 This session here is the one that I usually, well, actually only about 20 minutes of this session, 30 minutes of this session is one that I spend about, what did you say, between the video and bumping my gums about 12 hours with, so we're gonna cram all that in in maybe 20, 30 minutes, and it's the one that I feel is the most grossly overlooked by American parents today, and we'll get into that here in maybe the next 20, 30 minutes into this part of the talk, but let's start out by saying that many politically educated, I'm sorry, politically correct educated people get offended when Christians talk about training their children, even though Scripture says that's precisely what we're supposed to do. They often ask, well, isn't training your child on par with brainwashing them? And I say, yep, with the blood of Jesus who washes dirty brains, exactly, but at least I have chosen the divine detergent to do it with. Would I be better off allowing the world to pollute my kid with the same unfettered politically correct digital dumpster garbage that has indoctrinated the rest of America's liberal, lemming-like masses? Would I be better off doing that? Because they're getting brainwashed, too, but like I said, I've chosen the divine detergent. And again, like you heard me say earlier, there is no fool like the educated fool. Training themselves wise, they became as fools, Romans 1. But it doesn't matter what I say or what, quote, educated people say, the question is what has God already said? It goes back to faith, and that's where I'm going to put my faith when it comes raising my kids. You can have all the education in the world, but even the most educated among us still have to exercise faith in that education in order for their education to accomplish that for which they were educated for. But it all boils down to faith. And like I said yesterday, you can't even, or it was this morning, you can't even doubt anything except from the platform of faith. But even for those who understand the concept of training, some people spend more time training their dogs than they train their kids, and they're a whole lot more intentional about it. So I'm off to doggy obedience school, but there are two scriptures that are often, and I think misinterpreted, when it comes to raising kids and understanding God's promises concerning our kids. And one is Isaiah 55-11, my word will not return void. And the other is Proverbs 22-6, train up a child the way she goes, and he's all he won't depart from it. Despite popular belief, neither one of these verses guarantees us that our kids are going to follow the Lord, even after we train them properly. But our act of obedience to God in training them sure increases our chances. In the Isaiah passage, for example, the word void doesn't necessarily mean favorably. It means it will accomplish its desired effect. And it could mean justice or punishment, just as easily as it could mean blessing. Yet this doesn't negate our responsibility to impact, or rather impart, God's word, all while loving and training and exercising discipline on behalf of our kids. And likewise, in Proverbs 22-6, the passage should not be taken to mean that if we train our kids in the ways of the Lord, they're guaranteed to be the next Billy Graham or Mother Teresa. First of all, training them in the way they should go is better interpreted to mean to find their bent, help determine their giftings or purpose in life in the way they should go. And then second, the Proverbs, like most of the poetry passages in Scripture, scholars say it should be, and I've heard even Rodgers even say this, it should be considered general principles written to a people in general to produce general results. Just like if you work hard, you get rich. Well, guess what? My dad worked hard and died young trying. Raised up a child and ways to go, he's old and went to part from it. How did your father and mother, when you're old, you get blasted on that? I lost a child at 10 and a half months old. What did he do wrong? Something else we should be cautioned about is that, and that's interpreting love and discipline as being mutually exclusive. Proverbs 13-24 basically says, if you don't discipline your child, you don't love your child. And I think it's Proverbs 23-13 that says, if you punish your child with a rod, he won't die. He won't die. Punish him with a rod, save his soul from hell. And some passages say, if you beat your son with a rod, he won't die. And it's amazing to me, these guys like Dr. Phil, who want to be all politically correct Dr. Phil by hailing Bruce Jenner as a hero, you know why? Because Dr. Phil likes his gig, all right, because if he said anything bad about Bruce Jenner, he'd be Dr. Phil, the Texas private practitioner back there somewhere in Boat Dunk, Texas. But then he jumps on the bandwagon. If you'd have said spank your kids, he'd have caught flak. But because of the high tension in Baltimore when that lady smacked her kid around, that mom's a hero. Well, you know what, I probably would have done a similar thing to my kid doing that stuff, but you know, why wasn't it addressed that, where's the dad? Where's dad? Oh, I just love little poindexter too much, I can't spank him. Yeah, you know what, it's possible, maybe you love you too much. And I won't go in too deep into this, but if you camp out in Hebrews 12, just camp out there and virtually all the Proverbs, you'll get a pretty good handle on what the Lord's heart is concerning love and discipline, okay? You really can't have one without the other. And I've used this analogy before, and in fact I was talking about it over lunch. Love is kind of like a car battery. You got a positive and you got a negative. If all I did was hook my side up to the warm, fuzzy, positive side of the battery without the cleansing the temple negative side of the battery, I don't get a car that's going to start. I don't get a battery that's going to function for its intended purpose. But as soon as I hook the cable up to both positive and negative, the warm, fuzzy kind of love which you hug in your kids, kiss them, and dads, you cannot hug and kiss your girls especially enough, hug them, kiss them, fall in all over them. Even when they're older, hug on them. I know it's harder when they're older, but you still got to do it because if you don't some gorilla's going to tell her how beautiful she is, but back to the car battery. You don't get a charge until both sides are hooked up, the warm, fuzzy part of love and the temple cleansing part of love. They got it in order to the full spectrum of love. And I remember, believe this or not, I'm a big proponent of spanking, but I think I laid a glove on my kids. I can count on both hands how many times I had to spank them because the biggest mistake we make in spanking is either we do it too often, we don't do it often enough, and then when we do do it, it's kind of like tink, tink, tink, you know? Or sometimes it's whack, whack, whack, you know, the kids look at it as retaliation. There's a, I'm going to write a book, The Art and Science of Spanking, A Deeply Spiritual Exercise. It's coming out in paperback, you