Our desire is to glorify and honor the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and we believe that he is the Church's one and only foundation. He is the head of the Church and we worship and honor and glorify him and desire to do so in our life. It is a delight for us again to welcome to our pulpit Dr. Hubert Spence, We have been very thankful to have fellowship with our brother over this past weekend and our souls have been greatly blessed and encouraged by his ministry. Our brother is the president of Foundations Bible College in Dunn, North Carolina and he is also the pastor of the Foundations Bible Collegiate Church and he has had considerable experience in the realm of music having himself composed over 150 hymns and other musical monographs, and has had a lot of experience in examining the whole issue of the philosophy behind music and how it drives cultures and drives eras, and especially in the influence of the modern day music area. We've been very happy to have fellowship with God's servant and we're pleased he's back with us again tonight. We're going to turn the pulpit over to him now and just pray with him and for him. The Lord will bless him as he brings the message of God tonight. I truly want to continue to thank the Lord for the precious fellowship and high respect that we have for Dr. Frank McClellan and this church in Toronto. My father over the years has spoken highly of this ministry and its stand for God, and I would encourage if you do not have a regular church or a church that is truly taking a stand for God's Word, you need to enter into the privilege of this sanctuary and its people and the ministry of the Word of God here. I believe it will help you for the days in which we live. Last night I spoke on principles and my message tonight is going to be different. It's one that I don't want to get bogged down in, but it's a very important one the unfolding history of philosophy and where and why are we where we are and how that music has truly become the philosophical vehicle for the end time and the philosophy it is perpetrating. And I'd like to read two verses of scripture from 1st Corinthians chapter 14 before we have a word of prayer. But in 1 Corinthians chapter 14 verses 10 and 11, there are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification. Therefore, if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh, a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me." And in verse 15, what is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also. I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also. shall we pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for the invitation that has been given to us of the people of Canada to come and deal with this very delicate and controversial subject, probably the most controversial subject of the church today, that of music. Oh God, help us tonight to give with sequential thought the understanding of where we are philosophically in our day and how music has now taken up the torch and become the voice. And there is some signification to it. It's telling us something. We hope and pray that we have the discernment and we will understand it with insight. We need both light and an eye to see. We could have a lot of light, but unless you give us an eye, we will be blind. And if we had an eye to see, but there was no light, we still would not see. So grant us the light of thy truth, even through history, and an eye to discern the times. We pray in the wonderful name of Jesus Christ. pleading his blood afresh. Amen. The term philosophy has been a term that is somewhat rambled through history. And it's only been within the past 150 years that it has come to the forefront with power. The word in and of itself, philosophia, means a love of wisdom. I think that was what Eve wanted in the garden, that she was desirous to be wise, and one of the three reasons why she partook of the forbidden fruit. But philosophy over the centuries has taken on a deeper meaning. It is actually a term to designate the presupposition of a person. What I mean by a presupposition, every one of us have a grid, or a sieve. And everything that we read, and everything that we hear, and everything that we see, all goes through this sieve. And we judge everything in life according to the presupposition that dominates our life. And our family background, the home in which we were born, the schools we attended, the books we've read, the music that we've heard, All have become the welders to put this grid into position. Even Christians have a presupposition, and everything that we see and hear and read will go through this sieve. And perhaps the other word that is needed to the understanding is, what is your philosophy of life? Philosophers have all been looking for the unifying principle behind all of the particulars. You can take a pulpit, and pews, and carpet, and amplification, and stars, and a moon, and a sun, and all of these particulars of life, but what is the unifying principle that ties them all together? So the philosophers of old have pursued that as their lifelong journey. Einstein came up with the theory of relativity that E equals MC squared. He believed that was the unifying principle behind all of the particulars. But I must take you back in history. Not so much to give you details, but this will be somewhat of a jet ride through the history of philosophy to bring you up to where we are today. Some of the earliest men of Greek philosophy were called the naturalists. They believed that the unifying principle behind all of the particulars of life were things of nature. If you ask men like Anaximanders and Anaximenes that, what do you think is the unifying principle that brings everything together? Some would say, well I believe it's water. Others say you rub your hands together or rub anything, in the friction you get heat. So fire must be in everything. Some thought oxygen or air. Some thought the element of earth was in it. Some believed that all four were the unifying principle. And so beginning with Thales in the Greek civilization, they began to look to the natural things. But then came Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle, and they took a different approach. They were called metaphysical philosophers. They looked meta, beyond what you could see with your eye. They believed that the unifying principle was something you couldn't see. It was invisible. And Socrates believed that it was being. He gave an example of a man standing in a cave, in the mouth of a cave, and there's a fire behind him, and in front of him he saw his shadow. And he said that all the philosophers before him looked at the shadow and believed that was the real thing. But he said, no, it's what I am that is the real thing. And he gave a staggering observation that he said that reason is the best raft that we have on this immense sea of humanity unless God gives us a more sure word. This man didn't know anything about the Supreme God. But it's something that when Peter came in his writings, he took the exact same Greek phrase that Socrates stated, and he said, we have a more sure word of prophecy. Whereunto you would do well to take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawns and the day star rises. So even the metaphysic philosophers, although they placed a great premium on reason, Socrates still acknowledged that if there is a God, a supreme God, if He ever gave a revelation, it would be higher than reason. I want to make it very clear tonight that reason is the best thing that we have going on the planet if we didn't have a Bible. But God, thank God, has given us a revelation. And I am not the fountain of truth, but the word of God is the fountain, it is the sure word, and I would do well to take heed unto it as a light that will shine through the darkest hour of human history. But you've