City Of Evil (2005) "M.I.A."

[reprinted as written by Avenged Sevenfold]
As performed by A7X

Staring at the carnage, praying that the sun would never rise.
Living another day in disguise.
These feelings can't be right, lend me your courage to stand up and fight, on tonight.

Ooooo....
Stand up and fight.

Now fighting rages on and on, to challenge me you must be strong.
I walk your land but don't belong, two million soldiers can't be wrong.

It's no fun but I've been here before
Far from home and I'm fighting your war.
(Not the way I pictured this, I wanted better things)
Some are scared others killing for fun, I shot a mother in front of her son.
(Take this from my consciousness, and please erase my dreams)

Fight for honor, fight for your life.
Pray to god that our side is right.
Even though we won, I still may loose
Until' I make it home to you
I see our mothers filled with tears,
grew up so fast where did those years go?
Memories wont let you cry
unless I don't return tonight.

So many soldiers on the other side, I take their lives so they can't take mine.
(Scared to make it out alive now murder's all I know.)
Nobody tells me all the reasons we're here. I have my weapons so there's nothing to fear.
(Another day, another life, but nothing real to show for)

Fight for honor, fight for your life.
Pray to god that our side is right.
Even though we won, I still may loose
Until' I make it home to you
I see our mothers filled with tears,
grew up so fast where did those years go?
Memories wont let you cry
unless I don't return tonight.

Staring at the carnage, praying that the sun will never rise.
Living another day in disguise.
These feelings can't be right, lend me your courage to stand up and fight.

Watching the death toll rise wondering how I'm alive.
Strangers blood on my hands, I've shot all I can
There are no silent nights, watching your brothers all die
To destroy all their plans with no care for me
No thought of me, no thought of me

Ohhhhh.....

Walk the city lonely
Memories that haunt are passing by
A murderer walks your street tonight
Forgive me for my crimes; don't forget that I was so young
Fought so scared in the name of God and country

In the words of Howard Zinn, "War poisons the soul of everyone who engages in it."

When talking about this song Johnny Christ said, "The impact of the MIA thing was that we have a lot of friends of ours that have gone to Iraq. Some of them have come back and some of them haven't. The ones that have come back, we get our chance to hang out with them. They tell some pretty crazy stories of what they have seen, because a lot of our friends have been in the front line. We just kind of wrote about their experiences, of what has gone on there. It is not so much a political song, it is just about the stories we have heard from our friends."

Whether war itself is right or wrong, or a particular war is right, what it does to the individual who must engage in it is awful. On the one hand there is the need to have a reason for all the slaughter, praying that the soldier fights on the side of right, on God's side. On the other hand, war turns out to be legal murder, maybe even sanctified murder. So the soldier feels he is in disguise, he's a soldier who doesn't want to take life. He prays that the next day will not come so he doesn't have to pick up his weapon to kill some more. (I'm using "he" for third person, but only for tidiness' sake and no dishonor towards women soldiers).

The soldier understands what he's doing, and what it's doing to him. Even though he may survive being killed, the inside of him is being ravaged as he continues to take life so he can keep his. He understands that every person he kills is a person. A person like him, with dreams, loves, family, a future now being cut short.

In the end he asks for forgiveness of the people whose sons and daughters he has killed in the name of honor, God and his own country's right to be there and kill. He asks for understanding, that he is young, scared, sickened by the carnage.

The poet doesn't seek to give answers, only to describe the inner reality of what war does to the people who are in the trenches and on the front lines; the real people on both sides. It is particularly apt that such a song would close the album called "City of Evil," for what good, truly, can be found in war? it's a fallen planet, and all upon it are steeped in its evil. Even those who have an awareness of good and long for it are still boot deep in the evil.

Most of us are familiar with the Big Ten, the ten commandments as listed in the Bible, in chapter 20 of the book of Exodus. "Thou shalt not commit murder." What does that mean in a world that has always legalized killing? We level the death sentence against those whose crimes we consider to be particularly egregious. We have legalized the taking of unborn life. We wage wars in which there are such euphamisms as "collaterol damage," meaning people who aren't soldiers are also killed, and buildings that have nothing to do with military or political interests are bombed, and even whole forests, farmland, herds, flocks and wildlife are all destroyed.

What does "do not commit murder" mean, then? It means all life is the Lord’s, and only He has the right to command life, or death. You and I are called to love life, to protect life.

When God invited Noah and his family to disembark He made a covenant with them, and here's what He said, this is what was on God's mind:

God blessed Noah and his sons: He said, "Prosper! Reproduce! Fill the Earth! Every living creature—birds, animals, fish—will fall under your spell and be afraid of you. You're responsible for them. All living creatures are yours for food; just as I gave you the plants, now I give you everything else. Except for meat with its lifeblood still in it—don't eat that.

Life is God's property. Even if an animal’s life is taken, as permitted by God, you and I still must recognize the sovereignty and authority of God over life.

The first time I studied Genesis God convicted me about how carelessly I killed little lives -- ants, flies, spiders. My eyes were opened to how each of these creatures is a beautiful little life, created by God for His pleasure, He gave me permission to have dominion over this little life, and so if I take the life of a creature, it must be with honor and respect to its Creator.

God continued with His covenant with Noah,

"But your own lifeblood I will avenge; I will avenge it against both animals and other humans.

Whoever sheds human blood,
by humans let his blood be shed,
Because God made humans in his image
reflecting God's very nature.
You're here to bear fruit, reproduce,
lavish life on the Earth, live bountifully!"

Initially you can read this as God giving to Noah and his descendants a way to govern human behavior and establish a barrier to the kind of murder and mayhem that Cain’s line had initiated in the pre-Flood days. But it is not intended to be that alone, because an animal’s blood was also to be shed if it killed a person, even accidentally. Every person’s life is sacred to God; only God has the right to take it. If anyone violates God’s right in this, God says He will require a reckoning, and it is a terrible price.

Jesus said that even to hate someone, or to tear them down was to commit murder in God’s eyes:

"You're familiar with the command to the ancients, 'Do not murder.' I'm telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. Carelessly call a brother 'idiot!' and you just might find yourself hauled into court. Thoughtlessly yell 'stupid!' at a sister and you are on the brink of hellfire. The simple moral fact is that words kill.

"This is how I want you to conduct yourself in these matters. If you enter your place of worship and, about to make an offering, you suddenly remember a grudge a friend has against you, abandon your offering, leave immediately, go to this friend and make things right. Then and only then, come back and work things out with God."

There are all kinds of reasons that you and I get angry that, when you get right down to it, have only to do with our selfish interests being thwarted. We didn’t get what we wanted, one way or the other. When you and I hold people in contempt, or put them down, or impugn their reputation, that comes from evil. God considers that as good as murder, it’s sin. People who love with Christ's love will not sin in this way because love never seeks to destroy, but always to build up.

If you have some old business, some offense, som secret hatred or bitterness against someone, don't waste another minute. Sin never dies of old age, it just gets worse with time. If your life is emotionally and/or spiritually stalled out, this might be a reason why. Call that person up, or write them a note; do something about it, in all humility and true grief for having offended that person and God.

If you ask Him to, You will find that Jesus not only goes with you, He provides the words for you, and has prepared the other person to hear what you have to say. When you obey God in this, whatever happens next is also in His hands, you have done what was right in His eyes, and now it is the other person’s chance to also do right. Then you are free to move forward with God.

So you and I will be held accountable for hating in the same way we would be held accountable for murder. For those who belong to God, you can trust the Holy Spirit to convict you, in order to draw you into confession of hating someone, repentance of letting go of that hatred and the holiness of allowing God to cleanse you of all hatred through the pouring out of His love and forgiveness into you and through you to that other person.

So what about legalized killing, then? What about the death sentence, and abortion and war? What about police officers who carry weapons and shoot to kill? What about self-defense laws that allow otherwise unremarkable citizens to carry weapons, and to shoot to kill?

Back to the Old Testament, to what the Jews call Torah. God did outline the differences between murder and justified killing. He included penalties for crimes (pretty eye-opening, by the way, to discover what God considered death-penalty worthy crimes), acts of self-defense, honor killings, and wars that He alone commanded. Oddly enough, the only law that discusses the death of an unborn baby requires that the person who caused the death must pay with their own life. In war God was very specific about who was to be killed and who was to be spared. To veer from His instructions carried the death penalty itself.

No wonder, then, that the soldier in "M.I.A." prayed to God that the war he was waging was on the side of right.

And that makes war a far more serious business than we even make it. If it isn't a war that God justifies, then every life lost is murder. And even when killing is justified, it will tear us up inside, for we put to death one who holds the image of God, specially designed and given life by Him.