think I'm lying, I'm telling you. It is a deeply spiritual exercise and kids know when you're retaliating or if you're just ticked off or if this really is going to hurt you or it's going to hurt them. But to negate it totally is absolutely insane. I've often said the best spanking is the one that isn't given. You know, the reason we haven't had to drop an A-bomb on another country in, what, 60 years is because they know we have it and they know we'll use it. But for the most part, we've been a pretty good nation. We only drop on people who are going to kill more people than the bomb would kill. And our kids need to know that this is something we don't want to do. And every time I've ever, you know, the few times I've spanked my kids and they might say, you're dead, got me a hundred times. That's not true. It really was very few. But what I did, boy, did it count. And it wasn't like I had to wind up and give them 80 licks, two or three. And I want to tell you something right now, just because we're in this room. The Bible talks about a rod of correction. And a rod was something about this big around, about yay long, OK? And we talk about wooden spoons. Oh, wow, that's going to just knock me out in it. Or some big paddles, big thick belts. You heard the razor strap stories, right? All those are, you know, both ends of the continuum. If my wife knew I was telling you this, she would drag me off the stage. But I want to tell you this. Get yourself a three-foot piece of PVC. Put baton ends on both ends, tape them up real good. And here's all you got to do. Boom, boom. That's it. I did that to myself one time just to see how it worked. Sent me through the ceiling. I don't know what's in PVC, but it works. And trust me, you don't have to wind up. It's just whack, whack, done. You get your way, OK? And it really is, you know, pretty much in line with what Scripture says about the rod. So I'll leave that be. But it's hard for me to comprehend why some parents can allow their kids to be involved in every immoral, foolish, and life-threatening activity under the sun. And then just flat and refuse to exercise an appropriate measure of discipline and guidance to keep some of those dangerous things from happening. Pastor, what time we end this? We're supposed to end this? 30? This kind of parent, the one that doesn't ever want to exercise any kind of discipline, is often codependent and needs junior's approval. In some cases, they don't even know how or when to discipline. In other cases, they were abused as a kid, so they're afraid to discipline. I have a brother that's like that. You know, my dad was rough. And when he started drinking, I was 10 years older than my brother. And so he started drinking a lot toward the end of his life and drank himself to death, basically. And my younger brother took the wrath of that. And so he doesn't get involved in that. He wants to say, I mean, he does it, but not very well. Whatever the case may be, these parents are cheating themselves and their kids by not exercising proper discipline, whether it's spanking or another form of discipline. Again, check out Hebrews 12, but it's hard to say, and I got rabbit trail because of my ADD. The few times I did whack my kids, when it was over with, and again, it was over with in a flash, I always was sure to hug on them, sit down with them, sometimes cry with them, and let them know that, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. And in one time, Allison, my strong-willed child, before I knew what I was doing, I took a fishing rod. And I just, I didn't see that the fishing rod was actually, it was like split on the end. And I actually gave her a welt that looked like a cut. It scraped her skin. And I just, I had to just go before her and just repent and apologize. And when you make a mistake as a parent and you go to your kid and you repent and you ask her forgiveness, it gives the kid the experience of forgiving. And it's a tremendous healing situation. It's almost like God allows us to make mistakes so that these experiences can happen because they're going to happen, okay? Take advantage of those times. Humble yourself before your kids when you do make a mistake. Maybe it's just, you said something to them that, you know, wasn't right. I didn't realize this until later. I try to be funny and I think there's something to bringing in a sense of humor when you're raising your kids. And I would say things to my oldest son, like, you know, I tell him to do this or that or the other. I said, listen, I'm not interested in seeing you alive until that's done. And I thought he'd laugh, you know, but older years, dad, I didn't like that. And then I had a conversation one time with a guy and I said, if you ever said to your kid, I'm going to kill you if there's something to get done. And he got, you know, I'm thinking, certainly he has, and I go, no. Okay. So you'll learn as time goes on. And, you know, I think it was maybe 15 years ago, I heard Chuck Swindoll talk about spanking. Now, I don't think you'd ever hear Chuck Swindoll say this now because it's too politically incorrect. But I got to tell you, this is very effective. And this is right where we make big mistakes as parents when we're exercising a corporal discipline. Here's what he said, this is Chuck Swindoll saying this, but I agree. He says, whenever you have to spank your child, providing you're not abusing your child, but you're whack, whack, whack, whatever, done, that's it. And you let your child cry, but you know how kids will get mileage out of that, right? And they just keep it up, they just keep crying. Two minutes, three minutes, four minutes, still crying, and here's what you do. In 30 seconds, you will stop crying. And if you don't, you're going to get it again. And what that does is that it imparts to them self-control, where they're not getting mileage out of the event. Now, where are you going to hear that? Who's going to teach that to you? Okay. But I heard that come out of Swindoll's mouth. He's older, wiser, smarter than I am. But, you know, he's got a reputation to preserve, too. I don't care about my reputation. I really don't. I'll argue that with anybody. So you've got permissive parenting. You also have, and I'm not going to go into all this, but you've got authoritative, I'm sorry, authoritarian parenting, which is the opposite in the continuum, where, you know, you're down the kid's throat every two seconds. You're pulling out the atom bomb for every little thing. Well, he grows calluses to all that. I don't mean physically. I'm talking emotionally, spiritually. It could be physically, but I hope not. Then you are abusing your kid. But there's a balance, and it's called authoritative parenting. And I'm not going to go into it because you can go to any parenting book. Any of the 7,000 parenting books are out there, and they all talk about it. Oh, it's 120,000? 