Elvis Presley (1935-1977) is called the \u201cKing of Rock & Roll.\u201d Alice Cooper said, \u201cThere will never be anybody cooler than Elvis Presley\u201d (\u201c100 Greatest Artists of Rock & Roll.\u201d VH1) Presley produced 94 gold singles, 43 gold albums; and his movies grossed over $180 million. Further millions were made through the sale of merchandise. In 1956 alone, he earned over $50 million. He is the object of one of \u201cthe biggest personality cults in modern history.\u201d An estimated one million people visited his gravesite at Forest Hill cemetery during the first few weeks after he died, before it was moved to the grounds of Graceland. More than twenty years after his death, 700,000 each year stream through his Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee; and the annual vigil held to commemorate his death is attended by thousands of dedicated fans, many of whom weep openly during the occasion. Elvis Presley Enterprises takes in more than $100 million per year. When the U.S. Post Office issued a stamp of Elvis Presley and sold Elvis paraphernalia in 1994, sales exceeded $50 million. There are 500 Elvis fanclubs still active around the world.<\/p>\n
More than any other one rock artist or group, Elvis symbolizes the rock & roll era. Countless other rock stars, including the Beatles, trace their inspiration to Elvis. The King of Rock & Roll changed an entire generation. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam observed: \u201cIn cultural terms, [Elvis\u2019s] coming was nothing less than the start of a revolution\u201d (Halberstam, The Fifties). When Elvis appeared on the Milton Berle Show in April 1956, he was watched by more than 40 million viewers, one out of every four Americans. Soon, Life magazine published photos of teenage boys lined up at barbershops for ducktail haircuts so they could look like their rock King. Elvis\u2019 biographer Peter Harry Brown correctly noted that to the girls of that day, \u201cElvis Presley didn\u2019t just represent a new type of music; he represented sexual liberation\u201d (Down at the End of Lonely Street, p. 55). Elvis Presley stood for everything rock & roll stands for: sexual license, rebellion against authority, self-fulfillment, if it feels good, do it and don\u2019t worry about tomorrow, debauchery glossed over with a thin veneer of shallow, humanistic spirituality. The rock & roll philosophy created Elvis Presley, and it killed Elvis Presley.<\/p>\n
Elvis grew up in a superficially religious family, sporadically attending First Assembly of God Church in East Tupelo, Mississippi, then First Assembly of God in Memphis. His father and mother were not committed church members, though, and though Elvis attended church frequently with his mother during his childhood, he never made a profession of faith or joined the church. The pastor in Memphis, James E. Haffmill, says Elvis did not sing in church or participate in a church group (Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 20). By his high school years, Elvis largely stopped attending church. Elvis\u2019s father, Vernon, and mother, Gladys, met at the First Assembly of God in Tupelo, but they eloped a few months later. Gladys was 21 and Vernon was 17. Vernon, was \u201ca weakling, a malingerer, always averse to work and responsibility\u201d (Goldman, Elvis: The Last 24 Hours, p. 16). Vernon went to prison for check forgery when Elvis was a child. In 1948 he was kicked out of his hometown in Mississippi for moonshining, and the Presley family moved to Memphis. Soon after the death of Elvis\u2019s mom, Vernon began dating the wife of a soldier in Germany, and after she divorced her husband, they married. Later Vernon\u2019s second wife left him because of his adultery with another woman. Elvis\u2019s mother was \u201ca surreptitious drinker and alcoholic.\u201d When she was angry, \u201cshe cussed like a sailor\u201d (Priscilla Presley, Elvis and Me, p. 172). She was \u201ca woman susceptible to the full spectrum of backwoods superstitions, prone to prophetic dreams and mystical intuitions\u201d (Stairway to Heaven, p. 46). Gladys was only 46 when she died from alcohol-related problems. Elvis had a twin brother, Jesse, who died at birth, and both he and his mother were accustomed to praying to this dead boy. They talked to him about their problems and asked him for guidance. Elvis told his cousin, Earl, that he talked to Jesse every day, and that sometimes Jesse answered him (Earl Greenwood, The Boy Who Would Be King, pp. 30,32). When they moved to Memphis, Elvis told his cousin Earl that \u201cJesse\u2019s hand was guidin\u2019 us\u201d (Greenwood, p. 78). Elvis was a mamma\u2019s boy to the extreme, and to her death, she was jealous of any other woman in his life. She and Elvis \u201cformed a team that usually excluded the father.\u201d His mother \u201cwanted to be everything to Elvis and wanted more from him than what was right or healthy to expect\u201d (Greenwood, p. 116).<\/p>\n
