Doug Van Pelt

I'll see you tomorrow Doug, we'll talk Steak.

Don't forget to see Project 86 and
Becoming The Archetype for me!
Underoath vs. Skillet

UNDEROATH!

Doug: I can't wait to read your daily words from Cornerstone ! Thanks Bra. Wish I was there.........................

hi! I look forward to (hopefully) meeting you this week. me and my husband will be there on Friday only, most likely. Gotta catch the HM stage that night! =)

we're so STOKED.

=)

~d~

I wish I could be there too!! Cornerstone is the best!!
I'll be thinking about you and everyone there, and praying for you. I know HM stage will be exciting and exhilerating!!
Hope it doesn't get too hot around there!!
Hope the mosquitoes are only the ones in ink and not the kind that bite!!
Take care and God bless!

Doug.... It's Thursday........ you out there ???????? ..............

Dear Doug, It's your brother Matthew again.I am not saying anything negative about your ministry,or your calling.My gift is encouaging my brothers in this spiritual battle of our souls.I am not against heavy music,I just stand for Truth and against error.By the way, did you check out thoroughly those two ministries?.I am only giving you resources related to music,see both then tell me what you recieved from them. I know for a fact that you will be awestruck with what rock&roll means spiritually. PEACE 1st Timothy 3:16 1st Peter 2:2-3, Ecclesiastes 8:1

Dear Doug, It's your brother Matthew again.I am not saying anything negative about your ministry,or your calling.My gift is encouaging my brothers in this spiritual battle of our souls.I am not against heavy music,I just stand for Truth and against error.By the way, did you check out thoroughly those two ministries?.I am only giving you resources related to music,see both then tell me what you recieved from them. I know for a fact that you will be awestruck with what rock&roll means spiritually. PEACE 1st Timothy 3:16 1st Peter 2:2-3, Ecclesiastes 8:1

Dear Matthew, thankyou sooooo much for standing strong in the WORD and not being lukewarm in giving sound advice scripture wise.I do pray for Doug to take this seriously ,because we are in a war against satan everyday.The enemy is using music and the spirit of confusion.For example I was listening to P.O.D for 14yrs until the HOLY SPIRIT told me P.O.D. are not christians,they are rastafarians.So now I have to interceed for the band to come into a relationship with the Everlasting Father.So now I have a shirt that says Pride.Only.Destroys. Keep fighting the good fight in love always.Do not worry about Doug , he is in the LORDS hands now,you have done what the LORD told you.

uh...woa. ok guys, keep studying and be careful not to take what God has spoken to you about your own personal walk and pass it on as absolute truth regarding the church. There is absolute truth, but there are also personal things God tells us not to be apart of personally for our own benefit. That does not mean it is that way for everyone. Many graces for many callings.

HAWK NELSON! :-)

HAWK NELSON! :-)

Is P.O.D. Rastafarian?

No, They are Christians...

"...It's not Rastafarianism, its being around so many different cultures & styles, for example...we grew up in south S.D. where there are many different nationalities & religions also heavy drug use & etc... so our perspective about life & God is seeing it first hand ….We've seen God change our parents' lives & our friends' so there is nothing that can take that away & its as if our up bringing has given us a foundation in what we believe cause we seen it first hand!" - Wuv's sister

GW: Did reggae music influence your approach to presenting a spiritual message through music? Sonny: I think it definitely had a lot to do with it. For me, reggae music was always peaceful. So I think, growing up, reggae music always kept me a peacemaker. I never listened to "kill your mother" and pimp and ho" type of music. Like today, a lot of that kind is out there for kids to listen to. And they imitate a lot of what they hear. But back then I'd listen to a lot of reggae music, and it was 95% scripture-based. Just stories from the Bible about God watching out for you. So I always had a good mentality that kind of sunk in. When I started making music, it was just an expression of that.

GW: Can you reconcile Christianity with Rastafarianism? Sonny: With Rasta, a lot of it is scripture-based. People walk around singing Bob Marley lyrics, but they don't even know he got that from Psalms or Proverbs or something. The Rastas just kind of twist scripture their own way. But as far as morality, it's the same. And they believe in Jesus Christ just like we do. But they believe that the Second Coming of Christ was Haile Selassie. They believe the Second Coming already happened. So there's differences. (*shrugs*) They smoke a lot of herb, you know? It's a spiritual thing. -GuitarWorld, Nov 2001

Checkout.com: How do you compromise the gentle side of your spirituality and the aggressiveness of your music? Sonny: Our faith is what drives us to be even crazier. That's what motivates us. When we get on stage, it's so personal that we've been given that opportunity to praise God on stage. Even if the crowds don't get into it, that's 30 minutes on stage between God and us. And it pushes us even more. At the same time, our message isn't about complaining or whining or you do this, you do that. It's about love. It's all about positivity. There is a balance in there, we take what God's done with us and we use that on stage.

