Tag: kanye west

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Professing Christian Kanye West is a Christian No More?

We had high hopes for Kayne. When we first covered his supposed conversion in 2019, he was in good hands and was being taught and discipled by pastors who were theologically sound. Over the years, he showed some good fruit, such as Kanye West Talks Expository Preaching and Jesus on Joe Rogan Podcast and Kanye West Talks Faith In New GQ Interview, sayin things like:

One of my pastors, pastor Adam, the way he preaches is called expository. It’s like one-to-one by the Word. I like all different kind of preachers but there are some type of preachers they get up, they have the bible in their hand, and they close the bible and they just talk for two hours.

And some do have anointing, but expository preachers go line for line, and for me it’s like I come from entertainment. I got so much sauce, I don’t need no sauce on the word. I need the word to be solid food that I can understand exactly what God was saying to me through the King James version, through this, you know, this translation or the English Standard Version.”

At the time we were encouraged but were realists, with JD Hall urging back then:

INSTEAD OF GIVING VOCAL SKEPTICISM, TRY PRAYING IN HOPEFUL OPTIMISM

I am perfectly willing to concede that Kanye may brush off his Biblical counselors, jump back into a Hillsong-style Christianity, and become some kind of weird hip-hop antichrist. I am making no definitive claim that I know his conversion is real.

However, I also know that if all you can do is voice concern and not be hopefully optimistic that God can save the chief of sinners, we might have more hope that Kanye is saved than that you are.

Do not be the Prodigal’s older brother, with folded-arms, huffing and angry with snorting, cynical skepticism. Have your doubts, while you hope and pray for the best.

Unfortunately, since then the fruit has lessened and started to rot. His behavior has gotten more and more erratic, a mix of ego and mental illness which has harried West for years. A messy public divorce, frequently bad theology, inexcusable actions and statements, and now racially charged comments that echo what you might find flying from the mouth of Black Hebrew Israelites suggest that Kanye has definitely lost his way. Now, he writes:

“I’m taking a 30-day cleanse. A verbal fast. No alcohol. No adult films. No intercourse. In God we praise. Amen. But my Twitter still lit.”

The fact that Kanye is taking a fast from watching porn and fornicating suggests that it’s something he’s actively been engaged in, and the other fact that it’s only going to last 30 days and not forever is even more an indictment on the state of his soul.

We’ve always taken a sit and wait approach with new believers, and Kanye is no different. After 3 years, we now have our answer.

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Kanye West’s Mysterious, Private Christian School Closing?

Two months after professing Christian Kanye West opened up ‘Donda Academy,’ his own private school Christian school whose mission is to “prepare students to become the next generation of leaders, thinkers, and innovators” using an “an ethic of integrity and care,” he announced that he was shutting it down for the rest of the school year amid backlash over his public controversy but would starting it up again in 2023.

According to an email obtained by ESPN from principal Jason Angell to students, we read:

“Our leadership team will be working diligently to assist all families during this transition, ensuring that every scholar has what they need to succeed in their next community in a prompt and gracious manner,” Angell wrote. “We intend to begin afresh in September of 2023.”

Previously envisioned as “Yeezy Christian Academy,” the school advertised that Donda students will “grow in their faith and community through daily all-school worship and celebration at Sunday Service” so that they can “be a reflection of God’s glory in the world.”

There are about 100 students who started classes in September, with a school uniform consisting of West’s clothing designs. Tuition was $15,000 a year, and there were 16 full-time teachers whose names and educational backgrounds were unknown. 

The kid’s daily schedule consisted of “full school worship; core classes of language arts, math, and science; lunch and recess; enrichment courses including World Language, Visual Art, Film, Choir and Parkour.” Any parent sending their kids must sign a non-disclosure agreement or some other ‘informal agreement.’

A core part of the school included attending choir, with their website explaining, “We are looking for kids who love to sing and lift up the name of Jesus to audition for the DONDA Academy Gospel Choir.”

