We have been greatly blessed over this past weekend. The Lord in his providence has brought to our congregation and church Dr. Hubert Spence from Foundations Bible College in Dunn, North Carolina. Sometimes you wonder how the Lord directs your pathway, your footsteps, But the Lord has promised, the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and He delighteth in His way. And you know, as you know Christ, day by day, your footsteps are directed by Him. Not the year, the month, the week, but day by day, hour by hour, and moment by moment. And we have been blessed, and the Lord has directed us to invite Dr. Spence here, and on the Lord's Day, he preached for us, and we were greatly blessed, Both those messages are also available if you would like to receive them in the bookstore, and I would encourage you to get them. The Lord has really blessed the ministry of God's His servant here tonight. We're so thankful that He's come for this final evening. The time has very gone by quickly, it's very short, and we have been greatly blessed and encouraged. Dr. Spence comes to us with a great deal of knowledge in the business of music, He has composed many, many hymns himself and has taught and lectured for over 30 years in theology and in history and music and we have been very encouraged by the wisdom and the insight that the Lord has given and blessed his servant with. So we're very happy to have him back to our pulpit tonight and we trust the Lord would bless him as he leaves with us this final message in the Lord. Thank you, Reverend Johnson. Well, I'm glad you still keep coming back. It's an encouragement. I do want to say that the hospitality and love of this ministry and your pastor has been most unusual to us these days. We will not soon forget what has happened. My dear wife has never seen Niagara Falls. And so your dear pastor took from his busy schedule to take us today, and although it was cloudy and cold, I wanted to take my bride to Niagara. And we got out and walked the bitter coldness, but arm in arm. I felt like I'd just gotten married all over again. And it's not only been a lovely day, but precious days for us. We highly respect this ministry. There's very few churches that are truly taking a stand in these days for the Word of God, and it's the only thing through the power of the Spirit that's going to get us through an age that truly is bent to its own destruction. And often I I am so thankful I believe in sovereignty, because I don't know how this world keeps going day by day. But God will ever continue to keep and preserve His people. But oh, that we will have an understanding of the times and to know what we need to do. Tonight will be an important message. I want to speak it with the best balance that I know, because we are now getting to the core of the subject matter, and that's the music within the churches. I call your attention tonight to the book of Daniel for our initial reading in Daniel chapter 3. In Daniel chapter 3, beginning in verse 1, Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits. And he set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon. Then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent together to gather together the princes, the governors, the captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counselors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the province to come to the dedication of the image, which never the Knesset or the king had set up. Then the princes, the governors, and captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counselors, the sheriffs, And all the rulers of the provinces were gathered together unto the dedication of the image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up. And they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up. Then a herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, O people, nations, and languages, that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music that you fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up. And whoso falleth not down and worshipeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace. Therefore, at the time when all the people heard the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, And all kinds of music, all the people, the nations, and the languages fell down and worshipped the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar, the king, had set up. And we will conclude the reading there for our preface word tonight, shall we pray. Our precious Heavenly Father, we want to thank Thee for the open heart of this ministry, for Thy Word. It is one thing to be faithful to the ministry, but it is another thing to be faithful to the faith. And we thank Thee for the reputation across the world that this church has. for that. Help us tonight, Lord, through the enabling of the Spirit of God to preach on music and in time global worship. We want to plead the blood of Christ afresh for our souls and we pray that you will not only help this speaker to preach it, But may the Holy Spirit give that Aden insight to all who will hear it. In Jesus' wonderful name we pray. Amen. Last night we made and presented a very important burden about the days in which we live, our contemporary. is that the whole world of seven billion people will have to come to one presupposition or thought. And from the logistics of a natural perspective, this is going to be impossible. Because we're talking about a diversification of over 3,000 languages, besides all the ethnic races and cultures. And all of these become barriers, even in the realm of thought. We noticed last night that Western civilization is built on linear logic, and the Eastern thought is built on more of a surrealistic thought. So even the concepts of thinking are totally different of that of the East and the West. But there is a plan. that has been regularly undertaken, especially in recent centuries, to bring about this final presupposition. And it's in a five-fold stage. It starts out with the philosophical thought, a remnant of people on the planet wanting to bring about, in an ecumenical fashion, the global thinking, the social will of man. These are the teachers of the teachers that teach the students. And this philosophy of a remnant of people, even in the financial realm, to get it down to absolute control of humanity will take some steps. The next step will be to get that philosophy into the art world. Now most of us tonight in this room could care less about art because it takes too much money to buy it. But the people in the world that technically control the world are deep into art. Whether they really like it or not, they must buy it. They must have it because it is part of the upper crust society to exist. So the philosophy is then placed in the art to get to the upper crust of society. But to get it to the common man, it must now come to mass production. And that's what we dealt with last night. It comes to the realm of music. All of the men and women who write the music will record it and put it in sheet music and They will sing it live and all of the people will begin to hear it in a diversity of languages, sometimes translated, other times not translated, but they will still learn the lyrics. And then all of a sudden, once the philosophy that has been placed in the music now begins to lay hold of the global society, you will begin to tell that it is taking effect. It may take twenty years, it may take thirty years, but the devil has had a lot of patience since the Tower of Babel to bring about a global ecumenicity. And now the music will bring about the thoughts of the presupposition of the world. Once it gets into the general culture, when all of the people become clones. In that, they will start dressing the same. You can go to Mexico, the United States, Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom. You can go to Russia. You can go to the east of Korea, Japan, and China, and you'll find all the young people dressing the same way. All of them have got to have Levi jeans. All of them will have to have Tommy Hilfiger designer clothes, and may I just make quickly a postscript tonight that all of the top men that design the clothes, in fact all they are now are PRs like Tommy Hilfiger, all of these men are involved in the sodomite community. They are homosexuals. You cannot get into global clothes designing unless you become a sodomite or a lesbian. We have a dear man in our church at Foundations that in the earlier years was a partner with Tommy Hilfiger. But there came some very powerful men from Europe that wanted to market the clothes of these two men, and they made it very clear of what in their lifestyle they would have to do. And even though the dear man that is attending our church now was not a Christian, in fact he was deep on drugs