The Long War on Worship

Introduction: A Jealous God

Many think of evangelism as the great task of the church; it is not. Yes, without evangelism the church cannot function faithfully. Dead churches do not evangelize. Yet evangelism, though a great mission and task of the church, ranks below worship. Missions exist because worship does not. In heaven, evangelism does not exist; there, and on earth, the chief purpose of the church is worship. Worship ennobles our service; Scripture identifies church members as stones in God’s temple–the holy place devoted chiefly to worship (1 Cor. 3:16; Eph. 2:21; 1 Pet. 2:4-8). Our Lord graphically demonstrated God’s desire for worship:

Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. (John 4:21-24).

God tolerates no rivals for His worship, nor yet suffers His people to offer homage, or worship, to false gods: “Thou shall not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God” (Ex. 20:5). Therefore, there exists a worship that is true, and worship that is false. Jesus quoted the Old Testament to this effect: “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Deut. 6:13; Matt. 4:10).

Worship brings mankind to approach God, to magnify and glorify His name. John Owen writes, “And this is that which most commonly in the Scripture is called by the name of ‘The worship of God;’ as that whereby all the acceptable actings of the souls of men toward him are expressed, and the only way of owning and acknowledging him in the world, as also of entertaining a visible intercourse with him.”¹ In worship, the bride of Christ banquets with the heavenly bridegroom. She shouts his praises, “Jehovah Jireh,” providing his worshipping spouse a book especially and uniquely suited for her joy, namely, The Book of Psalms. Its Hebrew title, Tehillim (“Songs of Praise”), curiously crosses a feminine noun and a masculine plural finish. Songs of praise, and other elements of worship, love tokens from Christ to his bride, reflect the matrimonial relations he so deeply values. In worship, Christ and his church together sing songs of Zion, marriage melodies, harmonies of hope, and lyrics of love.²

On a chair in the department of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland, lays an inscription with the following words, set there at the behest of Sir William Hamilton: “The greatest thing in the world is man; and the greatest thing in man is mind.” Worship brings the human mind, and the whole being, to stretch for communion with God. Though God commands us to worship him, by nature the mind does not love God at all; sin brings tragic disturbance to our minds, as Solomon noted: “Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions” (Eccles. 7:29). As the sparks fly upwards, so the restless mind makes idols. Unless the Holy Spirit changes the disposition, the mind remains captive to sin. Regeneration is the necessary condition for worshipping God with our hearts and minds.

Christians must have the mind of Christ, their beloved husband.³ A husband cannot endure lewdness or unfaithfulness in his wife. So the Lord will not endure false worship from his church: “For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (Ex. 34:14), and “Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness” (Ps. 29:2). The warnings are necessary, for false worship multiplies at the idol factory in the heart of the city of Mansoul.⁴

The War on Worship in Eden

God made Adam in his image, to reflect God’s glory, to worship and know him. It was in Eden where God made the first direct call to worship, before sin’s sinuous entry. There he commanded Adam to obedience, to acts that displayed his dependence on God, as a rational creature. In Eden, God created the first church, the spiritual bride, to obey the Word and worship the Lord. Because they were worshippers, Satan hunted them, that the Lord might not have a church on earth. Satan searched for the place of worship, and swiftly, silently, slipped in like a mist by night to rob and defile that holy place.

Satan invited Eve to consider a path separate from the holy and divine rite prescribed by God to Adam. Then Adam, in frantic passion, and through Eve’s evil encouragement, abandoned God’s call to refrain from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What a startling difference between Adam and Mary Magdalene; Adam wanted the garden, but he did not want Christ; Mary wanted Christ, and found him in a garden, though first she found only a gardener. By one act of disobedience to God–an act of obedience to the serpent–Adam recoiled in his mind from the thought of God, as surely as he recoiled in his person from the presence of God. Perfect love drives out fear (1 John 4:18). In Eden, Adam learned that slavish fear casts out love; when Adam heard the voice of God, he was afraid and hid himself. He worshipped the creature instead of the creator. Ungodliness possessed his heart; he would rather hide from, and live apart from, God. Adam, the “image and glory of God” (1 Cor. 11:7), instead of obeying the revealed Word of God, wanted to follow the thoughts of his own defiled mind. It was anarchy in worship in Eden.

The War on Worship in Ancient Days

Outside of Eden, the war on worship claimed other casualties. Genesis 4:3-5 records how rebellion against God’s ordained worship provoked murder:

And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.

