Natasha Bedingfields Cover of Dylans Ring Them Bells Strikes Discordant Note with Amnestys International Humanitarianism

Richard Gott on Dylan in The Guardian and turning up on the blurb of Dylans Lyrics:
As a lyric poet of intensity, and as a human being of political and humanistic feeling, Dylan stands proud with the revolutionary romantics of the early nineteenth century.

John Gibbens in The Nightingales Code: A Poetic Study of Bob Dylan on Chimes of Freedom:
The only way to connect a thunderstorm, a wedding, and the salvation of the abandoned and forsaked is through the parousia the second coming of Christ, who says of it: . . .

He quotes Matthew 24:27 King James Version (KJV):

27For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

He also mentions the Wedding Supper of the Lamb in the Book of Revelation and the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5. But Bedingfield chooses, in her impeccable sense of political correctness, Ring Them Bells:
Ring them bells for the chosen few Who will judge the many when the game is through.

http://www.directlyrics.com/natasha-bedingfield-covers-bob-dylan-on-ellennews.html Compare from nine years before:

Pulled me out of bondage and You made me renewed inside Filled up a hunger that had always been denied Opened up a door no man can shut and You opened it up so wide And Youve chosen me to be among the few What can I do for You?

Professor Christopher Ricks said that if he were to become a Christian it would be because of songs like this. See The Inventions of Bob Dylan at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epHxpdS5bKM. Poe-faced academic Christopher Rollason, taking Dylan extremely seriously at http://www.atlantisjournal.org/ARCHIVE/31.2/2009Rollason.pdf:
In 1989 came Oh Mercy, an album little-known to the general public but arguably one of Dylans best. This album and some of the other songs recorded at the time form

the body of Dylans work showing the densest traces of Poes influence. In Ring Them Bells, we have the second Dylan composition to bear the imprint of The Bells, taking over where Chimes of Freedom left off a quarter-century before. The song opens with a Poe-like landscape recalling poems like Dream-Land or The City in the Sea: . . . The register is no longer socio-political as in Chimes of Freedom, but theological.

Rollasons distinction is entirely academic. Michael Gray in Song & Dance Man III p 608:
It may be that the average listener has trouble accepting such a thirsting for justice and compassion here and now from someone whose song begins with the combative, divisive and excluding peel Ring them bells ye heathen . . .

Michael rather excludes himself. Yet he says it might still be possible to appreciate the songs construction as argument and poetry and even the timing of the thrust of the unpalatable message. Michael on stage 2003, all flushed and overconfident from red wine in the intermission, waggling his finger, quite literally, over Dylans evangelistic period:
And was coming out with this really very very nasty stuff. The message was basically, I'm saved and youre not, ha ha HA!

At which point he went purple, his outburst eliciting some titters. Pull the hat down, Michael, pull the wool down over your eyes. Perhaps Michael could kiss and make up with Dylan on a Pale divisive afternoon? 1 Corinthians 6 in the KJV for those oh-so-sensitive to the delicate nuances of bluesy language:
2Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? 3Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?

Song & Dance Man III p 608 footnote 84: for many quotations are noticed but few are chosen (or many are chosen but few are noticed). I can see Dylans glowing apocalyptic iron-head eyes meting out justice to the petulantly protesting Howard Sounes and Michael at what Michael, digging himself a Gehenna-like pit, effectively calls the battle of Johanna. But you can call it Armageddon. Offended, Howard? For a BBC Radio 4 programme for Dylans seventieth birthday called Blowing in the Wind: Dylan's Spiritual Journey, Howard

Sounes ranted, as ever, about Dylans evangelistic period, saying he felt quite offended by it ya knoooow!. Yes, Howard, I do. See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b011c0s2/Blowing_in_the_Wind_Dylans _Spiritual_Journey/ On this programme Sounes waxed lyrical on the language and poetry of the King James Bible; he had to, for indeed it is statutory for all languagesensitive Dylan experts to do so. So how about this? 1 Corinthians 1:18 King James Version (KJV):
For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
18

In his Jokerman chapter Michael notes approvingly that Dylan castigated, he hopes, Christ for noting the rich mans torment in the fiery furnace approvingly (Luke 16). But Michael, in his desperate attempt to point up inconsistency on Christs part, was checking the wrong furnace (in more senses than one). From http://www.geocities.com/aballadofathinman/chronology5.html (now defunct):
CHRONOLOGY / A DIARY OF EVENTS 1990 - 1999 ---1990 Aug. 23 - Dylan's boyhood home in Hibbing is sold to an annonymous buyer for an undisclosed amount. When asked for comment Dylan replies "check the furnace".