got to admire men like Socrates. I don't believe he was a Christian. But these men were looking for truth. And their reasoning was based on what is called linear logic. Now, it must be understood that when God chose the language to write the New Testament, He did not choose any of the languages of the eastern countries. He did not even choose Hebrew like He did the Old Testament. But God chose out of all the languages, the Greek language, to get us the New Testament. That's an important observation. Because Greek, of all of the 21 civilizations, is the highest civilization that has ever been in human history, because its reason was built on absolutes. Now I called it linear or line logic, just mentally have a line in your mind. And on the left side of that line put a positive A, and on the other side of that line a negative A, or you can put the word right, put the word wrong. You can put the word Christ, you can put the word Antichrist. You can put light, you can put darkness. You can put righteousness, you can put unrighteousness. And what linear logic means is that if you believe something to be true, whatever the opposite of that is, is false. It is built on absolutes. That was the premise of the greatest philosophy that has ever been known, to reason in the mind of logic. Now, the eastern countries of Korea, Japan, China, of Singapore and the Philippines, all of those eastern, they are not based on linear logic. Theirs are mainly built upon the premises of their religions, and that's why it's very hard for people from the Far East to understand Christianity, because Christianity is based on absolutes. And you've got to live by them. You can't bend it. You can't distort it. This is what reason says. This is right, and if something is opposite, then it means that the opposite is wrong. But you go down through history. We come to a man who was the product of the Enlightenment period. This is after the Protestant Reformation, at the tail end of the Renaissance. And a man stepped forward by the name of Immanuel Kant. This was in the 18th century of the 1700s. And he began to boldly proclaim that we need to get out of our self-inflicted immaturity. And that we needed to get out of this dogmatic slumber. Now what he was announcing to the world is that man must live exclusively by reason and throw away any objective authority of life. Reject God, reject the Bible, reject the pastor, reject parents. For you to come to maturity, you must throw off self-inflicted immaturity of having other things to be the authority of your life. He and along with a man by the name of David Hume took all epistemology knowledge and divided it into two worlds of knowledge. One they called Phenomenon. The other was Numenon. And everything that you could logically explain with your mind He put it in the phenomenon realm. But if you couldn't prove it through reason, you stick it over in the noumena realm. You can't reason God. You can't reason your soul. You can't explain angels. You can't explain things of a spirit world. So we will throw those over into the noumena world, and the only thing that matters to us is what I can explain by reason, So he called it a closed world system. And anything out of that system has no influence on me. So therefore, if there is a God, He is not in my phenomenon world. He's in the noumenon, so I am an agnostic. I just don't know and I don't care if God exists, for it has no bearing on me. Now, one of the things that Kant did in the Enlightenment period is to bring to the forefront that the power of all truth resides in the brain of a man. And what he can reason is what truly exists. But after him, a German philosopher, Georg Hegel, he came along and he took this line, this linear line, instead of calling it positive A, he called it a thesis. Instead of negative A, he called it an anti-thesis, the opposite thesis, but wondered If reason is built on that, could we start thinking another way? Could we take the line and bend it and put the thesis and the antithesis together and come up with a synthesis? that there are not really any rights, and there's not wrongs, the opposite, but everything can be brought together and viewed together. So, for twenty years he gave his life, I wonder if two plus two could come out to be five. So he kept trying, but every time he put two plus two and put the bottom line, it always came up to four. Reason kept pushing him, you can't make it five, you can't make it six, it's always going to come up four. It reminds me of one of those little wooden bats. They don't have them today, but when I was growing up, a little, a pallet that has a rubber band on it and a rubber ball on the end of it, and you go and you begin to hit it like this. Well, this is what Hegel was trying to do. I'm going to hit this ball and see if I can make 2 plus 2, 5. And he'd hit that thing, but that elastic band would always bring that ball back to that wooden mallet. Why? Because reason was telling you, you can't make 2 plus 2, 5. It will always come out to 4. And he died trying to make, in his dialectic principle, Two plus two was five. But right after him, there was a man about as weird as his name, Soren Kierkegaard. He was a Danish philosopher and said, And I'm putting it into my terminology of the day, what you need to do is cut the rubber band. It's the rubber band that keeps bringing that ball back. So if you cut the rubber band and hit that ball, you can say it's 2 plus 2 is 20, 30, 40, 50, whatever you want, because the ball won't come back. And what was the elastic band? Reason. Absolutes. So he said, You've just got to do away with reason. And now he brought the system called existentialism, that my existence is purely based on the way I feel. Subjective. So we've got revelation. If it's denied, man went to reason. But if you throw reason away, that you come down to the only thing left is that you live by feeling, you live by emotions, you live by subjectivity. So Kierkegaard would say, now young boy, when you go to school on Monday and your teacher gives you a math test, and when she gives you 2 plus 2, you just go ahead and put 5 down. But the teacher's going to count it wrong. Well, she's still got that elastic band tied to her brain. What you need to do is just go ahead and believe it. Even if the red X mark is there, you just convince yourself, I just feel like the 2 plus 2 is 5. Now, I'm telling you, students would love that, wouldn't they? You wouldn't have to study. Just go in one day with all these geometry problems and trigonometry and say, I just feel like today it should be this way. I don't like Pythagoras. I don't like his theories. I don't like this isosceles triangle. I'm just going to make up my own configurations and I'm just going to believe it for myself. Even if I get a zero on the test, I just feel like today that the isosceles triangle is unequal. rather than three equal sides. Now I'm telling you this didn't get off the ground too well. You just live by feeling. And you become your own island. No past, no future. You're not accountable to anybody in the past. You're not accountable to anybody in the future. And you just live life the way you feel it. Well, now how are you going to do that? Well, there were two other men that read about this existentialism, and one of them was named Martin Heidecker. He said, it's going to be very hard to junk everything I've ever been taught about reason, so he advocated in the 1800s to take drugs. Timothy Leary, called the High Priest of LSD from Harvard University, took over a thousand drug trips in the 1960s, and this is what he advocated in order to break reason. You get in a car, you put the key into the ignition, you start it, and you've got cars coming on your left, and you're driving down on the right-hand side of the road. You just don't want to make up your road. You don't want to