If this post got you to thinking, please leave a comment and join the conversation

City Of Evil (2005) "Betrayed"

[reprinted as written by Avenged Sevenfold]
As performed by A7X

Passion in my eyes, I lived it everyday, but how could you go throw it all away?
In my dreams it's me and you, it's there I saw it all come true
As time went by faith in you grew, so one thing's left for me to do

I feel it burn inside, burn in me like the rising sun
Lifted into the sky, took away the only thing I loved
I know after tonight all your power crumbles in my arms
So don't worry, I'll be fine, when my life ends, I'll leave this scar

When I fell down, I needed you there
Every note and every word seems so hard to take
Finally, In destiny

A smoking gun in hand, now don't you realize what you've done
Put a bullet in his back, your hero since you were so young
How could you kill the man who brought salvation through your pain
He must mean everything to end it all this shameful way

Passion in my eyes, I lived it everyday, but how could you go throw it all away?
In my dreams it's me and you, it's there I saw it all come true
As time went by faith in you grew, so one thing's left for me to do

I started here so young and helped you get along
Just did it for the love, and people healed through us
Don't live you life in vain, don't take it out on me
You're cracked, so just remember, I'm not your enemy
I don't deserve to fall this way, by a man who felt betrayed

I felt so down now you're around to rescue me
Every note and every word I'm listening, yeah
Sometimes problems seem too deep to take
Sometimes I cry thinking my future looks so bleak

Finally, together we were destined, I know what's best for us in the end
Someone hear me, someone stop me, someone listen, why aren't you listening?

Passion in my eyes, I lived it everyday, but how could you go throw it all away?
In my dreams it's me and you, it's there I saw it all come true
As time went by faith in you grew, so one thing's left for me to do
In my dreams it's me and you, it's there I saw it all come true
As time went by faith in you grew, so one thing's left to finish you (hahaha)

Written in dedication to Dimebag Darrell, he was "remembered for his amiable nature and rapport with fans, [and] described by Allmusic as 'one of the most influential stylists in modern metal.' On December 8, 2004, Abbott was murdered on stage..."

"Abbott was shot while performing with Damageplan at the Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio.

"The gunman was Nathan Gale, who shot Abbott five times, including once in the head, killing him instantly. Gale then continued shooting, killing three others and wounding a further seven. Gale fired a total of fifteen shots, taking the time to reload once and remaining silent throughout the shooting.

"...the gunman was not angry about Pantera's breakup [the band Abbott and his brother founded before Damageplan] or about a belief that Pantera had "stolen songs;" [that Gale had written]. [I]nstead, the documents suggest that Gale's paranoid schizophrenia caused delusions that the band could read his mind, and that they were "stealing" his thoughts and laughing at him."

The point of view in this song seems to shift from the killer, "Passion in my eyes," to Dimebag, "When I fell down," to an accusing voice, perhaps within Gale's head, "Now don't you realize what you've done?" And returns to Gale's conscious thought for the remainder of the piece.

We see an obsession develop, an imagined union between the killer and his object, his faith growing in the rock star, an imagined savior, saving not only Gale but, together with him, healing the world. He hung on every note and every word. But something happened, some dark turning, a problem "too deep to take," overcame him, and though he desperately cried out for someone to stop him, the worshipper killed his god.

Gale idolized Darrell. But his idol did not fulfill him. Instead, his idolizing caused him to become increasingly undone by his imaginings, that Darrell and the other band members knew his inmost thoughts (as a god would do) but found him laughable, despicable. As in "Equus," he felt his only recourse was to forever shut the knowing eyes that stripped his soul bare.

It appears we are designed to worship, as recent research seems to indicate. People want gods. But you and I - remember Adam and Eve - want it our way, a god we're used to, a god we know how to manage, and who will produce the things we're used to asking for, and who we can worship in the way we've always enjoyed. We want a god who will give us what we want, so we're willing to jump through whatever hoops we think the god demands of us, so long as it keeps its side of the bargain we think we're striking with it, and comes up with the goods.

An idol is something within creation that begins to function as a substitute for God. It can be anything, even something that's otherwise very good and noble. It can be an object, a person, an activity, a sport, a role you play, an institution or an organization, an idea, a pleasure, a hero, your family, your work, it can even be yourself – anything can become a substitute for God. It might not completely replace God; it may be only a part of your life.

Idolatry is not necessarily a denial of God or His existence. An idol may be a perfectly good thing in its own right. But at the point where loyalty to any thing or any person leads you and me to push aside God, we are in danger of making that thing, or person - or even feeling - an idol.

People look to idols to find meaning in life, for developing a sense of “righteousness” or worth. It's something that you discover is central to your life in the way that only God should be central – anything that holds such a controlling position in your life that you feel God alone would not be sufficient to make you happy; whether or not you have God you know you must have your idol.

The fundamental problem behind sin is idolatry – even pride can be idolatry when it stems from an addiction to /idolizing of one’s own self. Idolatry is always the reason why you and I do or say something that’s wrong, or dwell in thoughts and feelings that are wrong. We are revealing that there is something we feel we must have besides God to feel happy, there is something more important to your heart and mine than faith in God.

When God lets your life be rocked, what do you see toppling? What might be too important to you right now? Is there something you are telling yourself you have to have? Is there something that is interfering with putting your faith in God?

1) You are angry because you are being blocked from having something you feel you is necessary – but it really isn’t

2) You are fearful or badly worried because something is being threatened which you feel is a necessity – but it really isn’t

3) You are despondent or hating yourself because you have lost something or failed at something you feel was a necessity – but it really wasn’t

Repentance is a great first step, but idols are not replaced by repentance. Love of idols can only be replaced by a love of something else that is richer and more satisfying. The antidote to idolatry is to deeply understand what it means to be chosen by God, to know God and be known by God, loved and blessed by God, to belong to God as His most precious, most beloved possession, to be filled in every pore, every fiber by God’s glorious grace, His lavish love, by the refreshment of His Holy Spirit.

It is impossible from our end to try and make ourselves love something less just because we know we should. It is impossible from our end to try and generate love for something that we know we should love more. But with God anything is possible. Ask Him for help.

If this post got you to thinking, please leave a comment and join the conversation

City Of Evil (2005) "Strength Of The World"

[reprinted as written by Avenged Sevenfold]
As performed by AyX

My story starts the day they said "she can't be found"
the news so dark, heart stopped, I stood silent without a sound
It's over, she's finished, mother lies with my father and sister too
Cold-blooded, they suffered, shot down by the outlaws after you
Sorrow swallows my screams

Strength of the world - is on my shoulders
Strength of the world - is on my side
Strength of the world - the one true beholder
Ice in my veins - for those who've died

I've seen my family fade away, you've taken my whole life
There's nothing left to say

Avenge the dead kill all who cross me in my path
Suicidal, I never planned on coming back
I want it, I need it, revenge is dripping from my teeth
Need nothin', to feel power, and bring the killers to their knees
Nothin' ta lose vengeance ta gain (you know I'll never be the same)
So taste my breath I'm close behind you (so desperate on your final day)
Sorrow swallows my screams

Strength of the world - is on my shoulders
Strength of the world - is on my side
Strength of the world - the one true beholder
Ice in my veins - for those who've died

I've seen my family fade away, you've taken my whole life
There's nothing left to say

Sitting in silence with heaven above me I prayed every night by their graves
While I search for closure I feel it no longer
I can't turn my cheek away
I stand before you; I'll sin when I have to
But now I leave your side, to avenge my family's pride

I've seen my family fade away, you've taken my whole life
There's nothing left to say

Strength of the world - is on my shoulders
Strength of the world - is on my side
Strength of the world - the one true beholder
Ice in my veins - for those who've died

So far forever alone, a greater punishment on me has been imposed
A killer falling from the light, I'll miss my family, I'll never be alright

According to one source, this song is about, "running around from your problems, that you might have caused other people." It begins as a classic ballad in which a story is told.

Outlaws who were gunning for the author shot down his family instead. One imagines him standing by their graves, imploding with grief, as the realization settles heavily on him that the consequences of his life have permanently altered the lives of those he loves most.

He finds within himself both strength - along with a cold, settled sorrow over what's been done - and either a fatalistic or a focused view of what is left to him.

The next stanza describes that one thing: With nothing left to lose he is bent on vengeance; a suicidal obsession to bring the killers to their knees.

In the third stanza the poet remembers praying every night by his family's graves, with heaven silent above him. There is no sense of closure for him. He can't find it within himself to "turn the other cheek." He presents his decision to God:

I stand before you; I'll sin when I have to
But now I leave your side, to avenge my family's pride

In the end the poet understands that even worse than losing his family, because of his own transgressions, is this final choice he's made of vengeance. By walking away from God, "falling away from the light," he realizes the unforeseen and far greater heartache of now, for all eternity, missing his family and never being alright.