Later testimony, in Heb. 11:4. explains, “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh.” Almighty God received and accepted Abel’s offering as a testimony and expression of his delight in true worship. God tested Cain. Cain refused God’s will for acceptable worship, becoming wroth when the Lord did not accept his careful innovations. Satan, like a roaring lion, had Cain’s heart in his mouth. Rather than escaping the lion by calling on God and following his appointed worship, Cain quickly blamed his brother. Though the earth swallowed the blood of Abel to hide the crime, Abel’s blood still speaks. It testifies that hope lives on, that worship is not worthless, that the fallen world still needs true worshippers. As Jesus said, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24).

All men must worship. This is plain not only from Scripture, but also from the annals of the world. The worship war occurs in the spiritual realm, but anticipates physical activity which can degenerate, as it did with Cain, into murder and mayhem.

Two types of worshippers exist in this world. One follows God’s appointed worship; the other appoints his own worship. If men will not worship God, they will in some form and fashion worship what God has made, for worship they must. When Cain murdered his brother, he painted in blood on the face of the earth the lamentable condition of the false worshipper. Cain became the image and forerunner of the wretched corruptions of worship of his children. Generations later, those who continued in true worship of God became known as children of God, whereas those who abandoned him, are children of men. The New Testament, in the blood of Jesus Christ, a blood that speaks better things (Heb. 12:24) than that of Abel, speaks in graphic terms of the continued warfare between Satan and the church of God.⁵ The children of light, like Abel, worship God; but the children of darkness worship devils (1 Thess. 5:5; Eph. 5:8). It is a worship war.

The Worldwide War on Worship

More common than atheism, an insipid indifference afflicts mankind, where Jesus Christ and his worship is like the white of an egg, tasteless in the world’s mouth. In such cases, natural men think it only proper that human genius can suitably order and dispose of worship. Some follow along in this ignorance, willingly walking after the commandments of men, without any respect to God’s will or authority. In Athens, Paul the Apostle confronted “ignorant” Greco-Roman worship and declared their wisdom to be mere foolishness (Acts 17). They made superstitions, thinking that in doing so, they were thinking about worship. Such superstitions are substitutes for thoughts, since merely following instinct falls far short of having the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16).

Others sense, in their haunting love of the beautiful, a genuine yearning for God, and however mistaken about the divine nature, constantly and solemnly worship whatever they take for their God. What is the world for, and what are we for? They realise that an inward worship of the heart needs an outward expression and exercise, and they understand that worship must be according to God’s appointment. Therefore, even when heathen invent their own worship, being “a law unto themselves” (Rom. 2:14), they still pretend to draw the knowledge of worship rites from the gods themselves. These rationalisations are the involuntary tribute which vice pays to virtue. But being on the wrong side of the long war on worship results in a loss of perception of reality. The Bible considers subversion of morals and intellect in these terms, condemning those “who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator” (Rom. 1:25).

Personal opinion of inward purity, or outward appearance of prosperity, fails as a safe standard of goodness; false worship always produces intellectual and moral disaster. Intellectually, men lose the principle of understanding and undergo a progressive blindness of insight. Morally, they lose the principle of life and suffer a spiritual phthisis, or wasting away. The intellectual desert which creeps over the mind closely connects with the neglect for life littering the graveyard of human history. Ancient Canaanites sacrificed children to their idols, as did Ahaz and Manasseh (2 Kings 16:3; 2 Kings 21:6). Rome waged a war against the Christians, martyring many.⁶ Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas turned human sacrifice into bloody, religiopolitical theatre.⁷ According to Pliny the Elder, the Roman republic abolished human sacrifice by 97 BC.⁸ In time, the Imperial cult, which identified emperors with the divinely sanctioned authority, came to identify the ruler as the summa divinitas.⁹ During his life, Augustus allowed far-flung provinces to erect temples devoted to his worship. When he died. the state declared him to be divine. Like Herod, his voice became “the voice of a god and not of a man” (Acts 12:21-22).