We previously noted that there is no sense of what type of religious courses are being offered. With Kanye’s understanding of the gospel and his manifestation of the fruits of the spirits growing more scattered and unbiblical over time, there is little reason to presume they will have solid, faithful Christian instruction, and it’s likely a good idea this is being shut down.

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Kanye West Wins Every Christian and Gospel Award at the Billboard Music Awards

Much like last year’s romp through the CCM, billionaire rap mogul, fashion designer and professing Christian for the last two years Kanye West did a clean sweep of all the categories for best Christian and gospel music, winning all the awards at the Billboard music awards in the categories he was nominated in by going 6 for 6 from his album Donda.

Last year West won Top Gospel Artist, Top Christian Album, Top Gospel Album and Top Gospel Songs, beating Kirk Franklin, Bethel Music, Hillsong United, Casting Crowns and Skillet for the title. This year, he added two more victories, winning Top Christian Artist and Top Christian Song.

In doing so, he defeated Maverick City Music, Lauren Daigle, Carrie Underwood, Phil Wickham, Elevation Worship, Cece Winans, Kirk Franklin and For King and Country with songs like ‘Praise God’ and ‘Hurricane’

Because the Billboard awards are in large part based on radio play and popularity, it’s telling that he would win many awards.

Though Kanye is a professing Christian, he’s had a hard go at it lately, indulging in publicly and erratic sinful behavior in the last few months that has seriously called into question his faith. Everyone should be praying for him.

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Kanye Offers Repentant Prayer- Takes ‘Accountability’ for ‘Self-Righteous Christian Behavior’

Kanye West, the billionaire rap mogul, fashion designer and professing Christian for the last two years, released a public ‘Thanksgiving prayer’ where he states he us taking accountability for the the ‘misactions’ that let to his wife of seven years, Kim Kardashian, filing for divorce in Februray of 2021.

Since then, West has been making public pleas for people to pray for his family:

…I want everyone to pray for my family…The narrative that God wants is for you to see that everything can be redeemed in all these relationships. We made mistakes. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve publicly done things that were not acceptable as a husband, but I’m here to change that narrative.”

The rapper, who shares four children with his estranged spouse, credited manic episodes, alcohol consumption, his temper, abuse of religion, and ego on his bad behavior, offering a public confession viewed by millions of people. He reveals:

I’m writing this prayer on my way back from taking my many metres first football game st got to play catch with Tom Brady before the game, this is a God’s dream. My Mini Me is a mix of two of my favourite things: me and my wife’s face.

All I think about every day is how I get my family back together and how I heal the pain that I’ve caused. I take accountability for my actions. New word alert: ‘misactions.’ The one thing that all my successes and failures have in common is me.

Let’s start with A) alcohol. I would drink to take the stress away, to knock the edge off. Drinking affected my health and the health of people around me because I already had a hair trigger temper and this just heightened it.

B) Episodes. I went into a manic episode in 2016 and I was placed under heavy medication. Since then I went on and off the medication which left me susceptible to other episodes, which my wife and family and fans have had to endure.

Ego. My ego has a tendency to go past the threshold of being motivating, entertaining, to just be an overbearing. There are ways to show confidence without arrogance.

Temper. Now I know none of ya’ll ever picture this, but sometimes I scream. And that screaming might have helped me tell off everyone who doubted me and music but that screaming did not help me keep my family together.

Religion. Self-righteous Christian behaviour. When I got saved, it did not immediately make me a better person. It made me a self righteous Christian. Mix that with being rich, famous and very, very, very, very, very attractive. And you got a Molotov cocktail ready to be thrown through the window of anyone who ever disagree with me. I was arrogant with my Jesus. Like I just got me some Jesus at the Gucci store with a stimulus check.