Who of us has never felt that surge of anger at gross injustice? Who of us has never wanted to right those wrongs with vigilante justice, frustrated by what seems like an uncaring God allowing the villain to win and the victim to lose? Do we just let it go? What does Jesus mean by "turning the other cheek," anyway?

In His famous "Sermon on the Mount," Jesus told the crowd,

You have heard that it was said, "Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth." But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

What Jesus was referring to was God's law given to Moses concerning how to deal with payback. The Romans called it the “Lex Talionis,” the law of “tit for tat.” Ancient and universal, it was found even in the Code of Hammurabi. Before this time, if a person injured another then payback was always much greater than the original injury. Clan would be against clan with killings often escalating on both sides. In fact we've just seen this ancient method of dealing with injury happen in Nigeria, with clans and tribes taking sides on religious issues that really fall along ancient tribal and territory lines.

God reigned all that in with His law:

You must give life for life—eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

This was not a command to take a life for a life, although God did allow that under certain circumstances (but He also established what He called "Cities of Sanctuary" at regular intervals within Israel so that any person being hunted down could find sanctuary in that city so long as they stayed within its boundaries). This was a command to severely limit payback so that the punishment was never greater than the original crime.

Now Jesus changed all that. His new teaching was to transform that righteous anger and understandable demand for punishment into forgiveness and an effort to restore. You're familiar with the old written law, 'Love your friend,' and its unwritten companion, 'Hate your enemy,' He said. I'm challenging that.

I'm telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.

For whose sake? For God's sake? For the evil-doers' sake? No, for your sake,

In a word, what I'm saying is, Grow up. You're kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.

But the injustice of it!! This is what was torturing the poet. The magnitude of the injustice is staggering. His entire family dead, gunned down ultimately because of his own wrongdoing. He couldn't bring them back to life. He couldn't undo any of his part in what had happened to them. The only thing he though that would help him to move forward, to make sense out of this tragedy, was to make the killers pay. Perhaps that would be penance enough, perhaps that would shift his sense of guilt and devastation onto them.

Paul the apostle understood all this when he wrote to the believers in Rome,

Be sincere in your love for others. Hate everything that is evil and hold tight to everything that is good. Love each other as brothers and sisters and honor others more than you do yourself. Never give up. Eagerly follow the Holy Spirit and serve the Lord. Let your hope make you glad. Be patient in time of trouble and never stop praying. Take care of God's needy people and welcome strangers into your home.

Ask God to bless everyone who mistreats you. Ask him to bless them and not to curse them. When others are happy, be happy with them, and when they are sad, be sad. Be friendly with everyone. Don't be proud and feel that you are smarter than others. Make friends with ordinary people. Don't mistreat someone who has mistreated you. But try to earn the respect of others, and do your best to live at peace with everyone. Dear friends, don't try to get even. Let God take revenge. In the Scriptures the Lord says,

"I am the one to take revenge and pay them back."

The Scriptures also say,

"If your enemies are hungry, give them something to eat. And if they are thirsty, give them something to drink. This will be the same as piling burning coals on their heads."

Don't let evil defeat you, but defeat evil with good.

Tall order, especially when, like the poet, we are scalded to the bone by an awful thing. And yet this is God's promise. He really will repay what is right and just to every person who has ever lived, whether by mercy because a person has run to Jesus, the ultimate "City of Sanctuary," or by clean and severe justice to those who decide to remain in their sin and take their chances.

As an epilogue to this song: Where there is life there is hope. It is God's desire that evil should be burnt out of every person and the person him or herself survive it, for redemption and restoration. It His express desire that none should "perish" but that all should live. No matter how awful the degradation, how terrible the sin, how complete the rejection, so long as you live there is a way back to God. He leaves the way open because of His love and His longing to make all right. The only unforgiveable sin is the sin that a person refuses to receive forgiveness for.

If this post got you to thinking, please leave a comment and join the conversation

City Of Evil (2005) "The Wicked End" (Part 3)

Continued from July 2, 2010
[reprinted as written by Avenged Sevenfold]
As performed by A7X

Man's becoming more corrupt now, godless, wicked, and cruel
The soulless man stood silenced, Mary's "word" rang so true
Chastisement worse than the flood, spread the word, its all through
Don't kill the messenger girl
As if we haven't swam enough in this life of misery

Voice your prophecy, shed us some light
Feel sorrow for mankind's chance to survive
Swallowed lies and swam in our own tears
A stab in the dark but it wounded our will
We won't be here tomorrow, hold on to me for one last time

We've grown into the numbers six hundred sixty six
War breaks, a sign of the end, eternally expelled
Look to the sky for knowledge, the stars align tonight
Eclipse and heaven shall fall
Now I know I've seen it all in my life of misery

Voice your prophecy, shed us some light
Feel sorrow for mankind's chance to survive
Swallowed lies and swam in our own tears
A stab in the dark but it wounded our will
Dust the apple off, savor each bite
And deep inside you know Adam was right
lust and power, indulgence, no fear
Left with his sins, how does this end?
We won't be here tomorrow, hold on to me for one last time

As the prophets shed the light on what's to come the crowds did gather
Your time is precious, they explained, no time to worry, messiah's coming
Don't go to sleep tonight, darling, hold me in your arms
These will be our final days and I can't let go

Walls are falling, churches burning, women ravaged, children crying
Flesh is tearing, some still fighting
In this world of misery

Voice your prophecy, shed us some light
Feel sorrow for mankind's chance to survive
Swallowed lies and swam in our own tears
A stab in the dark but it wounded our will
Dust the apple off, savor each bite
And deep inside you know Adam was right
lust and power, indulgence, no fear
Left with his sins, how does this end?
We won't be here tomorrow, hold on to me for one last time

The poet describes the end of the world, brought on by the sin of humankind coming to its full measure. Like an avalanche in slow motion, the soft crunch of Adam's teeth in the apple of old created the invisible force of sin that disrupted the matrix of creation. Now at the end of time, all blasts apart in utter devastation.

With mounting despair the poet cries his refrain,

We won't be here tomorrow, hold on to me for one last time

Not revealed in the lines of his poem is the music that now emerges, hauntingly beautiful, yet awful in its mourning. One pictures the silent destruction rolling in waves of fire across the heaving globe as a heavenly choir sings what sounds like "Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus."*

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts:
Heaven and earth are full of thy glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

This ancient mass, sung for millennia, finds its source in John's Revelation where all heaven sings of the majesty and holiness of God. These two images - the judgment of God on earth, and the holiness of God in heaven - sit in juxtaposition to each other because they are two faces of the same glory. It is God's very purity and holiness that makes it impossible for evil to exist in His presence. Like matter and antimatter, the one will destroy the other.

So it is that all who will be with God for eternity must be made of the same stuff of heaven. For those who are born again God pours Himself, His life, the essence of His being into that person and they are profoundly, unalterably transformed into the stuff of heaven. Jesus' disciple John said it this way,

My dear friends, we are already God's children, though what we will be hasn't yet been seen. But we do know that when Christ returns, we will be like him, because we will see him as he truly is. This hope makes us keep ourselves holy, just as Christ is holy.

Paul, also an apostle, spent a large portion of one of his letters talking about this same concept,

The First Adam received life, the Last Adam is a life-giving Spirit. Physical life comes first, then spiritual—a firm base shaped from the earth, a final completion coming out of heaven. The First Man was made out of earth, and people since then are earthy; the Second Man was made out of heaven, and people now can be heavenly. In the same way that we've worked from our earthy origins, let's embrace our heavenly ends.

In the music the heavenly voices and the earthly voices now join together as the poet depicts the last days coming to their climax,

As the prophets shed the light on what's to come the crowds did gather
Your time is precious, they explained, no time to worry, messiah's coming

This is a reference to two prophets who will be explaining all that's happening in that last hour, a final rescue prepared for those who are willing to embrace Jesus and all that's holy, to be lifted up out of the roiling cauldron of sin's penalty, as John described in his Revelation,

And I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth

Once the two witnesses' days of prophesying come to an end, the angel will sound the seventh trumpet,

Walls are falling, churches burning, women ravaged, children crying
Flesh is tearing, some still fighting
In this world of misery

Then the poet brings in his reprise, sorrowing over the end of mankind, having swallowed the lies of the Serpent from the beginning to the end of time, immersed in tears, wounded pride, lust, power, indulgence, no reverence nor awe of God....all found in the sweet corruption of forbidden fruit. As Paul, the apostle, wrote,

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images...

Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.

*(It isn't. But it would have been brilliant if it was!)