and into rock music, when they began to introduce what the two would have to do to get to a point of making hundreds of millions of dollars a year and to take on a certain sexual lifestyle, he immediately walked out of the store and told Tommy, I don't want anything else to do with it, and I hope that you will never get involved in this. It was just about three years ago that Tommy Hilfiger came to North Carolina, and the dear man that attends our church went to see him after twenty years. And immediately, Tommy, who was signing for a hundred dollars a shirt personally, When he saw this past friend ran over to him and embraced him, I asked him how he was doing. Of course, this man's not making by no means the money that Tommy Hilfiger is. But my friend asked him, are you still deeply involved in the lifestyle you had to take up? And he just kind of bowed his head and he said, well, it's just part of the act that I must do. But it's the sodomite realm that dominates basically the general culture, both of women's clothes and men's clothes and jewelry and cosmetics. Even Levi, you'll find it on the black market in Russia, all over the world. The young people have got to buy the same clothes. They don't want a Wal-Mart brand on it, even though it looks better. They've got to have that clothes designer tag. They don't even put the name on it anymore. They're saving money just by putting R.L. for Ralph Lauren or T.H. And people are getting used, I've got to have a name. This whole world is going to be acclimated to take the name of the Antichrist. the mark of the Antichrist, or the number, because we're used to now identify it with names on our clothes. When the general culture hits a society, the philosophy is now intact in that society. And the final step for the total conquest of a human being with that presupposition will be the fifth step of theology. of what it finally controls their soul and what their soul thinks about God. Now tonight, I enter into the realm of the fifth one, of how the presuppositional philosophical thought finally gets into that fifth stage of the global view of the concept of God. I want to take you tonight on a whirlwind flow of the history of Christian music. I don't want to get into any of the details, but I want to simply show you how there has been the shift in music, just like last night I showed the shift in philosophy and ultimately in music. When the church started, there was only one hymn book, and that was the book of Psalms. All of these people were Jews, and so the Psalter, or the Sefer Tehillim, the book of praises of the Hebrew Old Testament, became the music book for the early church. But by 60 or 70 A.D., as some of the New Testament books now were being written, The earliest, the Book of James, then the Gospel of Matthew, the final to be written around in the mid-90s A.D. of the Book of Revelation, individuals began to take passages of Scripture from these books of the New Testament that had a unique natural flow to them. Some of the earliest is the Magnificat of Luke chapter 2, given by the Virgin Mary. The words of Zacharias in Luke chapter 2. The words of Gabriel to Mary in Luke chapter 1. These were the earliest hymns of the church. And then there were several passages by 125 A.D. taken from the book of Revelation, particularly the passages giving glory and honor to Jesus Christ. But as those days began to unfold, there were men like Ambrose from Milan in the fourth century, and finally Gregory I of around 590 A.D. that introduced to the church what is called chants. They're called the Ambrosian chants or the Gregorian chants. especially since 1980 of the great movement of the New Age movement, the old Gregorian chants have been revived and re-recorded. And it's because of the transcendental thrust that the Gregorian chants gave. And the buildings were most conducive, all of stone. And so when they began to sing in the Latin, it gave this esoteric, ethereal, transcendental understanding of God. And the church began to lose the understanding that God is with us, the eminence of God. And the music helped to present that, to make the distance between God and man further away and that only the clergy became the mediator between God and man. By this time, only the clergy would be allowed to sing in the churches. And the church laity became more and more passive to the understanding of worship. They just came and sat. They heard. They visually saw the sacerdotalism of the church worship services, and heard the clergy or the priests sing. And more and more, the Lord's Supper now turning to the prominence of the Eucharist, or eventually the Mass. And this is what dominated through the dark ages. The passivity of the people, and only the prominence in worship of the clergy or the priest. But the Protestant Reformation brought about a powerful change in movement throughout all of Europe. It came at the apex of the Renaissance, which runs from 1300 to about 1600 AD. And God was wanting man, naturally, to start looking to himself seeing himself as an individual rather than a part of a corporate. For then you only were identified as a Christian because you were part of the church, the corporate. But God did use the Renaissance to get man's mind away from the corporate to more of the individuality. And by the days of the pre-reformers of Whitcliffe and Huss, And now of Martin Luther, they begin to realize that my conscience can be captive solely to the Word of God and not to a church. And that I can actually have a personal relationship with God alone, without the church, only through the singular righteous merit of the Lord Jesus Christ. But amidst many powerful effects that came from the Reformation, one was in the liturgy, or more specifically, music. Now, one of the beliefs or the doctrines that Martin Luther advocated was the universal priesthood of all believers. Now, that's an important doctrine because to that time, only the priests were allowed to sing. And the laity just came and sat passively in the worship. But Luther was now declaring that all believers are priests before God. They've been made priests and kings unto Him, so they have a right to sing. And he started congregational singing that for centuries they were never allowed to utter a note in the church. But now the heartbeat of praise to God came to the individual who had trusted in the merit of the Lord Jesus Christ. Martin Luther had an unusual view about music. He believed that you could purge the impurities from the hymns that came from the Roman Catholic Church. if there was a hymn that was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and there were many of those. He took those hymns and discarded Mary, and put in Jesus Christ, where He should be, in glory and honor, in that hymn. Beautiful, powerful melodies. But He wanted to bring about a conversion of the music. He believed in harmony. He believed in music with instruments. He wanted to do the best anointed of God to bring an embellishment of praise to God from the human heart. But there were others of the Reformation, particularly of the second generation, Zwingli and Bucher and men like John Calvin, that they emphasized more of the sovereignty of God, rather than the universal priesthood of all believers. And because of that, and the total depravity of man, they did not believe that a human being could write any kind of music that was worthy to God. The depravity of man would not allow it. And so only music that was sovereignly given could be sung in worship services. Now, we must understand that I truly believe that God used the paradox, what seems to be opposites, and He brought these seemingly opposites together into one principle to bring about a balance of both For Calvin believed that when you left the Roman church, you had to burn every bridge behind you. And so they inaugurated only the Psalms. No harmony, so that the flesh would not get in, and only the melody was to be sung. And because Rome had been using the instruments, They were not to have any musical instruments within the church. Now one of the sad things since that time in history is that theological systems have made a decision between one or the other. And I believe that God chose both Martin Luther and John Calvin in the understanding of music to become a check and a balance within the Reformation. You could get too elaborate, and the pride of man and the flesh of man could get in it. But at the same time, if we're only keeping to the Psalms, unless you interpret the Psalms through the New Testament, you will not see Jesus Christ in the Psalms. You must have that presupposition as a Christian when you go back in the Psalms. For a Jew today reading the 150 Psalms, they don't see Jesus back there. So, one part of the Reformation took, yes, it's proper to