The History of Christian Music & Worship

This is one I've been looking forward to doing. This is a history of Christian music and worship. And we'll be taking somewhat of a side trip in a couple places, a few places, looking at some of the Christmas carols and the history of some of them. Some of them have a centuries-long history and have changed radically from when they were first written. And we'll take a look at that.

Looking at it, a key verse to take a look at, a key passage, here's Colossians 3.16 and 17.

The way I remember it, John 3.16, everybody remembers that, shift over to Colossians and you're there. But this passage, let the word of Christ richly dwell within you with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. A really key passage, and there's a parallel passage in Ephesians We'll start looking at that this next week in the main service.

The key point here is psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Those three things. The Greek psalmos was often used in reference to the psalms that book in the Old Testament, but in general reference to what we would typically call hymns. That might seem a little confusing because hymns comes next, right? But the word was used in that sense. We'll also get another insight into that word psalmos shortly.

Hymns were actually used in songs sung directly to the Lord. That's that particular word. Songs sung directly to the Lord in praise to Him. Spiritual songs are any songs of a spiritual nature. For example, one of them that I believe it was Winnie put some music to that Hal came up with the words, you know, how would I know? And it isn't a song sung to the Lord, but it's a song of a spiritual nature. So there's those three categories. All three are biblically valid. And that's a key point. We put that here in diagram form. You will have psalms and hymns and spiritual psalms, and you will also have some overlap. Let me give you a for instance.

I might have a hymn that also speaks directly to the Lord. Right? Some of the hymns do. I might also have something that is a hymn that speaks directly to the Lord and parts of it are simply talking about spiritual lessons I've learned or other truths from scripture that aren't directly to the Lord.

So the truth is you'll have overlap between those but between those three categories you've got it covered. Paul basically gives the latitude and lays out those three categories of songs that are appropriate for Christian worship. Worship can include, and I think this is important because a lot of times we think of worship when we think of it must be music. Truth is scripture lays out other things.

Words said and not sung. Here's in Revelation 4, 9-11. Worship can include things shared. Things shared. Or here's another one. Worship can include presenting our bodies as living sacrifices. What does Paul say that is? Present your body as a living sacrifice. That also is your spiritual service of worship. Lastly, worship can include our bodily position before the Lord. This is what you see expressed in Revelation again as we saw when we went through it.

Bottom line is, there is an area of things called worship, there is an area of things called music, and there is an area of overlap between those two. So we can have psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and those are valid and appropriate in Christian worship, but also to realize that there are expressions of worship that fall outside of the area of music. Music is included. but also those that fall outside.

So just to kind of get a full biblical sense of what worship includes. What about musical instruments in worship? Important question. By the way, we don't think anything of it. For portions of church history, that has been a question. And even now, there are church denominations who exclude instruments. They're not even supposed to do that. Musical instruments were used in the Old Testament worship. We know that. There's a couple of passages that's not exhaustive. There are others. Psalms includes more than one. Paul makes reference to musical instruments, but not necessarily in a worship context. As you look at the context, it's more the idea of clarity is what he's communicating, not necessarily in worship.

However, originally this word psalmos, remember we said that there's Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. That word psalmos, originally the word was used for musical instruments. And it's actually based on a word that means to strum. And then over time the word evolved into use of singing with musical instruments accompanying it. So are musical instruments valid in Christian worship?

Yes. They are valid. And as we'll see here in a minute, Not everybody believes that, or believes it now. Revelation 5, 8-10 pictures the four living creatures and the 24 elders, and what are they doing? Playing the harp. I suppose all of you have your harp skills down well, right? Because you're going to be spending eternity doing this, right? I think the picture is not so much one of, here's the exclusive instrument, but the idea here is a very special time of praising the Lord. We'll talk about that in a minute.

New Testament hymns. There's actually no place in the New Testament where it's said, this is the hymn and here's the words. We don't have any of those. There are some, however, and we give these references in Philippians, Colossians, 1 Timothy and Ephesians, where scholars speculate that that might be a hymn. But there is nowhere explicit that we have listed, here is a hymn. What does that do? That leaves us free to write our own. And that is a perfectly valid thing to do. There aren't any inspired, you must sing this one kind of hymn. There is also no limitation on the creativity.