If this post got you to thinking, please leave a comment and join the conversation

City Of Evil (2005) "The Wicked End" (Part 2)

Continued from July 1, 2010
[reprinted as written by Avenged Sevenfold]
As performed by A7X

Man's becoming more corrupt now, godless, wicked, and cruel
The soulless man stood silenced, Mary's "word" rang so true
Chastisement worse than the flood, spread the word, its all through
Don't kill the messenger girl
As if we haven't swam enough in this life of misery

Voice your prophecy, shed us some light
Feel sorrow for mankind's chance to survive
Swallowed lies and swam in our own tears
A stab in the dark but it wounded our will
We won't be here tomorrow, hold on to me for one last time

We've grown into the numbers six hundred sixty six
War breaks, a sign of the end, eternally expelled
Look to the sky for knowledge, the stars align tonight
Eclipse and heaven shall fall
Now I know I've seen it all in my life of misery

Voice your prophecy, shed us some light
Feel sorrow for mankind's chance to survive
Swallowed lies and swam in our own tears
A stab in the dark but it wounded our will
Dust the apple off, savor each bite
And deep inside you know Adam was right
lust and power, indulgence, no fear
Left with his sins, how does this end?
We won't be here tomorrow, hold on to me for one last time

As the prophets shed the light on what's to come the crowds did gather
Your time is precious, they explained, no time to worry, messiah's coming
Don't go to sleep tonight, darling, hold me in your arms
These will be our final days and I can't let go

Walls are falling, churches burning, women ravaged, children crying
Flesh is tearing, some still fighting
In this world of misery

Voice your prophecy, shed us some light
Feel sorrow for mankind's chance to survive
Swallowed lies and swam in our own tears
A stab in the dark but it wounded our will
Dust the apple off, savor each bite
And deep inside you know Adam was right
lust and power, indulgence, no fear
Left with his sins, how does this end?
We won't be here tomorrow, hold on to me for one last time

Once wickedness and evil reach their full measure, "We've grown into the numbers six hundred and sixty six," the beginning of the end transpires,

War breaks, a sign of the end, eternally expelled
Look to the sky for knowledge, the stars align tonight
Eclipse and heaven shall fall

Predictions of these signs are scattered throughout the Bible, with the most famous prophet being Jesus Himself, as recorded by His disciple Matthew,

Nation will fight nation and ruler fight ruler, over and over. Famines and earthquakes will occur in various places. This is nothing compared to what is coming.

They are going to throw you to the wolves and kill you, everyone hating you because you carry my name. And then, going from bad to worse, it will be dog-eat-dog, everyone at each other's throat, everyone hating each other.

In the confusion, lying preachers will come forward and deceive a lot of people. For many others, the overwhelming spread of evil will do them in—nothing left of their love but a mound of ashes.

Staying with it—that's what God requires. Stay with it to the end. You won't be sorry, and you'll be saved. All during this time, the good news—the Message of the kingdom—will be preached all over the world, a witness staked out in every country. And then the end will come.

But be ready to run for it when you see the monster of desecration set up in the Temple sanctuary. The prophet Daniel described this. If you've read Daniel, you'll know what I'm talking about. If you're living in Judea at the time, run for the hills; if you're working in the yard, don't return to the house to get anything; if you're out in the field, don't go back and get your coat. Pregnant and nursing mothers will have it especially hard. Hope and pray this won't happen during the winter or on a Sabbath.

This is going to be trouble on a scale beyond what the world has ever seen, or will see again. If these days of trouble were left to run their course, nobody would make it. But on account of God's chosen people, the trouble will be cut short.

Following those hard times,

Sun will fade out,
moon cloud over,
Stars fall out of the sky,
cosmic powers tremble.

Then, the Arrival of the Son of Man! It will fill the skies—no one will miss it. Unready people all over the world, outsiders to the splendor and power, will raise a huge lament as they watch the Son of Man blazing out of heaven. At that same moment, he'll dispatch his angels with a trumpet-blast summons, pulling in God's chosen from the four winds, from pole to pole...

But the exact day and hour? No one knows that, not even heaven's angels, not even the Son. Only the Father knows.

The Arrival of the Son of Man will take place in times like Noah's. Before the great flood everyone was carrying on as usual, having a good time right up to the day Noah boarded the ark. They knew nothing—until the flood hit and swept everything away.

In fact Jesus' disciple Peter went on to describe what would happen to the entire fabric of the universe, every molecule torn apart so that only atoms are scattered randomly across the vast expanse of space,

But when the Day of God's Judgment does come, it will be unannounced, like a thief. The sky will collapse with a thunderous bang, everything disintegrating in a huge conflagration, earth and all its works exposed to the scrutiny of Judgment...

The galaxies will burn up and the elements melt down that day—but we'll hardly notice. We'll be looking the other way, ready for the promised new heavens and the promised new earth, all landscaped with righteousness.

What will bring this on, this wholescale devastation of our entire galaxy and the universe beyond it?

The poet brings us back to the very beginning of humankind,

Dust the apple off, savor each bite
And deep inside you know Adam was right
lust and power, indulgence, no fear
Left with his sins, how does this end?

The apple is a long story and it will take me a while to tell it. It's a story that began before time, when there was heaven, and heavenly beings, but no earth. What happened before time spilled like a tipped ink bottle onto the beautiful landscape of God's garden in Eden, Paradise.

The Bible opens with "In the beginning God..." God's Spirit hovered over nothingness and then God spoke, an explosion of power that burst forth with all the energy and matter that the universe contains. In an infinitesimal fragment of a moment all that exists came into being, matter coalesced into stars and planets, mysterious forces gathered these heavenly bodies into galaxies, and time began.

In Genesis 1, God made man and woman in His own image:
• God has made people in His likeness in spirituality: We are aware of God and His presence. We can commune with God through belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. We can be made one with God through the regeneration by His Holy Spirit.

• God has made people in His likeness in personality: Having intelligence: an ability to think and to know. Having emotions: to love, grieve, be angry, rejoice; having the capability of appreciating beauty. Having a will: the ability to make choices, and the ability to speak.

• God has made people in His likeness in morality: God has given every person a conscience upon which is written an innate knowledge of right and wrong

Then God commanded the man and the woman to be fruitful, to increase in number, to fill the earth, and to subdue the earth, to rule over the creatures of the sea, the creatures of the air and all creatures that move on the ground.

Genesis 2 unfolded to reveal that God intended the fulfillment of these instructions be a process. Man and woman would learn how to work and take care of the earth by first learning to work and take care of the garden. Mankind would learn how to wisely rule all creatures by first studying and naming them. Man and woman would become one through a process of vulnerability and unselfconscious enjoyment of each other, and communion with God.

Part of the process of growing and learning included a test of their love and commitment to God. The man and the woman were perfect and had the ability to stay that way. Through this test, choosing obedience to God would bring personal growth and increasing joy.

The man and the woman’s faith would be proven and would strengthen, preparing them for greater work, requiring greater faith – after all, the garden did have its boundaries, and there was a whole wild, unsubdued globe out there, waiting for mankind to come into its destiny.

To fail the test would be sin. Sin is the failure to be perfect. In Greek, an archery term meaning “missing the mark” or “missing the bull’s eye.” Even being really, really close doesn’t count.

Genesis 2 ends with the profound statement that the man and the woman were free of shame.

God declared at regular intervals that all this was good, even very good. But there was one dark blot lurking like an oily shadow, peering from it's dark place into the soft, new light of earth.

Before God created the heavens and the earth, God created angelic beings. Chief among them was Lucifer, meaning “the bringer or bearer of light.” In the Bible God said Lucifer was the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. Lucifer walked right at God’s side, in the highest and most important position of all created beings. He was blameless in all his ways from the day God created him until, as scripture says, wickedness was found in him.

Lucifer wanted to usurp God’s throne: God’s possession of the heavens and the earth, and His position which brought the adoration and worship of all creation. Lucifer became Satan, a name which means “adversary.”

Satan is also called the devil, a name which means “disrupter.” The devil is the one who, from the very beginning, has been trying to disrupt the harmony and beauty of God’s creation.

He was God’s adversary, convincing a full third of all angels to come over to his side, to worship him and oppose God. Jesus Himself saw Satan cast out of heaven, the morning star becoming a black blot of evil, brought down to the lowest depths of the pit.

Having failed to take heaven, Satan determined to get his hold on earth through the man and the woman, who had been given sovereignty over the earth. The author of Genesis tells the tale,

The serpent was clever, more clever than any wild animal God had made. He spoke to the Woman: "Do I understand that God told you not to eat from any tree in the garden?"

Drawing her attention away from God’s generosity, freedom to eat of every tree but one, Satan made God seem stingy to the woman, suggesting God didn’t really love her all that much if He would place something so obviously luscious and good right there in front of her and then deny her of it.

