Rapper Game Portrays Jesus Christ As Gang Banger on Album Cover

In what is the latest blasphemy of Jesus Christ by a hip hop artist, rapper The Game, released the cover artwork for his newest album Jesus Piece which portrays The Lord Jesus Christ as a gangster from the Bloods gang, which The Game proudly belongs to. While Game’s motives behind the blasphemous image may have been positive, his action reflects the sad state of the Christian church today where many Pastors are failing in their duty to properly teach the Bible to those who are new to the faith or newly-saved and thus lead them into error such as a mockery of Jesus Christ.

As the news reports stated:

The artwork for the upcoming “Jesus Piece” album shows a stained-glass image of Jesus Christ, who is wearing a gaudy gold chain and a red bandana – often associated with the Bloods street gang – and has a teardrop tattoo on his face. The album’s title is written as “Je5us Piece,” with the number five also being a symbol of the Bloods, and there are marijuana leaves on both sides of Jesus’ likeness. [B&E: A “Jesus Piece” is hip hop slang for a necklace that has a Jesus or crucifixion pendant on it.]

 
“I’m calling [my new album] ‘Jesus Piece’ ’cause last year in August I got baptized and so I’ve been going to church, but I still been kinda doing me out here,” Game said in an interview with radio personality Jenny Boom Boom in September. “I still love the strip club and I still smoke and drink. I’m faithful to my family, so I wanted to make an album where you could love God and be of God, but still get it poppin’ in your life.” (source)

Webster’s 1828 Dictionary defines blasphemy as: An indignity offered to God by words or writing; reproachful, contemptuous or irreverent words uttered impiously against Jehovah.
Blasphemy is an injury offered to God, by denying that which is due and belonging to him, or attributing to him that which is not agreeable to his nature.

Showing Jesus depicted as a member of a gang that rappers like Game have heavily promoted and marketed to the culture for their ability to sell crack, make illegal money and kill people is obviously an indignity and irreverent.   Additionally, making any artwork image of Jesus or God The Father is a sin in the Bible. In Acts chapter 17, the Apostle Paul is meeting and sharing the Gospel to a group of Greek scholars known as stoics, who had a series of statues and idols set up to numerous pagan gods they worshiped. In explaining who the true God was, the God of the Bible, Paul illustrated the difference between their gods and the God of Christianity:

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead. – Acts 17:24-31.

We are not to make artwork of God. God, who is the Creator of all things, is far more vast and great for us to think we can make a statue or painting of Him. Similarly in Exodus 20 when Moses received the 10 Commandments from The Lord, the second commandment says:  Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. – Exodus 20:4.  Scripture is clear -  Christians are not to make images of God, which includes a “Jesus piece.”  And certainly depicting God in an inappropriate manner is even worse.

The Cause of Confusion: The Apostate Church

“You want to believe in God, but you don’t want to be criticized and ridiculed by people who think that they’re better than you,” he told Rap-Up TV. “I don’t want to feel like I can’t love God or appreciate Jesus and have to put down that blunt. I want to smoke, maybe shower up, then go to church. Get the word, walk out of church, maybe smoke again, maybe hit up a strip club or two and do me, but I don’t want to be ridiculed.” – The Game aka Jayceon Taylor (source).

Now it is this author’s belief that Taylor did not intend to mock Christianity in this album cover. It was more of an attempt to make Jesus Christ adjust to the lifestyle that Taylor wants to live – where he can still be a gang member, make all types of sin-promoting music, use drugs, go to strip clubs and still be a faithful Christian. He even went so far as to include marijuana leaves in the image on the album cover.  This is not in line with what the Bible says and he is serious error of not even knowing the Gospel, much less believing it. But who is truly at fault here? Look no further than the church which Taylor attends. Refuge Church, in Gardena, California, is run by Bishop Noel Jones who is a major preacher of the heretical, unbiblical Prosperity Gospel. Along with fellow apostate preachers like T.D. Jakes, Eddie Long and Benny Hinn (who he has co-hosted church events with), Jones teaches his congregation a “me-centered” Gospel that is focused on using God to attain material wealth and worldly success.

The Bible says: “Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” (Hebrews 13:5). Yet the Prosperity Gospel says the exact opposite. It is entirely premised on coveting more success and more money. All at the cost of “sewing a seed” or giving money to the pastor, which counts as giving money to God, in order to receive your blessing.

Here is a video of Bishop Jones, at a Sunday service of the 17,000-member church, preaching on receiving a ‘double anointing’ of the Holy Spirit. Notice that just minutes into the video, the congregation is literally showering him with cash.