A close relation exists between the death of a god and the sacrifice of man. When the world neglects or despises God’s worship, society invariably descends into a bloody cacophony of competing idols. In 2011, on Peru’s northern coast, local residents made the macabre discovery of a partially uncovered mass grave, dated to about 1400 AD, of at least 269 children, 466 llamas, and 3 adults.¹⁰ It is the largest mass child sacrifice in the archaeological record. Forensic scientists estimate the children’s ages ranged from 5 to 14. Their death was no accident. It was a mass murder. The killers smeared a red cinnabar-based pigment across many of their little faces, before slicing open their chests and removing their beating hearts.¹¹ Their hearts scarred as volcanoes, the false priests offered hearts to false gods.

The War on Worship in the Church: A Case Study

It may be pleasing to consider intellectually the war on worship as it transpired in the dust of time. However sanitized and comfortable these ruminations, it is necessary also to take the uneasy path to settle one’s own share in the worship war, for we are both witnesses and participants. It is easy to flatter ourselves, as the Jews did, that we worship in ways pleasing to God. Jesus said, “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” (Matt. 15:9). God’s voice, not the voice of conscience, must be our guide. God’s Word alone reveals his will for worship. God reserves sole authority to appoint, alter, or abolish, at his pleasure, elements of his worship, according to the season in his great work of redemption.¹²

Scripture does not sugarcoat our scandalous genealogy. More recent personal history sketches the anarchy in worship to which the church remains prone. In 1875, Dr. James Begg sketched this in criticisms of his own church, the Free Church of Scotland, in Anarchy in Worship or Recent Innovations Contrasted with the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church and the Vows of her Office-Bearers.¹³ Much water has passed under the bridge since Dr. Begg’s day, yet his words are worth consideration as they bear timeless lessons and warnings about the war on worship.

According to Dr. Begg, the Free Church, in the 1870s, was rife with doctrinal and other problems. Various innovations in worship began to multiply, including hymn singing and use of mechanical instruments of music.¹⁴ That these trifles would arouse to passion a great theologian of the Scottish church may appear surprising to a modern reader. A good paraphrase of Scripture set to music, or some other hymn, can be lovely, and organs are but one of many mechanical instruments that can glorify God. But everything in its proper place.

Whether one agrees with Dr. Begg about a capella psalmody is beside the point. An analysis of his arguments offers to the reader insight into the contemporary war on God’s holy worship. Dr. Begg did not consider it a trifle when hymns and organs invaded the church. Higher reasons than mere prejudice animated his pen. Begg’s high and Scriptural view of worship, his reverent fear to handle holy things with care (Num. 4:15), meant that innovations in worship were sufficiently grave cause to use pen as sword.

Begg’s booklet, Anarchy in Worship, begins by considering exactly what is the doctrine of Scripture on the acceptable way of worshipping God. It was a sad indictment of the state of the Free Church of Scotland that Dr. Begg felt impelled to direct in detail about the acceptable way of worshipping God. And it was a shame that although he wrote to a general audience, the audience on whom he hoped to have the greatest influence were his fellow office-bearers. It is not, perhaps, a great shock when men unschooled in the Bible run after inventions. But office-bearers in the Free Church ought to be the most cautious and seek the face of God alone in settling, “Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God?”¹⁵ Dr. Begg’s answer¹⁶ includes quotes from the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms, which form part of the Free Church of Scotland Constitution, which all its office-bearers swear to uphold. The Larger Catechism lays down the principle: the second commandment forbids “all devising, counseling, commanding, using, and anywise approving any religious worship not instituted by God Himself.”¹⁷ Dr. Begg felt it was important to italicise the words “not instituted by God Himself.” The Shorter Catechism says that the second commandment “forbiddeth the worshipping of God by images, or any other way not appointed in His Word.”¹⁸ Dr. Begg here italicizes, “not appointed in His Word.” Obviously, these summaries of Scriptural teaching allow only that which God has appointed, and therefore forbid what God has not appointed. Consider a father who asks his child to buy a cup of sugar, and only a cup. What if the child returns with potato chips? May he claim ignorance of his father’s will? He exclaims indignantly about his innovative purchase with the father’s currency, “But Father did not forbid me!” This is precisely the foolishness to which men resort to justify their innovations in worship.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that an innovation in worship is permissible, just so long as the Scriptures do not expressly forbid it, and the innovation is in harmony with the general tenor of Scripture. Begg demurs:

Many Presbyterians at present are so profoundly ignorant in regard to this whole controversy, that they argue as if this were the principle of their own Church and of Scripture; and they ask, with a foolish and stupefied air of triumph, where God has “prohibited” instrumental music and other corruptions of worship under the New Testament dispensation.¹⁹

The Biblical position holds that worship requires God’s prescription, not childish Romish appeals to prohibition. John Knox, that great Reformer who preached gospel fire into the blood and muscles of his listeners, wrote: “All worshipping, honoring, or service invented by the brain of man in the religion of God, without His own express commandment, is idolatry.”²⁰ James Begg was of the same mind as Knox. He dared to speak up against opposition from those who preferred a peace that appeased innovators rather than facing them down.