Satan was suggesting that God is all about the “do nots” and not about liberty and enjoyment. Is that how you think of God and His word? Does it seem like it’s all about the boundaries, all about the cool stuff you don’t get to do, but everybody else does? God’s one prohibition was designed to strengthen the man and the woman, and to protect them from death. God had warned them that the judgement for sin was the penalty of death, which includes hell

The Woman said to the serpent, "Not at all. We can eat from the trees in the garden. It's only about the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, 'Don't eat from it; don't even touch it or you'll die.'"

The woman either didn’t know God’s word very well, or she had added that little bit - about not touching - herself. Maybe she wanted to make extra sure she wouldn’t step over the line, or maybe the man had told her that part. Satan pursued his advantage, seeing the woman did not have a good handle on what God had really said.

The serpent told the Woman, "You won't die."

He suggested she could disobey God and get away with it, there would not be any terrible consequences. Satan encouraged the woman to let go of her healthy unwillingness to disobey God. He encouraged her to doubt God's word concerning the penalty for sin.

"God knows that the moment you eat from that tree, you'll see what's really going on. You'll be just like God, knowing everything, ranging all the way from good to evil."

As the woman’s high view of God got lower and lower, doubting His goodness, doubting His truthfulness and His power, the devil was able to get her all excited about her own personal ambitions. She discovered that she liked the idea of being all-knowing, and wise and powerful like God. She liked the idea of exerting her independent will!

The woman was a perfect human being, living in Paradise, she enjoyed deep, intimate communion with her husband, and together with her husband she enjoyed joyful communion with God. Yet her own desires made her vulnerable to Satan’s suggestions. She no longer joyfully embraced God's position and authority in her life. It was this appeal to her pride that pushed her over the edge. I know better than God what's good for me, what I need, what's right and what isn't.

When the Woman saw that the tree looked like good eating and realized what she would get out of it—she'd know everything!—she took and ate the fruit and then gave some to her husband, and he ate.

Immediately the two of them did "see what's really going on"—saw themselves naked! They sewed fig leaves together as makeshift clothes for themselves.

Because of shame, none of us today really knows what perfect peace and harmony feels like, looks like, or sounds like.

We live in a sinful world. Our world is still laboring under the curse of sin. You and I, from the beginning of our lives, have experienced the effects of evil – let’s not downplay it – our own badness and the badness of others. You and I still struggle and sometimes fail to resist temptation. Our thoughts and motives are tainted. In Eden the man and the woman had so far never felt embarrassed, never felt bad, never felt condemned or judged or disapproved of.

Now they experienced the shock, terror and nausea of shame.

At each step the woman made poor decisions. She gave weight to what Satan was telling her, she considered his words as if they were worth listening to. She didn’t go to God at all. She didn’t even ask her husband.

Would the man and the woman have come to know good and evil if they had never eaten of the forbidden tree? The man and the woman already had the basic components for knowing good – good is Who God is, what He makes and what He provides, "It is good, it is very good." Evil, on the other hand, is anything contrary to God and His word. Growing in the knowledge of good and evil from the perspective of goodness would have come from obedience to and alignment with all that is good, God and His word.

Instead, the man and the woman chose to come into their knowledge from the perspective of evil, choosing to align themselves with the serpent, who opposed God. They disobeyed God’s good word thereby separating themselves from the source of goodness. Knowledge came through disobedience, discovering evil because they chose to do it, rather than coming to know evil by choosing to be distanced from it. In a terrible irony, at the moment of their sin, instead of becoming like God (as the serpent had promised), the man and woman became less like God.

1) When they heard the sound of God strolling in the garden in the evening breeze, the Man and his Wife hid in the trees of the garden, hid from God.

For the first time they were terrified of God, so they ran and hid from Him when He came to them in the Garden, giving evidence that God’s warning of death was taking effect – they were experiencing spiritual death, their deep communion with God, the source of life, was now broken.

In what ways might you be trying to hide from God right now? Trying to avoid talking with God about the guilt and shame inside, about the things you know are wrong, a sin that you don’t name, or admit to – keeping busy so you don’t have to think. Or keep drinking so you don’t have to think. Or keep reading so you don’t have to think your thoughts, keep listening to the radio, keep playing video games, keep watching the t.v. ...

Instead of gaining God's knowledge, their minds became clouded, and humankind lost the knowledge of the mystery of God's will and purpose for the universe, and for themselves. Instead of the heavenly realms, the home of God, their ultimate destination would now be eternity in hell, originally designed to hold Satan and the angels who had followed him, reserved for those who reject God.

2) God called to the Man: "Where are you?"
He said, "I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked. And I hid."

God said, "Who told you you were naked? Did you eat from that tree I told you not to eat from?"
The Man said, "The Woman you gave me as a companion, she gave me fruit from the tree, and, yes, I ate it."

God said to the Woman, "What is this that you've done?"
"The serpent seduced me," she said, "and I ate."

Even more deeply, in the presence of God, instead of no shame they felt for the first time feelings of exposure, guilt and deep shame; instead of intimacy, they set about covering themselves from each other; instead living in the truth they laid the blame for their own sin on someone else; all gave evidence of another aspect of God’s warning about death – their innocent natures had died

As God asked them questions to draw them into confession and repentance, the man and the woman admitted they had eaten of the forbidden tree but they fell short of true confession. Neither one admitted they were wrong, guilty...there was no remorse.

If they had only been honest with God, there would have been hope for restoration, even then.

In what ways do you try to cover over your sin and imperfection, minimize it – everybody does this; it’s not as bad as it looks; I’m not nearly as bad as that other person... In what ways do you try to justify your sin and avoid responsibility? Is it always the other person’s fault, they should have known better, or listened to you, or been more mature, loved you better and so on?

When the man blamed God, His mind had already become so clouded by sin that he could dare to throw blame in God’s face for his own sin. What do you throw, what do I throw in God’s face as blame for my sin? My childhood? The difficult situations God has allowed in my life? The undesirable people He makes me be with, or even serve? Hey, you made me this way God, I don’t see why I should have to bear the blame for this, I have to deal with these morons at work, I didn’t get enough sleep last night, you know how I get when I skip a meal, I can only handle so much pressure in this life You gave me, Lord...!

The woman was deceived and sinned first, but it is the man that God holds most accountable. The man was not deceived, he knowingly took the fruit from his wife’s hands, desiring her, and the fruit, more than he desired communion with God. Sin and the penalty of death, separation from God, was an acceptable price to pay, in his mind, and so scripture records, it is through Adam all die.

But the truth is, God holds each person accountable for their sin

The poet asks, "Left with his sins, how does this end?"

How do you get right with God again? Don’t be afraid of Him! God is so ready to forgive you and give you renewed life. Tell Him what you did wrong.

1) Name it. Be specific.

2) Turn away from whatever it is, agree with God that it’s wrong, bad, sin.

3) Ask God to forgive you. Jesus' disciple John later wrote “If we tell Him our sins, He is faithful and we can depend on Him to forgive us of our sins. He will make our lives clean from all sin.”

4) For the sake of your relationship with God, to stay close with Him, to be holy because He is holy, commit to doing whatever is necessary to avoid this sin in the future.

When you and I receive Jesus' forgiveness for every wrong thing we’ve done and said and thought, you and I begin, at least, to experience the kind of love and acceptance and inward transformation that helps to erase that sense of shame.

I will finish this writing about this poem tomorrow

If this post got you to thinking, please leave a comment and join the conversation

City Of Evil (2005) "The Wicked End" (Part 1)

[reprinted as written by Avenged Sevenfold]
As performed by A7X

Man's becoming more corrupt now, godless, wicked, and cruel
The soulless man stood silenced, Mary's "word" rang so true
Chastisement worse than the flood, spread the word, its all through
Don't kill the messenger girl
As if we haven't swam enough in this life of misery

Voice your prophecy, shed us some light
Feel sorrow for mankind's chance to survive
Swallowed lies and swam in our own tears
A stab in the dark but it wounded our will
We won't be here tomorrow, hold on to me for one last time

We've grown into the numbers six hundred sixty six
War breaks, a sign of the end, eternally expelled
Look to the sky for knowledge, the stars align tonight
Eclipse and heaven shall fall
Now I know I've seen it all in my life of misery

Voice your prophecy, shed us some light
Feel sorrow for mankind's chance to survive
Swallowed lies and swam in our own tears
A stab in the dark but it wounded our will
Dust the apple off, savor each bite
And deep inside you know Adam was right
lust and power, indulgence, no fear
Left with his sins, how does this end?
We won't be here tomorrow, hold on to me for one last time

As the prophets shed the light on what's to come the crowds did gather
Your time is precious, they explained, no time to worry, messiah's coming
Don't go to sleep tonight, darling, hold me in your arms
These will be our final days and I can't let go

Walls are falling, churches burning, women ravaged, children crying
Flesh is tearing, some still fighting
In this world of misery

Voice your prophecy, shed us some light
Feel sorrow for mankind's chance to survive
Swallowed lies and swam in our own tears
A stab in the dark but it wounded our will
Dust the apple off, savor each bite
And deep inside you know Adam was right
lust and power, indulgence, no fear
Left with his sins, how does this end?
We won't be here tomorrow, hold on to me for one last time

Rarely do I listen to a song over and over again, but this opus is magnificent. One hearing was simply not enough, and the real impact of the poet's work is not experienced nor understood until one listens to every layer of this incredible piece.