120,000, I'm sorry. Yeah. So I'm just going to leave that be. And I think there's a lot of other reasons that parents are permissive, going back to the permissive thing. Because I see that as the most pervasive problem with kids today, is that kids have been left to themselves. We have violated Proverbs 29-15. And what are some of the reasons? Well, parents too often, they want juniors approval more than gods. They don't know what Scripture and common sense says about right and wrong. They're too lazy or self-indulgent. A parent has a similar rebellious, indulgent past and feels, well, you know, I turned out okay. Well, the truth is, you're still turning out. And junior might not be so lucky. So don't feel like you're a hypocrite if you're disciplining your kid for what you didn't get disciplined for. It confuses peacekeeping with peacemaking. Parents are too busy and exhausted. And trust me, if the devil can't make you bad, he'll make you busy. They took their parenting cues from all the wrong places. Dr. Spock, Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, Dr. June, and Dr. Oprah, like we've mentioned before, has their own sin-filled life and doesn't want to be a hypocrite. But we're all hypocrites. Let's get over that one right now. It's just a matter of degree, isn't it? So really, our lives are hypocrite management, when you think about it. And that's why we need the body of Christ to hold one other accountable. So we want to limit the hypocrisy so we don't give more fuel for the guys out there who are trying to shoot us down. And then, of course, there's abs and T parenting. Through divorce, death, jail, drugs, alcohol, whatever the case may be. But I want to warn the authoritarian parents, OK, because it's my way or the highway thing. This could be equally as dangerous. And it often fosters strained relationships, certainly legalism, and late-term rebellion. Authoritative parenting, that's the balance. So let's say we truly run our home by the book, OK? Why then are so many Christian homes struggling with rebellious teenagers? Profligates. And why and how do some of these same rebels, addicts, and emotionally disturbed kids turn their lives around at a place like Shepherd's Hill? Well, listen up. One, it all goes back to culture. At home, when we attempt to exercise faith in the Bible to raise our kids, our kids see an entire culture living by a totally different standard out there, a standard that happens to be very appealing to their flesh. And this causes doubts to creep in on their part, but our part too. But you know, when it seems like the whole world is doing something different working against you, how could you help a doubt just a little bit? How could you, really? But that's exactly when compromises begin. And it's hard for us to imagine that we could actually be right on this whole issue, and the world all wrong. That just doesn't seem right. How can we be right? Just a handful of Christian people, especially us cult members, how could we be right? And the whole world would be wrong. Same way, a handful of people in the anti-slavery movement were right, and the whole world wrong. Shepherd Hill Academy used to be a farm, a plantation, where it was legal for one man to own another one. And then a handful of, it was Christian people, said, hey, this isn't right. Some of them got hurt, persecuted, lost their lives to say, we've got to do something about this. Ultimately cost this nation 600,000 lives to get sorted out, didn't it? But it started with a handful of people who said enough is enough. Nazi Germany, it was fashionable to gas Jews. And guys with a handful of Christian people again, guys like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others, said, hey, this isn't right. Let's try to do something about this. Cost them his life. Abortion, it's legal today. The whole country accepts this as something, I mean, there's people now understanding, understood it even back then. My point is this, and it's around the world where we have entire societies that are doing something that a handful of people understand this isn't right, and they're trying to do something about it, and they're usually Christian people. So the whole world can be wrong and a handful of people right. And that's why we have an advantage, knowing that our standard comes from right here. So our kids have an ally with the culture. They're at least the fleshly part of who they are. And we have to battle that as well. And it used to be, gradually went from the neighbors, the weird uncle, whatever, the hippies, the friends, but now it's school teachers and politicians and everybody in TV. Nobody's backing us up anymore. And our kids see this and they think, well, they got loony tunes for parents. Failing to realize that the parents aren't the ones that have the loony tunes. It's the rest of the world. And this is why an authoritative community, which is what we're gonna talk about tomorrow morning, is so important to understand and develop. So any doubt that begins to creep into the minds of our kids and us, it seduces us to go down that slippery slope of compromise and let that frog in the kettle that the pastor was talking about, it often occurs with our standards of music and entertainment. That's kind of where it begins usually. But then suddenly other standards begin to erode along with our relationship with our kids and with God. But here's the real tragedy. It has caused the church to compromise. And all you gotta do is look at all the liberal churches today, especially the ones that are embracing this post-modern emergent thing, and then there's the Joy Boys, the health, wealth, prosperity guys, and the liberal churches, homosexual theology. It's insanity. And this is what Oswald Chambers said about church. And let's see if I can quote it. He said, the church ceases to be a spiritual society when it is on the lookout for its own enterprise. When this becomes a business and you're worried about filling the pews and the head pastors pressuring the youth pastor to keep the numbers up, God's hand to blessing starts coming off the things. The reason this has an even greater impact on our Christian kids and it does the rest of the world is because we get looked at as Christian parents as the morality police, judgmental, legalistic, both in the eyes of our kids and the eyes of the world. So it's easy to be labeled hypocrites all while the rest of the world can live like the devil and at the same time still be consistent with their worldview. Are you tracking with me here? They're not hypocrites. They're being very consistent with what they say they believe at least in the eyes of our kids. Whenever I ask for a show of hands from the kids at Shepherd's Hill asking them if they think their parents are lukewarm, hypocritical, virtually every hand goes up, whether they are or not. This is how kids see it. And this is the pervasive thought of young people both outside and inside the church today. I mean it's no secret that when teenage seekers come to the average youth group and they assess the integrity of the youth group as a whole they're often terribly disillusioned by the attitudes, behaviors and spiritual climate of their constituency. This is one reason why the average stay for young people in today's church is eight to 11 weeks after converting to the faith and they're gone. That's why Ken Ham wrote his book, Already Gone. They