make up your path. You don't want to stick the key in the ear and pretend that the car comes on. You just felt like it that way, maybe to clean out the wax of your ear that morning. But how do I get over this hump of reason? So High Decker said, take drugs. So one evening in the basement of a very liberal church in the 1800s, brought the young people together and he says, now I'm going to take you on a trip tonight. And when you get on this trip, you're going to see things you've never seen before, you're going to experience things you've never experienced before, and you're going to have feelings you have never known before. But I want to warn you, when you get out there, don't commit suicide. Whatever you do, When you get out there where the realm of logic and reason no longer exists, don't commit suicide. Well, they all popped the drug and he began to pass rose petals down, and other kinds of flowers, and certain kinds of beans, and so these young people, they'd pick up that rose petal and they'd look at it cross-sided, They'd feel the texture of that rose petal, and after about six hours, the drug was wearing off, and when they'd come back, you'd ask them, how did you feel? I'm telling you, I experienced something I never... I thought I saw the Virgin Mary dancing on top of the rose petal. You saw the Virgin Mary on top of the rose petal? And sometimes the rose smelled good, and other times it smelled terrible, I'm telling you, I saw some things I've never seen before. Some people begin to commit suicide. So another man came along and said, well, we've got to take a safer journey, called Jasper. And he talked about involvement in life. And if I would put it in the 21st century understanding, supposing you're coming to a street corner and there's a 75 year old woman standing there waiting to go across the street you pull your car over to the side of the road and you get out and you start helping her across the road and all of a sudden you realize she has crutches and half of her leg is gone and she begins to describe how gangrene had destroyed that leg and eight months ago they had to amputate it and now they said they're going to have to amputate the other leg and Her husband had been killed two years ago in a fire, and she lost all of her grandsons in the Vietnam War, and she talks about all of her sisters, some dying of cancer, others dying of another thing, and you finally get that woman across the road after she tells you all these things, and you get back in your car, how did you feel? And I'm telling you, I didn't know anybody could go through problems like that. Sometimes I felt like crying and other times I just felt like laughing. I can't conceive a person could go through all those miseries. Or, when you see the elderly woman walking across the street, you put your floor on the accelerator to the floorboard and you run over and kill her. And that's the way you will get this leap of a surge of a feeling that you've never known before. Shirley MacLaine told us we need to go out on a limb. Transcendental meditations become popular. Whatever it takes to cut the rubber band of sanity and reason, do it. The main thing is to get the trip, to get the high, to get the feeling. Well, over the years, this has become the philosophy of our day and time. Some advocate drugs, some advocate alcohol, get stoned drunk in order to get out of the phenomenal world into the noumenal world or to make up a world of your own. I think of the story of Alice in Wonderland. You remember her? She lived in a real world in the story, but she kept looking every day through a mirror. I wonder what it is. on the other side of the mirror. I wonder what I would experience. I wonder what I would feel. And one day, she stepped through the mirror. And all of a sudden, she started seeing cats that appeared and disappeared. And these were talking cats. And there were playing cards that walked like people and talked like people. And you had all types of weird things. in this wonderland. Now they don't exist, but the mirror became the way to escape from reason into the realm of the non-existent. You can take this in the realm of arts in the 1800s with Vincent van Gogh, who was the son of a preacher. And for some years he was a missionary, and prior to that, my, you look at the paintings of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, and when you saw a man in the picture, he looked just like a man. You ever had a kindergarten student to give you a drawing? He said, I drew this this morning. And when you picked it up, you're looking for the obvious. If it's a cow, you're looking for four legs, someplace in the picture, four legs. Hopefully it's got a tail on the proper side. The body may be massive with little legs, but you're still looking for something sane, logical. Oh yes, I know what that is. That's a cow. Sometimes little children come up to me after church and they're supposedly taking notes from my sermon, but they are drawings and it's a drawing of the pastor in the pulpit. I know because of this stick man. And there's a pulpit there, there's a book that kind of resembles a Bible, so I'm still in a realm of sanity there. Oh, that's a good picture of the pastor. He looks a lot thinner than what he really is. I'm looking for things that will give saneness and soundness and reason. Well, Vincent van Gogh believed You are not supposed to paint what the real is. You are to paint according to how it impresses you. Impressionistic art. And so Vincent van Gogh, he began to impressionistically paint what he saw the world was, and it was dark, and it was bleak, and it had a lot of black and gray colors, Finally, this man committed suicide because all he saw subjectively in life was death and despair. Even his close friend Goguen. So impressionistic art. It wasn't distinct like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. There wasn't the absolutes on the canvas. But now they were painting according to the subjectivity. I've been amazed in writing your subway of the graffiti. It's all over Toronto. You can tell some of these people have got an unusual talent. I saw one of a massive man and he had a big nose. I knew that was a nose. It had two nostrils on it. So I took it as a nose and it had eyes and eyebrows and it had some other things that were beside it. Those that ride that subway day after day, bumping along, they keep seeing that picture. They keep seeing that picture. And all of a sudden, I wonder what that picture is saying. I wonder what he felt at two o'clock in the morning when he had his paint spray can out there and he was putting this on the wall. And all of a sudden, one day I start thinking, well, I think he was trying to tell me this. He was upset with the establishment, upset with the government, and upset with God, and upset with his girlfriend, and upset with his parents, and he just wanted to tell the world how he felt inside. All art is philosophy. But then you get to a man, Pablo Picasso. You take his paintings and you keep turning them. What's the right way? He introduced synthetic cubism. You've got triangle faces, and you've got an ear down here, and one eyeball stuck up here, and the title of it is Three Musicians. So the title's trying to help you out. I'm looking for instruments. Some place in this, is there an instrument? And all of a sudden, I see some straight lines. Some place, and there's a square box, Boy, I'm really straining. I've got this rubber band that's pulling this rubber ball back. I think I see a guitar in there. But reason is forcing me to see that. But Picasso, he didn't want reason. He didn't want absolutes. No right and no wrong. It's just today I think this is the way a musician looks. Have you ever walked into these banks and sit in front of a banker and on the back wall it looks like a painting that a monkey got a hold of? You ever