The poet begins his song with an indictment against all mankind,

Man's becoming more corrupt now, godless, wicked, and cruel

Jesus, Who laid an indictment against His own generation as wicked, predicted the day when judgement would come against a generation even more wicked, when wickedness would reach its fullness

The soulless man stood silenced, Mary's "word" rang so true
Chastisement worse than the flood, spread the word, its all through

Mary's "word" is Jesus, referring to the opening lines of John the apostle's gospel,

In the beginning was the one who is called the Word. The Word was with God and was truly God. From the very beginning the Word was with God.

This was not written about some epic hero, or some ancient legend, but about a thirty year old carpenter out of Nazareth. A regular guy, by all outward appearances, Who sixty years before (in 30ish A.D. John wrote his gospel around 90 A.D. or so) had made headline news.

John was now saying that this man, this carpenter was God. John tied his opening lines in with the opening line of Genesis,the first words of the Bible,

In the beginning God

Now John added more information to that – in the beginning, before Genesis, there was the Word, and the Word was with God and was God.

“Word,” the English word, comes from the Greek word Logos, which was familiar to the Greeks in their philosophy just as it was familiar to the Jews in their philosophy. To the Greeks, Logos meant “First Cause,” the reason or the will behind the universe, an unknowable force. Plato once wrote that he hoped a Logos would come from God some day to make the meaning of life clear.

In Hebrew this word was called “Debar” and it was God’s expression of Himself, “Thus saith the Lord.” Logos, or “Debar,” was the word that proceeded from God’s mouth and accomplished what God intended to do, almost a synonym for God Himself.

So this Logos concept incorporated the idea that this was God. But John was saying that Logos, the Word, was another personality with God. The nuance of the word “with,” in Greek, meant that Logos looked God straight in the eye, did not kneel as a subject, or look down as a superior, but looked on as an equal. John was grappling with one of the deepest mysteries of God: the Trinity. “The Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

How could one God be more than one Person? That’s impossible. Yet here is the mystery, that the Word was so intimately involved with God that their thoughts and purposes were one. The Word and God were one, as Jesus would later say, “I and the Father are one.” But how could both Jesus and the Father be God? How could the Son be His own Father? Yet here in verse one John declared that the eternal Word was a Person separate from God, with God, and yet also was God.

There is no other way to translate these words without violating the laws of Greek grammar, though people have tried. John was taking great pains to make his point clear: There is only one God, and Jesus was one with that God, and Jesus is God.

As John continued to introduce his theme, he explained that Jesus was the light, but the light was rejected,

Everything that was created received its life from him,and his life gave light to everyone. The light keeps shining in the dark, and darkness has never put it out.

Yet sadly

The Word was in the world,but no one knew him, though God had made the world with his Word. He came into his own world, but his own nation did not welcome him.

This is what the poet is referencing when he sings,

Voice your prophecy, shed us some light
Feel sorrow for mankind's chance to survive
Swallowed lies and swam in our own tears
A stab in the dark but it wounded our will

The poet's next line makes reference both to a famous number found in Revelation and God's supreme justice,

We've grown into the numbers six hundred sixty six

There has been much speculation during the past two millennia over what exactly John the apostle was indicating with this number when he wrote,

Solve a riddle: Put your heads together and figure out the meaning of the number of the Beast. It's a human number: 666

The Beast is a leader who will have paranormal powers, able to mimic and even outdo the miracles Jesus performed. But the Beast will be utterly evil, the tincture and very essence of all that's wicked. Knowing this, one of the early church's first theologians, Irenaeus, suggested that the number indicates that the beast is the sum of all apostasy. This idea is in keeping with what God Himself said about His judgement: He would not bring destruction until "sin had reached its full measure," meaning there would be absolutely no person left who would have any inclination to turn to Him for rescue.

This is what God explained to Abraham when He covenanted with him in Genesis. God promised Abraham that his descendants would have the land of Canaan for their own country. But not until

...the fourth generation will your descendants come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.

Joshua recorded what happened when the Abraham's fourth generation of descendants reached Canaan. These are the famous battles that so many have trouble reading about because of the utter destruction involved, where even women and children were killed, all the flocks and herds, all the buildings and material goods burned to the ground. Why? Why the brutality? How could a loving God command it?

The answer is wrapped up in the holiness of God, the corruption of sin and the destiny of all the universe.

Roll back time to the days of the great flood (which the poet refers to in his song, "Chastisement worse than the flood"), described in the first chapters of Genesis. Chapter 6 opens with the Lord's lament over the complete decomposition of humanity,

The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the LORD said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them."

The word “sorry” here is a description of God’s response to humanity’s total and utter depravity. Sin breaks God’s heart. Sin describes the heart condition you and I, and all people, are born with, a tendency to rebel against God’s authority. Sins are the acts that reflect our heart condition. The Bible says that sin defiles, sin damages, and sin grieves and offends the heart of God.

But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD ... Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.

...Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, "I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

Scripture also describes how the corruption of sin spreads: first the sinner is corrupt, then sin spreads into the family, then to the animals with them, then even to the material goods and finally even to the land inhabited by the sinners -- you and I see that today, vividly illustrated in the effects of disease and pollution. The people of Noah’s day reached a degree of depravity that threatened to irreversibly contaminate the earth.

The Hebrew words used here to describe evil are “shachat:” meaning “morally putrid, totally decayed, spiritually gangrenous, destroyed and wasted.” And “chamas,” which means “seeking to gain through assault, physical attack, cheating and/or oppression.”

Jesus warned that society will return to a similar condition at the time of the end.

Corruption had become so widespread and complete that God pronounced total destruction as the only solution.

• If God did not judge wickedness and corruption, it would mean that God was indifferent to the existence of right and wrong, good and evil. But He is not indifferent, God's wrath, grief, and intense pain over evil is the necessary and only right response.

• Throughout the Bible the limits of defilement also define the limits of God’s judgment. God’s judgment never goes beyond the boundaries of sin’s damage. God is just. So His judgments are just, He gives what is deserved. The penalty for sin, which is death, is the deserved judgment. It is mercy which is totally undeserved. Sin's penalty was, and will be, no greater than sin itself, and not one innocent person was, or will ever be, judged against.

• God rights what has been made wrong when He judges. God’s wrath, or judgment, protects and preserves those who are not the serpent's sycophants. Think of God as a surgeon. He knows when and how to wield His scalpel. He knows how much or how little to remove to protect the healthy tissue. God is an enemy to disease and a friend to health. God moves with the motives of mercy and love.

So God washed the entire earth clean, saving what was salvageable and starting over.

The same pattern reappeared with the people of Canaan. Their sin reached its full measure so that even the earth itself was full of corruption and disease. Severe mercy meant cleansing the entire area and beginning again. Can you save a dying pelican covered in the thick slime of petroleum? No. It is more merciful to bring death quickly and dispose of the body, than to leave the pelican suffering and then allow it to further pollute the ocean. It sickens you and me. And it sickens God profoundly more.

God found no pleasure in this drastic cleansing, not in Noah's day, not in the days of Canaan, and not at the end of time,

"As surely as I live," declares the Sovereign LORD, "I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die...?"

Scripture describes God's coming judgment as dreadful to act as a warning to sinners to run to Jesus for rescue.

This epic poem is so rich that I will continue with it tomorrow

If this post got you to thinking, please leave a comment and join the conversation

City Of Evil (2005) "Sidewinder"

[reprinted as written by Avenged Sevenfold]

I slide through the wasteland that's my world
My hunger takes your life, preyed on to keep me alive, yeah
Mercy's all that you need, mercy's empty in me

Can't you feel the poison rising out of the morning and clear through the night
You can feel my strength destroy you straight to the heart from the venomous bite

That's right I shed my skin tonight but my fangs are hard to hide
And you know that you're going to die, yeah
Mercy's all that you need, mercy's empty to me

Can't you feel the poison rising out of the morning and clear through the night
You can feel my strength destroy you straight to the heart from the venomous bite
I can't regret, can't escape decisions made for me, no control
Fire that burns and never dies, wrapped around I'll bury my fangs inside

Making my way through the night you're still in my sight
You're runnin' away cause you know you can't hide
My instincts are cold blooded hate; to you I'm the bearer of fate
Wrong place and now the wrong time, now terror is all that you'll find

Can't you feel the poison rising straight to the heart of the venomous bite
Can't you feel the poison rising out of the morning and clear through the night
You can feel my strength destroy you straight to the heart from the venomous bite
I can't regret, can't escape decisions made for me, no control
Fire that burns and never dies, wrapped around I'll bury my fangs inside

Stay inside tonight - you're out there all alone
Vanish from my sites - venomous control
You won't make it right - my appetite has grown
Lost the final fight - no love will be shown

When asked what he was thinking about when he wrote this piece, the poet responded, "Sidewinder was basically just to paint a picture of human greed and human nature in the form of a snake. Sliding through the desert, hunting and killing, doing what feels natural. I compared it to a snake because I feel sometimes society makes us hide our human nature and we get punished for natural feelings and instincts."