Elvis was a rebel. Even as a 13-year-old, when the other boys wore crewcuts, Elvis \u201cboasted long, flowing blonde hair that fell almost to his shoulders\u201d (The Boy Who Would Be King, p. 70). (Later he dyed his hair black.) Though he wanted to play football in high school, he refused to cut his hair in order to try out for the team. He cursed and blasphemed God behind his mother\u2019s back, told dirty stories, and ran around to places he knew he should not visit. By the time he graduated from high school, he was spending much of his time in honky tonks and was living in immorality. This is the boy who became the King of Rock & Roll.<\/p>\n
HOW ELVIS BECAME A ROCK STAR<\/p>\n
There is a saying, \u201cThe blues had a baby and named it rock & roll.\u201d Elvis Presley was an important figure in the birth of that baby. Elvis \u201cspent much of his spare time hanging around the black section of town, especially on Beale Street, where bluesmen like Furry Lewis and B.B. King performed\u201d (Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock, p. 783). Beale Street was infamous for its prostitutes and drinking\/gambling establishments. Music producer Jim Dickinson called it \u201cthe center of all evil in the known universe\u201d (James Dickerson, Goin\u2019 Back to Memphis, p. 27). Elvis\u2019s cousin Earl, who paled around with Elvis for many years before and after his success, said that he \u201cadopted Beale Street as his own, even though he was one of the few white people to hang out there regularly\u201d (The Boy Who Would Be King, p. 121). B.B. King said: \u201cI knew Elvis before he was popular. He used to come around and be around us a lot. There was a place we used to go and hang out on Beale Street\u201d (King, A Time to Rock, p. 35). Well-known bluesman Calvin Newborn (brother of Phineas Newborn, Jr.) said that Elvis often stopped by such local nightspots as the Flamingo Room on Beale Street or the Plantation Inn in West Memphis to hear blues bands. Elvis listened to radio WDIA, \u201ca flagship blues station of the South that featured such flamboyant black disk jockeys as Rufus Thomas and B.B. King\u201d (Rock Lives, p. 38). Elvis also listened to radio station WHBQ\u2019s nine-to-midnight Red Hot & Blue program hosted by Dewey Mills Phillips. It was Phillips, in July 1954, who became the first disc jockey to play an Elvis Presley record on the air. Elvis\u2019s first guitarist, Scotty Moore, learned many of his guitar licks from an old black blues player who worked with him before he teamed up with Elvis (Scotty Moore, That\u2019s Alright, Elvis, p. 57). Sam Phillips, owner of Sun Records, was looking for \u201ca white man with a Negro sound and the Negro feel,\u201d because he believed the black blues and boogie-woogie music could become tremendously popular among white people if presented in the right way. Phillips had said, \u201cIf I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.\u201d Phillips also said he was looking for \u201csomething ugly\u201d (James Miller, Flowers in the Dustbin, p. 71). That\u2019s a pretty good description morally and spiritually of rock & roll. Sam Phillips found his man in Elvis, and in 1954 he roared to popularity with \u201cThat\u2019s All Right, Mama,\u201d a song written by black bluesman Arthur \u201cBig Boy\u201d Crudup. The flipside of that hit single was \u201cBlue Moon of Kentucky,\u201d which was a country song that Elvis hopped up and gave \u201ca bluesy spin.\u201d Their first No. 1 hit single, \u201cMystery Train,\u201d was also an old blues number. Six of the 15 songs Elvis recorded for Sun Records (before going over to RCA-Victor a year later) were from black bluesmen.<\/p>\n
