Bob Marley’s Song “One Love”

“Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right;
Let’s get together and feel all right.
Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right;
Let’s get together and feel all right.”

                       -Some of the Lyrics of the Song, “One Love”                                                        (From his Album: “Exodus”)                                    ____________________

Greatest Album of the 20th Century / Song of the Millennium

Time magazine chose Bob Marley & The Wailers’ “Exodus” as the greatest album of the 20th century.

“One Love” was named song of the millennium by The BBC.    ____________________

Enormously Popular All Over the World 

Bob Marley’s music has continuously grown in popularity in the years since his death…affording him a mythical status in music history.   His posthumous album “Legend” (1984) became the best-selling Reggae album ever, with sales of more than 12 million copies.  

He remains enormously popular and well-known all around the world.  Marley was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Bob Marley was noted for being a member of the Rastafarian religion, which he joined around age 14.  Rastafari wear their hair in dreadlocks, worship the late Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie as God (now deceased — when Haile Selassie was still living, he himself deplored and denied this) and use marijuana as their “communion sacrament.”

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As a Rastafarian He Refused Amputation

In July 1977, Bob Marley was found to have malignant melanoma in a Football (Soccer) wound on his right big toe.  Marley refused amputation, citing worries that the operation would affect his dancing, as well as the Rastafarian belief that the body must be “whole”:

“Rasta no abide amputation.  It don’t allow a man to be dismantled.”

-From the Biography: “Catch A Fire”

The cancer eventually spread to Marley’s brain, lungs, liver, and stomach.  After playing two shows at Madison Square Garden as part of his Fall 1980 Uprising Tour, he collapsed while jogging in New York’s Central Park. The remainder of the tour was subsequently cancelled.

Bob Marley played his final concert at the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on September 23rd, 1980. The live version of “Redemption Song” on “Songs of Freedom” was recorded at this show.  

    He afterwards sought medical help from Munich, Germany specialist Josef Issels, but his cancer had already progressed to the terminal stage.

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Bob Marley Died a Christian: Converted to Christ and Baptized Before His Death

“But I’ll never forget, no way: they crucified Jesus Christ;”

        -From his Song: “So Much Things to Say”        

A few months before his death from Cancer, Bob Marley was baptized in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and took the name Berhane Selassie (which means: “The Light of the Holy Trinity” in Amharic).

According to his Christian mother, Cedella, his final words were, “Jesus, take me.” 

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Bob’s Wife, Rita Marley, Converts to Christ

Rita Marley, Bob Marley’s wife, was also baptized in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and is currently a Deaconess in that Church, helping to start new Ethiopian Orthodox Churches in Africa.

(Historical Note: the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is one of the Coptic Orthodox Churches that rejected the decision of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D., and is therefore not in communion with the Orthodox Christian Church Communions of Greece, and throughout the world. 

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Bob’s Backup Singer, Judy Mowatt, Receives Christ 

In a Thomasos interview on Cross Rhythms radio given by Judy Mowatt, a longtime backup singer for Marley in the “I Threes” with Rita Marley:

“Mowatt spoke with her former bandmate and Marley’s wife, Rita, about the late musician calling out to Jesus Christ on his death bed.” 

“Rita called me on the phone and said to me that Bob was in such excruciating pain and he stretched out his hand and said, ‘Jesus take me.’  I was wondering to myself, ‘Why is it that Bob said Jesus and not Selassie?’”

Mowatt became what she calls a “fulfilled Rasta,” according to Lion of Zion,

“…by becoming a born-again Christian.  She believes that Selassie was a very godly man, but was not God.  This belief was backed by two recordings that she possessed that were interviews with Selassie in which he discussed the fact that Rastafarians revered him as God, yet he clearly denied being God.

Those recordings are featured on Christian reggae singer Christafari’s “Why You Ago Look.”

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Bob Marley’s Funeral

Marley received a State Funeral in Jamaica.  Prime Minister Edward Seaga delivered the eulogy, declaring:

“His voice was an omnipresent cry in our electronic world.  His sharp features, majestic looks, and prancing style a vivid etching on the landscape of our minds.  

Bob Marley was never seen.  He was an experience which left an indelible imprint with each encounter.  Such a man cannot be erased from the mind.  He is part of the collective consciousness of the nation.”

According to the London Guardian Newspaper:

“The day of the funeral began with an hour-long service for family and close friends at the Ethiopian Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity on Maxfield Avenue, presided over by His Eminence Abuna Yesehaq, the Church’s Archbishop in the western hemisphere, who had baptized Marley in New York the previous November, just after his last triumphal concerts at Madison Square Garden.

At the end of the short service the coffin was transported to the National Arena, where the 6,000-strong congregation was assembling under the eyes of cameras and reporters from around the world.”        

Archbishop Yesehaq addressed claims that Marley’s terminal cancer was the motivation behind his conversion:

“When he toured Los Angeles and New York and England, he preached the Orthodox faith, and many members in those cities came to the church because of Bob,” Yesehaq said.

“Many people think he was baptized because he knew he was dying, but that is not so.  He did it when there was no longer any pressure on him, and when he was baptized, he hugged his family and wept, they all wept together for about half an hour.”

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Main Source: Beliefnet.com

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