Category: theology

Posted in contemporary music, discernment, do something, doctrine, matthew west, theology

Matthew West’s "Do Something" is a terrible, terrible song

Posted on by elizabethprata

There’s a song that many Christians today are enjoying on radio: it’s called Do Something by Matthew West. Apparently the background is that he was inspired by an American exchange student who went to Uganda and saved orphans from a terrible orphanage by starting her own.

I’m inspired by proactive Christians who heed the Lord’s call to become missionaries. And of course the bible says we should help orphans too.

Here are the lyrics to Do Something. I’m going to tell you why I don’t like this song. I’m going to tell you why songs like these saturate the Christian mind with a terrible theology under a guise of a happy tune and moral lyrics.

I think our attempts to live radically can ignore the Bible’s concern that we be radically godly in character. There is no doubt that I am called by God to live sacrificially and generously. My first calling, though, is to know God, to be shaped by him and on that basis to preach the gospel and to live as if it is true. I am called to do all of this right where the Lord has placed me. ~Tim Challies: Radical, A Book Review.Verse 1:
I woke up this morning
Saw a world full of trouble now
Thought, how’d we ever get so far down
How’s it ever gonna turn around

So I turned my eyes to Heaven
I thought, “God, why don’t You do something?”
Well, I just couldn’t bear the thought of
People living in poverty

Children sold into slavery
The thought disgusted me
So, I shook my fist at Heaven
Said, “God, why don’t You do something?”

He said, “I did, I created you”

Chorus:
If not us, then who
If not me and you
Right now, it’s time for us to do something
If not now, then when

Will we see an end
To all this pain
It’s not enough to do nothing
It’s time for us to do something

Verse 2:
I’m so tired of talking
About how we are God’s hands and feet
But it’s easier to say than to be
Live like angels of apathy who tell ourselves

It’s alright, “somebody else will do something”
Well, I don’t know about you
But I’m sick and tired of life with no desire

Wikipedia

I don’t want a flame, I want a fire

I wanna be the one who stands up and says,
“I’m gonna do something”

Chorus:
If not us, then who
If not me and you
Right now, it’s time for us to do something (yes, it is)

If not now, then when
Will we see an end
To all this pain
It’s not enough to do nothing

It’s time for us to do something

Bridge:
We are the salt of the earth
We are a city on a hill (shine shine, shine shine)
But we’re never gonna change the world
By standing still
No we won’t stand still (x3)

Chorus:
If not us, then who
If not me and you
Right now, it’s time for us to do something
If not now, then when

Will we see an end
To all this pain
It’s not enough to do nothing
It’s time for us to do something

It’s time for us to do something (x2)

[Matthew West – Do Something Lyrics]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I’m sure that skilled discerners can spot the theological issues in this song right away.

1. The song is a song about social justice, and the power of man to fix the wrongs in the world. It is a song that sounds good but is actually the opposite of what the bible teaches about man, man’s purpose, God, and sin.

Lyric: Saw a world full of trouble now. Thought, how’d we ever get so far down?
Answer: Adam. Eve. Lucifer. Rebellion. Sin.

Lyric: How’s it ever gonna turn around?
Answer: Jesus. Revelation 19:11, “Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war”

Lyric: I thought, “God, why don’t You do something?”
Answer: Like He’s not doing something? He is. John 5:17. “In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” (NIV)

Lyric: He said, “I did, I created you”
Answer: UNTRUE. He created us to worship Him and enjoy Him forever.
From the very beginning of the song it shows us how man-centric it is. There are no out-of-control world problems God created us to fix. We are not the solution. We are the problem! God did not create us to fix the world’s problems! There is your first opposite-from-the bible issue. In Do Something, it’s Bizarro World.

Bizarro World: In popular culture “Bizarro World” has come to mean a situation or setting which is weirdly inverted or opposite of expectations.