Let’s go with politics here. Good Lord- My wife did not like me wearing the red hat. Being a good wife, she just wanted to protect me and our family. I made me and our family a target by not aligning with Hollywood’s political stance. And that was hard for our marriage. Then I ran for President without proper preparation, and no allies on either side. I embarrassed my wife in the way that I presented information about our family during the one- and thank God only- press conference. All my dad had to say afterwards was’ write your speech next time, son’

F is for finances. I spent money like crazy. I mean, it’s the craziest thing I’ve done, and I’ve done a lot of crazy things. As the priest of my home, I must watch my own money and secure our finances. This is America. So people don’t consider stealing to be stealing. They just chalk it up to greed, consumerism and capitalism. I’ve let people use me. I’ve had giant entourages- people around me just to make me feel good about myself. I’ve had to learn that I had to take accountability. We always judge and tell other people what they should do, but we can only take accountability for ourselves and our children.

This Thanksgiving I’m thankful for the family that my wife has given me. I’m thankful for the life that God has given me. And I’m thankful for your time, attention and patience. In Jesus name, Amen.

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Kanye West Features Marilyn Manson and Justin Bieber in his ‘Sunday Service’ Worship Time

Marilyn Manson- the famed artist who became the poster child for “satanic music” in the early ’90s, particularly after his much protested “AntiChrist Superstar” Album was released, joined professing Christian Justin Bieber for one of Kanye West’s famed Sunday Service events, allegedly singing along and in actuality at one point being prayed for.

Kanye’s Sunday Service, the first one since 2019, had the choir and the two celebrities don robes for the event, which cost 10$ to live stream via Triller. and where they sang gospel songs from the artist’s last two albums. According to People Magazine:

“A spokesperson for Manson tells PEOPLE that Manson was an “integral part” of the Sunday Service. When asked if he had turned to Christianity, the spokesperson said, “That’s nobody’s business.”

https://twitter.com/hiddeninthecrag/status/1455318684558237697

Manson himself has been under heavy fire in the last year and has stayed out of the limelight, after being publicly accused by at least 15 women of a host of disturbing and criminal behavior, including sexual assault, torture, and emotional and physical abuse.

Kanye and Bieber, despite their faith professions, have both very underdeveloped and frequently compromised beliefs, West moreso than Bieber. This cast doubts on whether the seed to be planted in the soil is able to produce good fruit, given their propensity to give a warped and misunderstood presentation of the gospel.

Despite this, we pray that the Lord used this event to minister to Manson and give him faith that leads to repentance.

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Kanye West Talks Expository Preaching and Jesus on Joe Rogan Podcast

Musician and designer Kanye West appeared on the Joe Rogan Podcast on Friday, spending nearly three hours conversing with the famed interviewer about running for the presidency, design, record contracts, being bipolar, politics, abortion, family, Jesus, race, war, and everything else under the sun, frequently speaking in self-aggrandizing statements and sharing both good and bad theology.

The hotly anticipated conversation was everything listeners hoped it would be, with West talking nearly the whole time in a stream of consciousness. At times he made perfect sense and at others he struggled to explain his ideas and articulate them in the best possible and clearest way, resulting in a confusing mess. He describes his reasoning and the way he processes and shares information this way:

I think very three-dimensionally. I don’t think in the black-and-white lines that I’ve been programmed to think in. And I think in full color. So when I talk, I have to describe a thought in five ways. We enjoy food that has multiple seasonings in it. We enjoy music that has multiple instruments. So when I talk, it’s not a rant, it’s a symphony of ideas.

It’s in this spirit that we offer a few thoughts from West.

On making music for God

When I made Sunday Service, I completely stopped rapping, because I don’t know how to rap for God. All my raps always had nasty jokes. When I went to the hospital in 2016, I wrote, ‘Started church in Calabasas.’ As we left from 2018 going into 2019, I said; I’m not going to let one Sunday go by without starting this church. To start a ministry, I’m like the little drummer boy, where I’m saying, ‘This is all I got to bring, my drum.’ I might not be well versed in the Word, but I know how to make music and I know how to put this choir together. And all things can be made good for God. It quickly became the best choir of all time, because all the best singers moved to California…I was four months in before I gave my life to God. I wasn’t saved, I just had a calling, saying, ‘Just go make this church.’

God knocked me off my horse, literally called me and said, ‘Now I need you.’ Not that God needs me, but we need God. He called me to serve him. I was tired of serving the music industry, tired of serving filling up stadiums.

