The God Culture: Mo'edim Dawning Album Review

Timothy Jay Schwab who is The God Culture and Foundations Echo Collective has released a new album. It's titled Mo'edim Dawning and is all about the Levitical Feasts. 

Mo'edim in the title serves two purposes. 1. It is the word translated feasts in the Bible. It means appointed times. 2. It's Tim's way of signifying exotic theological depth. It's not enough for him to celebrate the feasts. He celebrates the Mo'edim. The problem here is that this ersatz depth is historically untethered. It's Second Temple Judaism without the Temple.

This AI generated album is so milquetoast and repulsive I couldn't listen to the whole thing. It is worse than Celine Dion and I hate Celine Dion but at least she has a soul. The "music" is so bland and even more formulaic and derivative than CCM they should open a new Dove category for worst album of the year. Here is a million dollar idea for singer and musician Timothy Jay Schwab: write and record your own music. Or how about this, Ok Computer but the lyrics are praise and worship. Take a lesson from Radiohead and learn intelligent music can only be created by humans.

The lyrics repeat the blasé message of our hearts are on fire and we are rising up and Yahuah, not God, is great. The majority of these lyrics are about the "singer" and less about the "singer's" deity who is Tim's deity who is the binity of Yahuah and Yahusha. Tim is an avowed anti-trinitarian who thinks the Holy Spirit is likely a creation. The theology behind these lyrics is heretical as the album's purpose is to steer people into keeping the feasts which Christ has fulfilled and which we are under no obligation to keep nor could we possibly keep because they all require animal sacrifices at the temple by a Levite priest.

Probably the worst offender on this album is Happy Birthday Yahusha (Shavout). The incarnation is not a fulfillment of Shavout or the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost as it is known by Christians. Pentecost is fulfilled by the outpouring of the Holy Spirt in the upper room as written in Acts 2. Remember, Jerusalem was filled with Jews from all over the world to celebrate Pentecost. If Jesus was born on Pentecost his parents would have been in Jerusalem. The incarnation is a fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles because Christ tabernacled in the flesh with us (John 1:14). The title alone is enough to write this off as heresy. 

Now for the lyrics.

Happy birthday Yahusha our king
We lift our hearts and gladly sing
Born on the feast when fire came down
You wear forever the golden crown
Light of heaven, Word made flesh
We celebrate your righteousness
Happy birthday Yahusha our king
All creation begins to sing

Hallelujah

From dawn till dusk let praises ring
Joyful voices to you we bring
In every heart your love will (allow??)
All our hopes are lifted now

Light of heaven, Word made flesh
We celebrate your righteousness
Happy birthday Yahusha our king
All creation begins to sing

Hallelujah 

With every year we'll shout and (play?)
Happy Birthday Yahusha today
Peace and joy in the air we share in your name
We are filled with praise

I listened to this song four times to get the lyrics right and I still cannot make out two words but this is good enough to show the absolute inanity of these lyrics. Thankfully it's very short. Unfortunately it's also staccato and catchy so it's going to be in my head for a while. 

According to the credits Timothy Jay Schwab wrote the lyrics. 

Is this really the best he could do? Tim has been a "Christian" for four decades and this is the highest praise he could muster for the incarnation? A categorically inappropriate Happy Birthday song? I suppose the theological heft of Hark the Herald Angels Sing and O Come All Ye Faithful are too high a bar for Tim to reach. The opening scene of Life of Brian is more reverent than this tripe. 

Just imagine if this is what the Angels sang when they appeared to the shepherds. Imagine reducing the miracle of the virgin birth, of God tabernacling in human flesh, to a banal Happy Birthday, we celebrate your righteousness. The fact that God became man for the express purpose of being a propitiatory sacrifice is a solemn event. It is not a time to put on party hats and sing Happy Birthday. While Christ was born in the flesh he is eternally God. There is never a time when he was not. The fact that God was born of Mary also means something else Tim rejects. Mary is the mother of God.

39:26 And they do indeed embrace the harlot of Babylon taking her image found in archeology centuries before Mary was ever born and they used that image of the harlot of Babylon in their worship and call her those same titles of the ancient goddess. Mother of God. Well, that's not Mary's title, that's the ancient goddess.

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Making this asinine claim shows that Tim is completely unfamiliar with the disputes of the 5th century over the nature of Jesus Christ and the necessity of calling Mary the theotokos or God bearer. The title Mother of God says less about Mary and more about Jesus Christ. Mary did not give birth to a human person, she gave birth to the second person of the Trinity who tabernacled in human flesh. The title does not mean she is the source of the divinity of Christ only that the one born from her was God. The Council of Chalcedon cleared up this debate and left the following definition:

https://www.monergism.com/definition-council-chalcedon-451-ad

...begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the virgin Mary, the mother of God, according to the manhood;...

https://www.theopedia.com/chalcedonian-creed

Rather than being a title taken from a Babylonian goddess calling Mary the Mother of God or theotokos is a bulwark protecting the divinity of Jesus Christ. If one cannot confess that Mary is the Mother of God or that God was born, God died, and God rose from the dead, then one does not have a right understanding of who Jesus Christ is.

But let's get even more to the point. The Yahusha being praised in this song is not Jesus Christ. He is a figment of Tim's imagination existing as a binary with his Father Yahuah. The Bible tells us Jesus Christ IS YHWH (John 8:58 and 12:37-41) and that he is one person in a trinity along with the Father and the Holy Spirit. This album is literally a paean disguised as worship to a non-existent deity encouraging people to keep the Levitical Feasts which Jesus fulfilled and can no longer be kept today because there is no priesthood and no temple. Not only that but it's also AI generated slop. A computer cannot praise the deity be he real or fictional like Yahusha. 

This album is part of a larger package which includes three children's books and a nine-week study guide on keeping the feasts. Tim believes he is restoring these feasts by telling people to keep them. However, without a temple, without Levitical priests, and without sacrifices these feasts cannot be kept properly. Thankfully Jesus Christ has fulfilled the feasts and we are no longer obligated to keep them. To insist otherwise is to teach a false Gospel and a false Christ.