Dylan: (laughing) On this earth and the world we can’t see

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In 1978, Dylan attended a home Bible study with girlfriend Mary Alice. She had recently “re-dedicated her life to Christ” and was concerned that she was living with an unsaved man who was not her husband.

DylanAnimated by John Wilson, Fine Arts Films

She invited two assistant pastors from the Hollywood Vineyard Church (associated with the Vineyard Christian Fellowship) to visit Dylan’s home.

DylanServe Somebody + Acceptance speech 1980

The Vineyard Fellowship, to which Dylan's girlfriend Mary Alice Artes introduced him in late 1978, was a small evangelical church that peddled a New Age, born-again version of Christianity. It had been found in Los Angeles in 1974 by Ken Gulliksen, who had previous been a singer on the Christian Music circuit. The church's style was informal. Gulliksen took services dressed in his shorts and counted a number of LA musicians among his congregation, including T-Bone Burnett, Steven Soles and David Mansfield, all of whom had played on Dylan's
Rolling Thunder Tour.

Dylanmeeting fans bbc

Bob and Mary Alice enrolled in the Vineyard Fellowship's School of Discipleship, attending Bible class most weekday mornings for more than three months at the beginning of 1979. At first Bob thought there was no way that he could devote so much time to the project; he felt he had to get back on the road. Soon, though, he found himself awake at 7 A.M., compelled to get up and drive to the real estate office in Reseda where Bible classes were held. "I couldn't believe I was there," he said.

Dylan’s testimony was as follows:

“One thing led to another ... until I had this feeling, this vision and feeling. I truly had a born-again experience, if you want to call it that. It’s an over-used term, but it’s something that people can relate to”

Dylanin the garden

It was during this late winter/spring period of 1979 that Mary Alice Ares was baptized in a swimming pool at Pastor Bill's house.
"This was total immersion. Because baptism is a symbol of burial, burying guilt, and then pulling the new man out of the water," says Pastor Kenn. Bob attended the baptism and, not long afterward, Bob was himself baptized, probably in the ocean, which was where the fellowship normally conducted baptisms. By being immersed in water, Bob became, in common parlance, a born-again Christian, though he would later shrink from the term, claiming he had never used it. Yet he was clearly quoted in a 1980 interview with trusted Los Angeles Times journalist Robert Hilburn saying: "I truly has a born-again experience, if you want to call it that. It's an overused term, but it's something that people can relate to."

Concert # 24 of the First Gospel Tour...

Bob's conversion to Christianity also caused considerable upset to his own children, who had been raised in the Jewish faith. Suddenly, packs of journalists were following their father to the Vineyard Fellowship in the hope of getting pictures of him going to a Christian church, and then staking out his home. The children saw this commotion when they visited their father. It was embarrassing and one of the few times when his celebrity was a problem in their lives.

Bob Dylan 1975-1981 Rolling Thunder & The Gospel Years Promomotional Trailer

In the fall of 1983, Bob's seventeen-year-old son Jesse had a belated bar mitzvah in Jerusalem- Jakob and Samuel had already been bar mitzvahed in California- and Bob was photographed wearing a yarmulke at the Wailing Wall, adding to speculation that he had returned to Judaism. "As far as we're concerned, he was a confused Jew," Rabbi Kasriel Kastel told Christianity Today. "We feel he's coming back." In fact, Jesse was on vacation in Israel with his grandmother, Beatty, when they discovered a bar mitzvah could be conducted quickly and easily at the Wailing Wall and Bob simply flew in to play his part. He still believed Jesus Christ was the Messiah, and kept a broadly Christian outlook, although he had not maintained regular contact with the Vineyard Fellowship since the early flush of his conversion.

DYLAN MADE A BARGAIN WITH THE DEVIL

In a rare interview with Ed Bradley, aired on the 60 Minutes program, June 26, 2005, the 63-year-old rock singer said that his early songs were “almost magically written … kind of a penetrating magic.”

He also said that he made a bargain with the devil.


Question: Why do you still do it? Why are you still out here?


Dylan: It goes back to that destiny thing. I made a bargain with it a long time ago, and I’m holding up my end.


Q: What was your bargain?


Dylan: To get where I am now.


Q: Should I ask whom you made the bargain with?


Dylan: With the chief commander.


Q: On this earth?


Dylan: (laughing) On this earth and the world we can’t see.
It could be argued that Dylan was referring to a bargain he made with God, but that makes no sense. As Brian Snider wrote to me on this matter: “Who makes a bargain with God to be a rock star? Everyone knows you make that deal with the devil. Down at the crossroads.” This refers to the old Blues concept of selling one’s soul to the devil. Bluesman Robert Johnson and others have sung about it.

(David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article)