CCM Singer Entertains Travelers with Beatles Song

When CCM singer Josh Wilson got stuck at the Newark airport on January 2 last year and decided to entertain his fellow travelers, he didn't choose a hymn. Instead, he led them in a rousing rendition of the Beatles' "Hey Jude" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_awnM6WnAo). Wilson is a touring partner on Steven Curtis Chapman's 2014 tour, and we believe it is absolutely unconscionable for Christian musicians to encourage an appetite for Beatles' music. That most of them do it is evidence of the extreme worldliness of CCM. It's true that "Hey Jude" isn't wild rock & roll. It doesn't scream out, "Let's commit immorality and use drugs and break laws." It's a soft rock ditty, the lyrics of which are typically ambiguous, saying nothing and anything. Author Paul McCartney says he wrote it for John Lennon's son Julian on the occasion of Lennon's cruel action of leaving his first wife Cynthia for Yoko Ono, but John Lennon said it sounded like it was written for him, and other people believe it was written for them, and the listener can read into it his or her own situation in life, whatever it might be. Rock & roll isn't about thinking; it's about emoting. It's blind mysticism. It's the sound track to end-time global apostasy. To promote anything by the Beatles is to promote the Beatles, and no rock band has had a more spiritually-destructive influence. This is no light matter. The Beatles were doubtless controlled by the "god of this world" as they captured the affection of a generation with their "magical mystery" music and carried millions of young people along on their journey to free sex, unisex, easy divorce, eastern religion, atheism, drug abuse, and rebellion against law and order. In his 1965 book, A Spaniard in the Works, John Lennon called Jesus Christ wicked things that we cannot repeat. He viciously blasphemed the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the song "God" (1970), Lennon sang: "I don't believe in Bible. I don't believe in Jesus. I just believe in me, Yoko and me, that's reality." Lennon's extremely popular song "Imagine" (1971) promotes atheism and a global New Age unity. The lyrics say: "Imagine there's no heaven ... No hell below us, above us only sky ... no religion too/ You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one/ I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one." How many millions of people throughout the world have followed John Lennon in this dream? Yet time will prove that it is actually the most horrible nightmare imaginable. The Beatles' influence is unabated. On January 27, the 50th anniversary of their 1964 appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show will be celebrated by "The Night That Changed America" extravaganza by the Grammys. Indeed, it was a night that changed America and the entire globe, and it was entirely to the glory of the god of this world and the furtherance of the "mystery of iniquity" (2 Thessalonians 2:7). To every contemporary Christian musician who promotes the Beatles I commend the following Scriptures, which are anything but ambiguous: "And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them" (Ephesians 5:11). "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? ... Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you..." (2 Corinthians 6:14-15, 17).

(Friday Church News Notes, January 10, 2014, www.wayoflife.org [email protected], 866-295-4143)

---