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First
published August 20, 2013 – David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist
Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061,
866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org
The following
study of popular worship singer Matt Maher further illustrates the fact
that contemporary praise music is a key element in building the
end-time, one-world “church.” It describes the very dangerous spiritual
world to which many fundamental Baptist churches are building bridges.
Many
are deceived by the fact that contemporary praise musicians sing about
the Lord in such a seemingly sincere manner. They ask, “Can it be wrong
to sing Maher’s ‘Lord, I Need You’?”
I would answer by asking
this: Is Matt Maher, who prays to Mary and believes that she aids men in
salvation, singing about the same “Lord” as the Bible-believing
Christian? When the pope and thousands of Roman Catholics, who hold to a
false gospel and worship a piece of bread as Jesus, join their voices
to sing this song, who are they singing to in reality, according to
God’s Word?
Too many professing Bible-believing Baptists are
following their emotions and their vanity and the crowd and their
bellies (e.g., build bigger churches, sell more books, don’t offend the
popular leaders, etc.) rather than God’s Word and the Spirit of Truth.
___________
The
Canadian born Matt Maher (b. 1974), who lives in Tempe, Arizona, is an
eight-time GMA Dove Award Nominee. He has a degree in Jazz Piano from
Arizona State University.
Like John Michael Talbot, Matt Maher is a Roman Catholic ecumenical bridge builder.
He
grew up Catholic but had a “profound awakening” through a charismatic
Catholic group. This consisted of an emotional experience that he had
while watching a skit “The Broken Heart” about a girl who gets a new
heart from God after giving hers away to a young boy.
“‘I
was standing in the back of the room and I burst into tears,’ Maher
remembered. Not long after, he started writing worship songs for the
group’s prayer sessions and devoted himself to performing Christian
music” (“Catholic Rocker Matt Maher,” Religion News Service, May 17,
2013).
The skit
did not present the biblical gospel, and Maher’s conversion was not a
biblical conversion. It was a religious conversion that did not include
repentance from error and rejection of Rome’s false christ and false
gospel.
Maher’s wife is Methodist, but they are raising their
son “in the Catholic Church,” while also taking him to Methodist
services “so he can experience both traditions” (Religion News Service,
May 17, 2013).
This is the perfect recipe for the building of the end-time, one-world “church.”
Maher
ministers at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Tempe, which is devoted
to Mary as the Queen of Heaven. The sign at the front of the church
says, “Mary, Mother of Life, pray for us.”
Maher is on the board of directors for the Catholic youth organization Life Teen.
He calls himself a “musical missionary,” a missionary for Rome, that is. Christianity Today
says “Maher is bringing his music–and a dream of unity into the
Protestant church” (“Common Bonds,” CT, Oct. 27, 2009). He says, “I’ve
had co-writing sessions with Protestants where we had that common
denominator, and I’ve seen in a very radical way the real possibility of
unity.” He says, “I look at it like the Catholic church is my immediate
family, and all my friends from different denominations are extended
family.”
David Wang says Maher is “one of the most successful
Catholic artists to cross over into mainstream Christian rock and find
an audience among evangelicals” (“Catholic Rocker Matt Maher,” Religion
News Service, May 17, 2013).
In the following video clip, Maher
performs at the 2013 Catholic World Youth Day in front of the pope, a
great venerator of Mary as the Queen of Heaven, and a massive crowd of
Roman Catholics, singing his popular praise song “Lord I Need You.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky0g_9dyhbU-
Maher led worship for Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the Rally for Youth in April 2008.
Maher says, “The arms of St. Peter’s are really big” (Religion News Service, May 17, 2013).
Maher, who tours with non-Catholics, comments:
“What’s
fantastic about it is we’re all Christians from different denominations
and we’re learning to understand each other. It just means that we’re
writing about mysteries that we don’t fully understand.”
Maher
is happy that other Catholic musicians are coming into the forefront of
the contemporary praise movement, such as Audrey Assad, who signed with
Sparrow Records, and producer Robbie Seay.
Leaving the Catholic
Church is not an option for Maher, because he says, “I love my faith and
the expression of it.” He intends, rather, for his music to be “a
bridge.” He says that contemporary worship music is a way to “build
relationships with people and link arms with them for the Kingdom.”
