Death meets Death and Death finds its End

Koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD) Visiting Professor, Department of Liberal Education, Kyungpook National University, Sangju Campus, South Korea, Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College, Australia

Hardly anyone expected it except those who came to deliver death, but Friday one week before was to change the lives of many people in France. It did. No less than 83 people died in a packed theater listening and taking part in a music concert. Of course all of us were drawn in by the media, the shock the horror of such a terrorist activity. Innocent people’s lives were taken from them while just attending a concert in Paris. When the dust fell back and the media repeated the anecdotes and detail, one specific aspect caught my attention: the theater.

You see, the Music that was played that night was not so innocent as it seemed to all of us and maybe still to many all over the world. This music was played by a band that specialized on the genre that was known in the 1970’s as “Death Metal” music. Now you tap into any online engine like Wiki and it will not take you long to find out that Death Metal is the weirdest music you can imagine upon the globe of this earth.

Stop you say. Yes, I am serious. No joke and no feeble judgment. They make no secret of the matter that they are necrophilic which means they “love death”. That is how I understood the Greek to mean. Besides the offroads they take on the music production itself the surroundings may play around cannibalism, mutilation and other strange things as well. Sometimes they may express their desires for Satan openly.

Whether you like it or not, we had that Friday Death inside and Death outside meeting each other. This is, if we are willing to stand back and look objectively to what happened that night. Of course, the group of “Death lovers” inside the Theatre de Paris did not call or ordered the monstrosity of Death that was on its way. Whether we had here a case of “terror-morals” is another issue but a footnote is enough to say that it is a dead-wrong approach to make a point, if that was their navigational axis for operation.

One thing is sure and one lesson stands out here to learn. One can be at the wrong place at the wrong time. No Christian in their right mind, was to be found in that theater that night, even if the disaster did not take place. It is like asking the Devil (the father of death) to send somebody to come and give us what we want, death. This is foolish. There is no better word for it. I like the style of the satirist Jack Engelhardt when he says: “and you can quote me on it, it is ‘justified’”. Of course he did not speak of the same topic but something else.

Modern man cannot learn from history enough. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong actions and disastrous results.

In the year 1448 BCE when Moses ascended Sinai and left the people of the Exodus out of Egypt at the base, he went up and received the Torah or Ten Commandments from God and then descended but Exodus 32:8 tells us that “they have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them”. They made a golden calf and started to worship it. Now this worship had a certain format like sacrificing for example. Moses up the mountain got the tablets (verse 16) and came down to find the people noisy and shouting (verse 17). This is a different kind of worship that one would expect in a context with God. It was since the context is a metal idol and the music had to fit the occasion. There is no middleway between God and Satan, some kind of middle-ground where you can say, I don’t hate anyone, I love everyone. It is either with God or against him. They were against. Joshua the general thought it was a war (verse 18). Moses told him it is not the cry of defeat or victory but the sound of singing. It was thus a heavy metal rock concert at Sinai. It says when they came near they saw the calf and the people “dancing” (verse 19). You can be sure that there is no such thing as “faithful dancing worship” outlined or prescribed in God’s Scriptures. The style is less kinetic and less noisy for sure. In verse 27 God ordered that many be killed. About 3000 people died that day. In verse 35 it says that the Lord smote the people because of what they did with the calf which Aaron had made. These are free-willing people that chose not to worship God any longer although they accepted Him initially. They tasted the miracles, they saw the nearness of God and mountain shaking etc. but they willfully decided that their relationship with God is not going to be lasting. They wanted gain and success but their own way. We will do it our way. God killed these 3000 from among the million or so migrants there because it was a lesson for the remnant that if you choose God, follow Him fully or otherwise get out completely. There were millions of people around the globe at that time and God did not go to them and killed 3000 because they don’t worship Him. It is the faithful with lips and actions that He is interested in. And that can be anyone around the globe also.

Paul asks the question in 1 Corinthians 15:55 “O Death, where is your victory? O Death, where is your sting?” Paul then explains that the sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. He then thank God who gave us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ and here is the key to the solution of death. Death lost at the cross with the death of the divine God-Christ Who resurrected Himself on Sunday morning and living can supply any human now with victory over death at His Second Coming. What should we do? Go to “Death Metal” concerts or participate in global religious-political state-making activities in order to spread a pro-death ideology because people expected it for the Eschaton? God forbid. God wants us to"be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord"(verse 58).