Azusa Street revival have such a move of the spirit of God in their day? Because they had a cry in their hearts and in their prayers. The Cry will release a desperate longing in you for Gods intervention in your life. It goes way beyond your natural thinking into a spiritual hunger from your innermost being. When everything else has failed, a desperate cry touches the heart of God.

Now do you think that someone who reads books like that will produce the same kind of children as parents who read William Lane Craig, Stephen C. Meyer, Jay Richards, and Michael Licona? Of course not. Because the Hudson books are fluff and the books by real Christian scholars are not fluff.

Now let’s read an article from Christian Post about what sort of child the fluff approach produces. (H/T Mysterious Chris S.)

Excerpt:

Katy Perry, the 29-year-old singer and songwriter, is revealing that while she prays she no longer identifies with Christianity.

“I don’t believe in a heaven or a hell, or an old man sitting on a throne. I believe in a higher power bigger than me because that keeps me accountable,” she told Marie Claire magazine recently. “Accountability is rare to find, especially with people like myself, because nobody wants to tell you something you don’t want to hear.”

Perry, who took the Billboard charts by storm with her hit song “I Kissed a Girl” in 2008, told Marie Claire that she no longer considers herself a Christian despite being raised by Christian ministers.

“I’m not Buddhist, I’m not Hindu, I’m not Christian, but I still feel like I have a deep connection with God. I pray all the time – for self-control, for humility,” she told Marie Claire. “There’s a lot of gratitude in it. Just saying ‘thank you’ sometimes is better than asking for things.”

Despite her decision to perform music that may seem controversial to the Christian community, the chart-topping singer has never shied away from crediting the Christian church for giving her a start as a performer.

“The atmosphere I grew up in was 100 percent Christian,” Perry said her “Part of Me: 3D” movie which was released last year. “I started singing in the church, I never really had another plan.”

Their daughter is writing songs to promote homosexuality to young people. That’s their legacy. The legacy of spiritual gifts, God opening doors of mysticism and charismatic anti-intellectualism. That’s what they are going to present to God as their spiritual legacy. I noticed that Mary Hudson is now calling her daughter’s celebrity divorce after one year of marriage a “gift from God”. Her daughter married a heroin-addicted leftist non-Christian – but he was hawt. Tall, dark, handsome and a famous comedian, too.

The list of questions I use when courting helps me to avoid marrying a woman like Katy Perry’s mother. She could not answer any of my questions. None of them. And what’s more, she doesn’t want to answer them. She wants to live her whole life without learning how to answer them. She wants to stick with her Bible, her singing, her feelings, her passionate oratory and her crowds of gullible people. I will not marry a woman like that. It produces disaster and failure. It produces anti-Christian children.

In fact, you can’t succeed at anything worthwhile in life using the Keith and Mary Hudson approach to parenting. You can’t do a thing with that approach. Not writing software, not fixing cars, not making investments, not sending a rocket to the moon, not even evangelizing an apostate daughter. You do not want to be a Christian man who pumps 30 years of hard labor into a family that produces apostate children. If you are going to spend the money, then make sure you get the results.

Personal

Friday night fun: The Wintery Knight’s favorite music

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One of the longest running series of games in the history of video gaming is the Castlevania series. In the games, the Christian hero squares off against vampires and other monsters using holy water, crosses and a flaming whip that can be upgraded to become more powerful. I played these games as child as far back as 1987, before many of you kids were even BORN!

But the appeal of the music from the series is still strong for me. The later games in the series often re-use or remix the original themes from the earliest games, especially the most ancient and famous songs like “Vampire Killer” and especially “Bloody Tears”. So it’s not surprising for people to listen to a soundtrack today that sounds similar to the music from 20 years ago!

Here is the main theme of the hero Leon from Castlevania: Lament of Innocence (2003):

And a few of my favorite themes from Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (2005).

Abandoned Castle:

That one makes me think of how Christians have abandoned the university to the secular left, and now it’s in ruins with truth nowhere to be found.

And, Machine Tower:

Levels where the hero is inside a giant clock tower are extremely popular in Castlevania. Clock towers were first introduced in Castlevania I in 1987.

And here is one more from Curse of Darkness, Mortvia Aqueduct:

This is a very suitable theme for driving at night. I have a strange habit of working in cities far from home, and it is not at all unusual for me to work a full day and then drive 12 hours to my parents’ house all night and arrive at 7 AM the next day. I consider it very heroic because I love my sports car and driving at night with the top down under the stars is so much fun. Especially if you drive fast, like I do!

My favorite theme of all is the “Theme of Simon” from Super Castlevania IV. Here is the original theme from 1994 from the Super Nintendo with a more modern 2007  remix tacked on at the end. The Super Nintendo was the first video game console I ever owned, because we were very poor when I was growing up.

It is also fun to learn to play them yourself on the piano. One video of someone playing Bloody Tears on the piano has over 1.2 million hits on youtube. (Bloody Tears is a theme from the first Castlevania ever, “Haunted Castle”, which was an arcade game that you played for 25 cents in a real arcade!). I remember this theme from the first Castlevania game I ever played, Castlevania II. So this is really a blast from the past for me… this is my childhood.

Castlevania music extremely popular in Japan and live bands even perform them. Here’s an orchestra playing a remix of the most famous Castlevania song, from level 1 of the first Castlevania console game ever made (for the Nintendo Entertainment System). It’s called “Vampire Killer”. It transitions into the level 3 theme “Wicked Child”. Then finally into a battle theme from the fight with Dracula.

I actually had a friend who used to play Castlevania II with me when we were kids. One day we rented Castlevania I, just for fun, and when we heard the level 3 theme “Wicked Child”, we were both amazed. I was actually able to keep the theme in my head and recognize it many years later when I found a rendition of it online. I think the scenery of walking across a crumbling castle ledge outlined by a giant yellow moon really stuck in my mind. Ever since seeing that, I have been a real night owl. I used to study all night in university and sleep during the day.

And of course you buy all the CD with the soundtracks from the games, even in North America! I can whistle many of the songs for my bird and he really loves listening to me whistle them. He is as old as the games themselves and has been hearing these songs from me for over 20 years! (Although I haven’t played any of the games since high school, I still care about the music!)

Looking back now, it was probably remarkably important for me to have good, heroic music to listen to as an alternative to sappy contemporary Christian music and godless, hedonistic, popular music. I think that men need to see themselves as heroic in order to actually engage in heroic deeds. Good music helps. A lot.