Christian music in the early church. Now, whether we like it or not, they didn't have a reliable method for recording music. So music tended to be more of a passed-on thing, because they didn't have any reliable way to write it down. That took centuries to develop. And even by the Middle Ages, they used a system different from what we use now. If I took one of our musicians here and played some music from the Middle Ages in front of them, they'd scratch their heads. It would be very strange.

The early Christians, however, did tend to pattern their services after the Jewish synagogues. That's kind of what they saw and observed. It doesn't mean it's inspired, that's just what they did. That's just the pattern that we see. They would have hymns and songs, they'd also have readings, things of that sort, and that was real common.

And in the early church, I'm talking about the post-apostolic church, the record that we have is that they sang songs a cappella. The term plain song came to be used and that actually held for over a thousand years. The plain song melodies where you would sing a cappella and no instrumental accompaniment was written for those songs. That was pretty common.

The early Christians also made a point not to use musical instruments. And here's the reason why. In the pagan temples they would use musical instruments and so the people who are becoming Christians coming out of that pagan background associated the use of the musical instruments frequently with their pagan worship. And so to try to make a separation from that they dropped it. Another reason is because In the theaters, and we've shown the picture of the theater there in Philippi in times past, and you've also seen perhaps one from Ephesus, the theaters, many of the women who are playing the instruments down below also doubled as prostitutes. And so the thought was, I just don't want to have anything to do with that in the church. And so they pushed musical instruments away in the early centuries there.

The other thing is Christians were inclined towards asceticism. We mentioned that before, basically denying the body any pleasures, and so since musical instruments were thought of as being pleasurable, you can't have them. That was their teaching. I'm not saying you, I'm just saying that was their thought and their teaching.

Now, if we step into the Roman Empire, what's interesting is as Christianity became legal, what happened is they said, okay, we've got to start making music laws. They actually began enforcing music laws, and they were enforced militarily and politically, if you can imagine that. You may not sing this kind of music, you may not write this kind of music, you may not do this. So they began making laws that fit that. There were people who wrote things outside of that, but they were kind of marginalized, they had to be kind of out on the edges. and they weren't allowed to use the church buildings for that sort of thing. Some of them could even sing their outlawed music in public places, but they had to do it outside the churches and they weren't given the church buildings to do that in. Here's an example, and some of you may have heard this before, the Battle of the Bands.

Arius was a heretic. We talked about him last week. Remember, Arius taught that Jesus Christ was a created being and the Holy Spirit was a force. Same as Jehovah's Witnesses do now. He was rejected by the church and not allowed to use the church buildings. So what did he do?

He went around and used, as I mentioned previously, catchy tunes. He used catchy tunes in order to spread the doctrine, the false doctrine, and make it acceptable. And then people who didn't even believe the words would go around singing because the songs were appealing.

Well, that really did not set well. John Chrysostom went to the Empress and got authority and some money to have these processions and they would proceed around in public places in counter measure to Aria's teaching with silver crosses and big bundles of candles on stands and they'd go around singing songs with proper doctrine and when the two groups would meet there was even bloodshed between the two.

So here was a Christian battle of the bands, if you will. Now, about the same time, Augustine wrote that he struggled sometimes if the music stirred him to the point where he felt it took the attention away from the content. So here was an expression of the concern that came about. His statement of concern was taken very seriously by subsequent church leaders. And so again, they enforced more church laws to make sure that the music was not stirring.

Make sure it is very simple, not stirring, and not distracting from the message. Now, chants were developed during this period of time as well. And there's various groups, typically monasteries would specialize in these chants. The chants, by the way, were not musically complicated. Some of them where you had one quarter note for each note, and that was it. Very simple chants, and the reason they kept them simple is you don't want anything stirring. Nothing stimulating, nothing that would get you excited. about the music so it's the words and so they would enforce the chant and the meter and pattern of the chant would be very enforced, simplified.