Lyric: Well, I just couldn’t bear the thought of People living in poverty
Answer: Well Jesus just couldn’t bear the thought of people living in sin. Sin is the problem. (Luke 19:10). Poverty isn’t. (Matthew 26:11). If more people sang about people living in sin with the reality of hell, perhaps people would ‘do something’, i.e, witness, instead of throw money at a problem Jesus said would always exist. The problem is not the wallet. It’s the soul.

Lyric: Children sold into slavery, The thought disgusted me. So, I shook my fist at Heaven, Said, “God, why don’t You do something?”
Answer: Child slavery is the new, sexy, socially conscious charity. I’m not making light of the reality of it. But it has emerged of late and it will sink back to the muck of all the other sins and diseases that occasionally get people’s attention, like HIV/Aids, Alzheimer’s, adoption, orphans, child abuse, elder abuse, drug abuse… “Causes” come and causes go. People still need the remedy: Jesus.

Secondly, shaking your fist at God for failing to do the things WE think He should be doing? Is that wise? Is that even warranted? No. Ask Job. God answered when Job asked- (Job 38:3-5)

Now gird up your loins like a man,
And I will ask you, and you instruct Me!
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”
Tell Me, if you have understanding,
Who set its measurements?
Since you know…
Job and his friends. Ilya Repin. The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

Since you know all about what God is doing or not doing, Mr West. Since you know.

As Richard Haas said, in his essay “What’s Wrong with Social Justice?“

people like these “are trying to play god over God and tell Him what is best for society.”

Lyric: If not us, then who? If not me and you
Answer: It all depends on us? Wow. A heavy load.

Lyric: But we’re never gonna change the world By standing still.
Answer: Ah! There it is! ‘Change the world.’ People, changing the world is NOT OUR JOB. Our job is to witness to the peace and salvation of Jesus Christ, (Matthew 28:19), who has another world for us to dwell in! This is not our home, it is God’s. It is the job of God almighty to change it, when He comes. (2 Peter 3:10).

I could continue about the lyrics, the repetitiveness, (drilling into our minds this false vision of our position in Christ), the man-centric attitude, but you get the idea.

Here is what Justin Woodall said about Matthew West’s lyrics and all songs like these–

The music behind these songs is relatively good. The problem is theological. We have to abandon notions of musical excellence until we can recapture the transcendence and a healthy dose of the immanence of God. We have sacrificed our theology on the altar of music.

After the wrong-headed theology, the second thing wrong with this song is that it subtly disenfranchises the “Wow! Christians” from the “Quiet Christians”. Just as not all are called to be the tongue in the Body, not all are eyes, not all are ears. Some are elbows. Some are toenails. It is the same with the way we live our lives. Not everyone is a Charles Spurgeon. Not all are Martin Luther. Not everyone can be a missionary to China like Eugene Sallee. Not all go to Uganda and start an orphanage.

As the song says, we are all lights, not called to put it under a bushel. Some lights are saving Ugandan orphans. Some lights are on a factory line in Detroit and witness at lunch. Some are quiet, joyful, persevering secretaries in St. Louis. Some are impoverished but fervent recycle scavenge-recycle workers in Calcutta. Some are hospitable shack dwellers in Guatemala. The message of ‘Do Something’ is wrongly two-fold. First, it tells us that we’re here to save the world, and second, it two-tiers Christians, the ones doing something big and sexy, and the rest of us schlubs doing nothing big, sexy, showy, or splashy.

But the quiet influence of a quiet Christian like Larry will change hearts and lives just as much if not more than the splashy new orphanages in Uganda, which will more than likely fall by the wayside in a few years due to corruption, bribery, and lack of funds and materials. Though they will never lack for orphans.

Why don’t these contemporary songs ever call us to persevere in a menial job we hate under a boss who doesn’t care with co-workers who mock, just so we can be the only light in their dark, Godless lives?

Do THAT, and you’re really doing something.