even write hymns to the glory of God, to sing the very best, and even to use instruments, while Cavan brought the check of the thing. The man is so depraved, no, I don't think he can write anything to the glory of God, and he must take exclusively that which was sovereignly written by the Holy Spirit. Now, this is an important truth tonight, and I'm not taking hold of one or the other. I've longed in my study of many years of history to try to wed some things that humanity has separated, that I believe has grieved God. You take, for example, George Frederick Handel. Handel was a congregation. He came, two centuries later, from the Reformed theology, or Calvinism. Handel has written some beautiful oratorios of the Bible, and one that he did in less than forty days, Messiah. That's over two and a half hours long. And it just poured from his pen and heart. But Handel never had one of his oratorios to ever be sung in a church because his theological background would never allow his music in a church. So all of his oratorios had to be sung in theaters across Europe. In fact, Messiah was written for a charitable organization in Dublin, Ireland. It was in a secular context. Whereas Johann Sebastian Bach, he was a Lutheran. He read three times through in his lifetime the 52 massive volume of all of Luther's works. And 98% of all of the songs, now the classical radio stations won't tell you this, but 98% of all of the musical works that he wrote, He wrote for church worship service, the embellishment of the fugue in its variety of ways, and often music was born out of strong preaching that he heard from the pulpit. His theology allowed him to give his talent to the church, whereas Handel's theology would not allow him to take his talent and use it to the glory of God in the church. That's one of the sad things that came out in history from that. But, we do have, coming in the 1500s, the chorales of Martin Luther and others will be moved, and English hemody coming from England, so many men that could be mentioned there. But I quickly come to a five-foot man in statute, Isaac Watts, probably one of the most gifted minds of human history. If you can ever get his book entitled Improvement of the Mind, you need to buy it and wade through it, especially if you're a student in high school or a college. It will truly enable you to improve your mind in assimilation of knowledge. He was a very gifted man when it came to the power of the mind and the power of knowledge. But he grew up in a church that only viewed the Psalms exclusively. And one day, as a young man, he turned to his father and began to tell his father some things. And one of the things he was so burdened, that King David needs to become a Christian. Now, we always thought that David, by faith, prophetically, was trusting in Messiah. But Isaac Watts saw that over the centuries, the Psalms were becoming stale and dry, and the church was only viewing the Psalms from the Old Testament economy. And he said the Psalms needed to be converted, or that David needed to be introduced to Jesus Christ. So what he did was to go through the Psalms for eight years, and began to paraphrase the Psalms and bringing in passages from the New Testament that gave clear interpretation of what the verses of the Psalms were speaking of. And after those eight years, dear Isaac Watts, and he is the father of English hymnody, as Luther is the father of Protestant hymnody, He now began to write away from the Psalms and began to write hymns of glory to God, so many of them, over 800. When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, my riches gained, I count but loss and poor contempt on all my He now began to embellish in the 1700s the understanding of the Psalms, but at the same time bringing to a greater fruition the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ of the New Testament. To me, in my studies, the 1700s probably was the greatest century, apart from the Protestant Reformation that the Church has ever known, because some of the greatest men that have ever lived and preached and wrote of composition of music was in that time period. We must understand that there was a movement throughout Europe in the 1700s and it was different than the United States. The United States even though birthed in 1776, it was still a pioneer land, and that country was still in exploration, but Europe was already settled. And what they were now looking for was perfection. They wanted to perfect architecture. They wanted to perfect literature. They wanted to perfect drama. They wanted to perfect music. And so in the Rococo period, or the pre-classical period, the days of Handel and Bach, that was the spirit. And Bach took the fugue, which was already in existence, but he brought it to a perfection. Handel brought oratorios to a perfection. They cannot be better than these two men did. It was the heartbeat. throughout all of Europe, take what we have and perfect it to its best. And we find that the Wesley brothers began to wonder if that is pursued in architecture and drama and literature and music. Is there a possibility of a perfection in living for Christ? And they took the greatest commandment that Christ himself gave, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength, as the definition of Christian perfection, not sinless perfection, only God is sinless, but they were longing amidst the Anglican church and its apostasy, can we live better as Bach is trying to make music better, and Handel is trying to make music better, and architects, and literary writers, and dramatic writers. Can we live better for the Lord Jesus Christ? It was a mood through Europe longing for some kind of perfection. And over 8,000 hymns came from the pen of Charles Wesley. Only about 300 of them still exist today, but he averaged three to five a week, and those hymns ran 28, 32, 40 verses long. It was a sermon that took you 20 or 25 minutes to sing. In our hymn books today, we've cut it down to three stanzas or four stanzas, I'm sure, of Charles Wesley. knew this, he'd be greatly grieved. You've left out this person, this person. That's what I wanted you to sing. And it's like a sermon that's got to build, a song has got to build. And of course, they had so much more time back then, you know, than we do. So they could sing several hymns, 32, 40 verses long back then. But they were looking for the best to be given to God. Then the classical period came in 1750. This will go to 1820. It was the Baroque period, then the Rococo period, or sometimes called the pre-classical period. And in 1750, the height of the first great awakening here in the United States, as well as the great evangelical revival throughout the English-speaking world. And the classical period came in with men like Haydn and Mozart. Bach and Handel wanted to know, all these beautiful flowers of lyrics and words, can you make a beautiful vase, or culturally a vase, to hold the flowers? So they took the musical forms and made them the best to carry the flowers. But when Haydn and Mozart came along, they built on the perfection of these previous men, but they wanted to inculcate beauty into the music. Music can be perfect, but it's also beautiful. Have you heard any of Bach's counterpoint music? Have you heard any of it? Now, I listen to it for about 20 to 25 or 30 minutes, and especially when I'm trying to relax Bach is not the man you need to listen to because he's forcing your mind to mathematically work as he's going through all of these counterpoints, the counterparts of his music. It's perfect in mathematics, but it's music for the mind and it's perfect. It's mathematically perfect. But you put on pieces of Haydn and pieces of Mozart and even Handel in that free time My, you can sit and listen to it for hours. And the natural man is caught, not in vulgar thoughts, not in dirty thoughts, but the natural man is caught in a glory of the natural world. That's all I'm talking about at this point. They get caught up in the natural world. And that's the way the music of the 1700s, Augustus Toplady, Rock of Ages, Clefomene, Let Me Hide Myself, and so many of the greatest hymns of the Christian faith. And one of the things these men tried to do is to take objective truth and doctrine, but also inculcate experience or feeling. Amazing love! How can it be that Thou, my God, should die for me? It's taking the truth and the doctrine of the Gospel, but it's pulling me into it that it's done something for me. The pronoun I was introduced more and more, even by Isaac Watts, when I surveyed the wondrous cross. It was the best balance between objective truth and the subjective working of truth in the human heart. But as I stated last night in the 1820s, the Romantic period Men like Beethoven finally ending up with Debussy at the turn of the 20th century. And these men now began to go more to feeling. They wanted pathos and to move the crowd emotionally. And in the 1800s that started coming in to the church. There's something we must never forget, and I want to handle this very carefully tonight. There's something that we must not forget that the 1800s is what birthed the evolution into the social sciences. Evolution had been taught, you can go all the way back to Egypt, the Egyptian Empire, but why was Charles Robert Darwin so unique? 