By 1956, Presley was a national rock star and teenage idol, and his music and image had a tremendously unwholesome effect upon young people. Parents, pastors, and teachers condemned Elvis\u2019s sensual music and suggestive dancing and warned of the evil influence he was exercising among young people. They were right, but the onslaught of rock & roll was unstoppable. When asked about his sensual stage gyrations, he replied: \u201cIt\u2019s the beat that gets you. If you like it and you feel it, you can\u2019t help but move to it. That\u2019s what happens to me. I can\u2019t help it\u201d (Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 21). Describing what happened to him during rock performances, Elvis said: \u201cIt\u2019s like a surge of electricity going through you. It\u2019s almost like making love, but it\u2019s even stronger than that\u201d (Elvis Presley, cited by James Miller, Flowers in the Dustbin, p. 83). Elvis correctly observed the licentious power of the rock & roll beat.<\/p>\n
Between March 1958 and March 1960 Elvis served in the army, then resumed his music and movie career where he had left off. He had many top ten hits in the first half of the 1960s.<\/p>\n
ELVIS\u2019S ABIDING LOVE FOR SOUTHERN GOSPEL NOT EVIDENCE OF SALVATION<\/p>\n
Elvis performed and recorded many gospel songs. In the early 1950s he attended all-night gospel quartet concerts at the First Assembly of God and Ellis Auditorium in Memphis and befriended such famous groups as the Blackwood Brothers and the Statesmen. When he was 18, Elvis auditioned for a place in the Songfellows Quartet, but the position was given to James Blackwood\u2019s nephew Cecil. Later, as his rock & roll career was prospering, Elvis was offered a place with the Blackwood Brothers, but he turned it down. Even after he became famous, Elvis continued attending Southern gospel sings and the National Quartet Convention. In the early years of his rock & roll career, he sang some with the Blackwood Brothers and the Statesmen at all-night sings at Ellis Auditorium in Memphis (Taylor, Happy Rhythms, p. 117). Elvis told pop singer Johnny Rivers that he patterned his singing style after Jake Hess of the Statesmen Quartet (Happy Rhythm, p. 49). The Jordanaires performed as background singers on Elvis Presley records and as session singers for many other raunchy rock and country recordings. Members of the Speer Family (Ben and Brock) also sang on Elvis recordings, including \u201cI\u2019ve Got a Woman\u201d and \u201cHeartbreak Hotel.\u201d The Jordanaires provided vocals for Elvis\u2019s 1956 megahit \u201cHound Dog.\u201d The Jordanaires toured with Eddy Arnold as well as with Elvis. They also performed on some of Elvis\u2019s indecent movies. J.D. Sumner and the Stamps toured with Elvis from 1969 until his death in 1977, performing backup for the King of Rock & Roll in sin-holes such as Las Vegas nightclubs. Ed Hill, one of the singers with the Stamps, was Elvis\u2019s announcer for two years. It was Hill who concluded the Elvis concerts with: \u201cLadies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building. Goodbye, and God bless you.\u201d (During the years in which Sumner and the Stamps were backing Elvis Presley at Las Vegas and elsewhere, Sumner\u2019s nephew, Donnie, who sang in the group, became a drug addict and was lured into the licentious pop music field.) Sumner helped arrange Elvis\u2019s funeral, and the Stamps, the Statesmen, and James Blackwood provided the music. After Elvis\u2019s death, J.D. Sumner and the Stamps performed rock concerts in tribute to Elvis Presley.<\/p>\n
Elvis\u2019s love for gospel music is not evidence that he was born again. His on-again, off-again profession of faith in Christ also was not evidence that he was saved. Three independent Baptist preachers have testified that Elvis told them that he had trusted Jesus as his Savior in his younger years but was backslidden. There was no biblical evidence for that, though. We must remember that Elvis grew up around churches and understood all of the terminology. There was never a time, though, when Elvis\u2019s life changed. Empty professions of faith do not constitute biblical salvation. \u201cTherefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new\u201d (2 Cor. 5:17). Elvis liked some gospel music but he did not like Bible preaching. He refused to allow anyone, including God, tell him how to live his life. That is evidence of an unregenerate heart.<\/p>\n
We agree with the following sad, but honest, assessment of Elvis\u2019s life:<\/p>\n
\u201cElvis Presley never stood for anything. He made no sacrifices, fought no battles, suffered no martyrdom, never raised a finger to struggle on behalf of what he believed or claimed to believe. Even gospel, the music he cherished above all, he travestied and commercialized and soft-soaped to the point where it became nauseating. … Essentially, Elvis was a phony. … He feigned piety, but his spirituals sound insincere or histrionic\u201d (Goldman, Elvis: The Last 24 Hours, pp. 187,188).<\/p>\n