——————————–

Further Reading

An Unremarkable Faith

Radical: Book Review by Tim Challies

What’s Wrong With Social Justice?

Posted in theology

Art

Posted on by elizabethprata

I express myself in words, the written word, not spoken so much.

Some talented Christians express themselves in art. Some honor God with their photography. Some, with their poetic imagery.

I go through bouts of wanting and needing to  make an image, an art piece, but I am not talented and usually fail. But I still try sometimes.

This one is called “Above and Below”. The bottom half is a photograph of my apartment reversed into a negative.

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

The lace in the middle represents the veil, through which Jesus has broken but as long as we are individually in fleshly bodies, we cannot go beyond until rapture or death (unless by prayer :).

“And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.” (Matthew 27:52)

The upper portion is the heavenly realm.

“I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows” (2 Corinthians 12:2)

Just a page out of my art journal. It was Barbara who inspired me to go back and take a look at my art journal. You should check out her art. It is very good.

Posted in doctrine, scripture, theology

Is your doctrinal screw loose?

Posted on by elizabethprata

The tiny screw fell out of my glasses this week. I was standing in the kitchen and all of a sudden the lens to my glasses popped out and fell to the rug. I took off the frames and saw that the screw at the end of the bow had come out. This released the frame to widen itself, and they no longer held in the lens.

It is a very, very tiny screw. I got on my hands and knees with a flashlight and used my other hand to gently sweep all over the entire rug. Of course the screw is the same color of the rug, and it’s about 1/32nd of an inch long. I never found the screw.

Without the screw that holds the frame together that holds the lens on the glasses that go on my head that allow me to see…I can’t see. I have severe astigmatism and I cannot see things even a few feet away. I’m not allowed to drive without glasses, either. I have a spare pair but the lens prescription is a bit outdated, but they had to do until the next morning when I went to the Dollar Store and bought an eyeglasses repair kit.

I got to thinking about the small, tiny thing that holds it all together. Once you take the small thing out, it all starts to unravel.

I’d written about this concept in March 2011 but from a different angle I am taking it today.

The pair of glasses are a system, unified, whole, and each part of it depends on the other for its entire integrity. When all parts are there, the whole thing works

The glasses are like the bible.

If you remove part of it, the whole thing falls apart.

I am NOT saying that the Word of God is in any way insubstantial, tenuous, or will falter. “Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? ” (Jeremiah 23:29)

His Word upholds the universe and it will ever pass away. (Matthew 24:35).

I am talking about OUR belief in the Word. When you start picking and choosing this little part to believe and that little part not to believe, the unity and perfection of the word is such that each verse relies on the other. Your belief will start to crumble the moment you say something like this (and a church leader actually said this to me:)

“I’m not sure about the whole Jonah and the fish thing. As a matter of fact, I just take the whole Old Testament with a grain of salt!”

Picture the story of Jonah being swallowed by the whale as that little screw. Initially, you might think that not believing that small section of scripture won’t harm your entire theology. It’s just a few verses in a very short book after all. But if you doubt the Jonah story, then what about this:

“For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 12:40).

Do you doubt what Jesus was saying? If you doubt the verse in Jonah 1, then you must doubt the verses in Matthew 12. And now your theological hold just got wider, and the screw in the glasses frame just got looser.

(Depiction of Jonah and the “great fish” on the south doorway of the Gothic-era Dom St. Peter in Worms, Germany.)

You might give room in your mind to the possibility of theological evolution – as Billy Graham does – and that ultimately to settle that belief in a literal version of the creation story “makes no difference.” But oh, it surely does. Graham said:

“I believe that God created man, and whether it came by an evolutionary process and at a certain point He took this person or being and made him a living soul or not, does not change the fact that God did create man. … whichever way God did it makes no difference as to what man is and man’s relationship to God.” – [Billy Graham: Personal Thoughts of a Public Man, 1997. p. 72-74]

Because Graham gave room in his mind for the possibility of evolution, then he made his hole bigger because Paul said “Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; in 1 Corinthians 15:45, and in 1 Timothy 2:13 Paul said “For Adam was formed first, then Eve;”. Does a person discount those verses, too? One must, if he believes God could have evolved man and not created him, as Graham does.

