Parent Me Video Premiere
Parent Me feat. J.R. is a single from Json’s City Lights album.
Purchase a digital copy of City Lights from iTunes.
Purchase a physical copy of City Lights from Lamp Mode.
Purchase the video from Lamp Mode.
The Forerunner EP
Stephen the Levite is back on the scene y’all!
On October 19th, we are releasing the Levite’s newest offering, The Forerunner EP. As the name suggests, this album is an offering similar to that of an appetizer. It’s something to whet your appetite. For what you ask? For his next full-length project, which he is in the process of working on.
Think of John the Baptist.
He served a similar purpose. He came as one to prepare the way for someone greater. That being Jesus. God in the flesh.
So, in a similar way, this album prepares the way for something which will be of more substance; a main course – the full-length album.
Until then, we hope you enjoy this appetizer!
We will also be releasing a new shirt (in collaboration with B3AR FRUIT) available for pre-order in anticipation of this new EP.
Keep your eyes peeled…
City Lights // Json’s new album // Pre-order now!
Yes Yes Y’all!!!
We are pleased to announce that Json’s album, City Lights, will be dropping very soon!
How soon?
July 20th.
It can be purchased from our store, as well as select Christian bookstores (call for availability), and most digital outlets (iTunes, Amazon, etc.).
The mission of City Lights is three fold. First, this CD is given to encourage the believer, no matter where they live, to be a light to their city. Secondly, it’s telling the person that doesn’t know Christ that the reason life is so dark in the city, the hood, and the block, is because of the absence of the light of Christ. And lastly, the reality is, a time will come when Christ will return and we won’t have to fight to be lights anymore… He will be the light. Until then, will you be a City Light?
Track Listing:
1. Intro
2. City Lights feat. Trubble
3. Hustle City feat. Boxx
4. Snapshot (interlude)
5. Peep Hole
6. Goon feat. Thi’sl & AD3
7. Parent Me feat. J.R.
8. What I Am feat. R-Swift
9. Hope U See
10. Love Like This feat. Thi’sl & Jai
11. Unexpected Happenings
12. I Am A City Light (interlude)
13. Crank It Up feat. Pro
14. Pray for my City feat. Rio, Future, Saved, Mike Real & Flame
15. Bout to Go
16. Heaven’s Runway feat. Fitzgerald
Pre-order your copy now!
The Church // Our newest album
Our new project. “The Church”, is set to be released June 8th, 2010.
We understand both the seemingly controversial nature of “the Church”, especially among the Hip hop contingent, and well as the biblical imperative of the Church’s importance. We are simply offering our contribution to the conversation, fueled and on the diving board of 9Marks’ book, “What is a healthy church”, written by Mark Dever.
9Marks is an organization that helps pastors think more biblically about the church through emphasizing key values that the bible ascribes to a healthy church. They do this through providing a variety of resources, most notably for the book previously listed, on which this album is primarily based. And surely a more biblical understanding of “What is a healthy church”, isn’t just needed for the pastors, but also for every believer.
So along with the Lamp Mode family, we teamed up with Trip Lee, Tedashii, Flame, Evangel, and more, to bring the contents of “What is a healthy church” to the hip-hop community. This is our attempt at communicating that valuable information to and through, the hip-hop culture, so that we can accurately see our place in, “The Church”.
Conferences Anyone?
Just wanted to give you a heads up on 3 upcoming conferences we are going to be a part of in the next couple of months. The first we are organizing and the other 2 we will be exhibitors and front row taking notes.
Frequency Conference // April 10 // Philadelphia
This is a 1 day conference in Philly that we are organizing in connection with Epiphany Fellowship. We will be looking at Jesus in the Old Testament, as well as the Gospels. In addition to that, there will be classes on Hermeneutics and Basic Bible Methodology. At the end of the day, Hazakim and Stephen the Levite will be doing a concert.
Teachers
Matt Chandler // Acts 29
Eric Mason // Acts 29
Miguel Davilla // Reach Life Ministries
Robert Polen // Tenth Presbyterian
For more info on The Frequency Conference: www.epiphanyfellowship.org/frequency
Together 4 The Gospel // April 13-15 // Louisville
The (Unadjusted) Gospel. That’s a topic worth thinking about for several days together with several thousand other pastors and church leaders. Don’t you think?
The good news does not adjust. It’s always the same and it’s always good. Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, proclaims a message that’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. So should we.
Teachers
Thabiti Anyabwile
Mark Dever
Ligon Duncan
John MacArthur
C.J. Mahaney
Albert Mohler
John Piper
R.C. Sproul
Matt Chandler
…and a possible performance by shai linne
For more info on Together 4 The Gospel: www.t4g.org
NEXT // May 28-31 // Baltimore
We all base our lives on what we think God is like. We act on what we know—or believe we know—about God.
