In 2007, thirty-six years later, the piano on which he wrote that iconic song was taken on a symbolic peace tour that took it to sites of violence and persecution around the world. Paraded before them as if it were the Ark of the Covenant, the trip included:
- Ford's Theatre, DC (Lincoln)
- Dealey Plaza, Dallas (JFK)
- Lorraine Motel, Memphis (MLK)
- Oklahoma City (bombing Federal bldg)
- Waco, TX (Branch Davidians)
- Columbine High School
- Auschwitz, Germany (holocaust)
- Tower of London
- London 2005 train bombing
As if its mere presence could somehow heal the world and usher in Lennon’s utopia.
In Lennon’s world, you can believe anything you want as
long as you don’t believe it too sincerely.
Today the great virtue is tolerance, defined not in the classically liberal sense of non-aggression, but as an imperative to confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that all beliefs and lifestyles are equally valid.
Except, of course, those that are labeled “judgmental.”
What he failed to realize is that a world with “nothing
to kill or die for” is a world with nothing to live for. He recommends we all
subordinate our individual faiths to an indeterminate “brotherhood of man.”
At the Paris Olympics this year, “Imagine” was performed in
the opening ceremonies by Juliette Armanet accompanied by pianist Sofiane
Pamart. It was performed on a flatbed boat, a sort of raft floating down the
River Seine and the visual was that of dark destruction. The raft was dark and
desolate except for the piano itself which was set ablaze as Sofiane began
to play. The scene symbolized the burning down of what has been in order to
build back what can be.
If one is to build back better you must first tear down
what has been.
“To build back better what can be, unburdened by
what has been.”
Just like the rest of the opening ceremonies, the visuals
are hard to ignore and carry meaning all their own. We should pay close
attention to the underlying meaning.
When we see these things we need to put our antenna up and be discerning to understand what's really going on.
As athletes from countries all over the world of varying
faiths assembled to compete with each other, the song was performed strangely
exalting how great it would be if there were no countries and no religions.
The song was first initiated into the Olympics by Stevie
Wonder who performed it during the closing ceremonies of the summer games in Atlanta,
Georgia in 1996. Since then, it has become a mainstay and somewhat of a theme
song for the Olympics themselves.
It was performed again Turin, Italy in 2006 during the
opening ceremonies, in London in 2012, South Korea in 2018, Tokyo in 2020,
Beijing in 2022, and now Paris in 2024.
Lady Gaga performed the song at the 2015 European Games
Opening Ceremony held in Azerbaijan.
Shakira performed the song before the Pope at the United Nations
in New York City in 2015.
Additionally, since 2005, event organizers have played
"Imagine" just before the New Year's Eve Times Square Ball drops in
New York City. It has been played at the WEF, UNICEF, in support of Ukraine,
and by numerous artists in various venues and their causes.
In 2023, the song was selected for preservation in the
United States National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for its
cultural and historical significance. “Imagine” has been accepted all over the
world as a template for peace and hope.
What is the appeal of this particular song that it is
sung regularly at world events and awarded for its cultural and historical
significance?
Released in 1971, the song is a plea for peace, calling
for an end to divisions among mankind. John Lennon proposed to accomplish this
is by letting go of country, nationality, religion, war, and personal
possessions in favor of "living for today" in harmony, a brotherhood
of man. His message of hope for the world. It is considered one of the most
beautiful pieces of music and an inspiration to all to lay aside all conflict
among our fellow man.
It sounds like a wonderful vision of what could be. A
vision of peace. Who doesn’t want to live in peace? What mother, what father
wants to send their son or daughter off to war? The issue lies in how he
proposed to go about it.
As they say, the devil is in the details. And in the case
of the song, “Imagine” he truly is.
To understand peace, let’s first understand where war comes
from.
Jas 4:1-5 KJV
(1) From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?
(2) Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. [you don't involve God]
(3) Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.
(4) Ye adulterers and adulteresses, [those who have turned away from God] know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
(5) Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?
War
begins in the spirit of man. Apart from God the world will never know peace. Despite
all of man’s best efforts, the nature of carnal man will never allow him to
find peace without God and His Holy Spirit.
For
all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust
of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of
the world. (1John 2:16)
Isa 59:8 KJV
The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace.
Though they may make treaties, establish organizations
with members from every country on Earth, hold peace accords, and even sing
award winning songs, man can only make crooked paths that lead to destruction,
John Lennon’s view of utopia is seemingly one shared by
all. But is it? Is this the answer to all of humanity’s problems?
Let’s examine the lyrics.
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky
There’s nobody up there! There’s no God, the fool has said in his heart! (Psa 14:1; 53:1)
God has given man a great gift of mind and imagination. God
has endowed us with the ability to imagine great things. We can imagine most
anything. We can imagine space travel flying to the moon or to Mars. And it is
in the imagination that seeds of the future are sown.
