2 Praise Yahweh with harp: sing unto him with the psaltery and an instrument of ten strings.

Introducing new music for a new age

A new age deserves a new style of music, and whatever might be the special combination of melody and harmony in the kingdom, its aim will be so positive, and its effect so ennobling, that the world will be transformed. The songs of the sanctuary will no doubt become the popular music of the nations, their tunes and words being embedded in their national consciousness.

Those who make pilgrimage to the temple in Jerusalem 5 will come from all nations 6 and no doubt involve successive groups, whose privilege it will be to attend on behalf of their people. Those who do come will be filled with awe at the magnificent choral assemblies at the temple, and will take home their experience, enshrined in hymns of such purity and beauty that they cannot forget them. They will be new in every sense, for not only will the music of the kingdom be unique, but the focus of the words will be completely different.

In the kingdom of men, the music of past and present has centred upon the experiences of mankind. In the kingdom of God, however, the music of the future will be focused on the dramatic intervention of Yahweh in every sphere of human life. The twin themes of its new songs 7 will be either God's deliverance of the saints 8 or God's judgment on the nations; 9 for with the direct involvement of heaven in the affairs of earth, the world will never be the same again.

Christ will preside over the creation of a new musical genre, which will capture both head and heart. The songs that will emerge under his leadership will become one of the greatest forces for good in the kingdom. They will instruct and inspire all who sing them, and it is evident that these new songs will be on the lips of people everywhere. 10

Of all the new songs, however, that will form the music of the age, there is one which will belong exclusively to the saints of God:

"And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood ... and they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth." (Revelation 5:9; 14:3)

The newness of this song rests not on its composition but in its comprehension. Only the saints will know how it feels to be delivered from sin and death. 11 Although others will join them in refrain, neither the angels 12 nor the nations 13 can fully comprehend the song, and none but the saints can sing its finale, which includes the triumphant words: "for thou ... hast redeemed us to God by thy blood".

It is fundamental to the work of salvation, that none but the redeemed can sing this particular song, because it can only be understood by those who have tasted both the weakness of humanity and the strength of immortality. 14 The saints alone can sing the song which celebrates their ascension from the knowledge of instructionto the knowledge of experience.

The difference is profound, and will profoundly affect the redeemed of God, who will sing their hymn as if it were new and fresh for a thousand years. Not even a milllennium will be able to diminish the joy of their song or the wonder of those blessed to hear them.

But although the saints will all sing, 15 they will not all share in the permanent system of temple worship. Different saints will be involved in different activities, with some engaged in fields of endeavour in the far corners of the earth, and others at work within the limits of the holy cantons.

Among the latter, it will be the privilege of some to be directly involved in the temple songs, as part of the choirs whose voices will be heard in high festival. Those so chosen will have been examples in their own day of faithful adherence to the standards of true worship, and to the principles of spiritual music, of which the House of Asaph were the most famous exemplars.

On the holy mount will be found the most skilful singers of all, whose songs will resonate deeply with the highest objectives of the age, as the hymns of the saints transcend all others in their beauty.

5 Zechariah 8:21,22; 14:16.

6 Isaiah 2:2.

7 Notice the use of the phrase "a new song" in a remarkable series of psalms (Psalms 33:3; 40:3; 96:1; 98:1; 144:9; 149:1). These "new songs" will find their fullest expression in the circumstances relating to the kingdom epoch.

8 Psalms 33:18-22; 40:1-3,13,16,17; 96:1-3; 98:1-3; 144:7-11,15; 149:1-5. 9 Psalms 33:8-10; 40:14,15; 96:10-13; 98:7-9; 144:5,6; 149:6-9.

10 Isaiah 42:10-12.

11 Revelation 5:8-10.

12 Revelation 5:11,12.

13 Revelation 5:13.

14 Revelation 14:3,4.

Bro Roger Lewis - The House of Asaph Ch 15

3 Sing unto him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise.

Music is harmony, unity, beauty, and purposeful orderliness of sound, and our God is a God of order and beauty.

Noise is confused sound-Babel-the world.

Music is disciplined, purposeful, meaningful sound. We shall be greatly struck if we look through a concordance under the word "sing" and see the long list of stirring exhortations and commands to lift up the voice in joy and thanksgiving and praise.

It is surely remarkable that musical sounds, from one tone to its repetition at a higher pitch-the octave-naturally falls into a sevenfold division-a division recognized by ancient nations.

And it is further remarkable that it has been found that to be able to transfer harmonies to different keys in the scale, the addition of five half notes is required, so that the full scale has twelve steps. Surely this reappearance of the divine seven, twelve pattern in so fundamental a thing is more than mere coincidence.