On expository preaching:

One of my pastors, pastor Adam, the way he preaches is called expository. It’s like one-to-one by the Word. I like all different kind of preachers but there are some type of preachers they get up, they have the bible in their hand, and they close the bible and they just talk for two hours.

And some do have anointing, but expository preachers go line for line, and for me it’s like I come from entertainment. I got so much sauce, I don’t need no sauce on the word. I need the word to be solid food that I can understand exactly what God was saying to me through the King James version, through this, you know, this translation or the English Standard Version.”

On Abortion:

People saw this clip of me crying. Some people didn’t know what I was crying about. I was crying about that there is a possible chance that Kim and I didn’t make the family that we have today. That’s my most family-friendly way to word that. The idea of it just tears me up inside, that I was a part of a culture that promotes this kind of thing.

One of the major statistics on the subject of life is that the greatest advocates for the A-word [abortion] are men from ages 31-37. That’s how old I was. I felt like I was too busy. My dad felt like he was too busy for me. We have a culture of that…In our culture, we’re doped up, and psyched out, and made to kill our children. We have to decouple the conversation of Planned Parenthood and women’s choice.

I’m Christian, so I’m pro-life. When I go into office, I’m not changing laws because I realize we live in an imperfect world and an imperfect society. What I will be presenting is a Plan A. We’ve already started working on a Plan A to change the connotation of orphanages, to change the connotation of foster care.

There were 210,000 deaths due to COVID in America. Everywhere you go, you see someone with a mask on. With A, the A word, A culture–I’ll say it one time, with abortion culture–there are 1,000 Black children aborted a day. Daily. We are in genocide. More Black children since February than people have died of COVID. And everyone wears a mask. So it’s a matter of where are we turning a blind eye to?

The whole interview is fascinating and be seen here or on Spotify. West talks further about Jesus and God speaking to him in a host of other contexts, all peppered throughout the interview, with some of it good and some of what he has to say very bad.

Continue to pray for West.

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Kanye West Crushes Hillsong United and Bethel Music at the 2020 Billboard Music Awards

Kanye swept almost all the Christian categories at the 2020 Billboard Music Awards on Wednesday night, winning 4 of a possible 6 and his work receiving a total of 9 nominations, the most of the night.

West, who is busy promoting his possible spoiler presidential campaign, gave glory to God for the recognition his Jesus Is King album received, saying in an uploaded video:

Thanks (to) all of my Christians that’s been praying for me, praying for the day where I would serve the kingdom. You know God just keeps showing up. Incredible increase and the favor.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1316741623682871297

Kanye took home Top Gospel Artist, Top Christian Album, Top Gospel Album and Top Gospel Songs, losing only to Lauren Daigle for Top Christian Artist and For King and Country’s “God Only Knows,” for Top Christian Song.

Artists he beat include Kirk Franklin, Bethel Music, Hillsong United, Casting Crowns and Skillet. None have yet commented on their losses.

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Kanye West Releases Flurry of Emotional Tweets on Abortion, Planned Parenthood

Yesterday, music sensation Kanye West released several tweets on the horrors of the abortion – a topic that he has been gravitating towards discussing these past few weeks. The posts follow another collection of now since-deleted ones, where he also posted images of a 6-month-old baby in the womb and said, “these souls deserve to live.”

The new round is particularly poignant, as he lists how many black babies have been killed by abortion in the last year – a staggering amount, and then makes a callback to an incident he had last week, where during one of his rallies he broke down in tears, publicly weeping in front of everyone as he pondered the horror of abortion and his history with it, saying at that time:

“My dad wanted to abort me. My mom saved my life. There would have been no Kanye West, because my dad was too busy”

“I almost killed my daughter…So even if my wife were to divorce me after this speech, she brought North into the world, even when I didn’t want to,” he added. “She stood up, and she protected that child.”

Kanye West announced that he was a born again Christian last year and has been battling mental health issues, including bipolar disease. Please pray for Kanye, that his conversion is genuine, and that he continues to grow in the Lord.