The question is whether what we believe about God is true.
Teachers
D.A. Carson
Joshua Harris
Kevin DeYoung
Jeff Pursewell
Mark Dever
C.J. Mahaney
For more info on NEXT: www.thisisnext.org
Helping Haiti
As people in Haiti scramble to rebuild and secure a fruitful society, we feel it is our call to reflect the heart of God’s providential mercy that He extends to all people. God provides by sending Haiti invaluable things like sunshine, water, and food. More important than material needs, the residents of Haiti need the gospel. They need the gospel as much as you and I need the gospel. That’s why we desire to partner with organizations that not only meet temporal needs, but also eternal needs. One way we can tend to Haiti’s eternal needs is through building local churches with indigenous leaders who preach the gospel and make disciples. Leaders who have this heart, such as Mark Driscoll and James White, are involved with an organization called Churches Helping Churches. The organizations primary aim is to help established churches in Haiti maintain a gospel centered presence.
As a response, we have teamed up with Reach Records and Reach Life Ministries to raise money to donate to this organization. How so?
We are throwing a concert and have made a shirt.
Check out the page over at Reach Life…
Hazakim Interview
What does Hazakim mean?
How did they team up with the Lamp Mode Krew?
What’s up with the Jewish samples?
Dimensions of heaven? Huh?
Have you ever woke up in the middle of the night and demanded answers to these questions?
Well, now you can know the answers to these questions as you listen to Hazakim being interviewed on the London based Urban Mission Radio Show. Listen now!
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Part 1
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Part 2
Christ in the Scriptures
The redemptive historical context of scripture
Christ is the protagonist of scripture. The word protagonist means: a: the principle character in a literary work (as a drama or a story) b: a leading actor, character, or participant in a literary work or real event (1). No story is sensible if you omit the principle character from it. Just imagine your favorite movie… then try to imagine that film without the lead character. Some movie, right? But now let’s take it a step further. Let’s try and imagine a lead character, but no story. Try hard to picture what kind of film that would be. What if the film ran all sorts of rabbit trails? Trails that told the story of when and where the protagonist bought his/her pants, what he/she had for breakfast one day when he/she was five, and so on. What if the film got so caught up in the minutia of storytelling but forgot to tell the actual story? It might be considered a decent paperweight before compact disks made videotapes obsolete, but now it could only be referred to as garbage can fodder.
Can it not be said that in one sense you can only really appreciate the significance of a protagonist if there is a story? In the same way, if we approach the scriptures forgetting it’s plot-line we run the risk of not only focusing in on particulars at the expense of the whole, but practically robbing our central character of his significance. It would be like God stopping short of breathing life into Adam after fashioning him from the dust. Since Christ is the protagonist of the biblical story, then the redemption he accomplishes constitutes the major theme of scripture. The Apostle Peter states it this way:
“though you have not seen him (that is, Christ), you love him, though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of you faith, the salvation of your souls. Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and enquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.” -1 Pet 1:8-12 ESV
This “salvation of our souls” is the meta-narrative (big story) of scripture, and to read scripture redemptive-historically is to read scripture in light of the salvation of our souls that is accomplished through the person and work of Christ. The chief way in which Christ procured our salvation was by dying on the cross. Often phrases like “cross-centered” or “preaching the cross” are employed to produce a redemptive-historical focus. The phrase “the cross” carries with it the weight of all that Christ did on the behalf of those he would save and is often a synecdoche for what I would refer to as “the soteriological (salvation) complex” (i.e. his death, burial, resurrection, & ascension). Everything that happened before this “soteriological complex” anticipates it and everything that happens afterward is redemptively-retrospective in nature. To say it another way, in the scriptures there are those things that happened before Christ became a man, died, rose, and ascended, and then there are those things that happened afterward. However, his role in the bible story is so important that these things cannot be understood properly without reference to what he accomplished.
Lamp Mode is committed to presenting you with music that creatively encourages you to keep your focus on this story of redemption and let it saturate the way you think and act. In my most recent release (the Psalter) I wanted to guide listeners through some themes presented to us in the longest book in the bible and show how they point us to the work of Christ. I feel it’s important for us to take our lead from Christ and the Apostles and see the “word of Christ” in the Psalms, utilizing them in our prayers, apologetics, and ethics. We encourage you to read and apply the scriptures to your life in a Christo-centric manner (i.e. with a Christ-centered focus) and grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus.
-g&p
jas
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“Christ in the Psalms” from Jas’s album, The Psalter.
(editors note: Wikipedia offers a good summation of the Redemptive-Historical approach to Scripture. You can check it out here.)
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