He
says that touring with people like Michael W. Smith is producing
ecumenical unity because people come to the concerts and find themselves
standing beside a priest or nun, and they learn that “we’re all in this
family together.”
What kingdom, though? There is the kingdom
truth and light and the kingdom of heresy and darkness. The New
Testament frequently warns of a great apostasy before the return of
Christ. These warnings began to be delivered through with the ministry
of Christ Himself (Mat. 7:15-23; 24:4-5, 11, 24) and were completed through the ministries of the apostles and prophets (e.g., 1 Timothy 4:1-6; 2 Timothy 3:13; 4:3-4;
2 Peter 2; Jude). The apostles warned that there will be false christs,
false gospels, and false spirits, and taught the churches to be
perpetually on guard, testing everything by the absolute standard of
God’s Word (Acts 17:11; 20:28-31; 2 Corinthians 11:4; 1 Thess. 5:21; Heb. 5:12-14).
They warned that false teachers would be deceptive, appearing as wolves
in sheep’s clothing and as ministers of righteousness (Mat. 7:15; 2 Cor. 11:13-15). They warned about the cunning craftiness of false teachers (Eph. 4:14) and their ability to deceive through “good words and fair speeches” (Rom. 16:17-18).
These
warnings are typically ignored throughout the world of Contemporary
Christian Music, and those who take the warnings seriously are dismissed
as unloving, judgmental Pharisees or worse.
Maher hosts the ecumenical WorshipTogether’s New Song Cafe.
He
performs with a wide variety of “evangelical” Contemporary Christian
musicians. He is in the Provident Label Group with Michael W. Smith,
Third Day, Jars of Clay, and others.
He has written songs with
and for “evangelical artists” such as Chris Tomlin (“Your Grace Is
Enough”), Bethany Dillon, Matt Redman, Jars of Clay, Passion (“Here For
You”), and Phillips, Craig and Dean.
Maher sings of Christ and
the resurrection and grace, but these terms must be interpreted in light
of Rome’s heresies. Salvation by grace, according to Rome, is salvation
through the sacraments. Christ is idolatrously worshipped in the
consecrated wafer of the mass. Christ’s resurrection did not complete
the believer’s salvation; it provided the storehouse of grace to the
Catholic Church to distribute through its sacraments, particularly
baptism and the mass and confession to a priest.
Maher told Christianity Today
that those who criticize his relationship with the Catholic Church are
misinformed and “mis-taught” and they “have a bad understanding of
Catholic teaching,” but that is not true for me. I have studied the
writings and history of the Catholic Church extensively. If Maher thinks
that the Roman Church teaches salvation by grace alone through the
blood of Christ alone without works, he is deceived by the ecumenical
program which was launched at Vatican II and which has been effective in
creating the end-time one-world church.
At the Council of Trent
(1545-1563), the declarations of which are still in force, the Roman
Catholic Church formally condemned the biblical gospel of salvation
through by grace alone through faith alone. Consider the following
declarations of Trent:
“If
anyone says that justifying faith is nothing else than confidence in
divine mercy, which remits sins for Christ’s sake, or that it is this
confidence alone that justifies us, LET HIM BE ANATHEMA” (Sixth Session,
Canons Concerning Justification, Canon 12).
“If
anyone says that the justice received is not preserved and also not
increased before God through good works, but that those works are merely
the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not the cause of
its increase, LET HIM BE ANATHEMA” (Sixth Session, Canons Concerning
Justification, Canon 24).
In
its most formal and authoritative statements since Trent, Rome has
continued to deny that salvation is by grace alone through Christ’s
atonement alone through faith alone without works or sacraments.
Consider the following statements of the authoritative Vatican II
Council of the mid-1960s, called by Pope John Paul XXIII and attended by
more than 2,400 Catholic bishops-–
“For
it is the liturgy through which, especially in the divine sacrifice of
the Eucharist, ‘the work of our redemption is accomplished,’ and it is
through the liturgy, especially, that the faithful are enabled to
express in their lives and manifest to others the mystery of Christ and
the real nature of the true Church” (Vatican II, Constitution on the
Sacred Liturgy, Introduction, para. 2).
