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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Eric Walsh: Must Be the Music

Eric Walsh

Culture, Sex, and the Fight for Purity

I kind of last minute I changed a little bit.

Tonight I'm gonna go through kind of 1 of the talks I do that kind of set the stage for what I'll do tomorrow afternoon.

I do these talks all over the country on music, and specifically the music that I try to address is hip hop music.

I actually deal with a lot of reggae music as well, only mainly because those are the 2 forms of music I'm most familiar with from my past.

But you can kind of extrapolate a lot of these messages into many forms of modern music.

I kind of need to give you a few kind of statements, qualifying statements before I start.

1 of them is I'm not, I do not consider myself to be a fanatic when it comes to music or no music.

I've learned that God doesn't really function in fanaticism and Spirit of Prophecy really I think backs me up on that.

But I do believe that anything we use, especially when we call it worship, we must be very careful that it is used actually to worship because the devil is really really really slick in the area of transforming worship into self-worship.

And that's 1 of the big problems that I see.

So oftentimes I tell people, people say, you know, they have a drum in that church and they'll march out of the church and I say you know I'm not as concerned about the drum as I am the spirit with which they do their services because you could be very quiet and only have a piano and a violin but if you're arrogant and prideful and showman and it's a lot of showmanship and you're showing off your talents and your skills I don't really see any difference between that and if they you know they're playing James Brown funky drummer on the drums the spirit with which things are done is important.

That's what got Satan in trouble in heaven.

Ironically, Satan actually was doing the right things a lot of the times.

He was just doing them for the wrong reasons and he was able to draw attention to himself and change the worship of God and he began to believe people were worshiping him.

We'll deal more with that a little bit later on.

I say so I qualify myself with that because I don't want you.

I don't tell people I'm not 1 of those types of people when it comes to these issues to tell you what to do.

I believe that once you read the evidence, the scriptures and especially the the scriptures combined with the spirit of prophecy are very clear.

So I can tell you that I no longer listen to hip-hop music.

I no longer listen to reggae music and I'm very careful with what Christian music I listen to because I've learned that it's easy.

So I'm not actually, this talk actually includes some stuff on television because it's an older version.

But I want to use this older version because you are probably primarily health, medical, dental, students, residents.

So some of this stuff might actually be of interest to you on a kind of another level.

The talk I'm going to do tomorrow night is a lot more edgy.

Tomorrow afternoon it's going to have a lot more images of modern stars and actually going to show you some of the lyrics.

And I realize that you guys probably don't listen to Jackie O and Jay Z and those people, but I think you're going to come across patients who do, and you live in a world where many and most people do.

And so hopefully it'll give you a bridge to be able to reach people that do listen to this music without coming across too judgmental or too ignorant, because then a lot of times people just shut down and don't wanna hear anything else you have to say.

So tomorrow night we'll do that more edgy, racy talk.

And you'll see it really is edgy and racy.

I have to block out parts of some of the songs.

The lyrics are so incredibly provocative and so we're actually so just rude.

Let me let us all suffer it all through at 1 time.

I promise there's probably only 1 more slide that does anything like that.

I make these 3 points because a lot of times when I'm doing these talks, I'm doing them at local churches.

Some of them are suburban affluent churches.

Many of them are churches in the heart of the city and some of the roughest parts of the country.

And so I do the talk and 1 of the things I like to set up is that we truly are still in the midst of a technological revolution.

I was reading an article on Bluetooth and the fact that now cars are going to begin to come, so that your cell phone, by Bluetooth, hooks into your car system.

And so that when you look in your rear view mirror, if someone's calling, the person's name and phone number will appear in your rear view mirror by Bluetooth.

Now just 20 years ago, 10 years ago, that would be Star Trek science fiction.

In the 80s when I was growing up, I mean, the cell phones were like VCRs, you know, these giant white things with long black antennas, you're like dragging them.

But now, you know, they got phones so small, you can hide it in your sleeve.

I believe 1 of the texts that fits that, I don't think I know if I have the text on this 1, is in Founding Revelation chapter 12.

At the end of the chapter, John the Revelator says something very powerful.

He says that the dragon opened his mouth.

Now to the mouth of the dragon came a flood.

And there are a lot of ways that that's probably interpreted.

1 of the things I see that as saying is that the dragon when he in the last days when the dragon speaks He will speak with great volume he will be able to pass a lot of information through at 1 time and You're gonna see that the devil has the ability to send messages and information now like he never had before.

I tell parents all the time, a hundred years ago, if the devil wanted to get into your house, you had to open the door.

Today, the devil can get into your house through high speed, telephone, wireless internet, your cell phone, pager, two-way, sidekick.

There's so many intangible ways for him to get to your child without you having any idea he's getting there.

And you see this Dateline NBC runs these specials on these internet predators.

And a lot of them are men of the cloth rabbis, preachers, priests, teachers, youth workers caught because now these predators can go into your house and try and get at your child without you even know your child can be upstairs being being approached and and and and and encouraged by a predator while you're downstairs preparing dinner a hundred years ago that was impossible so we live in a different age this is biblical Bible says in the last days knowledge would increase.