You have an example, St. Ambrose was one of those authors and you have a copy of one of his hymns translated into English so you have a chance to see what that looked like. That is one of the earliest that we have any record of with the complete lyrics. And so you can take a look at that at your leisure, but don't get excited about it, please.

Okay. There are also others that proceeded into the period of Gregory the Great, who was the one that we've mentioned, was the one that was the first to be called and act fully as Pope. And that brings us into his time, the Gregorian chant. You've heard the Gregorian chant? Okay. He wasn't the guy that came up with them. Okay.

What it amounted to, chants had been written for centuries before, but he organized them and put more regulations in place as to what those would be like. And so they began to be named after him because of that organizing and the institution activity that he put into place there. And by the way, this is an example of some of the music writing from the earlier time. This is actually medieval, not from Gregory, but a few centuries later. But it gives you an idea what it looked like. You and I might have a tough time knowing quite what to do with it. OK? A little tough. All right. Here's O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. We've all heard this Christmas carol.

What's real interesting, it's in 8th century Latin originally. And 8th century means the 700s, so it's actually the century after Gregory, after the Gregorian chant title came up with. And what's interesting, it was translated into English in the middle 1850s, and when the fellow who translated it did so, it originally had, Draw nigh, draw nigh, Emmanuel. So it's been changed since that time, but that was actually the first English translation.

That's not, however, how the song, the tune that we currently sing came about. Here's how it did come about. Vinnie Emmanuel was a 15th century French plain song. Again, what is plain song? No instruments. And what do we frequently do? We play instruments. So for centuries this was done with a different melody, no instruments. No instruments allowed.

So what was originally an 8th century Latin hymn, then got later changed and changed again into the English words that we now sing. And what was originally not allowed to have any accompaniment began to have accompaniment only after a French melody was put to it centuries later. So what we have now as O Come, O Come, Emmanuel is quite different from what originally was written. Now here's something, as we go through this you'll see it, I'll make the statement, I'm glad you're sitting down, What we commonly do here on Sunday morning at Holly Hills is by most churches standard considered conservative.

However, through most of church history, what we do here in the way of worship music on Sunday morning is absolutely appalling. Absolutely appalling. Unthinkable. Unconscionable. That you would play instruments, that you would have something other than quarter notes, and that you would have just instrumentals. is absolutely shocking behavior to think that that would be in a church.

And you'll see more of what I mean in a minute. Ok, here's Ocamacom Emmanuel. Look at this, and ransom captive Israel. Are they really concerned about Israel? What's the word they're reflecting? Who's Israel? The church. That's right. So we sing the words, but in truth it was written with an understanding that the church is Israel, and so if you read through all the verses you'll notice that theme of Israel keeps coming up, and that's the words that they're using.

It shows up again in the chorus. Now, polyphony was something that came up during about the time of the Crusades, towards the latter end of the Crusades, is when it became more common. What do I mean by polyphony? I don't mean harmony per se, What I mean is multiple melodies being sung at once. You've heard some tunes like that where you'll have different songs and you'll have one tune and then another tune.

An example of that, if you're familiar with the musical The Music Man, the one Nancy and I were thinking of to try to give people an example, Lila Rose. Excuse me? Lida Rose. Yeah, Lida Rose. That would be one where you have two different melodies going on at once. multiple melodies began to be invoked during this period of time and that was allowed.

It was during this century that they wrote the first entire Catholic Mass with multiple melodies. The problem is within a few centuries, and we'll see this in a little bit, they began to have so many melodies at once you couldn't understand what was being said. That's assuming that you can understand Latin to begin with. I hear you. My brain goes crazy too.

The other thing is that music began to be developed more outside of just church music. Because that was one of the things that with the Catholic Church regulating music so heavily, it was difficult for music to get developed freely. This was kind of the beginning roots of the Renaissance era, and so people began developing music more outside of a church context, outside of the regulations that controlled church music. Now, as we step into the Reformation, one of the things that began to happen is more musical accompaniment became to be accepted. Because, after all, the restriction on musical accompaniment had been set in place by the Catholic Church. So, what happened? The Reformation, because of now, we're no longer restrained, allowed some kind of freedom of thought. Well, maybe this is okay. And so, instrumental music began to be more accepted during this period of time. The other thing is you get some Protestant lyrical content.