But enough of furnaces; back to ringing them bells. It didnt quite resonate with Michael. But who cares? It really tickled the ears of the Louvre-itchers. Third verse:
Ring them bells Sweet Martha, For the poor man's son, Ring them bells so the world will know That God is one. Oh the shepherd is asleep Where the willows weep And the mountains are filled With lost sheep.

From http://uahcweb.org/rjmag/03summer/sultan.shtml:
reform Judaism online SUMMER 2003 SULTANS OF SONG By Paul Zollo

VOL. 31, NO. 4

According to Sue Fishkoff, author of The Rebbe's Army, in the early 1980s Dylan studied for several years with Lubavitcher rabbi Manis Friedman, who, she writes, "is still referred to as 'Bob Dylan's rabbi.'" Fishkoff notes that Dylan had visited Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson at Lubavitcher headquarters in Brooklyn more than a half dozen times, and made surprise appearances at two Lubavitcher telethons in 1988 and 1989; at one of them he played "Hava Nagilah" on the harmonica with his Orthodox son-in-law, rock musician Peter Himmelman. Almost every year Dylan worships at a different Lubavitcher High Holiday service; in 2001 he turned up in Encino, California, where he was honored with an aliyah on Yom Kippur morning. And Dylan is reported to have recently donated $100,000 to build a Chabad (Lubavitcher center) in Minnesota named after his father. In 1989 Dylan released his Oh Mercy album, which includes "Ring Them Bells," a song that would resonate with Lubavitchers who have spanned the globe in an attempt to bring all Jews back to Judaism--a necessary condition for the Messiah's arrival . . .

(Compare the Old Man of the Mountains during the Crusades in an Arab context.) Ring any bells? The Oneness of God. The impatience of the Lubavitch Chassidim for Moshiach now! First verse:
Ring them bells, ye heathen From the city that dreams, Ring them bells from the sanctuaries Cross the valleys and streams, For they're deep and they're wide And the world's on its side And time is running backwards And so is the bride.

Fifth and final verse:

Ring them bells St. Catherine From the top of the room, Ring them from the fortress For the lilies that bloom. Oh the lines are long And the fighting is strong And they're breaking down the distance Between right and wrong.

Breaking down the distance between Lubavitch and Vineyard? Penguin Dictionary of Symbols:
Origens second sermon on the Song of Solomon records the second-century mystical interpretation of the valley as signifying the world and the lily denoting Christ. The lily of the valley is directly related to the Tree of Life planted in the Garden of Eden, since it is the lily (Christ) which will restore a pure life, the promise of immortality and salvation.

Richard Wurmbrand in Marx & Satan on the Cult of Violence:

Engels wrote in Anti-Duhring, Universal love for men is an absurdity. And in a letter to a friend he said, We need hate rather than love at least for now Che Guevara learned his Marxist lessons well. In his writings he echoes Engels sentiments:
Hate is an element of fightpitiless hate against the foe, hate that lifts the revolutionist above the natural limitation of man and makes him become an efficient, destructive, cool, calculating, and cold killing machine.

Man of Peace (1983):

He's a great humanitarian, he's a great philanthropist, He knows just where to touch you, honey, and how you like to be kissed. He'll put both his arms around you, You can feel the tender touch of the beast. You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

The world-made-safe-for-the-Dylan-literati-and-Amnesty is no more, For human blood humanitarians roar, Strap off their gay guitars, and shuffle off to war. 2012 Paul Kirkman, Messianic Dylanologist