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THE BEATLES REBELLION
The Beatles rebellion against the God of the Bible goes way back for most of them! One example is the fact that John Lennon was taken to Sunday School by his Aunt Mimi. He even sang in the choir. But, by age 11, John was permanently barred from Sunday services in his aunt’s Anglican church because he "repeatedly improvised obscene and impious lyrics to the hymns." (Rock Lives; p. 114). He did things even cruder and viler than that, such as urinate on members of the "clergy" from second floor windows and display homemade dummies of Christ in lewd poses. In his 1965 book published by Simon & Schuster, John Lennon blasphemed the Father, Son and Holy Spirit by calling them "Fahter, Sock and Micky Most." In 1964 Paul McCartney stated, "We probably seem to be anti-religious… none of us believes in God."
Does the Bible say anything about those who do not believe in God? YES! It says they are fools. Psalms 14:1 "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good." That description pretty well describes the character and accomplishments of the Beatles… "corrupt" and having "done abominable works." The words of their own press officer Derek Taylor, affirm the application of Psalms 14 to the Beatles: "They’re [the Beatles] completely anti-Christ. I mean, I am anti-Christ as well, but they’re so anti-Christ they shock me which isn’t an easy thing" (Saturday Evening Post, August 8-15, 1964, p. 25).
One last illustration to prove the point. George Harrison financed Monty Python’s vile and blasphemous mockery of Christ in the movie "Life of Brian." Even Newsweek magazine described the movie as "irreverent." Time magazine called it an "intense assault on religion" (Time, Sept. 17, 1979, p. 101).
SOURCE: The Unholy Legacy of The Beatles by Pastor David L. Brown, Ph.D.http://logosresourcepages.org/beatles.htm
COMPROMISE AND ANTI-CHRIST
Religious tolerance is not always a sign of good will. It can be a sign of careless, perhaps hypocritical religious indifference of the most high-handed philosophic relativism. It can also be a mask behind which to hide downright malice. During the Nazi era, for example, arguments for Christian openness to other perspectives were used by German Christians in an attempt to neuter the church’s protest against the neo-paganism of Hitler and his minions. The Confessing Church in Germany found in John 10 a theological basis to stand against Hitler. There are times in which the only way to keep alive the non-vindictive, nonjudgmental, self-sacrificing witness of Jesus Christ is to stand with rude dogmatism on the rock that is Jesus Christ, condemning all compromise as the work of the Antichrist.
SOURCE: Ronald Goetz in "Exclusivistic Universality" (Christian Century, April 21, 1993). Sep00
THE CROSS AND ANTICHRIST IN HISTORY
Massachusetts Bay Colony was the scene of "The Great Migration" wherein thousands of religious dissenters came over to the New World to make a new life for themselves in the company of "saints" and other Puritans. Right off quick they passed laws regulating social behavior and the observance of the Sabbath and the ministers went to great pains to condemn the traditional "idols" of the established church (not to mention Popery). In 1636, following a sermon by Roger Williams (who was later ousted from Massachusetts for being too liberal and went on to found the Rhode Island Colony) condeming the cross as a symbol of the Anti-Christ, the Governor of the Colony, John Endicott, ordered the Standard Bearers of the Colony to remove the St. Georges Cross from their flags. Before this was done, however, the Great and General Court hauled Endicott in for examination, found that he had "exceeded the lymits of his calling" and punished him by forbiding him from holding public office for one full year! Then they gave the Standard Bearers permission to devise any kind of flag they wanted and, without exception, they removed the crosses from their flags.
More than a generation later, the Puritans having lost some of their hold on the beliefs of the Massachusetts settlers, the St. George’s cross again began to appear on the flags.
SOURCE: THE NEW ENGLAND FLAG by David B. Martucci
http://www.midcoast.com/~martucci/flags/NEFlag.html
THE CONTRAST: CHRIST VERSUS ANTICHRIST
1. Christ came from above. Antichrist will ascend from the pit.
2. Christ came in His Father’s name. Antichrist will come in his own name.
3. Christ humbled Himself. Antichrist will exalt himself.
4. Christ was despised. Antichrist will be admired.
5. Christ will be exalted. Antichrist will be cast down to hell.
6. Christ came to do His Father’s will. Antichrist will do his own will.
7. Christ came to save. Antichrist will come to destroy.
8. Christ is the Good Shepherd. Antichrist is the evil shepherd.
9. Christ is the “true vine”. Antichrist is the “vine of the earth”.
10. Christ is the “truth”. Antichrist is the “lie”.
11. Christ is the “Holy One”. Antichrist is the “lawless one”.
12. Christ is the “man of sorrows”. Antich...
ILL. The late Erma Bombeck in her book, "If Life is a bowl of Cherries, Why Am I Always in the Pits?", recalled the legend of a church where the chimes rang miraculously whenever someone gave a generous gift.
