Study: AC/DC’s ‘Highway To Hell’ More Theologically Accurate Than 96% Of Modern Worship Songs-SATIRE

The Babylon Bee ^ | 6/13/18 | Staff

[Mariner]

Yes, and underrated song writing too.

How many know that Ozzy sang favorably about God and Scripture? And OFTEN.

Not very many...

“God Is Dead?”

Lost in the darkness
I fade from the light
Faith of my father, my brother, my Maker and Savior
Help me make it through the night
Blood on my conscience
And murder in mind
Out of the gloom I rise up from my tomb into impending doom
Now my body is my shrine

The blood runs free
The rain turns red
Give me the wine
You keep the bread
The voices echo in my head
Is God alive or is God dead?
Is God dead?

Rivers of evil
Run through dying land
Swimming in sorrow, they kill, steal, and borrow. There is no tomorrow
For the sinners will be damned
Ashes to ashes
You cannot exhume a soul
Who do you trust when corruption and lust, creed of all the unjust,
Leaves you empty and unwhole?

When will this nightmare be over? Tell me!
When can I empty my head?
Will someone tell me the answer?
Is God really dead?
Is God really dead?

To safeguard my philosophy
Until my dying breath
I transfer from reality
Into a living dead
I empathize with enemies
Until the timing’s right
With God and Satan at my side
From darkness will come light

I watch the rain
As it turns red
Give me more wine
I don’t need bread
These riddles that live in my head
I don’t believe that God is dead
God is dead

Nowhere to run
Nowhere to hide
Wondering if we will meet again
On the other side
Do you believe a word
What the Good Book said?
Or is it just a holy fairytale
And God is dead?
God is Dead [x4]

Right!

But still the voices in my head
Are telling me that god is dead
The blood pours down
The rain turns red
I don’t believe that God is dead
God is Dead [x4]

That one won the Grammy for Best Rock Performance of 2015.

[Bob434]

many people think hell is going to be a party place- not so- My post is to anyone who may be of that mindset-

[dfwgator]

What about this line....

“I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners are much more fun....and only the good die young.”

[Bob434]

sounds like maybe that is talking about laughing with sinners while alive? and that they don’t wanna be good because ‘only the good die young’?

[dfwgator]

Once some Bishop requested Billy Joel not to play that song in concert....He played it twice.

[Bob434]

it was a pretty catchy tune

[fishtank]

K-LOVE = Hillsong Barney and the Spasmodic Xylophones

[Ancesthntr]

Wonder what the authors of the study would say about “Hell’s Bells,” another AC/DC classic?

[backwoods-engineer]

Because as everyone knows, some evil “King of the Hill” cartoon on network TV should set the standard for what Christianity should do. Sure. Of course.

[kosciusko51]

Joke cartoon on a satire thread.

[60Gunner]

I don't listen to contemporary "Christian music simply because it is a mile wide and a millimeter deep.

Cling tightly to God and He will give you your own song.

[sparklite2]

Cuz God’s allowed His entire flock to be misled on matters of eternal significance for millennia.

---

“If you believe anything long enough,
it must be true.”

[sparklite2]

I hate the “Jesus is my boyfriend” genre of church songs.

---

And the “Possess us, Jesus” bumper sticker that sounds icky.

[sparklite2]

many people think hell is going to be a party place

---

Heaven, on the other hand, is like Venezuelan socialism.

Your money is no good, you are expected to praise the administration endlessly, and it leads to nothing better.

[FNU LNU]

Gehenna wasn’t of eternal significance. All 12 times the word occurs in the Bible, it’s in reference to the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century.

As far as the Holy Spirit is concerned, he used the word Gehenna. The Roman Catholic Church didn’t use the word “Hell” until the 16th Century. That word meant “a cover;” it’s the root of our word “helmet.” The idea of eternal conscious torment was loaded onto that word to get the Roman Catholic concept. None of this originated with me, but can be read in serious lexical scholars.

But no one’s going to make you study the subject seriously.