The Constitution of Dr. Begg’s Free Church of Scotland is clear on the issue of worship, assigning to it clarity fitting to its centrality in the life of the church. Begg summarises the important question worshippers must ask: “Starting from the general principle of Scripture thus explained in regard to worship, its application is simple. What worship has God “prescribed” under the New Testament dispensation, the temple and all its services being done away?”²¹ The general principle to which Dr. Begg refers is that God forbids all worship not instituted by himself.

In answer to what God has prescribed, all else being forbidden, Dr. Begg does not go into semantic gymnastics, as he believed the innovators did to try their self-justifications. In answer to the question, Dr. Begg simply quotes from the Constitution itself:

What worship has God “prescribed” under the New Testament dispensation…? This is set forth with equal plainness in the Westminster Confession of Faith, c. 21, s. 5, “The reading of the Scriptures with godly fear, the sound preaching and conscionable hearing of the word in obedience unto God, with understanding, faith, and reverence, singing of psalms with grace in the heart, as also the due administration and worthy receiving of the sacraments instituted by Christ, are all parts of the ordinary religious worship of God; besides religious oaths and vows, solemn fastings and thanksgivings upon special occasions, which are in their several times and seasons to be used in a holy and religious manner.” Anything else or different from this, and especially anything borrowed from heathenism or the abolished temple-service – as pretended priests, altars, altar-cloths, incense, symbolical vestments, or instrumental music – are entirely without divine warrant, and therefore unlawful.²²

Partly because of the heroic actions of men like Dr. Begg, the Free Church of Scotland decisively resisted innovations and entered the twentieth century reinvigorated about her Protestant heritage of “purity of worship.”

By small steps of compromise, after nearly a century of renewed uniformity in worship, the Free Church of Scotland found herself, as she entered the twenty-first century, in an eerily familiar debate. The principal of the Free Church College in Edinburgh wrote, “Attempts…to exclude all spiritual songs except the psalms (the Free Church way) are intolerable violations of our congregational liberties.”²³ It was not long before a few congregations began to innovate. First, they set aside the psalms. One minister publicly proclaimed the real innovators as those who dare sing psalms only in worship.²⁴ But about worship, the Free Church Constitution is easy to understand. The vows office-bearers make at ordination to uphold the Constitution are obviously in no way supposed to set aside the Constitution.²⁵ The Westminster Confession of Faith leaves nothing to imagination. It gives an exhaustive list of the parts²⁶ of worship God prescribes in Holy Scripture. Congregational fiat, at least in a Presbyterian church, is not the proper way to introduce additions to prescribed worship. Dr. Begg’s warnings against innovators are as relevant as ever:

It is worthy of observation not only that this is the only appointed worship under the New Testament, but that it was undoubtedly the worship practised by the Apostles and early Christians. The very meaning of our being Presbyterians, moreover, as distinguished from Congregationalists, is that the details of worship shall be uniform, and settled by a central authority, so that in going from church to church, as from room to room in one great house, we shall not be distracted in our devotions by diversity and individual crotchets, as when “there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” (Cf. Jud. 17:6f.; 21:25). To this “uniformity,” as well as purity of worship, all the office-bearers of the Presbyterian Church are solemnly pledged. They are bound to follow “no divisive courses;” although it is notable and painful at present to find that many are setting this obligation at defiance.²⁷

Whatever one may believe about worship, it ought to be plain that office-bearers in Dr. Begg’s church willingly swore to uphold the purity of worship as practised by that church. Office-bearers swear they believe the only acceptable public worship offered to the Lord is that which He has prescribed. It is unlawful to add to the prescribed elements of worship listed in the Constitution.