This is the one, A Mighty Fortress is Our God. It has sometimes been nicknamed the Battle Hymn of the Reformation. I was over in Germany some 20 years ago and was in a Lutheran church and was fortunate enough to be there on a Sunday where they sang this. It was real interesting and fascinating to have them singing that there in Germany in the Lutheran church.

But it wasn't translated into English until some time later. Here's our English translator. So it took a while to get into the English language. And by the way, there's more than one English version. This one here is A Mighty Fortress is Our God, A Bulwark Never Failing. The other version has things about swords and shields. So it's a loose translation. Okay, a generalization.

Lutheran music style and content followed this philosophy. If it isn't forbidden, it's okay. The Reformed churches had a different approach. If we aren't told we're allowed to do it, you can't. See the difference? So the Lutheran music tended to have more freedom and latitude. The Reformed churches tended to keep things very narrow because of that. It's a philosophical approach. Am I allowed to do it if scripture doesn't prohibit it? Can I not do it because scripture doesn't say I can? That difference in philosophy between the two churches tended to develop different lines of musical patterns between the two.

The other thing that developed shortly in the Reformation was the Presbyterian Psalter. The Presbyterian Church, as we covered some time back, had its roots coming out of the Reformed Church through John Knox, established in Scotland. So what they did is they said, no, we're just singing the Psalms, that's it. And so what they would do is they would have this psalter and everybody would read from the psalter and they had kind of memorized tunes that went along with each one of those. And so you sang out of the psalter.

Joanne Lockwood showed me a copy that she has printed during the first half of the 1800s. And it's again, it's a copy of the psalter. Various editions of it are available online. Just within the last few years, a new denomination of the Presbyterian background, the American Presbyterian Church, was established based on wanting to return to singing the Psalter exclusively.

And that's here in the United States, not over in Europe. Council of Trent. This was a Catholic reaction. We hear of the Council of Trent, and as we looked at it before, there tends to be, looking at it from a theological standpoint, reacting to the However, there were four items that affected music that came out of that council, and those four items are secular melodies were used as a basis for sacred works.

They said, no more. Got to get rid of those. So, then the complex polyphony, remember I mentioned multiple tunes at once? They said, no, I can't have so many. It's confusing. So reduced the number and then set some limits. I don't know exactly how many. But they said, we can't have so many tunes at once. Too confusing.

So that meant that when these things were laid down, all the musicians, the church musicians, had to go back in and rewrite for decades. They were rewriting things to fit the Council of Trent. As copies of the guidelines came out, and those got distributed, by this time they could print, but it took a while to get them distributed. Decades went by of rewriting church music, at least in the Catholic churches.

Inappropriate behavior of church musicians. It's still a problem in some churches. I'm afraid so. Nancy and I were at one church where they had a guy who was leading music and all of a sudden we saw his name on the front page of the paper for horrible things. Inappropriate use of instruments. They thought instruments, no that's a bad thing.

So anyway, more restriction on the use of instruments were set down because that started to creep into the Roman Catholic churches and some of it they felt was getting out of hand. Again, you've got to keep it tightly controlled so you don't get too excited about this stuff.

Then, you step into the period after the Reformation, hymns and more hymns. Lots of hymns began to be developed. particularly in the Protestant churches where you didn't have quite the constraint, and most particularly outside the Reformed churches where, you know, if it isn't prohibited, it's allowed. Okay?

So many, many new hymns. And we have, just an example, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, author of something like 6,000 different hymns, particularly the words, and John Newton, John Newton, of course, is well known for Amazing Grace, but he actually wrote dozens of others that are less well known. If you ask anybody, even out in the world, you know, do you know a hymn? A great many of them will know or at least have some familiarity with Amazing Grace, but be completely unaware that he wrote dozens of other hymns as well.