come to realize that they can engage in the same foolishness out in the world without the guilt. And that's why the Great Commission focuses on disciples rather than converts. We think about converts and we gotta convert them, we gotta convert them. Well, that's an initial step, it's wonderful. But here's what Jesus said about converts. Read Matthew 2315. He's talking to the religious elite of his day. The scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees. Evidently they were missionaries when he said this. In Matthew 2315, just look it up. He says, you travel over land and sea to make a single convert and when he becomes one, you've made him twice as much a son of hell as you are. Now that's a scary passage of scripture to me. We falsely tend to think that young seekers and new converts want more rock and rap and scream old music and bells and whistles and pizza. Five minutes of Bible and 55 minutes of basically screwing off. But we have to realize that what gets a church, what gets a kid to church doesn't keep him there. These kids are really seeking something. They're really seeking something they don't often find in church. For them, they often find it in music because music is deeply spiritual. I write music, I know how deeply spiritual it is, I know where this stuff comes from. I'm just curious here, show of hands, how many in this room feel that music is just a harmless form of entertainment and nothing more? Good for you. How many would believe me if I told you that if you learn to read music and play music that your brain would be actually grow larger before today, obviously. Yep, that's true. Matter of fact, if you can Google this, the Washington Narrows Bridge. It's a bridge that I don't think it was quite, well it wasn't as big as the Golden Gate, but this is back in the 30s I think or 40s and they filmed it, they filmed this bridge. It had these, I don't know what you call those things, I hold the suspension bridge. And from what I can understand, the wind was blowing at such a steady speed through those suspensions, strings, ropes, cables. And it made a continuous sound at a certain frequency. The frequency alone got the bridge doing this. And I think it was like the second or third day the bridge is doing this. And then on film, that bridge goes in the drink. The winds weren't even strong. Remember when I told you that outside stimuli affects us at the cellular level? Physical? Why do you think certain opera singers can break a glass? That's what they, you know, with their voice. There's something to this, folks. There really is. So I wanna talk to you about music because music is deeply spiritual and scripture refers to music. How many times do you think scripture would refer to music? 1150 times. And it's the deep spiritual component to music that allows it to communicate a message even without words. My experience is that it can be as powerful and destructive as drugs. And I've had kids tell me time and time again, it is like a drug. I have more faith in myself, leaving Shepherd's Hill and overcoming my drug problem. Then I have faith in overcoming my music addiction because kids don't listen to music for the entertainment value that we used to as much as they do, they identify, is this who they are? It's a cathartic effect for these kids. I'm a grunge, I'm a punk, I'm a rapper, I'm a rocker, I'm a country, you know, and by the way, rock and roll music is basically things about, you know, what you wanna do. I wanna rock, you know, I wanna do this. I wanna do that, and what's country? I already did this, I already did that. Got drunk, I'm a truck, I'm a train, you know. So if we're gonna parent by the book, we need to know just how powerful music really is in communicating a message. And not only for individuals, but for entire nations. Music has been used to make both love and war. It's an idol for a lot of kids. What's one of the most popular TV shows on the planet right now? American Idol. And to show you how delusional some of these people are, they actually think they can make it. And they're so ticked off when they don't, it's like, you wait, I'll be a star, good luck with that. They think they can do it. Because of their subjectivity, their relativistic postmodern thought mindset, they think, you owe me a chance at making a million dollars, even though I couldn't sing a lick. Go sing Tenor, Junior. Tenor, 12 miles from here. Or solo, solo, I can't hear you. Sorry. It's a cheap joke, I'm sorry you had to hear that. But quickly before we get into the power of music, a subject few people talk about by the way. Let's first glance at some other powerful communication vehicles that certainly some folks did talk about. And there are many overlooked roots as why kids behave the way they do. It's not all about lack of education or they come from poor background. At least not an academic education. They're getting educated all right. Listen to what Joseph Stalin said. In 1940s, Joseph Stalin said that all he needed was the control of the American motion picture industry to convert the whole world to communism. Just movies. How often do kids go to movies? Once a week, once a month, twice a week, I don't know. I'm going somewhere with this. In 1950s, I told you about Aldous Huxley, he said the technology was moving faster than he originally predicted in the 1920s. How primitive was that technology? In the 1960s, Malcolm X said the media, news media and all that, is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and the guilty innocent because they control the minds of the masses. And he was right. They're all right. But they all had an emphasis on their one particular vehicle. And when you think back to how primitive the technology means of communication and entertainment were back in the 40s, 50s and 60s, compared to today's digital technology and Madison Avenue's pursuit of the American mind and market share, it's no wonder that Anaheiser Bush is willing to spend $2 million for each minute of airtime during the Super Bowl. Two million bucks for a minute of airtime. You think they're spending that $2 million because they're not gonna make a $2 million at least back? It's no wonder that our kids will freely advertise any brand Madison Avenue wants them to on their clothes that you and I pay for them to wear. You've seen Amicrobian Fitch or Nike or whatever, there were hats. Advertising freely. They're not getting any residual payments for these things. They're just promoting a company because they're identifying with that, with that line of clothing. That's where their sense of belonging and identity comes from. Something as stupid as clothing and music is a good trillion times more powerful than that. But let's now consider the deep and powerful spiritual communication and indoctrination powers within music. Music, unlike all the other communication forms we just mentioned, is something a lot of kids are exposed to not just once a month or once a week or occasionally, but virtually around the clock. In fact, for some kids, music is their, like I said, their entire identity, they wake up to it. It's in their video games. It's in the backdrop