So, yes it would be easy to imagine these thing’s Lennon
sings about. Sadly, maybe too easy. Easily imagined, but harder to do. It is in our
imaginings that we have deluded ourselves into thinking we can bring about
world peace on our own.
“Heaven” here represents the divine reward for living a
moral life in obedience to God. And “hell”, equals eternal punishment for
dismissing God and going your own way, following your own fleshly desires.
There’s no hell below us either! That’s “hell” as they
understand it. If there’s no heaven above us and no hell below us, there’s no
judgment! And there's No Judge! No penalty! No accountability! No retribution! No lake of
fire!
If it feels good, do it. Freedom to do whatever makes you
feel good. There are no consequences. Do what thou wilt!
This concept was codified by Aleister Crowley, an English
writer, mystic, occultist, and ceremonial magician, in a text he entitled, The
Book of the Law, a text he maintained was dictated to him by a voice he
reported to have heard April 8th, 9th and 10th
in 1904 [a spirit, a demon] named Aiwass.
It is key to the philosophy of Thelema which is the
concept of discovering and following one's True Will. Man's true will apart from God.
This work outlines key principles, exalting the axiom "Do
what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law," emphasizing personal
freedom and the pursuit of one's true path, guided by love. Love as you
see it. Love and the path to personal freedom. Freedom from God’s Law.
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."
he says.
Why get yourself all worked up trying to live up to some
externally applied standard in life? Why harbor the guilt and angst of not
measuring up? Why struggle to be a better person? Who gets to define what a better person is anyway? Don’t beat yourself up. Be who you are without apology. You
don’t have to live up to anybody else’s expectations. You do you.
There’s no standard of goodness. No right. No wrong. No
good and evil.
Is this true? What does the Bible say?
Isa 5:20 KJV
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
God is love. His view of love is very different from how
carnal man views love.
And freedom, as intended by our God-fearing founding
fathers, was not freedom to do whatever you want but the freedom to do what
is right. They came here to have freedom to worship God in accordance with biblical
principles and not what the State commanded according to the Church of England
or the Catholic Church. They weren’t seeking freedom to satisfy their every
lust but freedom to seek God.
Imagine all the people
Living for today
If today was the last day on Earth, no tomorrow, no God to
face after we die, no White Throne judgment, no lake of fire (no hell) how
would people act?
Everyone would be doing what was right in his own eyes. Like
in the last verse of Judges when there was no King in Israel. They had no one
to answer to. God was their King but they had rejected him. (Jdg 21:25)
Gen 6:5 KJV
And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Left to their own devices, spurning God, the thoughts they
imagine become more and more wicked. They had all rejected God with one
exception.
Noah
found grace in the eyes of the LORD.
And as it
was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. (Luke
17:26)
We don’t live for today.
We don’t take thought for tomorrow, what we will eat, what
we will drink, what we will put on, but we don’t live for today as if there is
no tomorrow. We plant, we grow, we harvest, we work to improve our lot in life,
to better the circumstances for our families.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof as we earn our
bread by the sweat of our brow.
But we don’t live for today, eat, drink, and be merry
for tomorrow we die. (1Cor 15:32)
YOLO – You Only Live Once, so grab all the gusto you can grab
with both hands. Nothing awaits you but the grave.
Jer 18:12 KJV
And they said, There is no hope: but we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart.
If there's no hope, what do people do? They do the imagination of their evil hearts.
Jer 23:17 KJV
They say still unto them that despise me, The LORD hath said, Ye shall have peace; and they say unto every one that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you.
These things they spoke, saying the Lord as said when he has not spoken are just lies and blasphemy!
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
It’s easy. Just pretend. There are no borders. Just walk
across the border like you live there.
With no borders we would be free to move about as we
want. We could migrate wherever we wanted. Live wherever we want.
Eliminate national sovereignty. We only need one
authority, the world government. The State. The United Nations and The
International Court would rule for the “common good.” They'll take care of us.
You have no individual rights. You can’t work and build
to better your family. You might get ahead and make somebody else feel
bad. We must all be equal after all.
We wouldn’t have to worry about competing with our fellow
man. The State will ensure we have what we need. They will provide and we will
all be the same.
So, we must destroy national borders.
We would have no homeland to defend, nothing to go to war
over.
We are all just citizens of the World.
One community. One world.
This idea implies that all nations would live in peace
and harmony sharing the same values and morals. That something like the Ten
Commandments, or more likely some secular humanist manifesto would have to be esteemed and obeyed by all.
That all people everywhere would exercise self-control in accordance with this
common set of values and principals.
Or else.
Without God’s guiding Spirit, these principles would have to be
enforced by the State to keep the people in line.
The laws, statutes, and precepts that we are
taught and live by are universal. All God’s people carry the same values and a
like-minded Biblical worldview. But in Lennon’s imagined scenario they do not.