The Bible warns that friendship with the world is enmity with God (James 4:4); and while we hope Elvis did trust Jesus Christ as God and Savior before he died, there is no evidence that he truly repented of his sin or separated from the world or believed in the Christ of the Bible. The book he took to the bathroom just before he died was either The Force of Jesus by Frank Adams or The Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus, depending on various accounts. Both books present an unscriptural, pagan christ. Elvis never made a public profession of faith in Christ, was never baptized, and never joined a church. Pastor Hamill, former pastor of First Assembly of God in Memphis, says that Presley visited him in the late 1950s, when he was at the height of his rock & roll powers, and testified: \u201cPastor, I\u2019m the most miserable young man you\u2019ve ever seen. I\u2019ve got all the money I\u2019ll ever need to spend. I\u2019ve got millions of fans. I\u2019ve got friends. But I\u2019m doing what you taught me not to do, and I\u2019m not doing the things you taught me to do\u201d (Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 20).<\/p>\n
ELVIS\u2019S DRUG ABUSE KILLED HIM<\/p>\n
Elvis did not drink, but he abused drugs most of his life. He began using amphetamines and Benzedrine to give him a lift when he began his rock & roll career in the first half of the 1950s. It is possible that they were first given to him by Memphis disc jockey Dewey Phillips, who helped popularize Elvis\u2019s music by playing his songs repeatedly (Goldman, p. 9). The drugs \u201ctransformed the shy, mute, passive \u00ceBaby Elvis\u2019 of those years into the Hillbilly Cat.\u2019\u201d He also used marijuana some and took LSD at least once. In her autobiography, Priscilla Presley says that Elvis was using drugs heavily by 1960 and that his personality changed dramatically. After the breakup of his short-lived marriage in 1973, Elvis \u201cwas hopelessly drug-dependent.\u201d He abused barbiturates and narcotics so heavily that he destroyed himself. He died on August 16, 1977, at age 42 in his bathroom at Graceland, of a shutdown of his central nervous system caused by polypharmacy, or the combined effect of a number of drugs. There is some evidence, in fact, that Elvis committed suicide (Goldman, Elvis: The Last 24 Hours, pp. 161-175). He had attempted suicide in 1967 just before his marriage. Fourteen drugs were found in his body during the autopsy, including toxic or near toxic levels of four. Dr. Norman Weissman, director of operations at Bio-Sciences Laboratories, where the toxicity tests were performed, testified that he had never seen so many drugs in one specimen. Elvis\u2019s doctor, George Nichopolous, had prescribed 19,000 pills and vials for Elvis in the last 31.5 months of his life. Elvis required 5,110 pills per year just for his sleeping routine. Elvis also obtained drugs from many other sources, both legal and illegal! It was estimated that he spent at least $1 million per year on drugs and drug prescribing doctors (Goldman, p. 56). Dr. Nichopolous\u2019s head nurse, Tish Henley, actually lived on the grounds of Graceland and monitored Elvis\u2019s drug consumption. In 1980, Nichopolous was found in violation of the prescribing rules of the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners, and he lost his license for three months and was put on probation for three years. In 1992, his medical license was revoked permanently.<\/p>\n
After a protracted legal battle, Elvis\u2019s daughter, Lisa Marie, inherited his entire estate, now valued at over $100 million. Graceland was made into a museum, and it is visited by more than 650,000 per year.<\/p>\n
A SELF-CENTERED MAN<\/p>\n
Elvis was self-centered to the extreme. Though he gave away many expensive gifts, including fancy automobiles and jewelry, it was obvious that he used these to obtain his own way. \u201cBut when his extravagant presents fail to inspire a properly beholden attitude, the legendary Presley generosity peels off, revealing its true motive as the desire for absolute control\u201d (Goldman, p. 104). He could not take even kind criticism and was quick to cut off friends who crossed him in any way. \u201cA little Caesar, he made himself all-powerful in his kingdom, reducing everyone around him to a sycophant or hustler\u201d (Goldman, Elvis: The Last 24 Hours, p. 15). He was hypercritical, sarcastic, and