The innovator wants to add or subtract from the prescribed worship, but the Constitution expressly forbids additions or subtractions. What, then, can an innovator do to justify the contradiction that appears? As we see above, they may assert that their innovation is actually obedience to God. According to Dr. Begg, the passion for innovative worship leads to lies and self-deception:

We live, however, unfortunately, in a day when “truce breaking” (cf. L.C. 145) is not uncommon; and when many, instead of following “no divisive courses,” according to their solemn vows, seem to make the promotion of innovations in the worship of God one of their favourite employments. Religion is wounded in the house of her friends. We can imagine nothing more fitted to eat like a canker into the faith and morals of the community.²⁸

Why have innovators and their innovations so troubled the church in the past and in the present? What motivates such a person? One only needs to look into one’s own heart for an answer. Scripture and secular history show many examples from which to deduce the improper motives that innovators have followed. Scripture teaches that all men are innovators by nature, and wish, like Cain, the worship that well-pleases their heart. With this caution in mind, we note the list Dr. Begg compiles:

a) The presumptuous and blasphemous innovator (e.g. Num. 16)

b) The popularity hunting innovator (e.g. Ex. 32)

c) The politic and scheming innovator (e.g. 1 Kings 12:25-13:5)

d) The aesthetic innovator (cf. 2 Tim. 3:4 with 2 Sam. 7:2; 1 Chron. 17:1)

e) The well-meaning innovator (e.g. 1 Sam. 15:22,23)

Lot lingered long in a sinful place. As he ran from danger, his glance drifted from God to the apples of Sodom, and, in his eagerness to rest, he said to the angel, “is it not a little one?” (Gen. 19:20). Even if the city Zoar seemed of little weight, Lot mistook the danger of a little compromise, thinking his little choice safer than God’s perfect provision. Begg argued against objections that thought the worship innovations tiny, or the innovators few:

It is vain to say that the “innovations” at present in question are small. Even if this were true, it would only form an aggravation of the offence, as proving to how small a temptation men have yielded in their rage to novelty and change. We must not forget that their vow in the sight of God is not merely to avoid great changes. They have solemnly vowed to follow “no divisive courses” from the worship which has been authorised and practised in the Church; but, on the contrary, to defend that worship “to the utmost of their power.”²⁹

Begg understood that in life, and in worship, our safety lies in fleeing to the mountain of God’s appointing. God’s Word is enough. Begg knew that small compromises would end fatally. As Augustine warned, “you can by a series of small doses accustom yourself to poison.”³⁰

Conclusion: Worship is War

Many people believe their life purpose belongs to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. Instead, their lives feature loss of purpose, rootedness, and emergence of bone-numbing unhappiness. Whether by wars, rumours of wars, famines, mass extinctions, biospheric upheaval, or some such disaster, despair over the past and fear for the future features high in the mind of fallen man. People fear because they cannot make sense of their world. Alienated from God, they feel trapped in a fatalistic death spiral from which they find escape impossible. They sense they must worship, but find false worship worse than useless; by itself it is like salt water, which, so far from slaking, aggravates thirst.

Perhaps man’s greatest capacity, most distinguishable from the beasts, is the spiritual capacity, “because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them” (Rom. 1:19). In this, we learn that man has the capacity to know there is a God. As man watches the world, his spiritual senses tingle. Atheist philosopher Peter Singer spoke in explicitly religious terms of his own experience of wild beauty. He wrote, “I do not think I am alone in this; for many people, wilderness is the source of the greatest feelings of aesthetic appreciation, rising to an almost spiritual intensity.”³¹ God has produced an indelible spiritual appetite on human lives. Scripture tells us the “law [is] written in their hearts” (Rom. 2:15). In other words, God gifts us with spiritual powers and faculties. True worship of God alone can satisfy the hunger induced by unfulfilled spiritual capacities.

Without true worship, man gravitates toward compelling and urgent tales of doom, and then proposes a worship for the hope of the world. Pagans seek to worship in techniques of transcendence, seeking there a life-purpose that rises above their hollowed out existence. To the Greek, nothing was superior to reason. To the Roman, nothing was superior to power. To modern man, nothing is superior to fantasy, or magical thinking. To try to solve their problems, to escape from what appears to be the intolerability of the present, they indulge in fantasy, and create dream worlds. They erect utopian images of God, God’s creation, and God’s worship, all contrary to God’s will. It seems reasonable to their own vain imagination, but its result, like that of scratching a wound, is a deeper, poisonous, infection. Man-made worship is an anaesthetic for those wearied of thought.