seen those paintings? As if he took a paint can and just threw it all over the canvas. I remember several years ago one of our local bankers, I went in to see him and that thing kept bothering me. And at the end of our conversation, I said, Mr. Carpenter, I'd like to ask you, what is that? And he looked at it, and he is no art connoisseur. He said, to tell you the truth, Dr. Spence, I don't know what in the world it is, but the headquarters said we had to put these paintings around, and they paid $1,500 for this thing. I said, well, sir, if y'all got some money to give away, I've got a couple of kindergarten students at our school, and we'll really give you some art to put up there. But, you know, people say, this is art. We went down to Toronto yesterday, and your dear pastor showed me this iron whatever. And he said it cost a lot of money. And so I'm walking by it, I'm looking it up and down, and I'm asking, what is this thing? It's got a bulge over here, it's got a bulge over here, it's coming to a point up there, it's fat in the middle, and I didn't see a head on it, I didn't see a tail on it. And my reason is straining to try to find something But to tell you the truth, I never found out what it was. But it's an expensive nothing. It's a very expensive nothing. But people will say, this is art. And you must pay a lot of money to get this art. And if you don't see what I see in it, something's wrong with you. It's what they call today, avant-garde art. You'll go, oh no. who stole John Lennon away from his first wife through deep escapades of immorality, she was involved in avant-garde. She had one piece where she took a board and nailed some nails in halfway and others all the way with a hammer by it and a sign under, hit me. $2,500. Would you like that piece on your mantel at home? Or another one of a 12-foot diameter circle with an X, and down at the bottom, stand on me. So you go and stand on the X. You're waiting for balloons to fall or something to happen, but you're supposed to get this feeling, this feeling, standing on the X. And she would be glad to come and for $3,000 put this in your living room with a circle and an X. Even John Lennon, the first time he met her at one of these En Varguard shows, he laughed all the way through because he knew it didn't make any sense. But she convinced him he was the stupid one and she was the brilliant one. And the world that doesn't think sanely and doesn't think rationally are trying to convince us we're the fools and they're the right ones. I cannot stand these interviewers when somebody's in an accident or the basketball player just made the final shot. It's as if these interviewers have never been to school of what questions you are to ask logistically. They stick the mic, how did you feel when you made that shot? Or, when your child died, how did you feel when the child was dying? They're like taking that microphone and knocking the interviewer on the head. Were you asking me, how did I feel? So there, trying, well, I had these emotions that were taking place, and I've never experienced anything like this, and no absolutes. My life is lived from one day at a time to the next day, all tied up in feelings. Well, you go to churches today that don't believe in the Bible. The charismatic movement is exclusively based on existentialism. No doctrine. I don't need the Bible. You know, that's dogmatism. That's absolute sin. I've got to be free. The Spirit is the one that teaches me. I don't need the Bible anymore. The Holy Ghost is going to tell me what to do. And the service is not a good service unless I felt the move. Felt the move of the Spirit. So what is right or what is wrong is not contingent upon absolutes or doctrine. It's how you felt that day when you went to church. And if the pastor didn't get you up on your hands and the organ playing and the drums beating and the solid body guitar with its infrasonics going, if it doesn't get the feeling going, you don't feel like you've had church that day. So all of their songs are written either with the rock beat. In fact, one prominent man in my country stated that God created rock and roll. just for the churches of the last days because this is the music that moves us. So you've got the drummers going and you've got the boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and the solid body guitars going and everybody is in a trance. You've got to get in the mood now, got to get in the mood. You've got to feel the Spirit. Whether you're living in adultery, whether you've committed fornication this past week, we are not concerned about sins and holiness and carnality. Let's just come, as Bill Gaither says, let's just praise the Lord. The feeling. The feeling becomes the criteria of what is right and what is wrong. A number of years ago, a dear friend of mine in North Carolina, not too many miles from my from our church, wrote Bill Gaither about the song, The King is Coming. I remember the first time I heard that song, I'm telling you, goosebumps went up and down my spine. It was a trio in 1970 that was singing it, and of course they kept singing that chorus four or five times, and you know, it was building, and I'm telling you, the people were groaning and saying amen, But a couple of months later I got a hold of the words of that song. And it's talking about when the king comes that all the typewriters are going to stop and have computers when he wrote this hymn. Typewriters were going to stop in the presses and everybody's going to be lining the highway as the king comes. Now that's a good description of Antichrist. When all of the world will greatly wonder after him." And my friend wrote to Bill Gaither and said, you know, this song is not biblical. And the response that came back from Mr. Gaither was, well, I don't profess to be a theologian and I'm not concerned about the doctrine because so many people have been blessed by the song and that's the proof to me that this is Holy Ghost inspired. Well, I'm telling you, you could do a lot of things to get people feeling good. And get them all drunk, they'd feel good. But it doesn't mean that it's true and right. Feeling. is not the criteria. Sometimes people tell me, well, Dr. Spence, I don't feel that way. That's not a good answer. You prove to me. You bring your Bible. This is the book of absolutes that God gave to us, and if the Bible condemns it, then I've got to condemn it. I've got to go against it. It's a book based on absolutes, and I cannot create even a Christianity that is based on feeling or subjectivity. But this is the way all the world lives. That's why children are becoming so moody in their homes. They seem to be nice one day, and the next day the parents are so scared to talk with the children, the girl's going to blow up and get angry, And what is it? She lives by feelings rather than living by logic and living by rationality. But I quickly come tonight. How do I get in a diversified world with over 3,000 languages and all the ethnic races and all of the cultures How do I finally get a globe of almost 7 billion people to start thinking the same presupposition? Now that's going to be hard to do. Back at the Tower of Babel, they were of one language, of one speech, and God brought a diversification to scatter them, and since then the world has been trying to get back together, but how do you do it with so many diversities? Everybody thinking the same thought. How do you get this philosophy to those in America, in Canada, in Mexico, in Africa, in Spain, in the United Kingdom, over in the Far East, how do you get everyone believing in the same philosophy? Not everybody reads, and not everybody likes art. So there is this one medium, it's the realm of music. There's not a place you can go, but what the music is being You can take the history of classical music, the Rococo period during the days of