TOO COWARD TO USE BIBLICAL INSTRUMENTS
By Ken Blue
There must be some logical explanation as to why we go to the Old Testament to support a doctrine or a standard, and then tiptoe past obvious passages which teach an unavoidable truth. That truth is the use of instruments in worship and praise.
However, if you want to see a pastor squirm and crawfish, challenge him on why he ignores this clear teaching in the Word of God.
If you don’t believe Baptist are cowards, in this matter, observe how they are chained to the piano and the organ. They actually fear to introduce any of the following instruments.
Cowardly Baptist chain themselves to the piano and the organ only.
- And his brother’s name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ. Genesis 4:21
- “… with psalteries…with cymbals…with trumpets continually before the ark of the covenant of God.” 1 Chronicles 16:5-6.
- “With… cornet make a joyful noise before the LORD, the King.” Psalms 98:6.
- “And all the people came up after him, and the people piped with pipes, and rejoiced with great joy, so that the earth rent with the sound of them.” 1 Kings 1:40.
- “And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe…” Isaiah 5:12.
- “And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.” Exodus 15:20.
- “…the king stood by a pillar …and the trumpeters by the king, and all the people of the land rejoiced, and blew with trumpets…” 2 Kings 11:14
- “…And when the burnt offering began, the song of the LORD began also with the trumpets, and with the instruments ordained by David king of Israel.” 2 Chronicles 29:27
- “…the viol, and invent to themselves instruments of musick, like David.” Amos 6:5
- “And David and all Israel played before God with all their might, and with singing, and with harps, and with psalteries, and with timbrels, and with cymbals, and with trumpets.” 1 Chronicles 13:8.
- “ Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp.
Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs. Praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high sounding cymbals.” Psalms 150:3-5.
All of the above were used by Israel to serve and praise God. You will find all kinds of stringed, wind and percussion instruments in the above list. Really, don’t you shun them because you fear the brethren? “The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the LORD shall be safe.” Proverbs 29:25.
Pastor Ken Blue was born in Boswell, Ark. In 1955 he accepted Christ as his Savior. He and his wife Joyce were married in 1955. They have 5 children. He graduated from Midwestern Baptist Bible College in 1969 and started the Open Door Baptist Church in Lynnwood, Wa. where he pastored for 39 years. Because of health issues (ALS) he was forced to resign as pastor. It is his desire to continue to be used of God to help pastors and believers through this ministry.
THE TOCQUEVILLE FRAUD
The Weekly Standard
November 13, 1995
By John J. Pitney, Jr.
Nowhere do they appear in Democracy in America, or anywhere else in Tocqueville. The authenticity of the passage came into question when first-year government students at Claremont McKenna College received an assignment: Find a contemporary speech quoting Tocqueville, and determine how accurately the speaker used the quotation. A student soon uncovered a recent Senate floor speech that cited the “America is great” line. He scoured Democracy in America, but could not find the passage. The professor looked, too – and it was not there.
Further research led to reference books that cautiously referred to the quotation as “unverified” and “attributed to de Tocqueville but not found in his works.”
And now, synthetic Tocqueville is appearing in the 1996 campaign. Pat Buchanan used the “America is great” line in the speech announcing his candidacy, and Phil Gramm invoked the flaming pulpits in his May address to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University.
Why does faux Tocqueville thrive? It took only a modest effort to expose the quotation as a phony, so how could it have circulated so widely for so long? We could make a nasty crack about politicians who cannot tell Alexis de Tocqueville from Maurice Chevalier, but that would be irrelevant since they seldom write their own material anyway. The lyrics of politics come from staffers, whose tight deadlines often keep them from checking original sources. When they need a quotation (or a statistic or an anecdote), they lift it from a speech or an article by somebody else. That somebody probably got it from another piece, whose author got it from . . . you get the picture. Bad information tends to linger and spread.
Here is a personal brush. In 1992, I served on the staff of the Republican platform committee. We came across the “America is great” line in an old Reagan speech. Though we could not verify it, we still wanted to use it in the platform, so we attributed it to “an old adage.”
Of course, after decades of repetition, it has in fact become an old adage. It just isn’t Tocqueville’s.
If you can use it to worship and praise God, then use it without fear or apologies.
Thank you, Pastor, for putting scripural application into one of the most hotly contested areas of church life. Isn’t it amusing, yet tragic, how we take this subject and make an assumption that God’s opinion must match our own, without any biblical foundation to back it up. Hopefully we can follow your lead and dig into the word and pray before we start deciding, (and tagging our decision with God’s name), the kind of music we need in the church and selecting instruments we should or shouldn’t use.