The 1800s saw more hymns, and here's something else that kind of took time. Women were allowed to write hymns. during the 1800s. Prior to that time, you'll find it very rare that women were allowed to author hymns. One of the very prolific hymn writers during that period, Fanny Crosby, and we have a number of her hymns in our hymn book. Handel's Messiah. Now, this is amazing. He wrote this from August 22nd to September 14th, 1741, roughly three weeks period of time. He wrote the entire oratorio. Actually, its three parts represent Christ's birth, death, and resurrection. So originally, it was associated not with Christmas, but with Easter. It was played at Easter time, and over time it migrated to being played around Christmas, traditionally. But originally, they didn't even think of Christmas. It was Easter time.

Then, many people were so aghast because the music in places was so stirring that it was appalling, it took about a century for the uproar to die down. It was absolutely stunning, startling, shocking, outrageous that he would write such stirring music based on scripture. The combination of the two was just unbelievable to people.

Eventually it did die down, In 1788, Mozart was commissioned to rewrite it, editing it, because they also had some shift in instruments being played, and they were going to play it for groups of no more than 30 people at once. That sounds strange to us, because we usually think of large groups, but no more than 30 people for the arrangement that Mozart set up. But by the 1830s, the Messiah actually began to be played with different variations, It was 1837, the Queen Victoria came on board, she said, this is wonderful, I want special editions to be played for different social groups and social classes, and I want especially to have the lower class people come and hear their version, because it is so morally uplifting. She looked at it as a means of social reform, to play Handel's Messiah in the low class version.

And so fascinating, it was used, and by this time, by the way, the uproar wasn't done. People were still outraged that you were playing this stirring, stimulating music that would overwhelm the lyrics. Terribly upset over this thing. But she said, no, go ahead and do it.

As a matter of fact, we'll let all the low class people come in and listen to it for free. Now, Silent Night. Here's one that people have heard. Becky and I were talking. The night probably was not silent. You think about it a minute. Here's Bethlehem. A census is taking place. Everybody who is related to David must come into Bethlehem.

It probably at best had one inn. And the inns in those days were one-room affairs. Everybody would come into the inn and they would set you down and it would be on dirt floor. and they would have campfires all over and you'd gather on different groups.

That's a great place to have a baby, right? So it was actually not quiet, but a pretty rowdy affair. People hadn't seen each other in decades. People that they were, hey, there's my second cousin three times removed, you know? It was that kind of an affair. You're seeing all kinds of people you're related to and maybe hadn't seen in your whole lifetime.

So at any rate, it probably wasn't silent, but it was written in this little village. Here it is off to the right there in Austria. And how many of you have heard the idea that the church organ broke down and they played guitar along with that? Apparently, it's been discovered in recent years since 1995. That's not true.

Apparently, it was discovered that this document, plus some others that were associated with it, It was written, one fellow did the lyrics, the other the tune and they put it together and there's no evidence of the little organ broke down story apparently. Nonetheless, it became very popular within a short period of time and was spreading all over the world, fascinating from this little village that that would be the case.

And then as we step into The 20th century, hymns continue to be written into the 20th century, some of which we also have in our hymnals. How Great Thou Art, Great is Thy Faithfulness, those are from just the first part of the 20th century. As a matter of fact, How Great Thou Art even has parts that go into the World War II period and just thereafter.

It's interesting that some of these hymns took a while to develop. One of the things you'll notice as you look through the hymnal, and you'll see the authors of the words and the music. Sometimes you can see it's even in a different generation. Sometimes it takes decades for these things to develop. How great they are is that kind of a story. By the time we get into the second half of the 20th century, different kinds of music are developing in the secular realm.

I list here jazz, pop, rock, ska. Have you ever heard of ska? Ska? Becky likes ska. Reggae, punk, thrash, metal, soul, Some of those things, you may not even have heard of what those things are. Contemporary Christian music followed the Christian lyrics to match the style, and that's ongoing, even now. There's new forms developing. I've listed some that I've heard of. I'm sure there's a bunch that I haven't. What's happened, however, is that the church has tended to gravitate towards that. Plus, another thing has taken place.