Handel and Bach. It was all based on absolutes. That's why that music is so powerful. And then the classical period. from 1750 to 1820 when men like Mozart and Haydn came along and they said that music must not only be mathematically correct, but there can also be beauty in it. And they brought this great balance that it satisfied the emotions, but it was true to reason in man. By 1820, the Romantic period, the very name's going to give us insight. Men like Ludwig van Beethoven, a liberal Roman Catholic who hated God. And you listen to a lot of Beethoven, and you can't listen to too much of Beethoven because you'll find a lot of those subdominant and those powerful low notes, and he's pulling out feelings. And after a while, you know you're trying to read a book and it's going boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And he's trying to express his feelings and more feelings and more emotions than that which brings about the balance. And by the time you get to Debussy and Tchaikovsky and all of these men, it's now more and more feeling. Just like the way philosophy was going. Even classical music goes that way. I had someone to ask me last night about opera. And my mother was an opera singer before she got saved. She had a beautiful voice. And opera is good for the mind. There is the natural man. You want to cultivate. We try to dress the natural man, nice looking. And listening to Mozart will increase the intellect of a child. 15 to 25 percent if you play classical music when they're very young over the years that's been proven but I'm telling you a lot of things that are professing to be opera are not good to listen and things that are professing to be classical music is more of surrealistic music existentialism that is purely pulling from the emotions rather than also the stirring of the mind. When I speak of music tonight, I don't want to go back too far, but start at the time of the Negro Spirituals. The Negro Spirituals were a combination of the old life in Africa and Christianity coming to these dear people. And they always in their sufferings, you know, they didn't have shoes, and angry with their parents, and angry with life, and they started writing about the sufferings, but they didn't include God, and that's what brought rhythm and blues. Blues. Feeling of sadness. Adding rhythm to the sadness. And so they will wail out their blues and sufferings, but you won't find God in it like their parents found God. And out of that in the 1920s jazz came and immediately after World War II electrification of instruments came and you've got men like Bo Diddley and John Hooker and Muddy Waters These were black men that knew how to get down into the soul of a depraved man, but alienated from God, and for hours would begin to play the existential beat. But then two white men, Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley came from a Pentecostal background, assembly of God. And he would often go to black churches and watch these Pentecostal people supposedly under the Holy Ghost, their gyrations when they were at the altar. And he loved listening to the black sound. So he and Buddy Holly would be the earliest of the whites to take the sound and put it into a white context. And the gyrations that Presley got, he got from what he saw of spiritual movements. Oh, this man took the flesh and what he thought was the spirit and put it together. He bought an old church and renovated it into a mansion called Graceland. And from his early days till the day he died, he always had gospel groups singing behind him. He just felt in this superstitious way that if I include God in my music, that everything will be alright. Do you know the top selling records of Elvis Presley in all of the history of his recordings? He has sold two. gospel albums for every one of the secular albums. People are drawn to him. The first group, the Jordanaires, a southern gospel group. And by the time he died, the Imperials were backing him, and J.D. Sumner and the Stamps Quartet. But old Elvis Presley was living in fornication the night he died. deep on drugs, and amidst the many hours he would force his friends to listen to him to read the Bible, it was all in the realm of fear and the obsession of the coming hell. And yet, Billy Graham told us that he believed that when he got to heaven, Elvis Presley would be there. But Mr. Graham, how do you know that Elvis Presley is going to be in heaven. It's because Johnny Cash told me so. Well, I got problems with Johnny Cash and his so-called Christianity to say nothing of the Christianity of Billy Graham. But Elvis would cry. Elvis loved to sing gospel hymns. He knew literally hundreds of them by memory. But I'm telling you, this man became the Pied Piper. of literally guiding hundreds of millions of people down the road of fornication and hell. You can't state that such a man is going to be in heaven. But the fifties, rock and roll, Alan Freed who was a Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey he took a little phrase from rhythm and blues of the thirties and the forties and he would turn up his mic as he was the only one that would play the black music on a white station and he would pound out with his hand the beat the back beat becoming the dominant beat and this is the beat that begins to stir up the body it's what the rock stars called visceral music And in the fifties, oh they talked about cars and they talked about dating and they talked about motorcycles and they talked about school and homework and study hall, but it was always this rock beat. And during that decade it was the body, the body, the feeling of the body is what they wanted. But in 1961 something happened. And by the way, rock and roll music is an export from my country. It did not come from England, did not come from any other country. It was birthed and spawned in the United States and became the exported music around the world. But in 1961, one of the youngest presidents in our history, John F. Kennedy, the month of January, became the president of the United States. That's going to change the shift of the prominence of age in my country. It was also the year that the Berlin Wall was put around West Berlin, and it was also the year that the race riots started. And it was during those early years that men like Bob Dylan and John Baez realized that rock and roll is not just a music for the body But we could actually lead a whole nation of youth and change their thinking and make them believe what we want them to believe. And so they started writing. One of the classic songs of Bob Dylan is like a rolling stone. It's one of the most classic existential songs ever written. It's a stone that has no past, it has no future, it has no roots of life. It's just going in life with no purpose, no hope, just aimless in life, like a rolling stone. In fact, a group will take that existential song and make that the name of their group, the Rolling Stones. But in 1964, It was a quartet of young men that came to my country. They were already number one in all of Europe, but unheard of in my country. And they were called the Beatles. They used to dress like Elvis Presley dressed, you know, the mutton chops and the flappy sideburns and the thick greased hair and the leather jackets. And by the age of 16, most of them had already contracted venereal disease. I wish I had time to go into the background of John Lennon, the prostitution of his mother and how much he hated God. There are times he would go to the roof of his of his aunt's home, and as nuns began to walk, and please excuse the crudeness of this, but he would urinate on the nuns as they would pass. He made a mockery out of God. He hated God. Even the year that he was in art school at Liverpool, my, he would, even Marcel Duchamp, who's called the high priest of destruction in art, he devoured all of these things in his