of their movies. They get dressed to school to it. They drive to school to it. They hear it at school. They chill out to it. They work out to it. They go to bed to it. They do their homework to it. They can't walk across the street without headphones on. So they're getting a very healthy dose of whoever their favorite pop icon might be. And I go back to the whole boo thing. I won't shake you up again, but it's causing chemical reactions in them. Music alone without digital technology in the equation is more powerful than most of us realize. I was talking to, you guys know who Dr. Norman Geisler is? Of course you would. Most churches have no idea I'm talking about. And I said, Dr. Geisler, I said, I'm gonna make a statement. I want you to tell me what you think of the statement. Now this, I admittedly, this was probably eight years ago, it was before smartphones, just smartphones maybe just came out. And I said, I'm gonna make a statement. I believe that music is the single most powerful, destructive tool the devil use against the church, teenage population, and our American culture. And man, he did not miss a beat. He said, I couldn't agree with you more. Nobody gets it. Nobody gets this. Now that smartphones are out, that might be debatable. Oh, here's the other thing. I said, beyond internet pornography. And he still said, couldn't agree with you more. Again, when these things came out, now the pornography is literally around the clock. Who was Satan before he was Satan? He was a music minister, wasn't he? According to a lot of theologians, they believe he's a music minister. Worship leader in heaven. And guess what? He's still leading worship today. But it isn't God that he's leading our kids toward worship or us for that matter. Even Socrates, Plato and Aristotle understood and wrote about music's powerful ability alone to control the attitudes and behaviors of not just individuals, but they also understood music's power to change entire societies. To the point that Plato wrote about music's contribution to the moral decline of Greece and actually wanted to have music regulated by the state. That he was no dummy. Fletcher said, let me write the songs of any nation. I don't care who makes their laws. The hippie movement, sex, drugs and rock and roll, that's where I came from. They used those vehicles to change our culture. And guess what? They succeeded, mission accomplished. Abby Hoffman, mission accomplished. Timothy Leary, done. So as questioned parents, how do we justify allowing our kids to listen to music that glorifies Satan, misogyny, murder, rape, cold-blooded murder, homosexuality, bestiality, necrophilia, cursing, using God's name in vain and other forms of blasphemy, theft and rebellion against every authority known to man, including rebellion against parents and God. In a minute, we're close. Worse yet, how does so many church youth groups justify playing the stuff they play in their youth ministries? You guys ever visit some of these youth groups? It's frightening. I think it's because we've been so slowly and so seduced over the years by an ever-increasing descendant of the melodic slime of Satan's playground that we've lost perspective as to just how far off track we've gotten. So let's take a quick glimpse at just the rebellious nature of music. And this is just a couple of minutes of a six and a half hour series, which I think we have some back there if you wanna get them. I strongly suggest every youth group has this series, Hell's Bells. Oh, yeah, let me give you a little warning. There's some rough stuff in here if you think your kids might want... I mean, there's nothing that's not bleeped out. Okay, I mean, I played this to my kids at young ages. It's stuff that your kids have seen and will see every day, basically. And by the way, I wouldn't totally shelter my kids from a lot of this stuff. Let them see just enough of it to be sickened by it, okay? Because if you shelter them totally, then they're gonna be curious, they're gonna find a way to see it themselves. And then Satan wins. You allow it too often in your house and then they acquire an appetite for it. But I think they need to at least know what's there and you guys can have adult conversation with your even very little kids. I think those conversations need to be had. Number one, rebellion is evil. Though frequently celebrated today as something cool, comical, and even heroic, make no mistake about it. God hates and punishes the sin of rebellion. The evil man seeks only rebellion, therefore a cruel messenger will be sent against him. Furthermore, God views it as a form of occultism. Something we'll look at in more detail a bit later. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. Lastly, while all rebellion is serious, there's one specific type that especially tears at the fabric of divine order. Honor your father and your mother. To rebel against, to dishonor one's parents is so abominable to God that cursing or striking them as well as other extreme forms of protracted rebellion against parental authority was a capital offense in Old Testament Israel. In this context, one shudders to think how God views rapper Eminem's rebelliousness as well as the millions of fans who feed off his depravities. Parents and their authority have become a primary target for the grotesque defiance that courses through the world of rock and roll. Rock and roll's supposed to be crazed joy and rebellion for no apparent reason. That's what started out as music to put your parents off. And that's what rock and roll ought to be. Kids ought to come up and just hit you right in the face. I don't mean breaking noses, but I mean with what it is they have to say and dressing different so that adults are going, oh, God, yeah, that's it, you know, make them throw up. If parents and mom and dad starts like corn, that's when we become not poor. Rock and roll is attitudes. It's all the things that your parents told you don't do, you can do. Green Day's Billy Joe Armstrong, once advised an audience, when you go home, I want you to eat your parents. I'm not allowed to listen to him when she's home, but you know, I don't care about it. They hate it, but I still go, I don't give a f**k what they say. This is rock and roll. Parents always hate rock and roll. It's in the custom. If parents like rock and roll, it must suck. Just keep this in mind. They're playing our CDs when you're not home. They're playing my tapes in your own car, and I'm influencing your children. Just don't push your luck. This is most of the stuff that the parents of the kids today have listened to and are listening to. The stuff that the kids listening to today makes this look like Sesame Street and they're getting full doses. And our youth groups are playing some of this stuff. Thinking that, you know, that's what's gonna draw them in. Have a blast, youth groups. How's it been working for us so far? You know, when Elvis came on the scene, he was banned in many venues. Yet, how would Elvis have felt about the music of Little Wayne? Eminem, Snoop Dogg, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Marilyn Manson, Lady Gaga, Jay-Z and Beyoncé? And we got a president that invites people like this into the White House and lifts them up and brags about their kids being entertained by these people. It's just deception. It's just delusion. It's that slow seduction into the fraud in the cattle. It's what it is. Let me ask you this. Can you name three contemporary songs that lift up chastity before marriage? This is gonna go about 15 minutes long faster. Okay. One song? Can you name one song? I wanna say, I gotta see his hands if you can name me one song. How about in the last 10 years? 