It was God who divided the nations. And it was God who
called Israel out, sanctified them, set them apart to be His own people, a
model nation for all the others to emulate.
Israel was to teach all nations what blessings would come
to the nations whose God is the LORD. (Psa 33:12)
The Bible says we are to welcome the stranger and to
allow him to become part of our community. And we should. The key though is that he must
assimilate. (Exo 12:48; Lev 16:29, 18:26) He must become as one of us adopting
our ways and our values, which are God’s ways and values.
That’s why we must vet every individual who enters our
country to see if they are clear of a criminal past and will comply with our
laws and conform to our values. Will they relinquish their past allegiances and
become Americans?
There were no hyphenated individuals in the Nation of
Israel.
Ruth didn’t consider herself a Moabite-Israelite. (Ruth
1:16-17)
There weren’t meant to be any hyphenated Americans either.
We were to come together as a melting pot sharing a common set of godly
principles, morals, and values.
Relying on the people to live up to the morals and values that God gave them.
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
No wife and children to protect. No honor to defend.
All women can be shared by all men, and all men shared by
all women. There’s no adultery, no jealousy.
All is shared in common.
No country, morals, or values to uphold
No family to instruct in the ways of righteousness. Children
are wards of the State. You don’t have the right to bring them up any other way
than to become model world citizens in accordance with the world creed.
Children are immediately world citizens upon birth with rights all their own
apart from their parents’ wishes. That is, if they survive long enough to be
born in the first place and are not snuffed out in the womb.
There are some who believe that religious strife has been
at the root of all wars, killing, and death.
In the Lennon dream, there would be no strife caused by
fighting to defend a righteous way of life.
No clinging to your guns and your Bible
Nothing worth dying for.
A world with “nothing to
kill or die for” is a world with nothing to live for.
A belief for which one is
unwilling to either kill or die is a belief too weak to provide the vital
energy necessary to sustain civilization.
How long does Lennon imagine his utopia would last if
none of its citizens were willing to take up arms and risk their lives to
defend it?
Life therefore has no meaning.
What are we here for? Why were you born?
If there’s no God, there’s no Kingdom of God. There’s no
family of God to look forward to. And there’s no hope.
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
Living in harmony. No strife. No differences in character.
We’re all the same. We’re ALL honorable people, aren’t we?
All you need is love. (Beatles, 1967)
C’mon people now. Smile on your brother. Everybody get
together try to love one another right now. (Youngbloods, 1967)
[Both songs released in the 1967 “Summer of Love”.]
They’ve forgotten the true corrupt nature of carnal man, or maybe never knew it in the first place. Without God’s Holy Spirit, the spirit of man
is contentious, competitive, envious, and self-centered.
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
A challenge this time – because it would be difficult to give up
our possessions
Christ told us in Luke 12:15 that a man's life consists not in the things he possesses.
And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. (Luke 12:15)
But yet… the World Economic Forum –
“You’ll own nothing.
And you’ll be happy”.
Possessions are just things to squabble over. “I want” is
at the root of all strife. Jealousy, envy, greed.
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Besides, The State will decide how to fairly divide the
food and resources and distribute it to you according to need. Providing, that
is, you are a citizen in good standing with a high enough social credit score.
(DEI, ESG)
No greed, no envy. Brothers aren’t envious of each other,
are they? I seem to recall the very first murder was between brothers. (1John
3:12)
But somehow, we will all be our brother’s keeper and will
put our brother’s needs ahead of our own, or else the State will take it from
us and give it to him if we don’t.
What’s mine is yours and more importantly what’s yours is
mine.
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
We’ll all be one big happy community sharing everything
in common, all for the common good. Do a careful study sometime of
“communitarianism” and you’ll find that those who espouse this philosophy
always see themselves as the ones administering it.
The Pilgrims tried this before. They initially established a communal property system when they landed in 1620, but within three years they abandoned it in favor of private property. They almost died, starving to death. The Pilgrims' experiment with a common storehouse in 1621-23 was unsuccessful. Young men refused to work in the common fields to produce goods for the storehouse, only to have the goods divided equally among families. Why do I have to work? Let somebody else do the work.
After receiving petitions from the planters, Governor William
Bradford and his council decided to assign each family a personal plot of land
based on family size and abolish the common storehouse.
Bradford wrote that the change was successful because it
created economic incentives that made people more industrious. Families could
keep everything they grew for themselves, and they planted more corn than they
would have otherwise.
Sharing all the world is the view of socialism.
“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” ~Winston Churchill
We will all be equal. Equal poverty and equal misery. But be
sure, some will be more equal than others. Those elites at the top who
administer the program.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” ~George Orwell, Animal Farm
A proclamation by the pigs who control the government in the
novel Animal Farm, by George Orwell. The sentence is a comment on the
hypocrisy of governments that proclaim the absolute equality of their citizens
but give power and privileges to a small elite.
