Bad Worship Songs: It's Always Been You - by Phil Wickham

From time to to we examine the lyrics of worship songs. Our desire is not to mock or humiliate, but rather to honestly examine content with a view to calling forth a better worship expression.

With the great volume and variety of worship music available, none of us should have to settle for bad worship songs. We should be able to select hundreds or even thousands of top notch songs very easily.

What makes a song a worship song? Is it enough to contain words like God or holy? How about vaguely spiritual sounding phrases? Should Jesus be mentioned?

We think an excellent worship song should contain the following elements:

• A direct expression of adoration (God, you are...)
• A progression of ideas that culminates in a coherent story
• A focus on God, not us
• Lyrics that do not create uncertainty or cause confusion
• A certain amount of profundity
• A singable, interesting melody
• Allusions to Scripture
• Doctrinal soundness
• Not excessively metaphorical
• Not excessively repetitive
• Jesus is not your boyfriend

It's worth noting the most worship songs contain at least something good. That is, there might be a musical idea or a lyric that has merit. Such is the case with this song, It's Always Been You.

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Prophecy and Tongues: A Compilation of the Best Cessationist Arguments - by Lee Irons

Excerpted from here. Our comments in bold.

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These are the best, according to the title. We would expect them to be devastating, the last word on the cessationism debate.

But they aren't good arguments at all. They aren't even biblical arguments, they're mostly assumptions and deductions from preconceived ideas about what someone has said about certain Scriptures.

They aren't really even arguments. They are assertions. Claims. 

We must deem this Bad Bible Teaching.

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Why ‘God Told Me’ Isn’t Biblical - By Elizabeth Prata

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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Over 1200 words, yet Ms. Prata cannot bring herself to explain why (from the Bible) contemporary prophecy is unbiblical. 

So that the reader would understand, Mr. Prata, like a lot of cessationists, falsely believes that everything God says must be included in the Bible. The Bible doesn't tell us this, but that's what she believes. 

Towards the end of her article she writes,

The canon is closed. 

We certainly agree. But what does the closed canon have to do with contemporary prophecy? She continues:

God’s new revelation ended with Revelation 22. 

"New revelation" for her means anything God says after the closed canon, all of which must be put in the Bible. However, there is no biblical standard that requires this. Next:

I’m not saying God CAN’T speak now, of course He can. It’s just that He closed the Bible with a warning not to add to the book nor take away from it. 

Again we find her premise that God speaking is synonymous with adding words to the Bible. And finally:

He said that at the present time, He would not be speaking. 

Thus her unbiblical conclusion based on a false premise. 

The Bible tells us that God is still speaking today: 

He. 1:3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.

We have written detailed explanations about contemporary prophecy and the closed canon, here and here.

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