life. Music, too, is a philosophy. And when that person writes all the songs that I have written, it's only going to last for about three and a half minutes, but I am putting in there something that I want the hearer to believe, to trust in. And every writer of a song, no matter how wretched it is, he's trying to get a philosophy across to his hearer. Artist or philosopher. But Brian Epstein, the manager, who was a sodomite, the only reason why he became the manager is because he wanted to have a sodomite relationship with John Lennon. But he came from a very wealthy Jewish home of furniture companies across England. He told them, when you get to America now, it's a little different than Europe, we're going to have to change your image. So he had them to put on suits. Boy, that's a change, isn't it? Have you ever seen those early pictures that look like somebody taking the suits, put them in a washing machine and they shrunk? And this is the way they were. Little high heels on their shoes and as if mama put a bowl on their head and cut their hair and they're coming on for their debut on the Ed Sullivan show and all these little girls are screaming and oh, they're not doing what Elvis did. Pelvis Elvis. But they're just singing sweet songs. I want to hold your hand. So the parents who hated Elvis didn't want their children going to the rock concerts of Elvis because they had heard all over Europe and down in Australia how even auditoriums were destroyed in the midst of those concerts. But the Beatles Daddy's saying, you know, all they want to do is hold my little girl's hand. Isn't that sweet? And when they're interviewed, they're laughing, and why do they call you Ringo? It's because I wear so many rings. Oh, these are nice boys. They wear a tie and wear a suit, and isn't that a cute little haircut they've got? And they're just kind of up there like this. playing their little guitars and Ringo's back there smiling and beating the drum and all of America opened their heart to the four men from Liverpool, England. Now one of the amazing things about these young men, they had no, they didn't have much talent, but I stated in my book that I believe that they were at the right place at the right time, and the devil chose these four to become the key advocates for him. Again, not unusual talent. They weren't brilliant. They eventually became, but they were not that way at the beginning. And they only lasted from 64 to 1970. short years, but they totally changed the culture of Western civilization. By 1965 and 1966 drugs were now becoming common in my country and the two famous streets in California, Haight and Ashbury, is where the drug culture was now beginning to foment an increase in power. The Beatles went for a couple of years, not involved in the drugs, but one day they made a secret visit. They'd heard about these hippies at Haight-Ashbury and they got in a limousine and drove down those streets and began to see psychedelic clothes and psychedelic glasses and psychedelic hair and They said, we've got to get in on this thing. So they went back and started writing. And one of the key ones, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club, that catapulted the drug culture in my country that will sweep across the waters of the world. By 1967, they are already deep involved in Eastern mysticism. Transcendental Meditation. They are now bringing in Krishna and all of the Eastern religions. And within one year, every teenager, just about, apart from those that saw through it, began to follow these Pied Pipers of Liverpool. And by the time they disbanded in 1970, the drug culture was well underway now. Rock music began to shift. By 1970, over 10% of all the rock songs that were being written had a religious theme. Even one that became one of the top of the chart is that Jesus is a soul man. Or put your hand upon the hand. or let that hand that stilled the waters. I want that hand to touch me. It was a secular song, but now religion was coming in. It was also that year that Jesus Christ Superstar made its debut. A 21-year-old young man and a 19-year-old young man, Lloyd Webber, writing the music and Tim Rice, both at that time were self-avowed sodomites. And they wrote about Jesus being a crazy man, an insane man, and that the world followed a crazy man. The number one song for six months in my country in 1971 was the song that supposedly Mary Magdalene sings in the rock opera, I Don't Know How to Love Him. I want to make it clear tonight, the Bible never says that Mary Magdalene was a harlot. Christ did cast out demons in her life, but it never even implies that she was a harlot. But, Tim Rice will write her as one of the groupies of Jesus. And so the scene is Jesus sleeping on the knees of this harlot, and she begins to sing this song, I don't know how to love him, I've loved so many other men. And you know what she's meaning by that. but she doesn't know how to love this man. And then in the next scene, Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane, and when he gets there, that's where Lloyd Webber brings out all types of chaotic music to show that Jesus has gone out of his mind. He's in a state of confusion. He feels like that God is against him, and hopelessness, fatalism, And at the end of the concert of the rock opera, who is resurrected? It's Judas, and not Jesus. Where did Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice get the material? They got it from the Neo-Orthodox. For even Karl Barth believes that when Judas kissed Jesus, He was not only thanking Jesus that even those who will hate Jesus till they die will still be part of the elect, but it also was a sign of the sodomite relationships between Jesus and Judas. And in the Broadway stage, which would take a hundred thousand dollars every night to present, in the kiss of Judas in the garden, it is a very intimate passionate kiss in the lips implying our Lord was a sodomite. Now Lloyd Webber has grown up he's probably a billionaire today and he wrote the Phantom of the Opera with his classical background of his parents and his rock music He has been able to synthesize or eclectically bring the two together to make them compatible. Beautiful music by Lloyd Webber and yet he was the young man that introduced to the world the rock opera blasphemies that Godspell and so many others will come. Six years prior to Jesus Christ Superstar, they wrote one on Joseph's transcendental coat, and it was a big flop. And Time Magazine in 1971 interviewed them and said, why was that such a flop, and yet Jesus Christ Superstar such a success? And he gave a powerful insight, is that the churches of America were not ready back then for this, but now they are. It was a commentary of the falling away of the churches in my country. And because of the religious theme, it gave birth to the satanic movement. The Rolling Stones started getting into satanic music. I don't have time to go into all of that tonight. I've given a full chapter in my book. And others coming in and kiss and ACDC which is an open sodomite group and homosexuality now was becoming prominent but they were writing songs of sympathy to the devil and even in my country and one of the most famous concerts Woodstock the night that Mick Jagger began to sing sympathy for the devil The crowd was in such an uproar they had to use the Hell's Angels, the motorcycle group, to become the bodyguards for several cases of beer. And while Jagger was playing and singing the song with hundreds of thousands of young people, a 14-year-old boy near the front at the Hell's Angels became so enraged on the stage by the power of that song, they jumped off the stage and beat that 14-year-old boy to death. Even Mick Jagger was scared that night. But when you start conjuring up the devil, it is no telling what is going to take place. I told a dear lady last night, she was