True social equity is not equality of outcome but equality
of opportunity. We defend the right of all to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. But we don’t guarantee all will have their version of happiness.
They must apply themselves and work for it.
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I’m not just some crackpot wild-eyed dreamer. There’s a
whole host of us.
(An implied majority. With an implied superiority.)
The people of God might be considered dreamers too but
ours is not a dream. It is a vision of certainty, a vision of hope, for
He is faithful that promised. (Heb 10:23)
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will (be) live as one
One world. One people. One big commune.
It’s worth noting that in the first refrain it says, “and
the world will be as one” and the second time it says, “and the world
will live as one.”
At first in this utopian dream, the world will be
as one whether we like it or not, whether we comply willingly or not. But
eventually, the world will live as one, adapting to the new order of
things as if it’s their own.
This is their dream.
Gen 11:4-6 KJV
(4) And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
(5) And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
(6) And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
What does the Bible teach us about their dream?
Psa 2:1 KJV
Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?
They plot in vain. They engage in designs which the result proved to be unsuccessful. In particular, this passage refers to the agitation among the nations in the sense that they resist and oppose the coming Messiah yet their efforts will prove useless and ineffectual. And that's good news.
They have tried this before and as verse 4 tells us the Lord laughs at
them and holds them in derision.
Do they care that God holds them in derision and hates the wicked
abominations they have imagined?
Jer 7:24 KJV
But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward.
They may say we’re not going back, but they are.
God will have the final say.
Deu 29:19-20 KJV
(19) And it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst:
(20) The LORD will not spare him, but then the anger of the LORD and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the LORD shall blot out his name from under heaven.
But better times are coming!
Jer 3:17 KJV
At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the LORD; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the LORD, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart.
Imagine God’s Way
Our dream, our vision is quite different.
All people everywhere want hope. Hope of a better life
without tears, without oppression, without pain.
Politicians on both sides claim that their party will heal
our land and they hard sell their dreams of hope and a better life.
But we know the truth of 2 Chronicles 7:14
2Ch 7:14 KJV
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and [I] will heal their land.
Turn from their wicked ways. Repentance.
Without repentance and God’s blessing it’s just a pipedream
that evaporates like the smoke from the pipe itself.
We argue over so many issues –
¾
Abortion
¾
War
¾
The economy
¾
Healthcare
¾
And on and on
Man argues and fights not over the “what” but the “how.”
Generally, we don’t fight about what we want.
We all want peace, to live in safety without fear of
harm
We all want our children to grow up big and strong
and to make a good life for themselves and their children
We all want enough healthy food to eat, and to live a
long life
But man fights over the how, how to bring these things about apart
from God.
If we just followed God and His way of life, we wouldn’t
have any of these issues. We argue about how to solve them but we don’t involve
God.
As I pointed out earlier, this is a spiritual problem. And
you can’t solve spiritual problems by political means.
When listening to John Lennon’s song, “Imagine,” rather than
a feeling of hope, those who understand get a feeling of hopelessness, that
life has no meaning, no purpose.
What comes after? There is no after without
God.
We know God is creating a wonderful family in the
Kingdom of God. And we look with great hope and anticipation for its coming.
Though we have been given a great gift to be able to
imagine the future God has in store for us our view is still quite limited in
its scope. We see only through a glass darkly. (1Cor 13:12)
1Co 2:9 KJV
But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. (Isa 64:4)
We know it will be amazing, astonishing even, but our limited
minds cannot imagine what God has in store for us!
In the meantime, we endure and await the consolation. (Luke
2:25)
And while we wait…
We imagine our future in the Kingdom, what it will be
like
We imagine what it will be like, both in the
Millennium and the New Jerusalem.
We keep the vision of the Kingdom of God burning
brightly, a vision of certainty and hope. Staying focused on the goal.
We don’t get discouraged. We have no reason to fear.
We weary not in well doing.
We cast
down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the
knowledge of God (2Cor 10:5)
We continue to fight the good fight brethren, as good
soldiers of Jesus Christ.
We stand in the gap against the evil onslaught.
Having no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness,
but rather exposing them. (Eph 5:11)
We trust in the LORD for He is faithful and true.
We come out from among them and be separate and be
not partakers of their sins and receive not their plagues. (Luk 6:22; 2Cor
6:17; Rev 18:14)
Rev 21:1-5 KJV
(1) And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
(2) And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
(3) And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
(4) And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
(5) And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.
Rev 22:6-7 KJV
(6) And he said unto me, These sayings are faithful and true: and the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly be done.
(7) Behold, I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book.
Rev 22:12-13 KJV
(12) And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.
(13) I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
Rev 22:20-21 KJV
(20) He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
(21) The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.
Just imagine.
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