75% of his collective works entitled The Origin of Species was plagiarized from an uncle. But why did it become so prominent through his writings? It was not only genetic evolution that he dealt with, But he began to introduce evolution as a philosophy in all of the sciences. That's what became the difference. Liberalism was born in that century. Modernism was born in that century. Progressive education was born in that century. All of the cults, Christian Science, Jehovah Witness, Mormon, all the cults were born at that same time. and Unitarianism was on the rise. How did these things come up in Europe? They didn't come in the 1700s. Why did they come in the 1800s? In the 1700s you had powerful men preaching. They knew the Word of God and Jonathan Edwards. In the New England states, George Whitfield, a brilliant man in his own right, and you just keep going down. Quantity of men in great, brilliant quality in touch with God. But something happened in the 1800s in the Church. The Church began to shift its emphasis upon the depth of doctrine and life to evangelism. Now, we are 100% for evangelism. We have evangelistic services at foundations. We've got a large prison ministry that goes out, not only throughout the state, but as far as California in the United States. We go to seven nursing homes regularly every week, twice to each one. One for Bible study, and then on Sundays, several services. But you cannot build a ministry exclusively off of evangelism. A minister cannot preach every sermon, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, evangelistically, because the vast majority of the people in the church are already saved. They can say amen to it, but there is no substance to help them spiritually grow. That's why spirituality must be preached and taught like it was in the 1700s, but now the shift of emphasis. And I don't say this derogatory tonight, for God has proven through His own sovereignty people who never had any education, but who had a heart for God, that God used them mightily in bringing revivals, moving people, stirring people, D.L. Moody, God greatly used this man because of his heart for God. But he wasn't a man of the depth of Scripture. And so as the preaching went, he had some exceptions. The Bonar brothers in Scotland, Horatio Bonar, some powerful hymns came from that man's pen. And now we begin to see the shift. Ira Sankey, fiery Methodist choir leader, when D.L. Moody met him. And he was a man so gifted that he could be riding in a train and see a poem in a newspaper and rip it out and put it in his pockets. And within a few days, as he's sitting on the platform and D.L. Moody preaching a classic sermon from the 1909s, and Sankye would always close with the most appropriate hymn and he was praying, oh Lord, what, how can I close, what hymn should I use? And it came to his mind, a piece of paper in his pocket. And he went to an organ, he always played an organ, I've seen that organ, it's just a small pump organ. He took that piece of paper out and put it on that organ and started pumping that instrument, and began to sing a melody that was the metrical pattern, and he kept all the verses with the same melody. Now that's something to do. The Holy Spirit enabled him, extemporaneously, to sing that wonderful hymn. They were ninety and nine. that safely laid in the shelter of from the storm." Iris Sankey, he was appropriate for D.L. Moody, but he was a man that kept the tempo slow, the rhythm proper. We have another woman, Fanny J. Crosby, she was a Methodist. And although Fanny J. Crosby wrote literally thousands of hymns, You can start detecting in her songs, and we sing some of Fannie J. Crosby's songs, but they don't have the depth of the doctrine like the previous people. It's more of the feeling. Experience, assurance, and feeling became the main concerns of people in the 1800s rather than the depth of doctrine in godly living. We're not saying it was wrong. I don't want to say that tonight. I'm just saying we're now leaning the music in a little different direction. There were some exceptions. Elizabeth Prentiss, Francis Havigal, Philip P. Bliss, who died in a terrible fire on the train that plummeted from a badly built bridge when the train went over. Those potbelly stoves turned over and he got out of the wreckage and he saw his wife burning in the train car and he went back in to try to save her and perished in it. One of the last melodies he ever wrote was for Horatio Spatford It is well with my soul." I really believe that Providence would have allowed him to live on past 39 years old. He probably would have been the most gifted hymn writer of the 1800s. Oh, man of sorrows, what a name for the Son of God who came, ruined sinners to reclaim. Hallelujah, what a Savior that came from His pen. But at the turn of the 20th century, we've got other men now coming, evangelistically. So the music has got to change. A man by the name of Charles Alexander came on the scene, and instead of using an organ, he used a piano. I don't have anything against pianos. We've got nine or ten of them on our campus, and we've got it in our sanctuary. Robert Wilson, a tremendous pianist as well as a tremendous organist. So I don't have anything against pianos, okay, in this statement. Please don't leave tonight and say, Dr. Spence is against pianos. I'm just stating it's a little different mood. When an organ's playing, it carries with it an atmosphere of formality or a proper form of worship. Whereas a piano, it doesn't have the same sound, so it doesn't create the same atmosphere. It's more of an informal. Now, if you can take an organ and a piano and have them playing together, that will help it out. In the mornings, we have an organ playing, and most of the Sunday nights. But sometimes I'll say, Brother Robert, I'd like thee to take the piano tonight. And we will sing more of hymns. leaning on the everlasting arms and some of those hymns that were born in the 1800s. But Charles Alexander, he did a lot of joking in the preliminaries, and he wanted to keep the people light. You ever been to some services when you're walking in, the pianist is going 80 miles an hour? And everybody's talking and happy and telling the local joke, you know. And they're still talking and all of a sudden a man comes running up. Let us stand! And we're still talking and we're standing and everybody's light and happy and giddy. And so he has an opening prayer like a machine gun. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da! And amen! And let's gather our hymn books and let's turn to page 456. And while he's talking, The piano's going strong, and you're trying to breathe to keep up with all of this. But it keeps the people light. We don't want to have any negativism tonight. We want you, when the preacher comes up, all of you smiling. He's got to start off with 14 jokes, you know, and get the people in a good mood. And this was what Charles Alexander wanted to do. Iris Sankey gave us gospel hymns, but the pump organ kind of helped to keep the rhythm down. Charles Alexander, he wanted to get that rhythm upbeat. I deeply respect Billy Sunday, the professional baseball player that was gloriously converted The one that would take care of his music was Homer Rodeheaver. Played the trombone, but he patterned his life by Charles Alexander to keep the people light. Tell a joke now and then during the preliminaries, keep them happy, and let's get into some songs like, Brighten the corner where you are, brighten the corner. So everybody's up-tempo now. My, it's feeling good. I can't wait to get to church to get this good feeling. And so the sermons, evangelistic, evangelistic, evangelistic, and experience, feeling. I've got to have this assurance, or I don't know if I'm saved if I don't have this present feeling of assurance. And the whole mood of the evangelical world changed. But simultaneously, behind the scenes, there were some Baptist men, a man by the name of Vaughn, another one Stamps, another Baxter. And they began to write music to market it. And they were the ones that started the gospel quartets. They wrote the songs and put the songbooks together And no one knew the song, so what you did is put four men with a pianist in a station wagon and give them about 500 copies of these books and go to churches and sing the songs and the people get to know the songs and then they'll buy the books and go to family homecomings and all of that. And for the first time, a syncopated beat was introduced. Music is always the first beat. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Or even in a waltz. One, two, three. One, two, three. But it's always on the first beat. But he introduced what is called the stomp beat. We've already got a problem with the name of it. Stomp. What's stomping? And so this is a man who doesn't know how to play the piano. As long as he learns the three chords, he can go with this gospel quartet and just make it look good with a lot of arpeggios. And so he's going... Sometimes they put their feet up on the piano and begin to play with their toes. You've heard of people playing by ear. Some of those play by toes. But you'll notice subtly in there... It's classy, isn't it? But... See how it just kind of blends in there very subtly? He doesn't know what he's doing. Somebody taught him three easy lessons of how to play the piano. He learned the three chords, or an inverted chord to put in, and just about all the music was in the same key. You know, the tenor could only go so high, and so the pianist is smiling there with his stomp feet. And that's the way he would conclude it. So the OOP-BAH 1-2 And what did it produce? It produced, well, hand clapping. Have you ever noticed at the concerts, no one claps on the first and third. No one. You get Bill Gaither's homecoming videos, you know. They're all sitting around the piano at the Grove Park Inn in the western North Carolina, these $500 a night rooms. About 50 of them get together and begin to reminisce of how mom and dad sang. You've got different people taking the piano and you've got tenors taking it and basses going way down. And then now and then they get that old stomp beat in. But every time you hear a group at a concert, southern gospel, conventional concert, they're always clapping on the syncopated beat. Instead of... I had to kill a Southern Gospel Convention singer. So they got a... Then all of a sudden, you'll find the beginning of a song. One's going up with this microphone going like this. He's trying to get you into this two and four. And once you get the beat going, then they'll... Then they'll go into their singing. Well, that started back in the 30s and the 40s. Even Elvis Presley, taking the Jordan Airs in those early years as his backup group, singing a lot of gospel music. But then all of a sudden, he's coming out, you ain't nothing but a hound dog and everything else. Not Jesus lover of my soul, but calling us hound dogs. Well, in the fifties, you had a lot of families, the Leferas, You had the Downings, a lot of families, the Happy Goodman family. Both of them were about three or four hundred pounds apiece, and the husband was called Happy. And Vestal, she always sang these high notes, and they had sons that used to write those songs, Who am I but a king? would die for. Now all of everybody's just... Now these people, they're not saved. They don't want to be saved. They're not going to go to the preaching tomorrow morning. I can't stand preaching. But I like this music. It's really moving me. And they think that is a religious experience from God. It's the Holy Spirit moving upon them, they think. But then in the ours uh... guitarist file x symbols all on the stage in the drummer's got fourteen different sets of drums all around him and they've got these peace symbols designed by barton russell of the communist society medallions hanging around their neck you know these people are a little different than the christians of the bible don't go to them now in the sixties Very few places would have these people, but they kept driving this, that you can be of the world and still be a Christian. But then, men like Ralph Carmichael, who started writing for Billy Graham's films, the first one to come out, The Restless Ones. Ralph Carmichael introduced the rock beat in the in the music score for the Restless Ones and did a lot he's done it for a lot of the rock stars but yet he will also write as president of light publications a lot of thousands of compositions a lot of them he's everything to me he wrote and so many others but in 67 the evangelical world started bringing in the rock beat then there was another man It was a Nazarene that came up on the sea with Ralph Carmichael, and his name was Bill Gaither. He wrote a song back in 68 entitled, He Touched Me. Back then, there was no problem. He touched me, oh he touched me, and oh the joy that floods my soul. Something happened and now I know He touched me and made me whole. Now back then we were not even thinking philosophically like it is today. But that song now is a classic song existentially. He touched me. And all the joy. Something happened. And now I know He touched. We're looking for the touch. If you've ever seen the movie E.T. there's this weird creature bald and bony eyes and there's a moment in the movie where he puts his finger out and the little boy puts his finger out the music's building and the man with the light affects his building and all of a sudden There's this glow, there's this light. And that's when the phenomenal world touches the noumenal world. And there's a lot of those things in Zen philosophy, Star Trek, The Empire Strikes Back, The Force, all of that is dealing with existentialism. One of the classic statements Billy Orr Roberts came out in the latter 60s, God in the now. Or Pepsi-Cola for the now generation. It's a classic, no past, no future, you're just living for the moment, you're living for the impulse and the desires and the feelings of the now, the now generation. But Bill Gaither, more conservative than Ralph Carmichael. Ralph Carmichael was the man that introduced, take men's voices and soften them. And sedate them so when they sing it comes across soothing rather than strong. He wanted to tone down the strength of the stand for God. And so he started writing all of his compositions, and to this day, when you hear such music, the men, as I stated last night, sounding like the women. And it's this easy listening sedative. Now, it's alright to listen to something that's soft. You don't have to be singing a mighty fortress is our God every time you sing a hymn. You could be singing, what a friend we have in Jesus, or more love to Thee, O Christ, more love to Thee. But you can't take a whole diet of that music. After a while, you will start getting soft in your walk with God and in your stand. You've got to get a diet of good hymns in your life. But by the time we get to the 1970s, when the satanic movement was coming into rock music, we had the Jesus music born. These were young people who were high on drugs in the 60s and hard rock music, and Larry Norman was one of these. And in 1970, when Jesus Christ Superstar was introduced to the United States, Larry Norman stepped on the scene, and he started taking strong hard rock music and now putting it into a gospel context, and tens of thousands of young people started coming to Jesus. The boys didn't cut their hair, the girls still looked like hippies, and they lived in the hippie-ish way, but now they've got Jesus. Somebody showed me recently, I made mention of it last night, Bill Gaither and his vocal band coming to Toronto in the near future. And one of the men, the tallest man, has got long hair and a beard. Somebody said he kind of looked like Jesus. Well, I don't want to do that to my Lord. My Lord doesn't look trashy like that. You will not find Jesus with long hair in art history until the 11th century. Prior to that, he always had short hair. We've got a facsimile of one of the catacomb paintings in our anvil house of the 1600 art pieces that we have and it was done at the time of Decius around 250 AD again it's a facsimile but it's it's showing Jesus as a shepherd and the sheep and the goats divided and he has a he has a goat on his shoulder which is the atonement animal but his hair is very short and curly the oldest mosaic in the world of Jesus is dated at 110 A.D. The man who did it may have known a person who knew Jesus Christ or had seen him, but in the mosaic of this Orthodox Church in Turkey, one part of the face is missing, but three quarters of the head is still there. He has very short hair. Why this happened in the 1100s, it truly was to feminize the Lord. to make him more acceptable rather than viewing him as some judge that will judge me one day. But the long hair softened his appearance. And now the people in the movies of Jesus and Jesus Christ Superstar, they look like people they've drug out of the gutter. Ragged old beards, and they haven't combed their hair in 14 weeks, and it's all matted and smelly, and this is supposed to be Jesus. That's not the