20 years? 30 years. I use rock and roll actually as an apologetic for the Christian faith. You know why? Because, and I can show it, they play all kinds of clips on here. Jesus and the Christian faith is continually bombarded and blasted and ridiculed and mocked in the rock and roll industry. I will never say that all rock and roll music, and I'm writing rock and roll, I mean all the rap, hip hop, I would never say that it's all the devil. I will say the devil's found a home in that kind of music, and we need to be alerted and on our toes when that kind of music is being played. I don't think I'd be legalistic and say, because it's very easy to be legalistic in this area. You can't listen to a contemporary song. You can't be Christian music. I think you're gonna drive a wedge with your kids, okay? I'm telling you, don't do that. You gotta be discerning, we're going to that here in just a second. You don't see contemporary music mocking Buddha, or Muhammad, or the Hindu faith, or any faith, and why is it always the cross that's upside down? Why is it they're always mocking Christianity and Christian symbols and upholding the devil? But why is it the Christian faith who will want to get attacked? And you know as well as I do, I don't have to go into it, it's the Christian faith that gets slammed by a lot of contemporary music, especially death metal, and why is that? Why in the world did the devil need to mock any other religions? There already is. Music communicates its message on a much deeper level than mere prose, okay? Poetry communicates deeper than prose, and music communicates deeper than poetry. Prose is just like me talking. Poetry adds rhyme, beat, meter, and then you can remember, that's why they did nursery rhymes, teach kids how to, you know, Mary had a little lamb, please, why snow, I don't know, all those. That was the whole purpose behind it, to indelibly implant these things in their heads. And then when you add music with harmonies and the beats and the rhythms and the chord progressions and all the stuff, these are all embellishments of the communication that goes along in music and is deeply spiritual. How many movies would you not have cried at if it wasn't for the music in the background? You can listen to music, a song you haven't heard in 30 years, and it brings back smells, it brings back feelings, brings back thoughts, that's how powerful music is. But it speaks a message, a specific message. If your intellect doesn't grasp it, guarantee it, your soul does. Remember that crazy TV show, The Monsters? Da da da da da da da da da, remember that, that goofy kind of scary, kind of funny music? Remember that? Anybody ever watched Saving Private Ryan? Or something like whatever, popular Hollywood movie? All right, here, whether you've seen Saving Private Ryan, you probably know what it's about, okay? And by the way, I think that's one area where we do get legalistic in. It's our rate of movie, but so is the Passion of Christ. And there's a difference between violence and gratuitous violence. gratuitous violence is like a Freddy Krueger movie that says, show me all the blood and gore. I'm getting turned on by the blood and gore. The blood and gore in a movie like Saving Private Ryan or another R-rated movie, Glory, was about the Civil War, it turns you off to the violence. You want to read a sex book? You want to read a violent book? Right there. But it's not gratuitous sex and violence, it turns you away from it. And so there are R-rated movies, I want my kids to see, I want Hollywood determining what movies my kids see and don't see, or what I see and don't see. That's between me and God. And the body of Christ, who when I lose my connection between me and God, someone can come to me and say, hey, come on, really? And then I have to say, yeah, you're right. And I'll debate some of these things with folks about that, but that's another story. I've rabbit-trailed. My point is the Munsters, Saving Private Ryan, switch the soundtracks, tell me why it didn't work. Charging the bluffs at Normandy. Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta, it's like playing a circus music at your honeymoon, you know, or a funeral. It doesn't work, nor does this beautiful orchestra music that's played in the background of some Hollywood, like maybe Braveheart or whatever. You're really gonna play that to the Munsters' TV show? It doesn't work. You wouldn't play taps at a wedding. Well, maybe some weddings you might actually play taps. It might be very appropriate. My point is that music, regardless of the lyrics, speaks a message all by itself. You know, even Jesus touched on this. He said, we played the flute for you and you did not dance, but a dirge and you did not mourn. So he even understood that certain music speaks a message or embellishes a situation just by the music that's in the equation. Everyone thinks that lyrics are the most dangerous and powerful component to music, yet the lyrics are filtered through the intellect, which, you know, while the raw music actually bypasses the intellect and speaks directly to the soul without any words in the equation. And I'm about to show you what I'm talking about. Anybody wanna cue that up, the test? Many contemporary artists themselves will tell you that they get a lot of their sounds and their musical ideas from the mother rhythms of the third world. It comes right out of their mouth. Occult societies where voodoo priests, shamans, witch doctors, headhunters, and cannibals use similar beats, rhythms, chord progressions, and energy to drum up their unholy spirits. It's just that we've electrified them. I was just talking to a brother from Haiti in the restroom and I asked him, I said, is this true? And I asked him, I said, is it true that, and I've heard this and I think it is true, in the 1920s, Haiti used to have the number one economy per capita in the world. It was a wealthy nation. And then whether it was officially or unofficially, they adopted voodoo as their national religion. Now look where they're at. When I was in Ecuador, I'm looking around at all these, this fertile land, volcanic ash, and they're growing things on the side of mountains, and there's gold mines, galore. And I asked the pastor, they were building a church down there, and I said, why is it that your country is so poor with all the fertile soil and our country's so rich? And it was broken in English, he said, because when they discovered your country, they were looking for God. They discovered ours, they were looking for gold. The occultists didn't take their music from the rock and rollers. The