In the end, Graham decided that all people go to heaven, even those who never heard about Jesus, as he told Robert Schuller and Larry King at different times. His slide away from the faith was long and slow, but just as damning.

Noah’s Ark, by Edward Hicks, Wikipedia

Some people say they do not believe the ark story, the animals could not possibly have fit onto a boat. But then one must discount what Peter said in 2 Peter 2:5- “if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;”

The point is, you must believe all of it, or none of it.

I can’t afford to go get more glasses. I decided it is more prudent to periodically make sure my glasses frames don’t have a screw that’s loose. If I have a screw loose, it could all too easily come breaking apart, and we would not want that to happen, would we! I’m pretty fond of seeing.

Henry II suit of armor,
Wikimedia Commons

Same with our doctrine. Periodically check to make sure you are using proper discernment. Pray to God for Him to sanctify you daily. Put on the full armor of God and pray ceaselessly (thus oiling the armor) so you will be protected from satan’s screwdriver that will try to find a loose screw to unhinge it.

“Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” (Hebrews 2:1)

“John Jefferson Davis writes:

Even though Calvin believes that regeneration is irreversible . . . he does not conclude that the Christian has any cause for spiritual complacency. Persevering in God’s grace requires, on the human side, “severe and arduous effort.” . . . The believer needs to continually feed his soul on the preaching of the Word and to grow in faith throughout the whole course of life. Since it is easy for the believer to fall away for a time from the grace of God, there is constant need for “striving and vigilance, if we would persevere in the grace of God.” Calvin thus balances his theological certitudes with pastoral warnings. . . . The believer must continually exercise faith and obedience to make “his calling and election sure.” (Davis, “The Perseverance of the Saints: A History of the Doctrine,” 222.)

Believe all of it. If you doubt, ask the Holy Spirit to help you. That is one of His ministries!

In the end belief in what some claim are the more the more fantastical parts of the Word boil down to this:

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” (2 Timothy 3:16)

The scriptures doesn’t say some parts are good, or a few parts, or even most parts. It says all scripture. Check to see if you have a screw loose. The lens could pop out and then you will not be seeing clearly. But regular maintenance of your eye-wear will result in seeing clearly, and beholding Jesus is the most beautiful thing you could ever hope to view. Having a right view of scripture is that beautiful perspective.

PS: I did fix my glasses. It was very difficult and it took a long time, and many tools. The screw is so small, I needed to use tweezers to even pick it up. I gripped too hard and the thing went flying off somewhere. Repeat the search on hands and knees with flashlight and hand feeling around everywhere. Not to be found.

I spent about 45 minutes reconstructing the frames, setting the lens on the thin frame just right, squeezing the clamp together, trying the different size screws, using the teeny screwdriver, had to use the tweezers again at the end to hold the clamp tight enough so the lens would be securely held. Let me tell you, the whole thing was such a pain that it is WAY easier to make sure that it is tight in the first place than to re-do the whole thing at time, expense, and frustration, and risking having to spend even more to get new glasses!

Posted in righteousness, slave, theology

We are slaves of Christ, and God owns our body

Posted on by elizabethprata

We are not just servants of Jesus, not just bond-servants, but slaves. Yes, we are co-heirs, friends, and sons, but we are His slaves. Let’s focus on that relationship for a minute.

