Quote from this message: “There is coming into the earth a universal form of worship. It always has music. Music is more prominent than preaching.” This message gives the importance of true worship as it relates to music in the light of the end-time changes in the concepts of worship.
Excertps from the sermon:
I think in my recent article in the “Straightway,” I too say you cannot in every composer, in every song he’s ever written, draw a line. But what you do is, get clear back to Heaven and the glory of Christ and say, “Lord, I’m starting from scratch in Heaven. I’m only going to sing the songs that please You. I want to judge and check the song not from the border of the CCM, but I want to check it from the border of Heaven.” That is where it all starts, for it is worship to God.
I don’t see any more cultural distinctives in any form of music anymore. It is all married Rock, contemporary beat, that’s Rock. The contemporary beat is Rock. It may be soft. It may be sweet. It may not necessarily be Acid and Hard—Punk Rock, or Pelvis Rock, or Elvis Rock, or Sex Rock—but you cannot handle it without becoming addicted.
You cannot call music, worship, You cannot call harp, worship. Worship is what you and I do with all the things in a service to glorify God. That’s what worship is. In Daniel 3, we saw the face of the image: pure gold, the music, harps. You cannot go down through that little ensemble of music and say this is an evil instrument and that is an excellent instrument, although if there wasn’t any music and they were standing over in the corner, I would pick the harp. But when music comes, that’s what the harp contributed, and you can take a harp and turn it over and bang it around, because it’s the music, it’s the music that destroys the instrument.
It’s not just the instruments. It’s the music it plays. It’s the music in Daniel 3.
The reason why we must establish that sanctuary [Whitefield Sanctuary in Anvil House] in this earth, is to permanently take our stand upon worship, not music. We are standing up for worship. It is not musicians, and it is not proficiencies. We are doing it for worship. I have heard the worship of cottage prayer meetings, they used to call them. I’ve heard the worship of brush arbor meetings. I’ve actually been in them as a boy. Sheffey is no new news to me. I’ve heard worship in home. I’ve heard worship in the open air. I remember after I got saved, in Washington D. C. in all the parks in the lovely Capitol Hill area, I went with my friend and held street services in the park and we sang. I used to hear the Salvation Army on the West Coast when I was in the Navy and it was the last thing God used to talk with me. This is before the Salvation Army became a soup and soap factory and it actually offered salvation. I’ve heard worship in all those categories. I’ve heard worship in cathedrals. I remember one cathedral I visited with my wife and I got up and left cathedral worship. Musicians, choirs, music—isn’t that lovely music? Isn’t that pleasing? Is it not sentimental and emotional and touch your heart? But there is a question you still have to ask. Does it worship? Does it worship? Is it worship? Well, that brings us to a whole new dimension. It’s not a performance. It’s certainly not entertainment. It’s not to show off the gift.
How would you like someday in Whitefield Sanctuary to hear an organ play, but couldn’t see the organ or the organist? Would you like it just as well? Did you hear? That’s my granddaughter. Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. Suppose you couldn’t see the singer, and you were craning to look and see who. Look at her. Look at her. Look at her. Got a flower dress on today. Would the music be of any value if you couldn’t see the musician? If it’s worship, it would. We’ve been thinking about that. It may be one morning you will hear somebody singing and won’t see them because whenever anything draws to itself the greater recognition than the God to which it’s offered, it is no longer worship.
I really believe you have to learn to keep your thoughts on God. I have passed through things in my life when my thoughts were galloping, and they were powers of thought that had inundated me with ecclesiastical leaders. “What will I do, O God, with this?” And, I can remember going to sleep at night, and I could not get it off of my mind as a young preacher—“What are they going to do with me?”—because I cannot believe and go on with that. “What is going to happen?” And, I learned you must worship God then. Worship God. And, I believe that it is possible and should be probable in every Christian’s life, you may control your thoughts. And, if you can keep your thoughts conscious of God—I don’t care what you’re going through with. There have been times I have felt in my life, especially as a younger man, I failed God so miserably, not that I took up smoking or was drinking. I failed God in my weakness, lack of wisdom—failed God. I don’t think anybody has really caught me in a failure I didn’t already know, but that was the last frontier into which I did dare to worship God with my weaknesses. I really thought for a few years (I was writing the book “The Quest for Christian Purity)—I really thought that’s one compartment you can’t get worship in. And, one day I read in Psalm 51 when David prayed this prayer after bloodguiltiness and adultery, he said, “Take not thy holy spirit from me.” He could worship in his mess. Hallelujah, he could worship in his mess. Heaven wasn’t going to cover up for him. It’s one of the last—it’s not the last—when you’re younger, “How in the world can I worship God and be God-conscious with my weaknesses, with my youthful ways.” But, I believe the last frontier of the aged Christian is, “How am I going to worship God with bitterness?” And, I tell you, you have to know how to worship God if you’ve been treated wrong. You’ve got to learn how to worship God if they did you wrong, and you are right, and they are wrong. You have to worship God. Worship is not dependent that you were treated right. And, I believe unless we get God-consciousness in our life for all situations, we will never know what it is to worship.
I`ve been thinking so much about the legacy of our hymn book, and I believe the devil has thought up of a way of how to change the hymn book. It’s not that they are going to lose the manuscript of the way they wrote it. They’re not going to lose the hymn books of the key it was in, but what they’re going to do is, rearrange it. And it`s going to be the soloist will struggle to keep the original lyrics and the original composition as the musicians and the accompanists destroy it with a different rhythm and dissonance. I had two outstanding people musically among Fundamentalism, that if I were to select two people qualified and educated to the art form of music, they would be right up there, and when I spoke with them about singing, they said, “We will not sing if the pianist does not use our chordality.” Well, we looked at their chordality and it was in contradistinction to the original writing of it because it was that flamboyant, dissonating chordality of the chords and the rhythm of the arrangement that made in the eyes of the world, “Amazing Grace” is more than we thought it was. And “The Old Rugged Cross”—my, did you hear this one
I’d like to see the original composition make a comeback. Now this year, last year, next year, it’s chordality, but it’s a way to change the way the song was written. And the way we got our hymns was very important. They were given to us as a legacy to preserve the spirit and doctrine of the past. And when the spirit and the doctrine of the Christianity of the past is lost, we will follow cunningly devised fables, and the music is not worshiping. It’s when we give back to God what He gave us through His Son—that’s worship, that’s true worship.”
How we need to get back to reading music the way it was written, and ask God to bless two things: that gift which was in the composer, and the gift of a channel that said, “Allow me to say this for him. He’s dead today. I want to say this piece of music for him. He has gone home, and I want to say it.”