The ‘double anointing’ is a reference to the request the prophet Elisha made to his mentor, the Prophet Elijah, just prior to Elijah being raptured to Heaven in a chariot of fire and whirlwind.

And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. And he said, Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so. – 2 Kings 2:9-10.

This one-time request was made from one man to another at a specific time in ancient Israelite history. And the Spiritual blessing Elisha received was to prophesy and carry out the work of God. It was not a material blessing and Elisha did not have to pay or compensate Elijah or God to receive it. There is nothing in Scripture that indicates there is a universal principle in life to receive “double blessings” in any regard. Yet not only is Jones misusing the Scripture, he is gaining from it because the people are giving him their money in order to receive this blessing. This is a heretical teaching from a false prophet. The Book of 2 Peter warns of these false teachers who would infiltrate the church in the latter days:

But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not. – 2 Peter 2:1-3.

It is because of the churches that are a part of the apostasy – the prophesied falling away of much of the Christian church from sound Biblical doctrine, in favor of New Age, man-made heresy, that so many people like the Rapper Taylor are in this state of spiritual confusion. If someone who is trying to come to church cannot even hear the real Gospel, then how can we expect them to know how to carry themselves as Christians?

The ‘Holy Water’ Video

The spiritual confusion of the rapper Taylor was on complete display in the video for his song Holy Water. With shots of a Jesus head pendant, scenes of a young woman reading a book on prayer interspersed with images of designer clothes, a Rolls Royce and pornographic images of naked women dancing in a shower with alcohol being poured on them (the video was too X-rated for this article to link to it), it again reflects the pseudo-Christianity that Taylor has been taught.  The video shows a cell phone, that is presumably Taylor’s, receiving a text message from “Pastor Mase” -  rapper turned televangelist Pastor, Mason Betha, who is a full-fledged Prosperity Gospel heretic, continually preaching a message on money and earthly success (the opening of his show features him walking off of his private jet and he most recently did a song with Kanye West where he compares himself to a drug lord). This “me-centered” false doctrine leads the misled congregation to recreate the Holy God of the Bible into a God of their own imagination. This is not the real God and they are not believing a real Gospel. 1 John Chapter 2 explains:

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. — 1 John 2:15-17.

Man-centered false Gospels are premised on the world and satisfying worldly lusts. Taylor has clearly fallen for this type of preaching. Jesus Christ, teaching His disciples in the book of Luke said: “…Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day:And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things.” (Luke 2:46-48). There is no sign of repentance for sin or understanding of surrendering one’s own life to follow Christ in Game’s attitude or music. As he said in his own comments above, he wants to believe in Christ but not “be ridiculed.”

With Jesus there is no middle ground, because true Biblical Christianity is the opposite of worldly living. Jesus said:  “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” (John 15:18-19). Christians are going to be ridiculed in circles that glorify fornication, drugs and rebellion because they believe a Gospel that identifies those behaviors as sin. So a Christian should expect ridicule, rather than shun it, because Christians are not of the world. This does not mean a Christian will never sin – but they will despise their sin, repent to God regularly for their sin and seek a life of holiness to follow after the example and image of Jesus Christ.

Taylor’s misunderstanding of the Gospel led him to even greater blasphemy in the video for Holy Water when he displayed an image of himself posing as Jesus on the cross:

This will always be the end result of following a false teacher. And the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of pastors like Bishop Jones who use the Bible for their own gain instead of converting souls to believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins.

As we explained in our article Lessons From A Church Sex Scandal, with false teachers there is often inevitably sexual sin involved as well. In the past year, Bishop Jones, whose church is frequented by celebrities, had an adulterous affair and fathered the child of singer and ‘X-Factor’ finalist Stacy Francis. Francis, who was married at the time, issued a statement confirming the affair and that Jones was the father of the child. And while Jones has not publicly acknowledged the child, his press release after Jones’ announcement did not deny it.

Pray for these false prophets to fail in their manipulation of their congregations and repent of their sins in perverting the Word of God for their own personal gain. And pray for a revival of churches that believe and teach Biblical truths. These are the churches that are going to provide a way to salvation in Jesus Christ and forgiveness of sins. Before the rapper Game can even be judged as a Christian, he has to first understand what it means to be a Christian and that starts with Jesus Christ. Not the false Christ one of the Prosperity Gospel, who is here to work as a personal ATM and genie, but the real one of the Bible, who is God, and left His Heavenly throne to take on the form of a servant, suffer and die so that the sins of the world can be placed on him. And those same sins that the Game thinks are okay to have in his life, need to be outlined to him, so he can understand the need for repentance. And the need for forgiveness and eternal life that comes through the Savior.

But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live. – Ezekiel 18:21-22.