so concerned about her sons, and they're out of their teenage years, playing it. I said, you've got to get this music out of the house, because just as the Holy Spirit anoints godly music, the devil anoints, or maybe I should use the word de-anoints, his kind of music. Demons accompany rock music. It's the medium to denounce revelation, to denounce reason, and get a whole youth generation to start living by the feeling, the pulse of the body, as they begin to put within the mind the philosophy that they are wanting. By 1980, Madonna will come on the scene. What has been the power of that girl? that Roman Catholic girl, she is one of the first to take very boldly the public or history's symbol of purity and virginity, the Virgin Mary, the Madonna. And although that is her real name, she took that name and capitalized in the worst of vulgarity and risque on the stage. And America and the world was now at a point they are willing even to take God and rape Him. Take the holy things and rape them. A man during this time known as an artist in my country, He had an art collection going around in the United States and other parts of the world that he would take a crucifix and put it in a jar of urine and display this as modern art. How low does a person go? But the country was ready for this. And Michael Jackson, a man that he is almost super to the natural. A man in his videos that will present himself as a massive giant. Or flying in a concert across the audience like God. Or even in his recent Halloween video of powers to transform himself. And yet in his interview He's like a little boy. He's very nice and he doesn't like to say bad things and it's terrible that people have been picking on him. But I'm telling you, when he gets on a stage and gets before a camera, we now see the apex of vulgarity of sexuality. The two powerful personalities of the 80s, Jackson and Madonna. But something else happened in the 80s. We were introduced to New Age music. My dear family and myself were visiting my mother's homeland of Nova Scotia a number of years ago, and we came to Bar Harbor. Bar Harbor is like Aspen, Colorado. It is the Mecca for the New Age movement. At every shop we went into this beautiful little seaport village, a bar harbor. You would see on the back wall these large signs, the music that you were listening to. It's New Age music. Now New Age music is a little different than rock music. New Age music takes the sounds of nature And it takes a little eastern music sound with very soft rock. I want to play a piece for you tomorrow night. These are beautiful pieces, but the music is intentionally written to alter the consciousness of a person. There used to be in the 70s what is called Muzak. These were companies that wrote the music by psychologists that guaranteed if you played this music in your department store it will increase twenty to thirty percent your sales. People psychologically manipulated once you go in. And even in restaurants if they're at a busy time they'll put on faster music so you'll eat faster and you'll get out so they can get more people in. You go to a good quality one, they're playing slow classical music, and you'll probably stay there for about three hours that evening. Muzak was to manipulate the crowd and buying, but New Age music was written for the corporations. The people that moved the money, that manipulated the business of the world. And while the secretaries are on their computers and the men walking from office to office, I had this subtle New Age music play and it was to alter the consciousness of who I am. Pantheism. That I am God. The movie, Free Willy. The big whale. He's God, and I'm God, and I don't want to kill God, I don't want to eat God, I don't want anything to happen to God because I'm God too. And so these nature sounds, you're supposed to, in the evening, let this thing control you, and you become one with nature. There is no God, there is no destiny of judgment of heaven or hell, The music is declaring you are one with the universe, you are a child of the universe. And the New Age movement will be the final reaping of all of this. Once the music begins to manipulate the people, several years ago Coca-Cola put out this beautiful commercial of some young people on the side of a mountain. They were from different nationalities. And they'd start swaying, I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. A nice cute little jingle. You only need to listen to it one time and you're leaving the theater. You're singing it. The most powerful music that has ever been written is simple. You remember, da-da-da-dum, da-da-da-dum. A whole symphony's been built on just those few notes. Jesus Loves Me sung more in any language of any other gospel hymn. Why? It's simple. Why did John Lennon's song Imagine become the socialistic anthem globally? Simplicity. I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. So we look at this and they're swaying back and forth together. It's as if there's no crime, there's no abortions, Everybody's living good. This is the way the utopia of the future is going to come if we just all live in perfect harmony. Then all the rock stars got together one night and Richie and others including Jackson brought out another powerful one. We are the world. We are the children. And all of a sudden It's planting in our minds one world, one religion. Now please don't think I'm against everything, okay? I'm not against my wife and my children. But somebody gave me two books to look over and that were written against the music of today and they were good books but I came across a paragraph that stated about non-christian songs that they are alright and what it was saying was true but it's the illustration it gave it said such as the music of the sound of music you remember the sound of music movie? first of all I've got a problem that That movie is making me very sympathetic to Roman Catholicism. And the more I look at it, you know the mother had me. Climb every mountain, ford every stream, follow every rainbow, till you find your dream. And dear, the little lady is standing. What a glorious hymn to humanism. But then there is the scene where Von Trapp gets rid of the other girl and finds Maria and all Hollywood knows how to do it. It's a blue light in the background. She's sitting on a bench and there's a gazebo and I've always wondered where the violins are in the movie. You know? You ever notice that? and he comes up and he sits down and he begins to tell her that the other girls left and now there's no vulgarity here there's no immorality this is a good little family movie and then all of a sudden they get to the gazebo the light men have got it the blue in the back you only see their silhouette together and here she begins to sing this beautiful song for here you are standing there loving me whether or not you should for somewhere in my youth or childhood I must have done something good what is that philosophy? that things turn out well in life if you've lived good. Well, I want you to know that none of us merit the grace of God or any good thing that's ever done to us, for we were all wretches. And I've known of people who did many bad things, but when God saved them, It was like God restoring the years that the canker worm had eaten. So that's not a good philosophy. That because I've done good, now and then, and I've nipped this one in the bud a couple of years ago, but one of our students one day got a check in the mail for $500 to put on their bill. And another student came in to the mail room and, of course this student was so excited, you see this $500 check? This other student is working 40 hours a week just to make the pennies meet. And he made this classic statement, you must be living right. As if the living right is what did it. No, God will provide the money for this man who doesn't have a job