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"New heaven over a brand new sky/New breed of wonder on the vine/Among the living there is new promise in this night/New arms to hold back the revolution/New eyes to recognize what you've become/New blood to recover a new will to honor all God's creations … New shepherd roaming through the tall grass/A new temple rising through the falling ash/That buries the tracks of millions of boots marching in packs"
—from "All Things New Again"

In the late '70s, Bob Dylan shocked everyone by declaring Christ as his savior, and expressed his newfound faith through three openly evangelical albums between 1979 and 1981. Since then, however, he's become far more enigmatic about his personal beliefs—some say he's switched to Judaism, others believe he's simply become private about the matter. He still makes biblical references in his songs, though it's not always clear where the American folk legend is coming from.

Poetic, cryptic, and sometimes spiritual … like father, like son. And since 35-year-old Jakob Dylan was close to ten when his father embraced Christianity in the '70s, it makes sense that his dad's newfound faith might have rubbed off on him to some extent. There's no evidence of this based on earlier albums by the younger Dylan's band, The Wallflowers, but 2002's Red Letter Days offered a few biblical references, not to mention the album's title—just what crimson colored text was he referring to?

Rebel, Sweetheart, the band's fifth, touches on spiritual matters even more, though it's a seemingly bleak spirituality. One would surmise that the apprehension expressed here is inspired by events in the Middle East. But as told to Paste Magazine, Dylan is intentionally vague to give more timelessness and broader perspective to a song: "I don't traditionally write in a storytelling manner. What I do is more like paintings, which are purely interpretative. But I don't see painting as existing in one short block of time, and I don't really see songs that way either."

Beginning with "Days of Wonder," it's clear that Dylan is fearful of these modern times and the ominous signs that haunt them, and with "The Passenger," he looks back to the fall of man and ahead to the end of time: "Adam took the apple, I was not involved/I'm not responsible for how lost we are/Batten down the hatches, extinction calls." Songs like "God Says Nothing Back" suggest that Dylan thinks the world is too far gone to be saved, doomed because of our inherent sinfulness. And he sounds downright bitter about it in "I Am Building," apparently giving up all hope when he states, "I will never say 'never say never' again." But by the song's end, he also notes, "For worse or better, I surrender/It may not matter, but I'm sadder than you'll ever know." Is there no hope amid these lamentations?

Apparently there is. Dylan doesn't think all is lost, expressing metaphorical hope for new life in "Back to California"—"Passing down through a valley full of lost sheep/Straight is the gate, narrow is the walkway." The tender country-flavored ballad "How Far You've Come" shows bittersweet acceptance of the way things are, hinting at our need for grace: "Sometimes a high wall is just a wall/Sometimes it's only there to make you feel small/Or may be there to save you from the depths of a much deeper fall/The truth will not set you free/It's okay to believe that you're not good enough/God is not angry, not blind, deaf or dumb/He knows how far you've come." Then he wraps up the album with "All Things New," a hopeful vision of Revelation (excerpted above) that makes abstract reference to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in its vision of redeemed creation.

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