The world has fallen into grief and disaster. Its annals prove amply the long war on worship, a continuance of the struggle begun in Eden. When Satan assaulted the Garden, it was with the goal to subvert that pure, spiritual worship of God. In Eden, Adam chose anarchy. This anarchy stalks the steps of Adam’s children. Without a godly sense of purpose, men hunger and grope blindly for a commanding formula of life. They fill the formula with arbitrary worship preferences or choices which are, in Scripture terminology, “man-made.” They make a desert and call it peace. It will implode. The doom of utopian worship features repeated cycles of crisis of meaning. Without true worship, we lack the means for possession of the proper knowledge of God and of man, and so, a mode of life consistent with such knowledge will ever escape us. The mind then becomes prostituted to its own fancies. What is worse, it prostitutes, also, the divine worship to the human mind.

Two systems of worship struggle for the mastery. The one, because based on human will alone, proposes worship through the senses, the eye, and the ear; the other a worship through the mind and heart. Free Church minister John Duncan expresses the danger of following human imagination: “A merely aesthetic religion (such as that of Goethe, and all worshippers of the beautiful) is a miserable substitute for piety; and it never stands the tear and wear of time, especially in the midst of great sorrows. It is the offspring of sentiment divorced from law; and that is an illegal divorce.”³²

Adam invented a world in which his own imagination and will could be greater than the revealed will of his creator. The result was death, and worship war. But Adam repented. He realised we cannot imagine our own truth apart from God, but that as the image of God, we have the gift of insight into divine truth. God forbids that we create our own values from experience or preference. They must come from Scripture standards of truth, beauty, and goodness. In worship, we dare not draw practice from our own brains. Doing so reveals a passion for independence and self-sufficiency.

The conflict is chiefly moral, not intellectual. The solution must thus also be chiefly moral. Like Adam, we too, must repent. Only a heart change can produce the proper attitude to worship; this is God’s sovereign work. God ordains His church, the bride of Christ, to be the instrument of furthering his worship on earth, to advance his kingdom, and destroy the kingdom of Satan. Therefore, the true Christian church is indispensable in the worship war. We must worship the King in the beauty of holiness. Unless, and until, the church of Jesus Christ renounces her own will, and behaves as a servant and witness and bride of Christ, there can be no hope for peace. God promises to bless nations that embrace Christ and his pure worship (Jer. 12:16). To engage in God-ordained worship, is to engage in spiritual warfare. The outward manner of our worship, if we would keep it whole, must be according to the primitive institution of Christ: “I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you” (1 Cor. 11:23).