"I think Rasta and Christianity have come very close together except, you know, obviously the different beliefs of the second coming of Christ and who Christ was," Sandoval explains. "You listen to Marley's tracks and a lot of old-school reggae music, and 95 percent of that is straight scripture. They're telling old Bible hymns and stories about Moses and Noah and Elijah. And now I realize that whenever I've had fights or troubles, I've always looked for peace first. And it's because of a lot of the reggae that I'm listening to is about choosing to accept peace and love rather than hate. So I figured why not incorporate more of that style in our music." - MTV.com 2003

How did P.O.D. get together?

CH1: Tell us about your beginning in music. When did you start playing? Wuv: Actually, Marcos and I started the band. We played together before P.O.D. -- I met him through a friend in high school. I played drums with all the kids, and my dad played, too. We just got together and started having fun. Sonny -- he's my cousin -- was always coming to shows and hanging out and just doing his thing. Around that time, his mom passed away with cancer. She was 36 years old and he was 18 or 19, and I kind of saw how depressed he was getting so I just said to him, "Hey man, if you want to get your mind off your mom, if you want to come try out and sing in the band, that'd be cool." He was like, "Yeah, maybe I'll try that." And that was 10 years ago. So it's funny. He never tried to be a singer, but through all the years of just plain having fun together, he's developed into who he is today, and I think it's amazing. Just awesome.

Teenmag.com: Tell me, when you started the band, was it just kind of for fun or did you always plan on making music a career? Wuv: We just started out having fun in the garage. Me and Marcos met through a friend in high school. I was in eleventh grade, and he was like in tenth grade. So we just had fun, just playing, and even when my cousin joined the band, it was still the same thing. It was never like, 'Dude we got a shot at this, man. I can tell we got something.' It was never like that. I mean, ever. I still think it's not like that. It just turned into that, over the years. Like I said, everything that happens now is like a bonus.

MTV Radio Network: When did you guys get started? Wuv: Marcos and I got together about nine years ago when we were in high school. We met through a friend, and we got together and started jamming in a garage and playing crazy stuff for all our friends. Then Sonny was doing something with hip-hop with some of my other friends, and we asked him to try to blend in some hip-hop flavor with our stuff. We borrowed Traa from my uncle's funk band, and he never left, and it's been P.O.D. ever since then. Marcos: We borrowed him and kept him. W: Yeah, we borrowed him, then we stole him.

5. How did they become Christians?

Wuv: "My dad was one of the biggest drug dealers in south San Diego," Wuv reveals. "He was living on the streets for three years before God actually touched his heart. After that, he would bring me to church and I started to see God change my dad's life. Also, God totally restored my parents' marriage."

Warrior Grrrl : How did you come to know the Lord?
Sonny: Ultimately just when my mother passed away. She was a Christian, and just watching God move through her life. Her being sick, and watching her example of being a Christian through all she was going through. And I was basically faced with the decision, I had to make a choice right there whether I was going to trust in God or not. I chose to trust in God and believe in Him, and it's been almost 7 and a half years later and I've just continued to stand strong.

WG: Before your Mom died, did she know that you had become a Christian?
Sonny: Yeah. What actually opened my eyes was that I remember when she was sick, one time she pulled me aside and she said 'you might be fooling everybody, but you're not fooling me. I want to know one thing, I want to make sure that you're in Heaven with me when I die.' I was like 'mom, don't talk like that.' She said 'no, when I die I want to make sure that you and your sister are going to be in Heaven with me.' I just said 'yeah, cool mom. I know.' I just always remember that, and then she got sick and she had to be in the hospital and she was dying. I remember that she was hanging on for a week and the doctor said that she was going to die any moment. He would say that every day and she just kept hanging on. Finally I realized that she was holding on because she knew that if she was to die that she would never see me again, because I wasn't right with the Lord. So I saw that, and, I recognized that and I went out and just prayed and asked God to come into my life. Then I went back into the hospital and I whispered into her ear 'go and be with Jesus, it's cool now; it's gonna be all right.' It was only moments later that she took her last breath and went to be with the Lord. I knew that God was faithful to her prayers, because I knew that she had been praying for me for a long time, and I knew that God was faithful to the very last moment.