It was a statistic that I heard several years ago, and I haven't heard any updates from it, but in 1970, 10% of those who claimed to be Christians claimed also to be charismatic. By 1995, that number was 60%. Okay? Claimed to be charismatic. What's happened, of course, a lot of music has developed out of that growth in the charismatic movement as well, and it tends to show itself in the lyrics that caused Nancy and I to leave the church. make me drunk with your Holy Spirit, this was not acceptable to us. Or in the emotional expression, they may get extremely emotional, or the other thing is repetition, constantly droning out the same thing. So at any rate, that became prominent, and still is the case. Marilyn?

My brother taught that 7-11 music. 7-11 music, okay. He did 11 times. Yes, 11 times. That's cute. That's a good way to put it. Now, I think as we look at this, we say, okay, how does this fit into things here? To give it perspective, and we actually in the God's Intent for the Church class went more into, here's what God intends, and here are biblical criteria for music. There are biblical criteria. Nonetheless, we don't have time for that here, but we will focus on Revelation 5, 8-10.

When he had taken the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders, by the way, he is capitalized, that's Christ the Lamb, and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each one holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints, and they sang a new song, saying, worthy are you to take the book and to break its seals, for you were slain and purchased for God with your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priest to our God and they will reign upon the earth." The focal point as we sing these songs, whether they're Psalms, hymns, or spiritual songs, needs to be upon the person of Jesus Christ.

That's the focal point. As we look at some of the new forms of music, that is a primary question to ask. does this music bring me to worship Jesus Christ? And that's a prime criteria that we can use. Certainly other things we could look at, but all other questions emanate from this one. Is it in worship of Jesus Christ? I'm going to change subjects here. There was something that I wanted to cover, but I could not find. I'd been looking for it for months and hadn't found it.

This is related to, remember, several months ago now, we took one Sunday here and looked at evidence for Christianity outside the Bible. Remember that? And we looked at a number of different documents. There was another thing I thought was fascinating, and I'd like to share it with you. So I've kind of sandwiched it in here. I think we've got time. And it goes like this.

A lot of people are familiar with Pompeii. Let me get the pointer here. A lot of people are familiar with Pompeii. How many have heard of Pompeii and the eruption there? Okay, Pompeii was covered with ash and it was sudden and it was hot and by the way they probably first got asphyxiated with poisonous gases. They'd get monoxides and methanes and sulfides and things of that sort, noxious gases that came down and just put them out within a breath. Then they were covered by hot ash And so what happened is back then and starting about 1929 and into the 30s and even continuing now, they're uncovering a lot of Pompeii and the neighboring areas in order to be able to look at the ancient city. It was August 24th, 79 AD was the date. And what's interesting though, Pompeii is the one most commonly known Herculaneum also perished the same time but for a different reason.

They were covered with hot mud. Instantly covered by hot mud. A flash flood of hot mud came down and buried Herculaneum. Now, what that did in both places and the neighboring towns and cities, what that did is it preserved what was there in very good condition and even to the point of we have casts of dogs and people just as they were when they were overwhelmed by this volcanic catastrophe when Vesuvius, that's shown here, Vesuvius erupted right nearby.

You can see how Herculaneum is right at the foot of Vesuvius and so it got covered with the mud. Pompeii, which is a little farther away, and the cities also nearby that aren't marked. was covered with hot ash. Now, here's the ruins of Herculaneum, and these are newer buildings in the background, but here's the ruins of Herculaneum. There's other parts, you can't catch it all in one photo.

But that's the idea, is that it was preserved. In 1929, see this was all buried in mud. So 1929, they just started a slow, careful, let's get the mud out of the way, okay? And they continued through the 30s and are still doing that now. So this is a portion that's been uncovered.

And this gives you an idea of the level of lifestyle. Look at these wall paintings. And even figuring that there's been some damage and that kind of thing, you can see how ornate this was and baths and fountains built into the floor. And over here, look at the floor mosaic. And look at that wall.