mean-spirited to people around him. When Elvis first began touring with Scotty Moore and Bill Black, they traveled in the automobile owned and maintained by Moore\u2019s wife, Bobbie. She worked at Sears and was the only one who had a steady paying job at the time. When Elvis became an overnight star and began to make big money, he purchased a Lincoln, but he never made any attempt to replace Bobbie\u2019s car or to pay back what she had put into it for them. Elvis promised Scotty Moore and Bill Black, the members of his first band, that he would not forget them if they prospered financially, but he did just that. While Elvis was making tens of thousands of dollars by 1956 and 1957, Moore and Black were paid lowly wages and were finally let go to fend for themselves as best they could. Elvis never gave his old friends automobiles or anything of significant value. Reminiscing on those days, Scotty Moore says, \u201cHe promised us that the more he made the more we would make, but it hasn\u2019t worked out that way. The thing that got me, the thing that wasn\u2019t right about it, was the fact that Elvis didn\u2019t keep his word. … We were supposed to be the King\u2019s men. In reality, we were the court jesters\u201d (Moore, That\u2019s Alright, Elvis, pp. 146,155). Elvis turned them \u201cout to pasture like broken-down mules, without a penny.\u201d Elvis kept up this pattern all his life. He would fire his friends and workers at the snap of a finger, and he \u201cwas not one to give his buddies a second change\u201d (The Boy Who Would Be King, p. 197). Bobby West served his cousin Elvis faithfully for 20 years, and was rewarded in 1976 by being fired with three day\u2019s notice and one week\u2019s pay. Delbert West (another cousin) and Dave Hebler were similarly treated.<\/p>\n
ELVIS\u2019S RAGE<\/p>\n
Elvis often exhibited a violent, even murderous, rage. He was \u201cnotorious for making terrible threats.\u201d He cooked up murder plots against a number of people, including the man his ex-wife ran off with and three former bodyguards who wrote a tell-all book about him. He threw things at people and even dragged one woman through several rooms by her hair. He viciously threw a pool ball at one female fan, hitting her in the chest and injuring her severely. One of his sleep-over girlfriends almost died of a drug overdose he had given her and she remained in intensive care for several days near death. He never once went to see her or call and had no further contact with her. According to his cousin Earl, he never apologized for anything. He drew and fired his guns many times when he could not get his way, firing into ceilings, shooting out television sets. When his last girlfriend, Ginger Alden, attempted to leave Graceland against his wishes, he fired over her head to force her to stay. Elvis hit Priscilla, his wife, at least once, giving her a black eye. He also threw chairs and other things at her. Once he tore up her expensive cloths and threw them and her out into the driveway. He even mocked and flaunted her with his affairs. When his father remarried, Elvis treated him and his wife very badly. When he first learned of it, he \u201cthrew a tantrum of frightening proportions,\u201d destroying furniture and punching holes in the walls with his fists. On one occasion he stormed around the dinner table and threw the plates full of food at the wall, cursing his father and stepmother and blaspheming God (The Boy Who Would Be King).<\/p>\n
ELVIS\u2019S IMMORALITY<\/p>\n
Elvis was a fornicator and adulterer. He had \u201ca roving eye.\u201d \u201cHis list of one-night stands would fill volumes\u201d (Jim Curtin, Elvis, p. 119). He began sleeping with multiple girls per week when he was only one year out of high school and discovered the power of his music to capture sensual girls. His cousin Earl notes that the sleazy music clubs Elvis was visiting \u201csatisfied more than his thirst for music — they unleashed Elvis\u2019s sexuality\u201d (The Boy Who Would Be King, p. 122). He slept with many girls before his marriage to Priscilla Beaulieu, and had multiple affairs after his marriage. Priscilla was only a 14-year-old ninth grader when Elvis began dating her in 1959 during his army tour in Germany. At the time he met Priscilla, he had an even younger girl living in his house (Moore, That\u2019s Alright, Elvis, p. 162). Elvis corrupted the shy, teenaged Priscilla. He gave her liquor and got her drunk. He got her hooked on pills. He taught her to dress in a licentious manner. He