rock and rollers took their music from the occultists. Why don't you hear Beethoven remote-sart type music in an occult ritual? Not the classical music couldn't be used for the devil too. The devil's smart enough to use anything he wants to. While so many teenagers today listen to music for its cathartic effect and identity purposes, Johann Sebastian Bach said that all music should be for the glorification of God and the refreshment of the human spirit. Refreshment of the human spirit. So even if you're a garden variety heathen, music should be listened to to at least refresh your spirit, and a lot of it does. And that's why I can't say that some guy out of Hollywood or Nashville comes up with a really good song is of the devil simply because someone's categorized it as a rock song. We've got to be really careful there, discerning. So many kids are listening to things today that neither glorify God nor refresh their spirits. In fact, it's destroying their spirit. So I'm gonna do a little test to see if music alone, without considering lyrics in the equation, can summon any emotions and communicate a message in you. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to close your eyes if you want to. And we're gonna play little snippets of nine songs. I think we are. Josh, where'd you go? Oh, okay. We're gonna play a snippets of nine songs. And here's what I want you to do. I want you to think about, you can write them down if you want, the emotions that you feel hearing just the music. If there are lyrics in the equation, just I want you to listen to the music. And you tell me what emotions get summoned up. Okay? Ready? Here we go. All right, for time's sake, we played a little shorter version, but okay, anyone want to give me any feedback before I? Okay, so I can just kind of move this along a little bit because I know we're running out of time. Is it safe to say that there were two distinctly different types of music? Okay, that's a no-brainer, right? Okay. And was there anything that, other than what I just said, is there anything that would have influenced you to think any differently? There's two different kinds of music, right? So we got songs one, three, five, seven, and nine. Songs two, four, six, eight. These are the screaming music. This was the other music. Give me your one-word terms. Just yell them out. Relaxing. Now it goes over here. Oh. What are you laughing at? All right, what else? Which side? I'll say what, let's just go with this side so I don't get confused because I know these are easily mistaken. I don't want to do that. All right, relax, romantic, okay. I love to victory. Who? Disney? That had to be a young person. Who said that? Peaceful. What was that? Oh, okay. Peaceful, inspiring, majestic, serenity, hopeful, patriotic, triumph, soothing, uplifting. What else? Glory, angelic, calm. What else? Soothing. Do we have that? I thought we had that. Yes, soothing. What else? Softy? Him? Reverence? Greatness? What else? I can't hear it. Good? Good? No? Comforting. Sleepy. What else? Challenging? Wonder. What else? Design to fly? Flying. How about flying? Relaxing. Anything else? Intelligent. About it or is it? Who? Healing? Healing. Ballet. Rejuvenated. Heaven. Heavenly. What else? Hopeful. Hopeful, you do? I don't see hopeful. Oh yeah, there it is, okay. What else? Mellow. Spiritual. Exuberance. What else? Order. Fantastic. Emotional. Freedom. Louder. We're done, okay. I think that's enough, right? You know, when I drag this out at Shepard Till, sometimes we come up with 30, 40, 50, I don't know how many are here, but we don't have time, we only get a few, but it's the same effect, but the more the merrier, and I'll tell you why later, but. Okay, let's go over here. Angry, violent, rage, chaos, wrath, scared, depressing, rebellion, which is a sin of witchcraft, right? Evil. You guys are enjoying this. I didn't get this much excitement on this side. Patron, hatred. I got depressing. Satanic. We got chaos, we'll go to chaotic. I heard after satanic, I heard something. Anxious, oppressive, out of tune, worldly, scary, demonic, psycho, psycho, I kid. Maniacal, I don't know how to spell maniacal. What else? Raging, we have that. Yeah, raging. Insane, unsettling, unsettling, unsaved, perverted, disturbing, hurried, stressful, heavy, discord, exorcism, destructive, damaging, losing, confusing. What was that one? Torment, hell, hell's bells, what else? Adrenaline, violence, I think we have violence. Defiance, murder, filthy, gulf, pagan, drugs, euphoria, euphoria, ungodly, negative. Okay, I'm gonna sue you for writer's cramp here. Can we leave that be? Okay. Here's a question I wanna ask you. Can, would it be appropriate in your mind or in your heart to swap any of these? Yes, I hear yes? No. Okay. Did I do anything to influence your emotions that would cause you to give me these answers? What was the only thing that stimulated you to summon up these emotions? Just the music alone, right? Did the lyrics have anything to do with it? So can we agree that the music communicated a message to your heart and your mind? Okay. And now those terms can cross over. You know, it's interesting. In the last 18 months at Shepherd's Hill, I've noticed that there's been two words that have popped up on this side that never popped up before. Familiar and home. And on the other side, fantasy and unreal. There's bits of other terms, but these are the ones that come to my mind. They're about the last 18 months or so. And then lately, maybe six months to a year. Over here, you guys gave me terms, angelic, heavenly, spiritual, kids, I didn't hear it here, but God, people would put God or Godly. Maybe you did put Godly, I don't remember. Okay, so you did. And over here, I would always get Satan, excess hell, demons, always. But in the last six months to a year, none of the spiritual terms popped up. Now let me ask you, what do you discern from that? All these physical terms and emotional terms, healing, victory, peace, inspiration, majesty, serenity, triumph, they all popped up. I've done this for six year olds and 96 year olds, same stuff. But lately, like I said, the spiritual terms, the heaven and the hell, the demons and the angels, the God and the devil, they didn't show up lately. What I've been doing this, why would that be? Okay, would I be off track and saying that spirituality is so far out of the equation with young people today, that they never think to bring up Satan, sin, the devil or the devil, demons, hell, exorcism, or God or angels, they just don't bring it up because it's not in their repertoire, the worldview. Right, why would the dark music, I'm gonna just call it the dark music, why would they come up with terms like familiar and home? What's that? The parents let us listen to it. The parents let us listen to it. It's what they're used to. It's what they know and love. It's what they know and love. They've acquired appetites for it. Yeah, because a couple of years ago, I never saw those terms. I mean, it was more solid this way and solid that way. There was nothing that could have possibly crossed over. This is indicative of where our culture is going. Are you following with me here? Or justify your anger. Right, right. Which is why I said kids don't listen to music for the art form anymore. They listen to it as a cathartic effect. Yes. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So then why would this side say fantasy or unreal? That's right. They can't imagine life being so pain-free. Listen to Christian music. One out of every three songs talks about pain. I'll challenge you to go listen to Christian songs. Relieve the pain, you know, pain. Oh yeah, and this great, wonderful America that we have. You know, we're pleasure in it and we have pain. We don't know pain, but we're singing about it because we don't deal with pain very well in America anymore, do we? Okay, so this is beyond anything they could imagine. One of these are all secular songs and one of these are all Christian songs. Which one's which? Hey, let me just cut to the chase here. These are all soundtracks to Hollywood movies. This is the Christian music. And this is what a great percentage of what our youth groups are listening to and they're walking away, expecting to get to know Jesus and they're coming away with emotions like that. I don't care what kind of Christian work you put to it. You put Bible verses to this. Remember what the devil did with Jesus? He quoted him scripture. He quoted the word to the word, but he did it in the spirit of the enemy. So the music communicates on a deeper level, which you just proved. Yeah, you can't understand the words. But even if you could, it would still do the same thing. Maybe not quite as much. But this is all Christian music. Now, folks, what is wrong with that picture? It's beyond disgusting. But you see how genius the devil is? Would God endorse these as Christian songs? Can God bless a life that's routinely being entertained by spirits and subject matter that grieve the heart of God and bring these same kinds of emotions up, bring these same kind of emotions upon its kids, morning, noon, and night? Now, add bees and hoes and eff the police to these beats and rhythms and chord progressions. Jay-Z, Beyonce, Lil Wayne, Eminem, and all the rest. And now you've got yourself an elixir for destruction. And our kids are addicted to it. They're addicted to it. They won't turn loose of it. And even with Christian lyrics, with Christian labels plating Christian churches by Christian youth workers, you walk away with those emotions. Now, here's the confusing part of the equation. Most music isn't way over here on the continuum like this, or way over here. Most music is somewhere in here. And you got some music somewhere in here. Somewhere in here. Let's take the song Imagine by John Lennon. You guys all know that song, right? Beautiful song. Devil's beautiful. This is a case where the lyrics are all screwed up. All right? Maybe not eff the police and all that stuff, but the ideology behind it. So I'd put that song probably somewhere in maybe here. And here's what we have to discern as parents. How are you gonna keep up with what's on Junior's iPod? Truth and matter, you probably won't. Which is why I would suggest making iPod like the smartphone on adult toy. And he can play it, he can learn how to use it, operate it, but it's gotta be played where you can hear it. No headphones. Can't take it with him in the car. See, without the time to explain how dangerous this stuff is, if I just was out in the street and I told the average Joe that music's dangerous, I'm not gonna let my kids listen to the latest Christine Aguilera album or whatever the case may be. They'd think, well, you're just a religious lunatic. But I've never, never have I ever had this conversation with someone where they've given me the time to break it down like you're giving me the time or they wouldn't agree. This is a deeply complex subject. And I'm glad that you're patient enough to bear with me on this. So the question your kids ask me, well, not your kids, but kids ask me at Shepherd's Hill, is then how do I discern good music from evil music? And what I tell them, I say, do you want the spiritual answer or the mechanical answer? Because to be truthful, very few people are spiritually discerning enough. Now they might be spiritually mature, but not spiritually discerning when it comes to music enough to really grasp the spiritual answer. But here's the spiritual answer. It's just like makeup. How do I know good music from bad music? I don't know. But I know it when I hear it. It'll check your spirit. And if your spirit is checking, anything your kids listening to or watching, you not only have the right, you have the responsibility to say, junior, turn that off or give it to me or whatever the case may be. And so what I advise my kids to do, and I wanna advise you to do the same thing, along with spiritually discerning it, is this. If it gives you positive thoughts about yourself, your fellow man or your God, probably all right. It gives you negative thoughts about yourself, your fellow man or your God. I wanna not listen to that. And get yourself an accountability group to help you discern these things and discuss it, dialogue with it. So why is it then that you get artists like Jay-Z or Prince or Fred Durst from Lynn Biscuit or Christine Aguilera, I mean, whomever. And of course you get the candy bar music like Christine Aguilera, but that's even more dangerous sometimes than some of the screamo stuff. Why? Because it's packaged to look like M&Ms. If you were the devil, like Holmberg says, is which mode would you choose? But why would so many contemporary artists, and you know what I'm saying is true, wear crosses, pray on camera, have God in prayer in the titles and the words of their songs and then thank God at their award shows and like the Grammys. Why would they talk about Jesus even? Thank you Jesus for helping me produce this trash so I can pollute, you know, why would they thank the Lord? Anybody got an idea why they would do that? Is it just hypocrisy? Deception. Deception, is it just deception? I wanna suggest it's market share. It's market share. Here's what I mean by that. They know that those who call themselves Christians, there's a lot of lukewarmers, millions, multiplied millions. And our Christian kids listen not just to this Christian screamo or rap or whatever the case may be, but they're listening to the garbage that does mention bees and hoes and after police. And parents let them listen to that. And so on their CD jackets, here's a picture of the guy that got the grill going on and got the big, you know, the bling and the cross and first song might be God this, prayer that, whatever. And the rest of them are all the crazy nasty stuff. Parents, all they see is the bling, the God, the prayer, their junior, here's your 20, 25 bucks, knock yourself out. And they don't even think about listening to the other stuff. And so they got an entire market, your kids and mine, to sell their garbage too. And it's addictive, so they can resell their garbage too. Well, I know we've gone long and we're gonna go ahead and wrap it up and we're gonna be here for questions. So I hope this enlightened you a little bit anyway. Thank you.