Sidewinder was a canny choice. Depicting human nature as a snake brings in the imagery of what John the apostle called, in his Revelation, "that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan." John was referring to the being which enticed Eve clear back in Genesis, at the dawn of time, a creature described as being "more crafty than any other beast." By aligning with the serpent, Adam's and Eve's natures did become like that Sidewinder of old.

God brought that association into focus during the exodus of His people, when the Hebrews were emigrating from Egypt to Canaan, about four thousand years ago.

They had just won a big battle. As so often happens after the excitement of a victory, the Hebrews were feeling all pumped up and full of themselves. But now they had to walk around Edom, per God's instructions, and it must have seemed like a tiresome and unnecessary chore, especially when they were so close to the border of Canaan, only to have to go backwards to get around the unfriendly Edomites (even if they were brothers). As Moses related the story,

The people became irritable and cross as they traveled. They spoke out against God and Moses: "Why did you drag us out of Egypt to die in this godforsaken country? No decent food; no water—we can't stomach this stuff any longer."

Their impatience revealed a lack of love and a sense of entitlement. They were resentful of God protecting Edom, the unchosen, unfriendly people, and making the Hebrews, the chosen ones, take the longer harder way around. Their resentment sucked all the joy of anticipation out of this part of their journey. Instead of being excited about all the victories that lay ahead, being just months away from their life-long dream, they were poisoning their victory with complaining and being resentful.

The Hebrews were also tired of traveling, and even though Edom was arid, there was water in there, and good food. Now these people had no idea what had been left behind in Egypt. They were just kids, if they had even been born yet, when the exodus had begun thirty-eight years before. But all their lives they had listened to their parents constantly compare their current circumstances with Egypt. Now they were doing the same thing without even knowing what they were really talking about.

What the Hebrews had actually called God’s heavenly bread was “cheat the stomach” food - that’s what those words mean in Hebrew. Now that they saw themselves as he-man soldiers, winning battles, they needed something a bit more hearty than flakes of sparkly white manna.

[God had, for the past forty years, caused a flaky white substance to appear on the ground every morning, enough to feed the entire camp. It tasted sweet, with a hint of coriander, and could be made into both a kind of soup and into bread. They didn't know what this substance was, so they called it "manna," which means "what is it?" in Hebrew. All they did know is that God made it happen, and that it was so nourishing and strengthening they never needed any other kind of food.]

What they didn’t realize is that they were showing contempt for a lot more than God’s grace in making sure they always had food. Thousands of years later Jesus' follower, John, explained that these people were showing contempt for God’s true Bread from Heaven, the Messiah. He was quoting Jesus Himself, Who referred to Himself as being the true manna.

There are a lot of layers in this story. First, God’s discipline of His people was going to illustrate the people’s own poisonous pride, sense of entitlement, resentment and complaining attitude with the burning poisonous venom of snakes. Moses continued,

So God sent poisonous snakes among the people; they bit them and many in Israel died.

Wrapped up in the idea of snakes was the story of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, with his deceiving lies: You deserve better than this, you should be in charge of your own life, God is holding back on you.

The people had rejected the Bread of Heaven, they wanted bread grown from the earth. But God showed them that rejecting the Bread of Heaven results in death. What came up from the earth were snakes, and nobody escaped being bitten. Evidently there are two types of snakes indigenous to this area of the Middle East which have a venom that causes heat, violent inflammation through the whole body, the skin turns red and creates a terrible thirst. The Israelites were getting a vivid picture of their sin

And the people knew it. They knew God was punishing them for their sin, and here is real spiritual growth in this second generation. Before Moses had a chance to intercede for the people they repented

The people came to Moses and said, "We sinned when we spoke out against God and you. Pray to God; ask him to take these snakes from us.

Moses prayed for the people."

God’s way of salvation was not going to be instantaneous. The people had rejected their Bread from Heaven, so God gave them another type of Messiah

God said to Moses, "Make a snake and put it on a flagpole: Whoever is bitten and looks at it will live." So Moses made a snake of fiery copper and put it on top of a flagpole. Anyone bitten by a snake who then looked at the copper snake lived.

God didn’t just take the snakes away. They continued to bite the people, and the people who were bitten would continue to die; they would see and feel the full effects of their sin unless they looked at that snake on a stick.

God’s unusual way of deliverance must have raised some questions:

1) What about not making idols? God had already specifically said they were not to make a cast image of any creature or any anything. Yet now Moses was making a shiny, golden looking snake. How could this be different than making an idol? So think about how that snake must have been anchored to the stick. This is the very image Jesus talking about when He referred to Himself as being lifted up (John relayed this story in his gospel). The phrase “lifted up” in Jesus’ day was a euphemism for being crucified.

The snake was either nailed or skewered. God gave His people a visual of the penalty for sin skewered on a pole – just as the Passover lamb was also skewered on a stick once a year. Just as the Lord Jesus Christ, Who became sin, was nailed to the cross.

When the people looked at the snake, they were looking at the result of their own sin. By His grace, God had skewered their sin to a stick, and if they would just believe that God would forgive them, and thank Him for His grace, they would be healed.

2) What about the fact that this was a serpent, the ultimate symbol of evil, due to the serpent in the Garden of Eden? Again, think of the snake nailed to the stick. This was not an image to worship, but to see that God had conquered the serpent and all it stood for: the triumph of sin and its penalty of death was now, in turn, defeated by God Himself. Remember that bronze was what covered the altar, which burnt all the sin sacrifices. God’s power was more powerful than the serpent, which would be overcome by the sacrifice the perfect lamb, God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The people had referred to God’s gracious Bread of Heaven as a worthless food, something that wouldn’t nourish them. They had received a sting instead of a blessing, dying instead of being nourished and kept alive by what they called worthless bread. Now God gave them something to transform their thinking, a symbol of death becoming the source of life and deliverance.

There was no cure for the snake bite. No medicine to take, no therapy to do, no workshops, no bio-feedback loops, no ten step method to recovery. There was only one way to survive the snake bite and live, and that was to look at the bronze snake skewered on a pole. But the power of life was not in the bronze snake, it was in God.

Think of all the layers in this story:
1. Just as every Hebrew was bitten, so all people today are bitten by sin, and succumb to its venom

2. The snake bite was painful and ended in death, just as sin causes untold harm in the world today, and its penalty is death and eternal judgment

3. The only remedy for this condition was to look to God’s picture of redemption, the source of the pain nailed to a pole, just as Jesus, Who became sin for us, was lifted up on a cross

4. No one could save themselves. The only salvation available was what God graciously provided, and if you rejected it, you died, just as today the Lord Jesus Christ is the only way to be reconciled to God and be saved. To reject Jesus is to remain under the penalty of sin.

5. That serpent on the stick had no venom, just as Jesus was Himself without sin. The sinless one became your sin and mine, and all the sin of everyone.

6. As soon as the bitten person looked at the snake, they were saved from physical death, just as the moment you put your faith in Jesus you are made spiritually alive, and are saved from eternal death

7. This remedy was made effective only because of God’s grace, His willingness to forgive, and by God’s supernatural power to heal. In the same way, it is only through God’s gift of belief and faith, what we call grace, that saves today

8. This wasn’t a blanket remedy. Each individual had to look for themselves at the snake, just as today you, personally, must make a decision about what you believe. No one can make that decision for you.

Are you experiencing the negative effects of some sin that has you in it’s grip? An overindulgence in some pleasure, a total focus on self, laziness, a wrong relationship, addiction to something? There are all kinds of solutions out there that claim to help you and me get some temporary relief, and some measure of control over these things. But the only permanent cure is to look to the Lord Jesus Christ to deliver you.

You and I are better off admitting that we’ve got sin, we’ve been bitten by the snake, and that’s why we’re hurting. Because then we’ll look to the Lord for deliverance.

There is something deep and wonderful in God’s response to the Hebrews’ repentance. This new generation (the older generation had all already died in the desert by the time of this story) was spiritually more sensitive, closer to God. They were in a better place spiritually than the previous generation. They were ready to have their faith built up. They were prepared to understand what it meant to look by faith, and believe in God’s grace.

