I recently watched a performance of Toby Mac on Fox News.  I didn’t know for sure if he claimed to be a Christian, but evidently he did.  The song he performed was very good…if his goal was to stimulate the flesh.  It had no spiritual value whatsoever.  It caused the reaction in people that it was designed for.  Mac verified that fact when he asked the crowd to dance.  Many were already dancing.  And dance they did—the women moving sultrily and provocatively.  I think I heard Mac’s song on a secular station (where it appropriately belongs) when I was in a department store.

I won’t go into the origins of CCM, its birth out of the Jesus Movement, which came from the Counterculture Movement, whose offspring are now destroying Christianity and the United States.  Instead, I will deal with Mac’s and similar music on the basis of scripture.

Ephesians 2, the old nature defined.

“And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.” – Ephesians 2:1-3

God considers individuals dead who are in trespasses and sins, because they are in subservience to the flesh and cannot accept life.  They choose death over life, darkness over light, and flesh over spirit.  Such an individual has a carnal mind, which is a mortal enemy against God.  The flesh is very creative when it has control of the mind, but it only produces what is pleasing to itself.  Everything the flesh produces is an affront to God.  Just as He did not accept Cain’s offering, or the offerings of Nadab and Abihu, God does not accept such offerings

If there were a “Holiest of All” on earth, and Mac waltzed into it playing his song, he would be instantly cremated.  The tired, old excuse, “But it is reaching the lost,” is invalid.  Satan is reaching the lost.  He is reaching the lost who have rejected the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  He does so by one major method of music designed by the flesh, for the flesh.  The many professing Christian musicians joining him in his paradigm are a great assistance to his efforts.  They are also reaching the lost in the same manner and with a diabolical message.  That message is, “You can have God and the world system.”  That is synonymous with a call to worship Satan.

For those reasons I would call Mac’s music, and most CCM, “dead” music.  It has no life for the spirit, but only the flesh.

The Carnal Mind is God’s enemy:

“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” Romans 8:5-8

The contrast to Ephesians 2:1-3 is Ephesians 4:17-24

“This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart;  who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.  But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” – Ephesians 4:17-24

A true Christian must be focused on building up the spiritual mind.  That cannot be accomplished if one returns to subservience to the flesh.  Further, such reverting can open the door for old bondages and proclivities to return.  Maybe that is why the Christian Music Industry is fraught with homosexuality and other tawdry lifestyles.  It is an unaccountable industry—arrogantly and defiantly so.

The problem is that we now have generations that have never known otherwise.  Born and raised in a time of apostasy, they believe the aberrations in Christianity are normal.  Those generations have been cheated out of a genuine relationship with Christ and God.  I have been praying for years that God would raise up an army of Christian musicians that write and produce exclusively Christian music.   It may or may not happen.  The absence of it must not lead one to turn to the “Toby Macs” of the industry for entertainment.

Christians do not need music, but they want it.  We do not need many things that we believe are essential to our comfort and emotional well-being.  We need God’s word.  We need to pray.  We need to stand up for truth.  We need to keep ourselves unspotted from the world system.  We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit.  We can use music that feeds the spiritual person.  But we don’t need Toby Mac.

When Josiah became king, he was 8 years old.  He did not know that there was anything wrong with the kingdom that he inherited.  The temple, all the priests, and everything related to the worship of and obedience to God, was in a decrepit condition.  The nation had fallen into idolatry and it had been that way since before he was born.  Like all young people, he thought the dilapidated, sordid, disorder was normal.  However, Josiah at 18 years of age begin to seek God.

Discovering the truth
Hilkiah, who was the priest, should have known what was right.  However, he may have also have been raised in the degradation.  As the highest spiritual leader, he was presiding over a totally apostate nation, and no one had ever told him.   However, when King Josiah turned 18, Hilkiah quite by accident found the Book of the Law.  When he has it read to King Josiah, the young king became outraged.

When Josiah turned 20, he called the elders and other religious figures together, and made a “covenant before the Lord, to follow the Lord and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book.”  Then Josiah cleaned house.  He tore down all the idols, burned and otherwise destroyed all the false altars, and even defiled their places with the powdered bones of dead men.

Our nation is in the same raunchy condition spiritually and secularly.  We are a wicked nation that is becoming increasingly wicked.  Just the fact alone that our nation has sanctioned and committed the murder of over 57 million babies, with many professing Christians sanctioning the slaughter, makes it cursed by God.  In the nation that was founded by Christians on Christian principles, we are now developing policies that are aggressively against God, His Son Jesus Christ, and anyone who devoutly follows Him.

A Deceived Generation
However, let’s focus on Christianity.  Christianity is in unpredicted apostasy.  Most of the younger generations have never know it any different.  The cancer of apostasy is eating the fabric of righteousness and spitting out the bones of truth mixed with lies.

Their leadership is defiled.  They prefer to resemble the emissaries of Satan rather than someone set apart (sanctified) as an anointed man or woman of God.   With body piercings, tattoos, secular fashion, and using the language and mannerisms of the world system, they present bondage in their messages.