That was a nice wall at one point in time, wasn't it? I mean, that would be fancy stuff. So they lived well. They live quite well. Here's a carving up top here. Now, why do I bring this to your attention? At the Bicentenary House, which is one that has been thoroughly uncovered, the Bicentenary House was what we would call an apartment. Multi-family kind of arrangement, different people living in there.

One of the things that they found on the wall, see that? A cross. Now, if you were not a Christian, you wouldn't put one of those If you were a Roman, because this was in Italy, it's right near Naples. You wouldn't put one of those on your wall. So this person must have put it there because he's a believer. You don't put them on your wall otherwise. Crosses were not something you would put on your wall. As a matter of fact, people in polite conversation wouldn't even mention them.

So here we have at least by 79, and it may have been years or even decades before, record of Christianity in Italy early on in the first century. It's just one of a series of additional evidences of Christianity outside of the New Testament. That's valuable in case you get instances of somebody who says, well, a lot of those Christian books weren't written until the second century or centuries later or something of that sort. Uh-uh. Christianity got here to Italy It must have been by and quite likely well before 79 AD. Okay, let me jump back here a minute.

Alright, next week we'll go into today's Roman Catholic Catechism, what's in it and why. We'll be looking at what does the Roman Catholic Catechism teach, and what does the Bible say, and a history of how did all those various doctrines show up, what time. And what you'll be amazed to see is they all evolved over centuries, starting right after the time the Bible was written, even into the last century or so. So you'll see that.

Now, any questions? We've actually got some time here. Questions? Yes? Yeah, I would say it's a sociological phenomenon. One of the things that's happened, and I don't know if they mentioned it, I saw the title of the article but didn't have time to read it, there are internet churches, churches that only meet on the internet.

There are churches that are set up particularly for the unchurched. Part of my response is that I've got no problem, obviously, with using technology, but we need to be careful As we look at this, we don't end up with something that is quite unlike what scripture lays out. It's quite unlike what the Lord has designed. The internet's very helpful. I don't think it's a substitute for getting together and having fellowship. There's lots to be gained from it, but not that. I think there's something else that many churches may be missing in pursuing that approach, and that is this. that the church is intended for those who believe.

Whatever takes place in the church needs to be designed accordingly. And if we're not careful, we end up designing something for those who don't believe, and that's not what church is intended for. Evangelism takes place out there. This is where the body of Christ meets, wherever it is, whether it's in a home or a church building or wherever it takes place. that the body of Christ needs to meet as the body of Christ, and we need to make sure that that doesn't get confused with evangelism. I would say the other thing about that is making sure that what takes place there still fits within the definition of what needs to take place at church, and that is the building up of the body of Christ.

That is the purpose of the church. And whatever we design, however it takes place, that needs to happen or we've missed the boat. Quick summary reaction, but anyway, I have not read the article, but I've encountered things like that before, and so that's my general thought on it. Marilyn? Yeah, let me head up to it. There, yes. That was one of the things that happened.

The cross actually was used, but less commonly. It's also been found during this era on the ossuary boxes that were used among the Jews. And some of those were like between the period of not, it wouldn't have started this early, but between 10 and 60 AD was when the Jews used the ossuary boxes. And they've actually found some with crosses. So it would be unusual.

The problem is the public use out in the public areas of a cross could bring a problem, especially as time developed and there was more animosity. Initially, a lot of people in the Greek and Roman cultures didn't know what it meant anyway. But over time, yeah, there was an opposition to the use of the cross, so Christians often used other symbols in order to be able to communicate secretly who they were. Nancy? Yeah. I didn't go into it, but I did mention it, that we've got the Hymn of Ambrose in the package there. So people have a sample of what a very early chant is, what it would have been like. Doug, you had a question or a comment. Not a question.

I was reading that there's a shop in Jerusalem that is starting to build defense strength hubs in preparation for the weekend. Yeah, there's a great deal that is being done to pull this together. There's a museum of temple artifacts and things of that sort. There are two different organizations. One of them I've been receiving email from regularly, Temple Mount Faithful. There's another one whose name escapes me at the moment.