[shotgun]

Sympathy for the Devil

The Rolling Stones

Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
I’ve been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man’s soul and faith

And I was ‘round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

I stuck around St. Petersberg
When I saw it was a time for a change
I killed the Czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain

I rode a tank
Held a general’s rank
When the Blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
What’s puzzling you is the nature of my game, oh yeah

I watched with glee as your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the Gods they made

I shouted out
“Who killed the Kennedy?”
When after all
It was you and me

So let me please introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reached Bombay

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game, oh yeah

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what’s puzzling you is just the nature of my game

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails just call me Lucifer
‘Cause I’m in need of some restraint

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse?
Or I’ll lay your soul to waste, um yeah

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game, oh baby

Oh yeah
Tell me baby, what’s my name
Oh tell me honey, can you guess my name?
Oh oh oh oh
Tell me honey, what’s my name
Oh, just the sweetest, tell me what’s my name?
Tell me, sweetie, what’s my name
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah

(Oh oh oh)

Can papa get a holler now?

Songwriters: JANN ARDEN RICHARDS,ROBERT FOSTER

© Abkco Music, Inc.

For non-commercial use only.

[T-Bone Texan]

I find the Iron Maiden song 2 Minutes to Midnight to be a compelling anti-abortion argument.

Oh, and for years the only Bible verse I knew I got from an Iron Maiden song “Woe to you, oh Earth and Men, for the Devil sends the Beast with wrath...”

[T-Bone Texan]

If you do a meta-analysis, just about all of AC/DC's songs can be classified as falling under 3 categories:

Sex and Drugs,

Rocking Out, and

Satanism/evil.

[Mrs. Don-o]

The word "hell" has neither Catholic nor 16th century origins; "hell" and its Germanic cognates were already long in use by the time the Eddas were written (13th century). The Norse had a god or demon entity named Hel, ruling of an underground realm of the same name. So you'd have to blame the German/Norse pagans for the word itself. I'm not sure whether the Germanic 'Hel' had fires or if it was more like Sheol, a place of vague repose.

You won't find this troublesome word in non-Germanic Bible translations. You're going to get words in Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Bibles like enfer (French), ad (Russian), pieklo (Polish). In the 16th century Catholics would most likely be reading it in Latin, where the place or state-of-being is called infernum.

Some of the medieval Rabbis said the "fiery furnace" that Abraham saw was Gehenna; in Matthew, too, "fiery furnace" is identified with the gates of Gehenna.

If you're looking for something rather more distinctively Catholic, that would be "Purgatorio," a temporary place for saints-in-waiting, where fire might or might not be the main feature. The name “purgatorium” (L) originally indicated a place for cleansing with medicinal herbal smoke, steam, and purging — think "sauna".

Pope Innocent III, who historically committed grave crimes but repented in the end and went to Purgatory, actually (historically) came back to tell St. Lutgarda of Brabant that he was in a fiery place (no devils, though) and that it might last for centuries. Dante's Purgatorio, on the other hand, had all kinds of terraces and different stages and features, the parts closest to the summit (the Earthy Paradise) being the leafier suburbs.

So we frankly don't know much about that --- nothing in detail --- except that it would be purification, if in part terrible, still temporary; and hopeful, unlike the valley of Hinnom, fiery Gehenna, where *according to the Bible) the fire is quenched not, and the worm sleepeth not, and from which --- the rabbis say --- smoke is continually rising.

[FNU LNU]

Thanks for the more serious reply, Mrs. Don-o.

You say: “The word “hell” has neither Catholic nor 16th century origins...”

I didn’t say the word hell originated with the RCC or in the 16th Century. They appropriated the word, loaded it up with concepts of eternal conscious torment, and it appeared in English translations. Most of us got it from the KJV, which (mistakenly) translated Sheol, Hades, Tartarus, and Gehenna all as hell. Later translations rightly distinguish between the first three, and Gehenna shouldn’t have been translated at all, being a geographical place name.

Then you say: “Some of the medieval Rabbis said the “fiery furnace” that Abraham saw was Gehenna; in Matthew, too, “fiery furnace” is identified with the gates of Gehenna.”

If by “gates of Gehenna” you’re thinking of Mt. 16.18, Gehenna is not in that passage, but Hades.

Thanks again for your more reasoned response.