Jesus of the Bible. But you keep portraying Him like that. It's like taking mud and throwing it on a wall. You throw enough mud, some of it's finally going to stick. You keep throwing enough lies out to the people of the churches, sometimes some of those lies are going to stick if you throw enough lies out. So the music keeps pumping it out. By 1972, Bill Gaither is now into deep, hard disco music. and he leaves his conventional singing southern gospel roots and he goes way out into hardcore rock music christianized but hard rock music it's only been in the last ten years that he's come back to his gospel roots he says and he is making a pile of money off of it but it still has that slow charismatic ethereal trance type of music. By the 80s, it had now permeated this kind of music. It's either charismatic of courses or slow music that helps you get in tune with the Holy Ghost. They have what is known in large charismatic meetings, tuning up in the Holy Ghost. And it's when a pianist will just start giving arpeggios up and down the keyboard, and you'll hear 20 or 30,000 people taking a different note, and it sounds just like an orchestra tuning up. If you've ever heard an orchestra tune up, every instrument is taking on that first note of what they need, and it's... Well, that's the way the character is tuning in to the Holy Ghost, All of a sudden this harmony starts flowing through a massive audience as the eyes are closed and hands are lifted up to heaven and we are now in the transcendental mode of the surrealistic existential world. It's the feeling. I've got to have the feeling if Jesus truly is in the service. Tonight, I want to take some conservative sounds. I didn't want to bring any hard rock music, because I believe that you know what kind of music rock music is. But I want you to hear some more conservative sounds that have now come in the past five, six years. I've told you the stomp beat that introduced the syncopation and then by the 1960s either the bass guitar or the drums were giving the back beats or the subdominant beat now becoming the dominant beat. Now, syncopation can be honorably used in music if it's sprinkled in. But one of the concerns we must have is that this has become a key to contemporary music, and it's because of the visceral or the fleshly effect on the body. I want our brother to play, first of all, I made mention of the New Age music. I want him to play two pieces. I was in Spain last year and there was a group of New Agers in front of the Bartholona Cathedral. And they had the pan pipes which is this instrument has been revived since 1979. It was identified with Greek mythology and the gods. It is an instrument identified with the gods. But in 1979, when the New Consciousness Movement became the New Age Movement, they took out of the mothballs of antiquity, the pan pipe, it's got a beautiful sound to it, and now begin to inculcate it into New Age music. One of the things that you'll hear is there's a lot of wind. It's not like a flute, but you'll hear the wind bouncing around in the reed. And this is what gives it the nature sound. It's not hard rock, but it's this surreal, ethereal kind of sound. And let's play the first one. This one's entitled Force. sounds a bit like a John Denver he was a pantheist, he was a New Ager, talked about a lot of nature, Rocky Mountain High, Michael Calypso, Chuck and Sko of course he died a drummer in a plane that he was flying himself but he made this sound popular one See how that syncopation is very visceral. It strongly affects the pituitary gland and so many of the glands in the body. Let's go to the other one. This one was written by Rod Stewart. rock star entitled Sailing. He wrote it as a New Age piece. You can kind of feel that freedom. Again, it's purely for the feeling, the hearing. Now there's the pan pipe. You hear the wind. It's not like a flute. You hear a little of the jazz, but just hang on a little bit there in the synthesizer. New Age music is an eclectic, E-C-L-E-C-T-I-C, eclectic. It's when you take various forms of music and bring it together into one song. Now, it's just a very slow, Now what's doing this is the hitting of the stick of the drum. You use a bass guitar to do it, a pan part, you use sticks, even a rhythm guitar to bring back the back beat. Now he's strengthening that syncopated beat. I'm telling you, if I would not tell Charismatics what the songs were, they would love them in their souls. It's very easy for them. And even the guitar, it's the slurring of the notes. Let's take this one off. You'll hear, and this was popularized in the late 70s and 80s, And I'm going to give you an example. This is not the way I sing, but I'm trying to get the example across to you, okay? How firm a foundation ye saints of the Lord. It's as if I can't find the note. Where is that note? Don't hit it. You just kind of He is late. Come on, get up there on that. He's late. I tell you, people can make $100,000 off of that kind of singing. It's almost as if you're pulling the tail of a cat and it's screeching out. But these are the number one singers of our day. And so they play the instruments that way. It's not hitting the note. Hit the note. Get to the note. And they're kind of... And what is that? It's all of that slob culture. You know you're wearing pants, but the 20 yards of cloth down at the bottom so you can mop up the floor as you're walking along. And the crotch is way on down to the knees. And something when they have to go into their pant pockets. And this is cool. This is cool. They can hardly walk, but at least they're cool. At least they're cool. Well, the music is that way. The music. It's cultivating a slob culture of society. Let's go to the next one. This is a piece entitled, How Sweet the Name of Jesus Is. But listen to the singers. They are not going to do as bad as I did in How Far A Foundation, but you'll detect they're kind of slurring into their notes, and when we think, well, this is a good song, something will happen. Okay, brother. In our eternity. Jesus is born of this wisdom, And Christ the living King. We'll synthesize you there. Now you're not able to hear it because it's not loud enough, but the bass guitar is down there at the bottom subtly getting us ready. Your subconscious is picking it up, but your master brain is not. You hear the bass guitar just a little bit of it. It's just hitting the beat very subtly. Now they've gone into harmony. It's a nice, easy, filthy song. They're still working on it. So it was just a tad of a story, but maybe they haven't been trying to be chaotic. Can you turn it up a little bit? Where did that little thing come in? It's like a plug. Boom, boom. Boom, boom. Boom, boom. The rhythm is getting a little bold here. And the drums are getting bolder. We have it this time. That's the last riff. A little bit of extra drum there. But we're going to end it well. Now the synthesizer has been a tremendous invention to give this surrealistic sound. Let's go to another one. He's having to change CDs. This was entitled, My God is Alive. Now this would be a classic charismatic song that we love to listen to, constantly repeating back and forth. Now on the word rock, if the song unfolds, you'll start hearing them sliding. My God is a rock. See, it's just sprinkled in water. They're ploying with the rhythm. You don't hear it. They're building. Let's hear it. In my tears and worries, the Lord God is the law. For on which I stand, I'm sure God is great. He is as strong or mighty, or as poor or as discreet as he beholds. Okay, let's take that one out. We'll go to the next one. I wanted to play this one. Remember the name Cindy Berry. She has become a very sought-after composer. She is now Southern Baptist, very charismatic, but she is now being paid by a lot of good conservative churches to start writing music for them. But I want to play one that she wrote a year ago, and then play one that she wrote for a fundamentalist church. We'll take the first one, it's entitled, Claiming the Victory. This was taken off her website. Now, let's go to this one she wrote entitled, By the Gentle Waters. You would have never known it was the same people who wrote it. They told her, we want you to write a walking service song for us. Don't leave this oven. So it's one of these little songs. You have this with one or two on a CD. If you have 16 songs that are like this, all of a sudden you've got a diet of just easy listening, soft, sedated music, as if there is no war or battle I'm facing. But let's go to another one entitled Be Still and Know. This is an easy listening piece. Be still and know that He is faithful. Consider all that He has done, and you will not be afraid. You can probably go to sleep with that one, you know. This was the very next one on the same CD, on that same