New in PJ Media:
Maybe Bob Dylan is a prophet after all. On stage in Omaha back on Jan. 25, 1980, Dylan, in the midst of fierce controversy over having become a Christian, said, “Years ago they…said I was a prophet. I used to say, ‘No, I’m not a prophet.’ They’d say: ‘Yes you are, you’re a prophet.’ I said, ‘No, it’s not me.’ They used to say: ‘You sure are a prophet.’ They used to convince me I was a prophet. Now I come out and say Jesus Christ is the answer. They say, ‘Bob Dylan’s no prophet.’ They just can’t handle it.” But some contemporary resonances in a couple of those Christian songs suggest that the old folkie was on to something.
Dylan’s three explicitly Christian albums, Slow Train Coming (1979), Saved (1980), and Shot of Love (1981) were derided by critics at the time. Rock music critics then and now are generally secular Leftists and dope-smoking hippies with scant regard for religious fervor, and even today these albums are considered minor parts of the Nobel laureate’s canon. But Slow Train Coming contains some striking passages — not passages that were striking in 1979, but passages that are striking in 2023.
Consider, for example, “When You Gonna Wake Up?” This song became a particular object of Leftist ire with its suggestion that Dylan had not only become a Christian, but a right-wing one at that: “Counterfeit philosophies have polluted all of your thoughts / Karl Marx has got you by the throat, Henry Kissinger’s got you tied up in knots.” Well, yeah, that’s right, Bob, and even more so in 2023 than in 1979. Kissinger makes Old Joe Biden look as if he is in the bloom of youth; he’s 99 years old and still pontificating on foreign policy, with his realpolitik perspective firmly ensconced in the State Department.
The same song contains this uncanny foreshadowing of the age of Fauci and Birx: “You got innocent men in jail, your insane asylums are filled / You got unrighteous doctors dealing drugs that’ll never cure your ills.” Yeah, and banning the drugs that would actually cure your ills.
“When You Gonna Wake Up?” also contains this line: “Adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools / You got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules.” Now here, you gotta wonder. Adulterers in churches? We had those in 1979. Jimmy Swaggart’s prostitution scandal was still nine years off when Slow Train Coming came out, but no one who heard the album thought Dylan was way off base about that.
The “pornography in the schools” line, however, was another thing altogether. In 1979, the idea that there would be pornography in the schools, other than a girlie magazine snuck in by some unruly boy, was beyond inconceivable. Fast forward 44 years, however, and we have the husband of the homosexual secretary of Transportation furious that a state authority is actually acting to remove pornography from the schools.
There is more. Read the rest here.
somehistory says
New International Version
“’In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.’
Acts 2:17
The Bible says that God “works in mysterious ways.” Who can say that he was not leading Mr. Dylan to write what he did?
The attorney general of NY, has set up a drag show for the little kids at a library….and libraires all across that State are hosting, at taxpayer expense, drag shows. Porn in person for an audience of tiny children.
Mark Spahn says
SomeHistory writes, “The Bible says that God ‘works in mysterious ways.'”
Citation, please; chapter and verse.
Siddi Nasrani says
Try reading this to understand, “The Bible says that God ‘works in mysterious ways.’”
https://www.compellingtruth.org/God-works-in-mysterious-ways.html#:~:text=Psalm%20147%3A5%20states%20that%20God%27s%20understanding%20is%20beyond,pain%20when%20his%20brothers%20sold%20him%20into%20slavery.
To a greater understanding
somehistory says
Siddi Nasrani,
thank you. I find many things online with only a few words.
Hoi Polloi says
+1
Thanks for the link.
Pavithra Sair says
This is from a poem not the Bible.
God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
William Cowper
somehistory says
The Bible said it first, but in different words.
“‘That He may do His work, His strange work; and bring to pass His act, His strange act.’ — ISAIAH xxviii.21
““’For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isaiah 55:8-9).
“The word mysterious, according to the Oxford Dictionary, means difficult or impossible to understand, explain, or identify. ”
https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/bible-study/is-it-fact-or-fiction-that-god-works-in-mysterious-ways.html
The Psalm, cited above by Siddi Nasrani, is exemplified in the account of Joseph, whose brothers sold him into slavery, a “bad thing,” but God used that fact for “good”
This actually happens a lot….bad things come our way, but God uses them to make good things come about for us.. And, many of us wonder just how it all happened, esp if we don’t figure God into our everyday lives. It’s “mysterious” or “strange.”
terry says
Yes sir1
mg says
I find ‘Neghborhood Bully’ one of the most accurate songs about the goings on- in that songs case, Israel, that I’ve ever heard. As for all this talk about his obvious prescient thoughts, I don’t think Dylan bothered to contradict the memes about the progressives who’ve initiated all this evil in our society and culture. He of course would have been burned much worse if he had… of course.
Jim says
I wonder why Dylan got a Nobel prize in literature. His songs seem more like political polemics than literature. I like them, but I wonder if a Nobel Prize for literature is the right sort of recognition. Some famous American poets and writers never got this prize. Of course the prize is controversial, because it seems to be based on political status rather than literary values. Are the lyrics of songs actually poetry? Always or only sometimes? But I do like his sentiments. He got it right about the disintegration of society in America. Victor Davis Hanson compared America to the fall of the Byzantine Empire and Constantinople. Decadence masquerades as greater insights and higher morals today.
brenrod says
How about the Dylan song “I pity the poor immigrant”. …. “who falls in love with well fed self and turns his back on me”?