Music has great power. David's pure and spiritual psalms of praise soothed the spirit of Saul and inspired him, temporaly, at least, to better things; and Elisha, in trying and alien circumstances, called for a minstrel that his mind might be better prepared to speak the Word of God.

This must be the purpose and result of our hymns. Herein all our hearts can be united as one. In the dedication of the completed typical Solomon Temple, it was when the players and singers were

"AS ONE in praising and thanking the Lord" that "the glory of the Lord filled the house"

{2 Chr. 5:13, 14).

Christ's whole desire was that his true brethren should be one, as he and the Father were one. Our singing must accomplish in us this joyful spirit of mutual love and oneness.

Music has great power, but its true purpose is Divine worship and spiritual joy. Man has profaned it to fleshly things.

"And they sang as it were a new song before the throne, and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty-four thousand which were redeemed from the earth."

Bro Growcott - 144 000

4 For the word of Yahweh is right; and all his works are done in truth.

We sometimes ask ourselves why so much importance is attached to matters of belief and doctrine, which do not seem to have any bearing on conduct. The natural view is to regard discussions about points of creed and doctrine as bickering and dogmatism, at the expense of the far more important principle of the spirit of love, but that is not the apostolic view.

Paul views matters of belief in a very serious light, and he urges his hearers and readers to cling fast to what they have learned and contend earnestly for the faith as delivered to them. We cannot escape the fact that the Scriptures place very great stress on TRUTH-true belief, true hope, true doctrine, and we do not have to go very far to see why.

Without a concrete foundation of fact and truth we are at the mercy of every whim and fancy of the mind of man-every wild superstition that may be concocted or imagined. We would have no defense against

"being tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine."

We would have nothing sure or certain. We would be veered and turned from day to day as our emotions and imaginations buffeted us.

We must have a clear and well-defined platform of fact and hold tenaciously to it. True, such an attitude is regarded as narrow minded and bigoted by the wise of this world. To say that a man has no chance of salvation unless he believes just certain things may seem unreasonable to many pious and broadminded people, but a careful consideration should show that there is no other way. Truth is truth. Facts are facts. If we do not act in agreement with them we suffer.

A false belief, a false viewpoint, a false conception is valueless and destructive. We know we can accomplish nothing in this life unless our opinions about how to do it are in accord with the facts. Divine things are no different. If a man does not see the necessity of believing that the rising tide will drown him unless he gets out of its way, that won't help him any. If he persists in his disbelief of truth in the face of facts he will surely drown.

Bro Growcott - Through much tribulation

6 By the word of Yahweh were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.

Intelligent Design - Stars and galaxies

There is an obvious relationship between atoms and stars, since stars are made up of huge concentrations of billions of atoms, to form suns without number...

So if an atom, a very complex electronic structure (there are 96 naturally occurring atoms, but stars are principally made up of Hydrogen (H) and Helium), could not possibly happen by chance, then obviously, neither could stars, and therefore neither could the Cosmos or Universe.

What applies to atoms (quantum mechanics, the forces that govern atoms) must therefore apply to stars, and the laws and forces that govern the whole. As the psalmist declares

'The heavens declare the glory of God' Psa 19;1

Einstein and Dirac. Physicists like Einstein, and Paul Dirac, who recognised the creator, tried to get a unified theory for what they did not fully understand (the Dirac equation).

Galaxies are made up of billions of stars. Atoms, stars, galaxies - a progression in size, but all atoms, or all multiplications of One (Hydrogen =1).

As Bro Thomas puts it...

'One Primary Creating Power and a multitude of Secondary creating Powers (Elohim)' as intimately connected with and dependent on the First, as 10 or a 100 on the number 1' .

.

This concept is expressed in Gen1;1 (singular verb, plural noun) and Isa 45;18 'He the elohim' that formed the earth and made it. This is not a literary accident but doctrinal, teaching that the creation was produced from One supreme power ex au = out of which, are all things (Rom 11;36, Rom 1;20)

Abraham, Job, David and the prophets gazed up into the starry heavens (the night sky) and were overawed by splendour, infinitude, size, law, power, glory they saw in the stars and constellations (Arcturus, Orion, Pleiades), the stories of heaven, testifying to an Omnipotent Creator' (Phanerosis).

To the 'moderns' this all resulted from a ball of energy which suddenly decided to explode = CHAOS. Seth Lloyd in his book The Digital Universe sees a mathematical cosmos like a giant digital 01 computer. This is getting close to the Truth. A computer must have intelligence behind it as must a mathematical system and could not happen by chance, whether this be Ezekiel's Temple (Ezk 40-48), or a single atom of Hydrogen (H =1).