Two organizations that are both working towards bringing this about. They've got a lot of the things implemented already. They've got training programs set up for the Levites. I was talking with Margaret about still some difficulty getting a red heifer that meets all the qualifications. Margaret, you had a comment? Oh, you did, okay. Sure, right. Yes, very big. Right. Yeah.

It takes a tremendous amount of work to do it, but amazingly they have, they've done it. It's interesting too, I might also note that when the Romans went in and sacked the temple, and basically it, whether by intent or accident, that's debated, got lit on fire, they first took out all the valuable things that are now being reconstructed, and the location of those was actually tracked for centuries, and then sometime up to and including the Crusades, they got lost in different places, but actually the location of those was known for centuries until finally it was lost. However, some conservative Jews, I should say Hasidic Jews, a proper term, Hasidic Jews claim to know where the Ark of the Covenant is, and that's one that is not replaceable. So, very interesting. That's one that's probably some speculation at heart.

It seems to me that Oh yeah, it's there although the battle continues I would say in large part it's for many churches it's over and there's this a complete reliance upon you know getting your worship music from the power company and get the decibels up there and blast people out and all that. It's still raging in some areas, and other churches have long since capitulated. Pardon? Some churches will resolve it that way, that they'll have conservative, traditional, and then they'll have contemporary, and so they'll try to address it in that way.

In other churches, the traditional music is completely by the wayside, or largely by the wayside. Other thoughts, questions? Yeah? Some of the things that Nancy and I thought were contemporary, our kids are shaking their heads, thinking that's old hat. Things do change, even in a matter of decades, especially now. Other thoughts, questions, comments? Yes?

Is there a time when we sing to glorify God rather than to know? You mean to sing about glory, glory of the Lord, but not singing directly to Him? I would think of singing to the Lord. Ah, okay. And I think of singing directly to God. Let me go back to this. This one here. Let me do a quick... get the scale up.

This is what we covered early and I think this addresses it and that is that Colossians 3.16 and 17 actually talks about psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs and the three categories biblically and that's also in your handout too.

The three categories biblically are those three Psalms referring to actually what we would call hymns. And the word hymnos there, refers to songs which were sung directly to the Lord himself. And then finally, spiritual songs, so that you have the biblical validity, if you will, for all three categories of music. That singing directly to the Lord is appropriate, that is a fitting thing to do in Christian worship. that songs that talk about our relationship with the Lord, that that's fitting, and the hymns being more historic and conventional, there's room for all three.

And in fact, we do have all three kinds here at Holly Hills by intent. I would mention one other thing, and that is that one of the shifts we made, not so much on the basis of explicit statement from Scripture, from concept is to ship more music after the message. Here's the reason why, and that is that worship is our response to Him. Hopefully the message is delivering God's word about Him and we sing worship in response to that. So anyway, a quick summary of the idea. Other thoughts, questions? Yeah? Yes, let me do that. Everybody hopefully has one.

If you don't, feel free to come and get one from Nancy. The idea with this is if you are missing any of the handouts from either this quarter or the last one, that is all the way back to the first time in July, you can mark off whichever ones you're missing. Put your name on it, please, or Nancy won't know. Give them to Nancy, and then she can put together a package for you that has those.

That'll allow her to hand this back to you paper clipped with whatever ones are missing and she'll have it orderly and know who needs what. So anyway, that's how we're going to go about it. So if you've got this, go ahead and fill that out as you have opportunity. Maybe you need to take it home to do that, that's fine. And then give it back to Nancy with your name on it. And that way you can get a complete set. Okay? Yeah. Anything else? Any other questions? Okay?

Let's pray. Lord, we give you thanks. We thank you for this marvelous medium of music. How wonderful a way it is to praise you and give you glory. Whether we speak directly to you or whether we speak of you or whether we speak of the things that we're learning and things you've taught us. We give you thanks for it all. And Lord, we We know that even the battles that continue about music in various ways and realms and areas, Lord, will all be ended one day when we stand before you and sing your praises for eternity. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.