“As often as the sacrifice of the cross by which ‘Christ our Pasch is sacrificed’ (1 Cor. 5:7)
is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is carried out”
(Vatican II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Chapter 1, 3, p. 324).
“…
[Christ] also willed that the work of salvation which they preached
should be set in train through the sacrifice and sacraments, around
which the entire liturgical [ritualistic] life revolves. Thus by Baptism
men are grafted into the paschal mystery of Christ. … They receive
the spirit of adoption as sons” (Vatican II, Constitution on the Sacred
Liturgy, Chap. 1, I, 5,6, pp. 23-24).
“From the most ancient
times in the Church good works were also offered to God for the
salvation of sinners, particularly the works which human weakness finds
hard. Because the sufferings of the martyrs for the faith and for God’s
law were thought to be very valuable, penitents used to turn to the
martyrs to be helped by their merits to obtain a more speedy
reconciliation from the bishops. Indeed, the prayers and good works of
holy people were regarded as of such great value that it could be
asserted that the penitent was washed, cleansed and redeemed with the
help of the entire Christian people” (Vatican II, Constitution on the
Sacred Liturgy, Apostolic Constitution on the Revision of Indulgences,
chap. 3, 6, pp. 78,79).
Rome’s
gospel is a heretical combination of faith plus works, grace plus
sacraments, Christ plus the church. It redefines grace to include works.
It confuses justification with sanctification. It confuses imputation
with impartation. It views justification not as a once-for-all legal
declaration whereby the sinner is declared righteous before God and is
granted eternal life as the unmerited gift of God, but rather as a
PROCESS whereby the sinner is gradually saved through participation in
the sacraments. There is no eternal security in the Roman gospel because
salvation allegedly depends partially upon man’s works. According to
Roman Catholic theology, Christ purchased salvation and gave it to the
Catholic Church to be distributed to men through its sacraments. This is
not only a false gospel, it is a blasphemous usurpation of Christ’s
position as only Lord and Saviour and Mediator.
Our Sunday Visitor’s Catholic Encyclopedia, published in 1991, defines justification as “THE PROCESS by which a sinner is made righteous, pure and holy before God.”
“Justification
in the Catholic Tradition comes about by means of faith in Christ, AND
in a life of good works lived in response to God’s invitation to
believe. … That works are clearly required in the New Testament for
union with Christ is seen in the many parables such as the Good
Samaritan, Lazarus and Dives, and others” (emphasis added).
Therefore,
when committed Roman Catholics like Matt Maher and John Michael Talbot
sing of Christ’s grace, they don’t mean what the Bible means. They are
using a Roman Catholic theological dictionary, but because of the
widespread ignorance that exists in “evangelical” and even
“fundamentalist” churches people are deceived by the language.
If
a Roman Catholic does not accept what the Catholic Church teaches, he
or she should leave and stop pretending to be both a Catholic and a
believer that salvation is by Chris’s grace alone without works.
(See “How Rome Denies Salvation by Grace Alone” at the Way of Life Literature web site — www.wayoflife.org.)
In the fall of 2009, Maher traveled with Michael W. Smith on the New Hallelujah Tour.
In the fall of 2010, he was a guest singer at the David Crowder Band’s Fantastical Church Music Conference at Baylor University.
In early 2011, Maher toured on the Rock and Worship Roadshow headlined by MercyMe.
In
July 2012, Maher sang “Hold Us Together,” the ecumenical theme song for
Mormon Glenn Beck’s Restoring Love conference in Dallas, Texas.
In
July 2012, Keith and Kristyn Getty and Stuart Townend joined Roman
Catholic Matt Maher on NewsongCafe on WorshipTogether.com. They played
and discussed “The Power of the Cross,” which was co-written by
Getty-Townend. The 10-minute program promoted ecumenical unity, with
Maher/Townend/Getty entirely one in the spirit through the music. Major
doctrinal differences are so meaningless that they are not even
mentioned. Spiritual abominations such as papal supremacy, the mass,
infant baptism, baptismal regeneration, and Mariolatry were entirely
ignored. Jude 3 was despised and Romans 16:17 completely disobeyed for the sake of building the one-world church through contemporary Christian music.