CD. See how soft it is? It's easy listening. There's no vital cue more. Let's go to the last one and I want to make mention there's good music and there is bad music But right in the middle of good and bad music is a gray area. It's locked. He hasn't gotten to Sodom, but it's locked in the first seven stages before he gets to the gate. He is now pitching his tent in that direction. That's that gray area. I'm always careful in talking to people when they ask me, what do you think of this song, Dr. Spence? And I'll say, well, that's one of those in the gray area. I don't want to say it's a bad song. It's not an excellent song. But it's one of those songs that if you keep listening to these songs in about four or five years, you will be over here in the bad singing because the gray area, you can't put a handle on it, but it does have that tinge of the sound of the contemporary in it. Now, this next one, All of the young people may have heard this sometime in your life. Let's play this one. How many know what that is from? Lovely, a lovely movie, Man of Green Gables, okay? That's not a Christian song, but it's just, you can see her out there, Nova Scotia, my mother's homeland, no, in Prince Edward Island, a little bit north. And she's got the carrot's hair, you know, she's got a shawl around her. For that, for that movie, that's a good piece. It sets the mood. Have you ever watched a movie with the mute on? Especially if somebody's sneaking up and it's 12 o'clock at night and no one's sitting with you and the music is building and you're either going to run out of the room or hit the mute when the man comes out of the corner and goes boom! You start laughing. Why? I didn't have any music to help me out. But if I had that music on, it's creating mentally in my mind somebody's going to get it around the corner. It's setting the mood. That's why they put music in movies to help set the mood. They're toying with our feelings. But you heard that. Let me go to the next one. You can almost see two people dance to it. It's beautiful, like Anne of Green Gables. This is a Christian song. He's always listening. He's always listening. So there's a lot of similarities that start coming in for easy listening. Let's go to the next one. I'm walking, I'm water walking I'm water walking, I'm water walking Now somebody's walking on the water. Who's walking on the water? This is Peter. Look at this. Look at this. He's walking on the water. It's very light and rhythmical. Now we're going in for a little jazz. Look out, Peter. I tell you, you can see the apostrophes walking through the roofs behind him as he's doing it. Let's go to the next one before we get that ingrained in our mind. Now here is the classic hymn, Holy, Holy, Holy, but notice the contemporary harmony that will come in. A lot of dissonance. Right there. There's another one right there. Now the back beat is being forced on our mind. You see how sedated we should be with strength. Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty. It broke the rhythmic pattern there. Let's go to the last one. That one just keeps on and on. This was written for children. To make creation glow He could have made it black and white And we'd have never known And what made God send Jesus To die on Calvary Of course it was this joyous thing I feel inside of me Now that's Sandy Caddy when she was about 23 or 24. She was able to sing three and a half octaves. Caught living in fornication or adultery with one of her She was a musician several years ago when her husband left her, but she's back on the circuit now. Okay, let's take that one out. In conclusion tonight, I want to take you to Daniel 3, and how is music going to end up in history? Well, all music will have to come to one thing. and it's the original theme that God intended music in its worship to him but it's on the earth at least in the time of the tribulation period and this is a prophetic history chapter of Daniel 3 as Revelation 13 of Nebuchadnezzar with this image on the outskirts of Babylon he's using the music as a mood instigator for worship. Notice the word worship. It's in verse 5, it's in verse 6, it's in verse 7, it's in verse 10, it's in verse 11, it's in verse 12, it's in verse 14, it's twice in verse 15, and then in verse 18. The key is this is going to be for worship. But how do you get all of these princes and governors and captains and judges and all of these languages and all of these people and all these nations to bow down together? You'd have to say it in hundreds of languages. He's not going to do that. He tells us in verse 5 that at what time that you hear the sound of the cornet, the flute, the harp, the sacked bolt, the psaltery, and the dulcimer. Three score cubits in verse one, there's one six and six cubits, that's another six. And the third six will be found in the music instruments. They will be mentioned four times the number of earth in verse five, verse seven, verse ten, and in verse fifteen, these six instruments. It is going to be the music that will become the announcement and the mood music to get the people in the mood to worship this image of gold. But we're also told in verse 5, and in verse 7, and in verse 10, and in verse 15, all kinds of music. In our English language it is the word eclectic. You can have eclectic colors and decor, fabric, or you can have it in music. You can take jazz and disco and folk and rock and southern gospel and put them all into one song, so that one song will have a little bit of all the forms of music that people like. McDonald's, hamburgers, for years in the seventies every two months came out with a different commercial and it was the same jingle advertisement but they did it in a different form one time it was disco another time it was jazz another time was country western another was the black sound another was in a rap and they covered within a year quite a few different forms the same melody but just sang it in a different form There's coming a song in the future. We've had foretaste of the song. John Lennon's Imagine. Stairway to Heaven, which has been declared by the rock world as the most perfect rock song that's ever been written. All of these have been building an influence upon the world, and it's needed one final ingredient. And that's Christianity. It's needed the gospel sound, the apostate gospel sound, but the gospel sound in the pot for the final ingredient. And there's going to come a man in the future that he is going to sit down at a piano or at a guitar or maybe flying in a plane one day, and he is going to write a song It's going to be the greatest song that depraved man has ever written and it will be a song that will truly bring universal worship to the devil and the Antichrist. This is the final apex of the world system we talked about last night. Music will be the ingredient to manipulate the moods of the people to fall down to this image. I am amazed that the three Hebrew children were even present. Daniel's not, but they were. Sometimes you may find yourself in a place, and once it starts, you wonder, why in the world am I here? But when they said, you've got to bow down, they weren't going to do that. They were forced to be present No problem with that, but if you're going to have me to bow down to this image of some type of God, no, I'm not. I don't care all the mood music you play. And I'm telling you, sometimes you've got to be very careful if you're in an environment of music. You've got to control your body so that it will not respond to that music. But in the contrast, there is going to be a song in heaven. no hymn books, there'll be no preparation of choir practice. But according to Revelation chapter 5, that all of the redeemed will sing a new song. We're told in Psalm 40 That when God takes us out of the pit and out of the miry clay and establishes our goings upon our solid rock, that He will put a new song in our mouth. And that score sheet starts in your soul at the new birth. And as you grow older with God and you're going through trials, He gives you a song in the night. It's a few more notes of notation. And you grow. You go through another trial. You overcome temptation. Maybe there was a failure and you'd recovered. But all of those years in walking with God, that new song is being strengthened in your life. And when we stand before God in a glorified state, And no longer blood being the life principle of the body, but the Holy Spirit, the quickening Spirit. We will all join in together in the new song. Somebody may say, well I like that, I'm bound for the promised land. I like that song. Maybe somebody will say, well, brother, we've already got here. I don't want to sing I'm Down for the Promised Land. Or what about prayer? Sweet hour of prayer. Oh, brother, we're already here. What song, what hymn