encouraged her to lie to her parents. He led her into immorality and pornography. He taught her to gamble. He used hallucinogenic drugs with her. (These are facts published in Priscilla\u2019s autobiography.) In 1962, the 15-year-old Priscilla moved in with Elvis at his Graceland mansion in Memphis (after Elvis lied to her parents about the living arrangement) and they lived together for five years before they married in May 1967. (The marriage was probably due to pressure put on Elvis by his manager, who was worried about the star\u2019s public image.) Elvis and Priscilla had constant problems in their marriage and were divorced in 1973. Elvis had many adulterous affairs during his marriage, and Priscilla admits two affairs of her own. Scotty Moore\u2019s second wife, Emily, said she felt sorry for Priscilla because of all of the women Elvis was seeing. Elvis seduced his stepbrother Billy\u2019s wife, Angie, and destroyed their marriage. He then banished Billy from Graceland. Elvis\u2019s cousin, Earl, who was his best buddy in high school and during the early years of his music career and who worked for him for many years after his success, describes how Elvis became addicted to orgies involving many girls at one time. Elvis cursed and profaned the Lord\u2019s name continually in his ordinary conversation. Even during his earliest concerts he \u201ctold some really dirty, crude jokes in between his songs\u201d (RockABilly, p. 120).<\/p>\n
WASTING A FORTUNE<\/p>\n
Elvis lived for pleasure but was utterly bored with life before he was 40 years old. Elvis sought to be rich, but it came with a curse attached to it and most of his riches disappeared into thin air. Though Elvis\u2019s music, movies, and trademarked items grossed an estimated two or more BILLION dollars during his lifetime, he saw relatively little of it and most of what he did receive was squandered on playthings. By 1969, he was so broke that he was forced to revive his stage career. He had no investments, no property except that surrounding Graceland, and no savings. His manager, Colonel Parker, had swindled or mismanaged him out of a vast fortune. (On Parker\u2019s advice, for example, Elvis sold the rights to his record royalties in 1974 for a lump sum that netted him only $750,000 after taxes.)<\/p>\n
ELVIS\u2019S SENSUAL MUSIC<\/p>\n
Elvis\u2019s music was reflective of his lifestyle: sensual and licentious. Many of his performances were characterized by hysteria and near rioting. Females attempted to rip off Elvis\u2019s clothes. There were riots at his early concerts. \u201cHe\u2019d start out, ‘You ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 but a Hound Dog,\u2019 and they\u2019d just go to pieces. They\u2019d always react the same way. There\u2019d be a riot every time\u201d (Scotty Moore, p. 175). Girls literally threw themselves at him. In DeLeon, Texas, in July 1955, fans \u201cshredded Presley\u2019s pink shirt — a trademark by now — and tore the shoes from his feet.\u201d At a 1956 concert in Jacksonville, Florida, Juvenile Court Judge Marion Gooding warned Elvis that if he did his \u201chip-gyrating movements\u201d and created a riot, he would be arrested and sent to jail. Elvis performed flatfooted and stayed out of trouble. Colonel Parker played up Elvis\u2019s sensuality. He taught him to \u201cplay up his sexuality and make both the men and women in the audience want him\u201d (The Boy Who Would Be King, p. 164).<\/p>\n
TRAGEDY FOLLOWS THE ROCK MUSIC LIFESTYLE<\/p>\n
Elvis\u2019s first band was composed of three members, Elvis, lead guitarist Scotty Moore, and bass guitarist Bill Black. The lives of all three men were marked by confusion and tragedy. Elvis died young and miserable. When asked about his severe narcotic usage in the years before his death, Elvis replied, \u201cIt\u2019s better to be unconscious than miserable\u201d (Goldman, p. 3). Bill Black, who formed the Bill Black Combo after his years with Elvis, died in 1965 at age 29 of a brain tumor. Scotty Moore was divorced multiple times. He also had multiple extra-marital affairs. When he had been married only three months to his first wife, he fathered a child by another woman, a nightclub singer he met on the road. The little girl was born the night Elvis, Moore, and Black recorded their first hit at Sun Records. During his second marriage, Moore fathered another out-of-wedlock child. In 1992, at age 61, Moore filed for bankruptcy.<\/p>\n
ELVIS\u2019S STRANGE RELIGION<\/p>\n