But the chimes hadn’t rung for a long time, even though kings & potentates had come to give gifts of gold & silver & precious gems. The chimes had not rung for a long, long time.
But one Christmas Eve a little peasant boy came down the aisle & knelt before the altar. As he thought about the Christ-child lying in a manger, he took off his tattered coat & laid it on the altar. When he did, the chimes rang loud & joyously.
Erma Bombeck wrote, "I’ve heard the chimes ring, too. I remember a Christmas when one of my sons brought me a piece of tattered construction paper on which he had tried to draw a picture of praying hands, & underneath the picture he had written, ’O Come, Holy Spit.’"
"When I saw that," she said, "I heard the chimes ring & I knew that a very special gift had been given."
"On another Christmas I received a shoebox all clumsily wrapped. When I opened it, I found two baseball cards & a piece of gum. Again I heard the chimes ring."
"And I heard the chimes ring the time when the kids got together & cleaned the garage & gave that as their Christmas present to me."
"Those days are long gone," she remembered, "days when we fashioned lace doilies into snow flakes, & pipe cleaners into Christmas trees. When we took empty spools & used them for candleholders. Those days are long gone."
"I remember little feet coming down the stairs with a hand-made gift all wrapped up in $2.00 worth of wrapping paper to put underneath the Christmas tree. Those little feet now wear panty hose & fashion boots."
"Little hands that used to break the piggy bank to get 59 cents to buy a Christmas gift, now hold credit cards that are good in any store in town."
"We’ll have a good Christmas this year," she said. "We’ll eat too much. We’ll mess up the living room & throw the warranties in the fire by mistake. We’ll put bows on the dog’s tail. We’ll take bites out of cookies & put them back in the plate. We’ll listen to Christmas songs, & have a good Christmas."
"But, Lord, what I wouldn’t give to bend over just one more time & receive some toothpicks held together by library paste & to hear the chimes ring - just one more time."
When the wise men come to Jesus, they bring three gifts: Gold, which is the gift for royalty, a gift for a king. Incense, which was for divinity, a gift you give a God. And myrrh, which is a funeral gift, a gift used for burial. Their gifts show amazing insight.
At first hearing, you might think these gifts were a lucky coincidence. They’re not. God set up the events of Christmas in such a way that you would know that He was carefully orchestrating each element of it, years in advance. Nine months before Christmas, God sent an angel to tell Joseph and Mary about the birth of His Son. Christmas night, God sent angels to communicate with shepherds about the birth of His Son. Hundreds of years before Christmas, God sent a holy man – Daniel – to the eastern peoples to prepare their highest caste, their wise men, (court advisors to the king) to respond to the birth of His Son. God communicated to the wise men that the Messiah would be king and God, and that He would come to die. Through a combination of Daniel’s leadership, Hebrew Scripture, and the tailor-made revelation of a star, these wise men knew as much or more about the nature of the Messiah as the Jewish people.
QUOTE –GOD CAME NEAR:
“They were too busy. The day was upon them. The day’s bread had to be made. The morning’s chores had to be done. There was too much to do to imagine that the impossible had occurred. God had entered the world as a baby. Yet, were someone to chance upon the sheep stable on the outskirts of Bethlehem that morning, what a peculiar scene they would behold. The stable stinks like all stables do. The stench of urine, dung, and sheep reeks pungently in the air. The ground is hard, the hay scarce. Cobwebs cling to the ceiling and a mouse scurries across the dirt floor. A more lowly place of birth could not exist…
Meanwhile, the city hums. The merchants are unaware that God has visited their planet. The innkeeper would never believe that he had just sent God into the cold. And the people would scoff at anyone who told them the Messiah lay in the arms of a teenager on the outskirts of their village. They were all too busy to consider the possibility. Those who missed His Majesty’s arrival that night missed it not because of evil acts or malice; no, they missed it because they simply weren’t looking. Little has changed in the last two thousand years, has it?” (Max Lucado).
“Christianity, in its purest form, is nothing more than seeing Jesus. Christian service, in its purest form, is nothing more than imitating him who we see. To see His Majesty and to imitate him, t...
A recent survey in the Times reports. The Saga Populus survey of 10,000 over 50s found widespread concerns about the celebration of Christmas. Some 85 per cent objected to councils replacing ‘Christmas’ lights with ‘winter’ lights and 84 per cent were dismayed by the replacement of nativity plays with non-religious productions in schools. The poll release came on the same day that MPs held a special debate at Westminster Hall. Conservative backbencher Mark Pritchard urged the government to protect public expressions of the UK’s Christian heritage.
Source The times newspaper Dec 2007
I like what S. D. Gordon wrote: "It is startling to think that Satan can actually come into the heart of a man in such close touch with Jesus as Judas was. And more--he is cunningly trying to do it today. Yet he can get in only through a door opened from the inside. Every man controls the door of his own life. Satan can't get in without our help.
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