"My mother was a Christian in her later years," he (Sonny) says. "She loved God and trusted in God to her very last dying breath. She would sing worship songs while laying there in her hospital bed, and for me, I had never seen a more beautiful thing. She knew that she was going to die, but she always had a song in her heart, and she thanked God for the moments that she had. At first I thought I was practicing just for her, so that she wouldn't worry about her son. But the more I got into it, I realized that there is a love." Kerrang! Jan 12, 2002

After Wuv's family turned to spirituality, the Sandovals followed suit. Sonny's mom started reading the Bible and encouraged her kids to seek salvation. At first Sonny wasn't interested. Then his mom was stricken with cancer and died. "I was sitting there watching her suffer," he remembers, "and I said, 'What's the purpose? Why does anything matter?' "When I reached than moment of being at rock bottom," Sandoval says, "I prayed to God. ... That was the point where I said to myself, 'Enough messing around, enough goofing off and getting into trouble. There's more to life than just little old me. I need to do something that means something and find something real.' " - MTV.com

6. What does "Jah" mean?

Psalm 68:4 "Sing unto God, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name JAH, and rejoice before him."

Jah is actually Hebrew for "the Lord," only there is no "j" sound in the Hebrew alphabet and it sounds like the "y" sound, so it's actually Yah in Hebrew. Whenever the Bible says "hallelujah" it's saying "praise the Lord". Jah=the Lord. For proof besides an ancient Hebrew study read along to Psalm 150 while listening to it on the TFEOS CD.

Jenna, it is SO SO SAD that you claim "the Holy Spirit showed you" that POD aren't Christians. Now no one can point out that you are wrong. You've made a foolish choice of words. Your words, which can be so harmful. Imagine, just for a second, if I accused YOU of not being a Christian. Wouldn't that hurt? How would you feel? I wouldn't like it if someone said that of me. When you accuse POD of not being Christian, you are making a VERY SERIOUS accusation. You shouldn't do this without much thought and careful and prayerful consideration. The Bible makes it clear that accusations of sin should only be given credence if they are accompanied by two or three witnesses. And elders or leaders should be given special care (and pause) before accusations fly.

What would you say of yourself if you had to defend your faith in Jesus? If I ranted on a public message board that you were not a Christian (and I made the FOOLISH and IMMATURE mistake of stating that God Himself showed me this), then you would probably find yourself stating in your own words that you believe in Jesus, maybe that you love Him. You might try to go so far as to show examples that prove that your faith is genuine. That would be like bragging. If your friends and family came to your side and defended you instead, it would have more credibility, but still how would we really know that you believed in Jesus and that you were not living a secret and sinful lifestyle? These things are hard to state with total confidence and certainty.

You should have used two or three words to make your argument not be petty, silly, ridiculous and childish. Those three words would be "I believe that" the Holy Spirit showed me. That gives us an out to dismiss your claim. When you state dogmatically that God showed you something, you eliminate the option of debate. That's like what a little kid will do when they run out of points or reason during an argument.

I don't think the Holy Spirit showed you that. I don't know the guys as close, personal friends, but the people in P.O.D. and I do know each other. I would without hesitation recommend them to teach my kids Sunday School. If you think about it, that is a high level of trust. I don't want a messed up person to teach my kids about God. I want someone who I believe is grounded in the faith, mature, not given to immature action to teach my kids. I'd be happy to have them sit under the POD guys' instruction.

It seems you are afraid of false religion. Anything closely resembling some other religion sets off all your warning bells, as if anything associated in your mind with a false religion is yoked together with that false religion. God gave you a brain. I believe that you are making a rash, premature, and immature and false conclusion regarding POD.

I can't prove that ANYone else is a Christian really. Even Billy Graham, who I'm confident is a believer and faithful servant of our Beloved Lord, cannot be proven to be a believer, because we cannot truly know his heart. If we trust his words then we can believe that he loves Jesus. Did you know that P.O.D. has been asked to perform at Greg Laurie's Harvest Crusades in SoCal this summer? Do you think a good, solid ministry like that would hire a Rastafarian band? I think you're crazy!