book are we going to use? What page number are we going to turn to? No. The Holy Spirit's going to empower all of us to sing the new song. I've often wondered if Amazing Grace is going to be sung there. Or Hallelujah What a Savior. I've always loved that one by Philip P. Bliss. But I think all of those were foretastes of glory. There's going to be a song. A new song, the Song of the Lamb. 144,000 will sing a song that no one else in heaven will be able to sing. It's uniquely their song. But music will be a part of our life with God for eternity. But the devil's coming up with a final song. He's been working on it for thousands of years. And one day, at the apex of the abounding of iniquity, there is going to be a song of songs to step forward. One that will have all kinds of music in it. It will be the apex song of the world system. And everybody will be ready for it. When Elvis Presley died, There was a caricature that came out in many of the newspapers in the United States of an angel standing on each side of him. Each of them have a harp. And he was standing in the middle before the throne with his sideburns and his greased back hair and his leather jacket with his guitar singing before God. I tell you rock and roll music will not be in heaven. It will not be there. There won't be any electric guitars in heaven. There won't be solid body guitars. There's violet cymbals. There won't be people sensually dancing up there. The Charismatics say, well, David danced before the Lord, but you can't put the dancing of today back 3,000 years ago. It wasn't this sensual rock music dancing that they've got now. It was more of gymnastics, of jumping up with excitement, maybe turning a cartwheel, Doing a somersault so elated of what God was doing in his life, but he wasn't out there moving his hips around and stirring up the carnality of the people. That's devilish. That's not God. Heaven will not be a place for the visceral, the fleshly. Heaven is a place where we will receive a body that truly is fashioned like unto His glorified body. And it will be the power of the Spirit that will enable us to sing there. My dear mother had a beautiful voice for many years. But now she cannot sing. Sometimes when I'm with her, I'll read passages of scripture and I'll say, Mother, let's sing a hymn. And I'll start singing the hymn. And she knows that no one's around but me. And she'll start singing in her stroke-affected voice. most of the time she can keep on key but it's a very rugged tone and after one or two stanzas she'll start crying I'll say mother now don't don't worry about that don't don't worry about how you sound let's keep singing this this is a good hymn I'll say one day God's going to give you a voice that you're going to be able to sing like you've never sung before. And that will kind of perk her up. And we'll start on the third stanza, and here she will go with me. Dear people, don't allow the world to give you their song, and don't allow their song to ground out your song. But you keep praying every day, I want to keep my music right. When you become a Christian, you don't drop rock music immediately. You don't even start liking good hymns immediately. We've had people over the years, still coming to our church, and they have a hard time with our music. Because they've been used for this, I wouldn't take nothing from my journey now. Gotta make it to heaven somehow. no matter what they're from, Baptist, Charismatic, whatever, and we're singing, you know, Almighty Fortress is our God, and they're wondering when is this thing going to be pumped up, you know? And some of them are bold enough to say, Brother Spence, I like everything about this church, but it's hard for me to take this music. I'll say, just keep coming. and singing with it. Just keep coming. And after about six or eight months, I see them out in the audience, their faces are beaming, and they're singing the hymn almost by memory. And they'll tell me, I don't know how I took those other songs before. What is it? You cultivated your ear to that trash. Now you must learn to cultivate your ear to better things. You've got to cultivate it. My mother used to take students her first day in voice and say, I'd like for you to sing a song for me. And she put on a tape recorder. And maybe this young lady, she's used to singing at her church and She comes and she starts singing as if, you know, I'm the best singer. I really don't need these lessons, but I want to show you how I can sing. And when they're finished, they look at my mother as if, where's the praise? She'll say, well, that's good. But I'm glad that you're taking music from me this year. And so nine months later, my mother pulls out the tape recorder and she says, I want you to hear something and she plays and you'll see the student who in the world is that? That's you. Is that the way I sounded? Yes, that's the way you sounded to me. Oh, they can tell the difference. If you've been coming Just a few days or weeks of this church and you're kind of looking for the oompa, oompa, oompa. That's the way your ears have been cultivated. You listen to rock music all the time. That's all you'll love. That's all you'll love. But once you get saved, you must recultivate your hearing and bring it up higher. Listen to better music. Listen to more noble music. and you'll find after about a year your whole life is different and you'll wonder what in the world you even saw in that music back there I don't have the time tonight and you've been a very patient audience with me I don't have the time tonight but perhaps I can send back and leave with the pastor but I've given it in my book of nine warnings that become criteria of what, if the music is of the good, or the evil, or is it in the gray area. The nine characteristics that mark the contemporary sound of our age. That all that God will not only save our soul from sin, but that he will deliver us from this present evil. world. Our precious Heavenly Father, we are thankful tonight that Christ died for us and saved us. We were a product of the world when he found us. We loved the things of the world. We pursued the things of the world. We desired, our ambitions were things of the world. The day that you saved us, not everything changed, but as we grew on with you, we began to realize, I need to let certain things go in my life, and these companions are not the best for me, and that music, yes, I know it has Christian words in it, but it's visceral. I enjoy it because of what it does for me physically. And we try to make it compatible because it has Christian words in it, but the music is truly the message, not the lyrics. Oh, we pray that thou will speak to young people tonight, peradventure one leave, with a cocky, insensitive heart tonight. get in their car and turn on that radio or go back to their old trash of music. Oh God, how will their life end? But we pray that some eyes have been opened and some will go home tonight and say, yes, I used to listen to this, but I've got to give it up. It's not the best. We're no longer choosing between good and evil. But when we become a Christian, we must now be choosing between good and best. What's the best for me? Because I want to be the best Christian for God. Bless this church, its music, its people. And we truly pray that this week has been of some profit to them. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you so much for your attention tonight. I want to thank Dr. Spence for coming along this week. This has been a most informative time as night after night he's laid the foundation for the philosophy of the present day and finished it off so wonderfully by giving us an understanding of how Christian music is where it is today. I want to thank him for coming and he's pointed out to us how there has been this gradual change from worship of God to more or less worship of self and of feelings. We are today involved in a tremendous battle, and as our brother was saying, when you hear that soft, gentle, feel-good music, you wonder where is the battle? But today we are in a major battle for Biblical Christianity, and so therefore we have to stand up and be counted for God. I wish every so-called evangelical church in Toronto could have heard those messages and perhaps you might like to get the copies of the tapes and deliver them out to some people who would need to hear them because it is one of the great problems in the Christian church today as life has gradually changed over a period of time. I don't think we can bring this week of meetings or these meetings to an end without some real rock music. So we're going to sing number 280. You'll find it on page 289 in the handbook. Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. We'll stand and let's really sing as we praise the rock of our salvation.