Footnotes

1
John Owen, Works, Vol. 15, (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1976), 448. ↩︎
2
The reader may benefit from a study of Christ and His Church in the Book of Psalms, by Andrew Bonar, a nineteenth century minister in the Free Church of Scotland. ↩︎
3
1 Cor. 2:16; Rom. 12:2; Phil. 2:5; 2 Tim. 1:7. ↩︎
4
This is a reference to the 1682 book by John Bunyan entitled The Holy War Made by King Shaddai Upon Diabolus, to Regain the Metropolis of the World, Or, The Losing and Taking Again of the Town of Mansoul. ↩︎
5
1 Cor. 7:5; 2 Cor. 2:11; 11:14; Eph. 4:27; 1 Thess. 2:18; 1 Tim. 5:15; James 4:7; Eph. 6:11-12; 1 John 3:8. ↩︎
6
Ignatius, Presbyter of Antioch (b. 35 or 50), martyred in Rome, said: “Now I begin to be a disciple. I care for nothing, of visible or invisible things, so that I may but win Christ. Let fire and the cross, let the companies of wild beasts, let breaking of bones and tearing of limbs, let the grinding of the whole body, and all the malice of the devil, come upon me; be it so, only may I win Christ Jesus!” from John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, Vol. 1 (London, 1841), 118. ↩︎
7
E.O. James, Origins of Sacrifice (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2003). ↩︎
8
J.S. Reid, Human Sacrifices at Rome and Other Notes on Roman Religion, J. Roman Studies, 2, (1912), 34-52. ↩︎
9
Latin, meaning supreme godhead. ↩︎
10
See https://bit.ly/2HwNenn and https://bit.ly/2ZqUaeO (accessed 20 April 2019). ↩︎
11
As a pigment, cinnabar has been used in South Asia from very early times to decorate cult icons of Hindu divinities. See, e.g.. Francesco Brighenti, “A ‘Sulphurous’” Śakti: The Worship of Goddess Hiṅgulā in Baluchistan,” in Soulless Matter, Seats of Energy–Metals, Gems and Minerals in South Asian Traditions, eds. Fabrizio Ferrari and Thomas Dähnhardt (London: Equinox Publishing, 2016), 28-50. Among the Maya, cinnabar, perhaps intended to suggest blood, the symbol of life, has been found in the Tomb of the Red Queen in Palenque, where the remains of a noble woman and all the objects inside her sarcophagus were completely covered with bright red dust of ground cinnabar. See Arnoldo Gonzalez Cruz, La Reina Roja: una tomba real en Palenque (Turner Publicaciones, 2011). The Inca similarly associated cinnabar with religious worship. See Thomas Besom, Inka Human Sacrifice and Mountain Worship: Strategies for Empire Unification (University of New Mexico Press, 2013), 92. In Taoism, cinnabar is symbolic of immortality. See Anne Birrell, Chinese Mythology: An Introduction (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). Pliny the Elder noted that the Romans regarded cinnabar as having sacred associations. See Harikleia Brekoulaki, “Precious colours” in Ancient Greek polychromy and painting: material aspects and symbolic values, Revue Archeologique, 2014/1, 3-35. ↩︎
12
Cf. Gen 2:16-17; 17:10-11; Ex. 12;3-24; 25:9; Col. 2:14; Heb. 1:1-2; 9:10-12. ↩︎
13
James Begg, Anarchy in Worship or Recent Innovations Contrasted with the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church and the Vows of her Office-Bearers (Edinburgh, 1875). ↩︎
14
The Free Church began to drift from its practice of a cappella psalmody, a brief defense of which may be found at https://www.westminsterconfession.org/identity/psalms-in-worship/ (accessed 20 April 2019). ↩︎
15
Micah 6:6 states the question the King of Moab asked. ↩︎
16
The Westminster Shorter Catechism was completed in 1647 by the Westminster Assembly and continues to serve as part of the doctrinal standards of many Presbyterian churches. However, in recent times some Presbyterians have taken the liberty of modifying the original Westminster Standards so that there are various modern versions still called by the same name, but differing from the original standards. See also the following works: William Cunningham, The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation (London: Banner of Truth, 1967), 27, 31; and James Bannerman, The Church of Christ (London:Banner of Truth, 1974), 337-338; and John Owen, Works, London, vol. XIII (London: Banner of Truth, 1966), 473. ↩︎
17
Westminster Larger Catechism 109. ↩︎
18
Westminster Shorter Catechism 51. ↩︎
19
Begg, Anarchy of Worship, 6-7. ↩︎
20
Ibid., 7. ↩︎
21
Ibid., 13. ↩︎
22
Ibid., 13. ↩︎
23
Donald Macleod, Footnotes (West Highland Free Press, 6 September 1996), 7. ↩︎
24
David A. Robertson wrote on the public Free Church message board: “The desire to limit Gods people to singing psalms only is a human innovation contrary to the Word of God – which is why I cannot support it – although I support fully the idea that we should sing the psalms -but not exclusively.” The full text written by Mr. Robertson is no longer accessible and was taken off the Free Church message board, at http://members3.boardhost.com/Freechurch/msg/4106.html (accessed 20 October 2001). ↩︎
25
For example, General Assembly Act I, 1910, Anent Public Worship, and Act V, Class II, 1932, define purity of worship as practiced in the Free Church in terms of exclusive psalmody without the use of musical instruments. ↩︎
26
These various parts of worship are usually called the ‘elements’ of worship. ↩︎
27
Begg, Anarchy in Worship, 14. ↩︎
28
Ibid., 12-13. ↩︎
29
Ibid., 45. ↩︎
30
Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957), 493. ↩︎
31
Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, Second Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 272. ↩︎
32
John Duncan, Colloquia Peripatetica (Edinburgh, 1873), 121. ↩︎

Donald Macleod exclusive psalmody James Begg John Duncan John Owen regulative principle

Introduction: A Jealous God

The War on Worship in Eden

The War on Worship in Ancient Days

The Worldwide War on Worship

The War on Worship in the Church: A Case Study

Conclusion: Worship is War

Footnotes

About the author

Table of Contents

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Introduction: A Jealous God

The War on Worship in Eden

The War on Worship in Ancient Days

The Worldwide War on Worship

The War on Worship in the Church: A Case Study

Conclusion: Worship is War

Footnotes

About the author

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