John MacArthur:

Being a slave of Christ may be the best way to define a Christian. We are, as believers, slaves of Christ. You would never suspect that, however, from the language of Christianity. In contemporary Christianity the language is anything but slave language. It is about freedom. It is about liberation. It is about health, wealth, prosperity, finding your own fulfillment, fulfilling your own dream, finding your own purpose. We often hear that God loves you unconditionally and wants you to be all you want to be. He wants to fulfill every ambition, every desire, every hope, every dream. In fact, there are books being written about dreams as if they are gifts from God which God then having given them is bound to fulfill. Personal fulfillment, personal liberation, personal satisfaction, all bound up in an old term in evangelical Christianity, a personal relationship. How many times have we heard that the gospel offers people a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?

What exactly does that mean? Satan has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and it’s not a very good one. Every living being has a personal relationship with the living God of one kind or another, leading to one end or another. … But what exactly is our relationship to God? What is our relationship to Christ? How are we best to understand it? You do have a personal relationship to Jesus Christ, you are His slave. That’s putting it as simply as I can put it. ~Slaves for Christ

Few of us go so far as to re-align our thoughts with the fact that we are His slaves. Fewer of us would go even further to explore the full implications of that fact.

“But now, O you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” (Isaiah 64:8)

“But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?'” (Romans 9:20)

“Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.” (Romans 6:16-18).

“Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” (John 8:34)

God made us. He owns not just our heart, and our mind, but our body. Ask Isaiah.

“at that time the LORD spoke by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, “Go, and loose the sackcloth from your waist and take off your sandals from your feet,” and he did so, walking naked and barefoot. Then the LORD said, “As my servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and a portent against Egypt and Cush, (Isaiah 20:2-3).

God saw fit to use Isaiah’s body AS the message He wanted to send to the people. Isaiah obeyed. We read in verse 2 the LORD said, and in verse 3 cut to three years later, Isaiah did. Did the LORD say, if you don’t mind…please… I know this is embarrassing, but…” No. The Lord who is the Potter said to the clay, ‘I formed you and now I want the vessel that is your body to be a sign. Naked.’ Isaiah surrendered to God, and when the call came to do this thing, he obeyed. What a marvelous lesson in being a slave to righteousness. How would you like to be a walking naked billboard from God to everyone in your town?

We are slaves. Ask Job. God used his body, too. Satan charged Job in the presence of God of worshiping God only because God had put a hedge around Job. God told satan that he was allowed to test Job but not to touch his body. (Job 1:6-12). Satan took Job’s property and children.

However Job remained steadfast so satan asked God for further access. This time the LORD said satan could touch his body. (Job 2:5-7). Job’s body broke out in loathsome sores from head to toe. In all this Job did not sin with his lips. (Job 2:10).

God made us and will deal with us as He deems fit. Not just the mind, nor the heart, but the body. We are His slaves and He owns us. Ask Mary.

Luke 2:26-38 describes the scene where an obedient girl, a young virgin betrothed, was told that she will conceive a son by the Holy Spirit. In the day of Jesus and before, it was a mark of honor and duty for a woman to conceive a male child. The family must grow and the tribe must be maintained. It was a black mark on a woman not to have children, and worse, not to have boys, and the lack caused deep distress in the woman who was barren. (1 Samuel 1:10). Hannah, in 1 Samuel 1:2; Manoah’s wife, in Judges 13:2-3; Sarai, in Genesis 11:30; and Elizabeth in Luke 1:36 all were women in disgrace because of their barrenness, but received news of their forthcoming child gladly. Not so Mary. Her situation was not a social blessing but a social disgrace, because she was not married. Yet she said,

“I am the Lord’s slave,” said Mary. “May it be done to me according to your word.” (Holman Standard Christian Luke 1:38). Though the word is translated servant or bondservant in most of the other translations, in Greek it is doulos, slave. Mary knew that if the LORD wanted to use her body to instill a child by the Spirit, He would, and she would obey, no matter the social cost. Even 33 years later, she was still haunted by the stigma of uncertainty of proper birth, when the townspeople charged Jesus and said, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.” Mary’s son, not Joseph’s son, the proper way to declare birth genealogy. Mary knew this and she said, ‘I am His slave, let it be done to me.’ O, that we all could obey so gracefully! What a lesson for us.