As Bro Thomas so wonderfully perceives in Phanerosis, 'One is the great power of the arithmetical universe: and all the other powers resulting from the multiplication of One combined, cannot exclude One therefrom without annihilating themselves, and expunging the system.'....

'The atoms of all material things are elemental condensations of free spirit, connecting the orbs of heaven and all they contain, with the great Central Focal Power of the Universe.'

The physicist Paul Dirac said 'God used beautiful mathematics when he created the world.' 'God is a mathematician of a very high order, and used some very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe'.

Gen 1 is absolute and explodes evolution as fiction.

Cosmos, Order.

The Greek word Cosmos signifies Order or and ordered system. This was recognised by the ancients, such as Pythagoras who knew that the universe was a mathematical system of numbers, although they had difficulty in modelling it.

Aristarchus of Samos saw a heliocentric system (i.e. a solar system with the Sun at its centre with planets orbiting around) (Ptolemy confused the world for centuries until Copernicus, Keplar and Galileo).

Keplar saw an ordered Universe, 'that was laid out according to mathematical design', yet that was accessible to human intelligence. The greatest brains like Isaac Newton saw an ordered Universe governed by fixed laws, which rocket scientists rely on to this day to get their rockets and voyagers through space to the planets and around the sun and rendezvous with comets. Laws imply a lawmaker.

Without those laws of gravity, mass, energy, light, electromagnetic spectrum, wave particle duality, first and second laws of thermodynamics, laws of motion and inertia, acceleration and velocity and their relationships, there would be chaos in the Universe, everything disintegrating into a cosmic nightmare.

Instead we see perpetual motion, like giant clockwork precision wheels within wheels, all ordered, heavenly bodies exactly positioned sun, moon, earth, Jupiter, stars etc.

Bro Richard Lister -

The Apocalyptic Messenger, Feb 2016

thomas.lister1@btinternet.com

9 For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.

Nature has been constructed to act automatically; but she possesses this power by reason of the initial force or power constructing her. She did not construct herself. She could not. The modern scientific doctrine of the conservation of energy is strong on this point. Nothing ever happens in nature without an antecedent energy equal to it. All nature is on the evolve. Trace the process backwards, and you must come to the first cause. In this must exist the potentiality of possibleness of all that comes after. What is this? God. There is no other ultimate conclusion. God has made heaven and earth, with all their wonderful ways.

"God commanded, forth they came."

"He spake and it was done, He commanded and it stood fast. He commanded and they were created, He hath established them for ever and ever, he hath made a decree which shall not pass."

It is therefore the language of intelligence to attribute the phenomena of nature to God, as David does. Nature is automatic; but God made the automatism. He is not in bondage, however, to the work of His hands.

...God, in the invisible background of creation, reserves to Himself the prerogative of interference when and how He sees fit. His non-interference does not mean nature is not His work, or that its wonderful operations are not His doing. God is present by His invisible energy, as much in one part of the universe as another, but it is only at "sundry times and divers manners" that He makes His presence known.

In the high heaven of His habitation, He is doubtless always manifest in the movements of His nucleated being. Jesus said the angels of his people do always behold the face of his Father who is in heaven. To this altitude we may also hope to rise, if we are permitted a place in the final glory, when-

"The throne of God and the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him, and they shall see His face, and His name shall be in their foreheads."

Bro Roberts - Nature but God's machinery

22 Let thy mercy, O Yahweh, be upon us, according as we hope in thee.

If a man only possessed at birth the observation and reflection that belong to after years, what a dreadful place the world would appear on first casting his eyes around.

He would behold the nations, the most civilised especially, armed from tip to toe. If he were to enquire "What for?" the reply would be, "For the preservation of peace!"

How readily would such a man endorse the Bible comparison of men to beasts-wild beasts: lions, tigers, leopards, wolves, foxes, etc. In every direction he would behold, too, sin in all its horrible forms: oppression, corruption poverty, vice, filth, disease, etc.

He might ask, "Is there no government!" but he would only do so to receive the sad reply that government was futile, and always had been, to alter or remedy affairs. Man has become so inured to evil that he fails to realise its enormity. That the world is under a curse, and that few obey God is indeed a terrible fact. It is profitable to know and feel this.

The evil that obtains is capable of yielding many good lessons. It is on record that this evil, vanity, or sore travail, "God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it." It quickens the desire for deliverance; it enkindles gratitude for the prospect of it; and it makes manifest the utter folly of rebellion against God.

Bro AT Jannaway

The Christadelphian, Jan 1888