Elvis did not believe the Bible in any traditional sense. His christ was a false one. Elvis constructed \u201ca personalised religion out of what he\u2019d read of Hinduism, Judaism, numerology, theosophy, mind control, positive thinking and Christianity\u201d (Hungry for Heaven, p. 143). The night he died, he was reading the book Sex and Psychic Energy (Goldman, Elvis: The Last 24 Hours, p. 140). Elvis loved material by guru Paramahansa Yogananda, the Hindu founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship. (I studied Yogananda\u2019s writings and belonged to his Fellowship before I was saved in 1973.) In considering a marriage to Ginger Alden (which never came to pass) prior to his death, Elvis wanted the ceremony to be held in a pyramid-shaped arena \u201cin order to focus the spiritual energies upon him and Ginger\u201d (Goldman, Elvis: The Last 24 Hours, p. 125). Elvis traveled with a portable bookcase containing over 200 volumes of his favorite books. The books most commonly associated with him were books promoting pagan religion, such as The Prophet by Kahilil Gibran; Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda; The Mystical Christ by Manley Palmer; The Life and Teachings of the Master of the Far East by Baird Spalding; The Inner Life by Leadbetter; The First and Last Freedom by Krishnamurti; The Urantia Book; The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception; the Book of Numbers by Cheiro; and Esoteric Healing by Alice Bailey. Elvis was a great fan of occultist Madame Blavatsky. He was so taken with Blavatsky\u2019s book The Voice of Silence, which contains the supposed translation of ancient occultic Tibetan incantations, that he \u201csometimes read from it onstage and was inspired by it to name his own gospel group, Voice\u201d (Goldman, Elvis, p. 436). Another of Elvis\u2019s favorite books was The Impersonal Life, which supposedly contains words recorded directly from God by Joseph Benner. Biographer Albert Goldman says Elvis gave away hundreds of copies of this book over the last 13 years of his life.<\/p>\n
Elvis was sometimes called the evangelist by those who hung around him, and he called them his disciples; but the message he preached contained \u201cstrange permutations of Christian dogma\u201d (Stairway to Heaven, p. 56). Elvis believed, for example, that Jesus slept with his female followers. Elvis even had messianic concepts of himself as the savior of mankind in the early 1970s. He read the Bible aloud at times and even conducted some strange \u201cBible studies,\u201d but he had no spiritual discernment and made up his own wild-eyed interpretations of biblical passages. His ex-wife, Priscilla, eventually joined the Church of Scientology, as did his daughter, Lisa Marie, and her two children.<\/p>\n
Elvis prayed a lot in his last days, asking God for forgiveness, but the evidence points to a Judas type of remorse instead of godly repentance. \u201cFor godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death\u201d (2 Cor. 7:10). One can have sorrow or remorse for the consequences of one\u2019s sin without repenting toward God and trusting God\u2019s provision for sin, which is the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Judas \u201crepented himself\u201d in the sense that he was sorry for betraying Jesus, and he committed suicide because of his despair, but he did not repent toward God and trust Jesus Christ as his Savior (Matt. 27:3-5). True biblical salvation is \u201crepentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ\u201d (Acts 20:21). Had Elvis done this he would have been a new man (2 Cor. 5:17) and would have seen things through the eyes of hope instead of through the eyes of despair. He would have had supernatural power, and there would have been a change in his life. The spiritual blindness would have fallen from his eyes and he would have cast off his eastern mysticism and cleaved to the truth. Elvis\u2019s guilt and sorrow produced no perceptible change in his life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Elvis Presley (1935-1977) is called the \u201cKing of Rock & Roll.\u201d Alice Cooper said, \u201cThere will never be anybody cooler than Elvis Presley\u201d (\u201c100 Greatest Artists of Rock & Roll.\u201d VH1) Presley produced 94 gold singles, 43 gold albums; and his movies grossed over $180 million. Further millions were made through the sale of merchandise. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2302,2348,5348],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7476"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}