The truth is, looking to Jesus, the rescuer, in faith is the only way to be delivered from sin and death

Where are you right now in your own faith journey? How spiritually sensitive are you, how spiritually responsive to God? Is something really hard happening in your life right now? Maybe God is doing something deep and wonderful in you, too, maybe you are ready to have your faith built up.

Maybe that's why the poet brings this thought out, throughout his song,

Mercy's all that you need

God has the mercy, not the serpent, who would have to say mercy's empty to mee

If this post got you to thinking, please leave a comment and join the conversation

City Of Evil (2005) "Seize The Day"

[reprinted as written by Avenged Sevenfold]
A7X's official video

Seize the day or die regretting the time you lost
It's empty and cold without you here, too many people to ache over

I see my vision burn, I feel my memories fade with time
But I'm too young to worry
These streets we travel on will undergo our same lost past

I found you here, now please just stay for a while
I can move on with you around
I hand you my mortal life, but will it be forever?
I'd do anything for a smile, holding you 'til our time is done
We both know the day will come, but I don't want to leave you

I see my vision burn, I feel my memories fade with time
But I'm too young to worry (a melody, a memory, or just one picture)

Seize the day or die regretting the time you lost
It's empty and cold without you here, too many people to ache over

Newborn life replacing all of us, changing this fable we live in
No longer needed here so where do we go?
Will you take a journey tonight, follow me past the walls of death?
But girl, what if there is no eternal life?

I see my vision burn, I feel my memories fade with time
But I'm too young to worry (a melody, a memory, or just one picture)

Seize the day or die regretting the time you lost
It's empty and cold without you here, too many people to ache over

Trials in life, questions of us existing here, don't wanna die alone without you here
Please tell me what we have is real

So, what if I never hold you, yeah, or kiss your lips again?
Woooaaah, so I never want to leave you and the memories of us to see
I beg don't leave me

Seize the day or die regretting the time you lost
It's empty and cold without you here, too many people to ache over

Trials in life, questions of us existing here, don't wanna die alone without you here
Please tell me what we have is real

Silence you lost me, no chance for one more day [x2 then continues in the background]
I stand here alone
Falling away from you, no chance to get back home
I stand here alone
Falling away from you, no chance to get back home

The poet begins with the wisdom he will unfold throughout his song,

Seize the day or die regretting the time you lost

There's no way to know how long you and I have to enjoy what we have, so live each moment to its fullest, make the most of what you have, be thankful for it, love richly and deeply, savor every good thing. Tomorrow may never come,

I hand you my mortal life, but will it be forever?
I'd do anything for a smile, holding you 'til our time is done
We both know the day will come, but I don't want to leave you

The poet muses about life, mortal life, the cycle of life, newborn life replacing those who age and die. And for those of us who are aging, where do we go? Does love last beyond this life?

No longer needed here so where do we go?
Will you take a journey tonight, follow me past the walls of death?
But girl, what if there is no eternal life?

...Trials in life, questions of us existing here, don't wanna die alone without you here Please tell me what we have is real

At some point in this life the tragic will happen, and you and I will be left behind when someone we dearly love dies,

It's empty and cold without you here, too many people to ache over

That pain is hard to describe. People say time heals all wounds, but in reality time usually just gives us...time. Time to get used to the ache, time to learn how to live with that empty place in our hearts. Then comes a different way of sorrowing,

I see my vision burn, I feel my memories fade with time

When the beloved's face eludes memory, the sound of their voice, that way they would laugh, or toss their head, or move their hand.

If there is no eternity, then now is all we have.

The band illustrates this song in their video (link above) with another layer, with a sort of cosmic justice at work. Every action bears fruit of some kind, the good (love) to life, the bad (holding up a convenience store) to death. When you and I seize the day, what is it we'll do? Will we choose the good, or will we choose the bad? And if the bad, how steep will be the price?

Again a biblical theme comes through,

Don't be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of weeds. All he'll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God's Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.

So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up, or quit. Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all

Yes, there is eternal life, and love is real. And also yes, there will always be a price to pay when you and I choose to seize the day with something bad, but we can never know how deep and long and wide the price will be. Sometimes a little mistake causes a lifetime of terrible pain.

If this post got you to thinking, please leave a comment and join the conversation

City Of Evil (2005) "Bat Country"

[reprinted as written by Avenged Sevenfold]
A7X official video

He who makes a beast out of himself
Gets rid of the pain of being a man

Caught here in a fiery blaze, won't lose my will to stay.

I tried to drive all through the night,
The heart stroke ridden weather, the barren empty sights.
No oasis here to see, the sand is singing deathless words to me.

Can't you help me as I'm startin' to burn (all alone).
Too many doses and I'm starting to get an attraction.
My confidence is leaving me on my own (all alone).
No one can save me and you know I don't want the attention.

As I adjust to my new sights the rarely tired lights will take me to new heights.
My hand is on the trigger I'm ready to ignite.
Tomorrow might not make it but everything's all right.
Mental fiction follows me; show me what it's like to be set free.

Can't you help me as I'm startin' to burn (all alone).
Too many doses and I'm starting to get an attraction.
My confidence is leaving me on my own (all alone).
No one can save me and you know I don't want the attention.

So sorry you're not here I've been sane too long my vision's so unclear.
Now take a trip with me but don't be surprised when things aren't what they seem.

Caught here in a fiery blaze, won't lose my will to stay.
These eyes won't see the same, after I flip today.

Sometimes I don't know why we'd rather live than die,
we look up towards the sky for answers to our lives.
We may get some solutions but more just pass us by,
don't want your absolution cause I can't make it right.
I'll make a beast out of myself, gets rid of all the pain of being a man.

Can't you help me as I'm startin' to burn (all alone).
Too many doses and I'm starting to get an attraction.
My confidence is leaving me on my own (all alone).
No one can save me and you know I don't want the attention.

So sorry you're not here I've been sane too long my vision's so unclear.
Now take a trip with me but don't be surprised when things aren't what they seem.
I've known it from the start all these good ideas will tear your brain apart.
Scared but you can follow me I'm too weird to live but much too rare to die

The poet delivers a sort of tongue-in-cheek view of the high rollin' lifestyle he and the rest of his merry band lead -- good times, good times. What he describes is the hedonist's utopia.

"Hedonism is a school of ethics (ethics, also known as "moral philosophy," is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and bad, noble and ignoble, right and wrong, justice, and virtue) which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good.

The basic idea behind hedonistic thought is that pleasure is the only thing that has intrinsic value. This is often used as a justification for evaluating actions in terms of how much pleasure and how little pain (i.e. suffering) they produce. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize this net pleasure (pleasure minus pain)."

When watching A7X's official video it's clear that hedonism is the central theme, but there is also an underlying warning: with the pursuit of pleasure also comes the price, knowingly paid by the poet and his compatriots. There is an exchange of the soul so that the man becomes a beast.

Sometimes I don't know why we'd rather live than die,
we look up towards the sky for answers to our lives.
We may get some solutions but more just pass us by,
don't want your absolution cause I can't make it right.
I'll make a beast out of myself, gets rid of all the pain of being a man.

Is it worth it?

On the one hand you and I have the promise of maybe seventy or eighty years of life on this planet. We can squeeze quite a lot of pleasure out of those years if we have the resources. But even at that, much of what we consider pleasurable has a poison in it. Indulge yourself and you will reap the physical byproducts of disease, parasites, waste and decay. Age ends up not being so much a matter of years, but of mileage.

And that's only the earthly price. What of the spiritual price of exchanging one's soul for a "trip," as the poet refers to this journey into Bat country (the world of A7X, the world of hedonism)? Is eighty years of declining health and mental capacity due to indulgence heavy enough to weight the balance of eternity?

It's not that pleasure is wrong, or that the pursuit of pleasure is wrong. Think of it this way, the way Paul, an early follower of Jesus, put it:

"All things are lawful for me," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be enslaved by anything.

and

"All things are lawful," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful," but not all things build up.

The emphasis for those who follow hedonism is escape from pain through self indulgence. Think what that will do to your relationships alone, when selfish, self-centered and self-indulgent people get involved with each other.

But for those who follow the way of Jesus, Paul wrote,

If you've gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don't push your way to the front; don't sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don't be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.

Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death

Think of that while you read the poet's spiritual lament,

Can't you help me as I'm startin' to burn (all alone).
Too many doses and I'm starting to get an attraction.
My confidence is leaving me on my own (all alone).
No one can save me and you know I don't want the attention.

Self-centered versus other-centered, a radically different lifestyle. Pleasure, joy, enjoyment, it's all there, for followers of the Way, but it's being given to each other instead of being taken from each other.

If this post got you to thinking, please leave a comment and join the conversation