The younger generations have thrown off scriptural restraints, discarded every righteous restriction, and have leaped headfirst into apostasy.  They are not knowingly subjects of Satan.  They do not knowingly worship at his altars, imbibe his polluted spirituality, and knowingly reject the Holy Spirit and the voice of truth.  They do it because they are deceived.

They sit under “rock star” pastors, novices who have no substance and blatant heretics.  Their messages are designed to entertain, but not to convict or offend.  The messages are a mixture of humor, pop psychology, and strange interpretations of the Scripture stretched to cover the heresy.  If they quote a bold exhortation from God’s word, it is applied to anyone who disagrees with their aberrant paradigm.

Some Youth are Waking Up!
However, some of the youth are becoming edgy.   They are the ones who long for God.  They know something is wrong, but not many of them know exactly what it is.  They are actually reading the Bible and studying what they read.  Even in the mangled text of modern, hip, bibles, there is some truth.  One day they may, as Hilkiah, eventually discover an accurate translation.  Upon reading it to themselves and other young leaders, they may come to the realization that they have been deceived and cheated out of their inheritance, which is the legacy of the life and experiences of godly people.  They will realize that they are being cheated out of a true relationship with God, His Son Jesus Christ, and His Holy Spirit.

They may realize that the longing in their soul—that is never satisfied by the churches they attend—is a longing for God and truth.  They may recognize that the unsettled feeling, and the sense of dread, is because they worship in a diabolical environment, empty of the righteous presence of the Holy Spirit.

When that occurs, some of them are going to rise up in righteous protest.  They are going to begin exhorting their friends and challenging the evil.  This army of youth will be powerful because they have been in the shadowland, feasted with demons, and known the emptiness of the entire paradigm of Christian worldliness.

A Mighty Youth Army
I do not know how large this army will be or what effect if any it will have on the apostasy.  When they come out of their dark places, they may discover that the older sector of Christianity has apostatized down a different path.  Maybe they will begin meeting in small house churches.  They may take over dilapidated and declining churches that are closing their doors at the rate of several hundred each month.  One thing is for certain, their voices will be heard.  God will make their leaders all like prophets.  They will stand in the faces of the “Steven Furticks” and “Perry Nobles” of this generation and boldly rebuke them.  It may be what those apostate leaders fear the most a youth uprising against them and their high places.

It is a job for the Remnant to pray for this uprising of godly young people.  We need to pray that they truth will burn like fire shut up in in their bones and words of truth like flames on their tongues.  We must pray that they will not be discouraged when they realize the devastation that they were born into and not be dismayed at the task ahead.  We must pray that they do not compromise when they realize how alone they are in the world system and Christianity.  We must pray that they will be content to be accepted by God.  We must also accept them and encourage them to be Josiah and Hilkiah in their generation.  Praise God for His immeasurable wisdom and power!!

In Revelation 3:14-21, God rebukes the Laodicean Church because of its lukewarmness. Their lukewarmness was brought on by attempting some degree of Christianity mixed with materialism and self-aggrandizement. What a fire-quenching combination. The fact is, we need fire in this dangerous period and we will need a reserve of oil before we depart from here. I am encouraged to know that we can still get both. Sure, there is a plague of heretics and hirelings, churches and entire denominations are apostatizing, and the world system is becoming very hostile to and dangerous for Christians. But none of those factors are welcome in my “prayer closet.”

I encourage Christians to pray. It is one of the most powerful things you can do. It is also one of the greatest battles that you will fight. Everything in the kingdom of darkness is alerted and comes against the child of God that begins to pray. What was the first thing our government did to begin this long decline into moral poverty? In 1963, prayer was banned from the public education system.

The Counterculture took force, ripped society with drugs and so-called “free” love, anti-establishment riots, the hippie movement, and other evils. It spawned the Jesus Movement, an unaccountable group infested with heresies that invaded Christianity and changed its music. 10 years later, the same court legalized the slaughter of unborn children. 44 years later, one of the Counterculture’s main leaders, a murderer and terrorist, hosted in his home in Chicago, the announcement of the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama

The beginning of the end times invasion of New Age heresies that threaten to destroy several denominations, and have polluted nearly all the Christian colleges and universities, began with acceptance of diabolical Contemplative Prayer. It is another attack on prayer.

What is Satan so afraid of? He’s afraid that Christians will grasp the concept of prayer, its power to defeat him and strengthen them. He fears that they will begin praying like they did when the Great Awakenings occurred in the last century. Additionally, he is terrified of them becoming so fiery that they roll back 44 years of darkness and destruction, undoing his entire evil agenda.

If this nation and Christianity are to survive, it will because God’s people began praying in earnest—and more than 5 minutes per day. If we “tithe” on our time, 3% of one 24-hour day is about 45 minutes. I know beyond any doubt that if the Remnant spent at least 45 minutes each day praying, we would become an army of fiery warriors. Spend more than that time in prayer and you’ll begin to spread the fire. Glory to God!

Just one more time, Lord, one more time—send us forth a fiery army that shakes open prison doors, sets captives free, preaching like trees of righteousness, and fearlessly bringing the Gospel to the lost, that He may be glorified!!

Some may ask, “But what if it doesn’t happen?” Then you will go into meet the Bridegroom with fire and plenty of oil!!!