The three examples go from the Lord’s use of our body from superficial to deep. Isaiah walked naked. Job was beset with sores on his skin. Mary was used all the way to the interior of her body- her womb. We are His clay.

Once you think about how the LORD chooses to use us, it becomes clear that we do not own our body at all. Look at the verses in where He gives a blessing:

“You shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you. None shall miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.” (Exodus 23:25-25)

Here the LORD shows that he controls the wombs of the women and the bodies of the tribe by declaring healthy child-bearing, no illnesses, and healthy living until the number of days is fulfilled.

Herod was struck with worms. (Acts 12:23)

In John 9:1-3, a man had been blind since birth. He spent all his days, decades perhaps, blind, until the moment that the Potter should deem it the time to release him from blindness. Why did God use the man’s body this way?

“As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

We are slaves, through and through. Not just our mind and heart, but our body. We do not just ‘serve’ Him, but He bought us with His blood. Redeemed us, with His blood. Purchased us with His blood. (Revelation 5:9, Acts 20:28, 1 Corinthians 6:20). Slaves are bought, and we are.

He owns us and can do with us as He wills. May it be to our benefit and His glory that we accept this as Isaiah, Job, and Mary- in worshipful submission.

“I am the Lord’s slave,” said Mary. “May it be done to me according to your word.”

‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
‘Hear, and I will speak;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.’
I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees you;
therefore I despise myself,
and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42: 3-6)

Posted in theology

Absent from the body…

Posted on by elizabethprata

Published on Jan 17, 2013 by “I’ll Be Honest”, part of Grace Community Church of San Antonio, TX, Pastor Tim Conway.

At last year’s Fellowship conference Pastor Tim exhorted the brethren that some of us may not be there next year. During the very next year Bob Jennings at 63, and Ayla Petteruti at 23, went to be at home with the Lord.

Now is the time of your salvation!

Posted in theology

Milestone upcoming

Posted on by elizabethprata

Less than 10,000 views and I hit 2 million! What can I say, I’m a sucka for stats…

But what it really means is Jesus proclaimed 2M times. I am grateful have an eternity to proclaim Him 2 google-gazillion more

Posted in theology

Yom Kippur begins today

Posted on by elizabethprata

At around noon EST, the highest holy holiday in Israel begins, Yom Kippur.

“Also known as Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the year for the Jewish people. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. Jewish people traditionally observe this holy day with a 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue services. Yom Kippur completes the annual period known in Judaism as the High Holy Days or Yamim Nora’im (“Days of Awe”).

“Yom Kippur is the tenth day of the month of Tishrei. According to Jewish tradition, God inscribes each person’s fate for the coming year into a book, the Book of Life, on Rosh Hashanah, and waits until Yom Kippur to “seal” the verdict. During the Days of Awe, a Jew tries to amend his or her behavior and seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God (bein adam leMakom) and against other human beings (bein adam lechavero). The evening and day of Yom Kippur are set aside for public and private petitions and confessions of guilt (Vidui). At the end of Yom Kippur, one hopes that they have been forgiven by God.”

Source- Wikipedia.

Further Resources:

Judaism 101: Yom Kippur
Jewish Virtual Library: Yom Kippur’s importance

News for Yom Kippur:

Yom Kippur: 64% fast, 46% pray
“Public consensus over Day of Atonement continues: Even those who don’t mark day in traditional manner devote it to ‘quality time’ with themselves or their family; only 0.5% of Israelis plan to travel”

Opinion piece: Jerusalem Post: “Time for Atonement“

Gnosticism infiltrating the highest holy day for Jews, too:

Manayunk congregation’s Yom Kippur service will take a nontraditional, meditational turn

I feel the Yom Kippur holy day is a time for high alert. Remember, 39 years ago, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel on this holiday. Be in prayer for the Jewish people, and the lost Muslims too…