The Bible prophesies an age of apostasy, blasphemy, narcissism, unbelief, rebellion, and scoffing skepticism preceding the Day of the Lord, and we are observing that age nearing full bloom. See Psalm 2; 2 Timothy 3; 2 Peter 3. Leonard Cohen’s (1934-2016) “secular hymn” Hallelujah is one of the anthems of the perverted age. Wildly popular, it has been covered in at least 300 versions. It celebrates the spiritualization of everything. Holy and unholy merge into one. There is no repentance, no redemption, no saving light. The Bible restricts the use of “hallelujah” to the worship of God and His holy character. Hallelujah is from the Hebrew “Halal Jah” or “halal Jehovah,” but Cohen and his proud generation would apply “hallelujah” to whatever pleases man. The singer questions God’s right to judge. “You say I took the name in vain/ I don’t even know the name/ But if I did, well really, what’s it to ya?/ There’s a blaze of light in every word/ It doesn’t matter which you heard/ The holy or the broken hallelujah. Love is not a victory march/ It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah. Maybe there’s a God above/ But all I’ve ever learned from love/ Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you. And it’s not a cry that you hear at night/ It’s not somebody who’s seen the light/ It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.” Though Cohen sang and wrote of love, it was eros love, self love, lust love. Leonard Cohen exemplified the life he acclaimed in poetry, fiction, and song. Jonathon Van Maren observes, “Like so many artists, he deluded himself into believing that passionate promiscuity could be the pursuit of art. It was the women and children who paid the price of these delusions. There is a trail of blood through Cohen’s canon. In Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories: The Early Years, musician Julie Felix says of Marianne [Cohen’s girlfriend on the Greek island of Hydra]: ‘He made her have five abortions.’ Cohen’s friend Peter Katoundas recalled that one abortion had left Marianne sterile. Marianne was Cohen’s most famous muse, and he nearly destroyed her. Few marriages survived that island paradise. Few children did, either. The histories of those raised on the island are rife with substance abuse, suicide, and institutionalization. Marianne’s son Axel never recovered and spent much of the rest of his life in mental hospitals” (Van Maren, “Leonard Cohen’s Lost Children,” FirstThings.com, July 4, 2022). “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away” (2 Timothy 3:1-5).
(Friday Church News Notes, October 21, 2022, www.wayoflife.orgfbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)