and maybe couldn't get a job But God is also meeting the needs of this student just as much by giving him a job so that he can work and pay off his bill. Both are of God. But it's little philosophies that are thrown in to certain songs. We're taken by the blue light in the back. We're taken by the string instruments. And this lovely couple we kept hoping for many moments would finally get together and that other girl would get off the scene and... They got together. Did you hear what they said? No, I didn't hear that. It just kind of slipped over. That's the way the devil does it. gets us looking at something else and he just kinda slips in a philosophy in the back door and the more I listen to the music of the world more unconsciously the contemporary is being placed in my mind and in my thinking and you know why children are moody? if you have a moody child I will tell you tonight one of the reasons is because of the bad music that they're listening to. Some young people have told me, I don't listen to it, but I can tell by their life they're secretly behind their parents' back listening to it. It will truly affect the moods and the feelings of life. Once the music puts it into us, then our culture will begin to change. I'll start dressing like the music tells me to dress. I will body pierce because it's promoting it. In the culture of my life, I am now part of the world because the music has conditioned me to become like this. And the final frontier, which I want to deal with tomorrow, once the music puts the philosophy into my thinking, and it becomes my presupposition, and it activates the way I dress, the way I live, the crowd that I go with, the final frontier that it affects is my theology. I will start thinking about God the way the philosophy is telling me to think about God. And when that happens, it's over. A whole generation now will believe in that one presupposition. This is the reason, and I want to deal with it further tomorrow, why the charismatic movement is the final glue to bring it all together. Because it is a religion that is exclusively based on feeling and not doctrine. And any Tom, Dick and Harry from a Rod Parsley to a Benny Hinn can get up on a stage and with the music and their personality flair can manipulate a 50,000 crowd in feeling. Feeling. They live by feeling. And they'll control the world. by feeling. The two greatest innovators of gospel music has been Bill Gaither and Ralph Carmichael. Bill Gaither left his wars in the early seventies and got deeply involved into disco and heavy metal Christian music and you can even still now, I noticed a brochure, I think Gaither's coming very soon to Toronto And the Bill Gaither vocal band, just look at the picture and it will tell you something is wrong. This long-haired, long-bearded man, and all of the music they sing is this rock music. And if you went to such a concert and tried to worship God, you would look like a fool if you weren't swinging in the pew. If you weren't up, if you weren't clapping, It's forcing the crowd to become one of them. And all of these videos of Bill Gaither now, powerful, powerful composer, get all excited. Go tell everybody that Jesus Christ is King. You may talk about the weather and talk about other things, but let's just praise the Lord. Forget about your sins. forget about your immorality, let's just all get together and praise the Lord. Unless God gives us the eyes to see, we're going to be duped by this generation that has left revelation, it's left reason, and we are now in a realm where feelings are driving our car. And it's how we feel on a given day of whether we're going to live the Christian life or not. Or it's how I feel whether I believe that God is with me or not. Or if I'm going through a trial and I don't feel good, I believe God has left me. It's feelings, feeling. And it's now the world's manipulated by the music to come to this. We thank God for the Christian hymns because It's not the body that is stirring, although I enjoy singing a good hymn. But the words and truth are strengthening the soul to meet this age of whether I feel it or not. Martin Luther was once asked, do you feel that your sins have been forgiven? And he said, no. But I'm as sure as there's a God in heaven. For feelings come and feelings go and feelings are deceiving. My warrant is the word of God. Nothing else is worth believing. You don't need drums. You don't need a solid body guitar designed by Les Paul to become a phylax symbol on the stage. It's the presence of God. like the Shekinah glory that stayed back in that Holy of Holies. No one saw it, but he was back there. But then there were times that it manifested big, but then it always went back. And sometimes the Holy Spirit will manifest Himself. Yes, I felt the presence of God tonight, and thank God for that. But when the cloud gets small and goes on back into your Holy of Holies, And you don't feel Him. You just remember He's still abiding in there. And it's not feeling that I'm to live by. I'm to live by faith upon the Word of God. Young people, do you know that this world is out to control your mind? And the world doesn't want to go to hell on its own. It doesn't want to take as many people with it. And the Pied Pipers of this age are out to destroy you, philosophically. Oh, that your mind will be the mind of Christ to get you through this hell-bent generation. Our precious Heavenly Father, we know that this has been a detailed, tedious message tonight. But we believe it's very important to see where we've come from And where are we headed in the future? And how the music is the power to implant the philosophy. To get the whole world living off of feeling. Feeling is the most fluid state of human existence. That everybody becomes their own island and they declare what truth they want and what kind of God they want and There's really no right and wrong. There's no Bible of absolutes. Even the music is dictating it to us. But as this is happening in the secular world, I pray that as we present tomorrow night's final message of music, the power of end-time worship, and all of it will finally come together And every man and woman will be praying who has a consciousness of God, Oh God, keep the world out of my home, keep the world out of my children, keep the world out of my own heart, and keep it from creeping into my church. This is not going to be easy. We are going to have to pray daily for this stuff to stay out. Because it is permeating the world just like air that we breathe. May this week some young person be delivered from the power of the devil in this music. And we pray that you will deliver our homes from those things that are leaning in the world's direction. and not in the direction of God. We believe that classical music, if it's true classical music, will help the natural man. It's not spiritual music, but it's good for the natural man, the cerebral. It will help the mind. But it's going to take Christian hymns that will feed the soul of the Christian. Bless these dear people And thank you for their audience tonight, Lord. We know that it was a lot to assimilate tonight, but we believe it was very important. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you so much. Amen, brother. I want to thank Dr. Spence for again pouring out his heart and delivering this message tonight. Thank you all for coming, for your attention, Invite you to stay along around as long as you'd like to and to visit the bookstore and Dr. Spence will be at the front of the church here again if you want to come forward and just speak with him or ask him any questions. He'd be very happy to help you through tonight. Thank you very much again for coming. Please remember tomorrow evening again at 7.30 and you're welcome to come and to bring along a friend and be sure not to miss the final and concluding message tomorrow night.