Knowledge has so rapidly increased that we are doing things that were just your imagination just 20 years ago.

You couldn't even have imagined what we're doing today.

So the children are being influenced by these new and evolving sources, things like video games.

When I was a kid, the first video game I saw had a bar on this side, a bar on this side, this little dot, doop, doop, doop, bounced around.

We thought it was just like the coolest thing ever invented.

Today I can't even figure out how you use the joystick for the new video games.

And I think the biggest thing, especially inside of the church and inside Adventism, is that parents and even youth workers often are unprepared for what's going on.

You know, I see a lot of parents who their kids get online for them.

The child has to load the computer up, get online, send emails for them.

Even still, when you figure out how to spend enough time now, parents still don't know how to do that.

Parents still don't know how to use PowerPoint.

And the devil will work this to his advantage as a way of getting to the children without the parent being able to defend or protect the child.

So I talk to a lot of parents about that, and becoming computer savvy being important.

And all of the things that we've seen, we've seen this recent scandal with a senator.

All of these things show you the power of being able to communicate with someone when you never have to see them or hear them.

All right, here's a quote, we are living in the midst of an epidemic of crime at which thoughtful God-fearing men everywhere stand aghast.

The corruption that prevails it is beyond the pen to describe.

Every day brings fresh revelations of political strife, bribery and fraud.

Every day brings its heart-sickening record of violence and lawlessness, of indifference to human suffering, of brutal fiendish destruction of human life.

Every day testifies to the increase of insanity, murder, and suicide.

Who can doubt that satanic agencies are at work among men with increasing activity to distract and corrupt the mind and defile and destroy the body and that is from the book counsels on health page 25 it was a be almost as if sister white was right right read wrote this after she read USA Today I mean it's it applies that well to modern times.

Every single day that makes this testimony.

When I logged on to AOL this morning to check my emails, the front page cover, I don't read newspapers anymore, I get all my news mainly through AOL, honestly.

The front page cover, that's where I first see it, was that the head of the National Association of Evangelicals was caught in a gay scandal.

Now, I don't know if a man is guilty, innocent.

Countdown to the Showdown

We'll read our opening text and we'll go into the message.

We'll start in the book of Acts the 16th chapter.

The scripture says, and it came to pass as we went to prayer a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying.

The same followed Paul and us and cried saying, these men are the servants of the Most High God, which show unto us the way of salvation.

And this she did many days, but Paul being grieved, turned and said to the Spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.

And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas and drew them into the marketplace unto the rulers.

A sermon, a sermon this morning is entitled The High Price of Holiness.

Father God, we thank you Lord for bringing us together in this place.

We thank you Lord for your word and your truth.

We ask now Lord that I would just be made a nail upon the wall, a rusty old sorry old nail, Lord, hammered in by the Holy Spirit.

That upon that nail, Lord, I ask that you hang a portrait of Jesus Christ so that Eric Walsh is not seen or heard this morning.

With that, Lord, we hear a message from the throne room of God.

Many times it's happened to me that while I've been preaching, there have been people who have been seemingly exuberant in the audience.

Now I come from churches where people respond.

Call and response is a part of the black liturgy of church services.

So in and of itself, that isn't abnormal, that we preach and someone shouts amen or preach on, brother, or whatever they might say.

But there have been times when the response has been so overwhelming by 1 particular individual that it's distracting.

And I can remember this year and I was in Birmingham, Alabama preaching at the 1 of the oldest largest black Adventist churches in the south, the main church there in Birmingham, the mother church, and there was a woman to my left who just kept shouting stuff I mean beyond amen beyond hallelujah she was saying stuff like you're my pastor you you're my man keep preaching and I said you know this again a little uncomfortable you know I'm trying to focus and preach here, and this woman is like throwing all kinds of stuff up at me here.

And finally, I stopped my sermon, and I said, my sister, please allow the Lord to speak.

Because basically we were both preaching a sermon.

Hers just was garbled, disjointed statements.

She threw 1 or 2 more out, just kind of snuck them in.

After church, I got a letter that afternoon after I did my seminar in the evening from a church member who complained that I had dealt too harshly with the woman.

That This is a woman who had joined the church in the last couple of years, and I had no place to tell this woman how she should respond to the Holy Spirit.

And as I was flying back to California, I took out my laptop and typed a very long letter back to the church and to this individual who decided to remain anonymous, except to tell me that it was someone who had gone to Oakwood, not with me, but they had gone to Oakwood as well.

So I wrote back a long letter and the text I used to defend my stance was this 1.

The text I used to say that just because people are saying Christian things does not mean that it is the Spirit of God moving on them.

Just because the words might be accurate, and her words in my opinion weren't even good words to be being said because she was focusing on me not on the word not on God not on anything so I I start our message this morning that way because I never heard back from anybody because I think when they went and read the text they saw exactly what I meant.

He knows when God has gained momentum and I'm a big sports fan so I know about momentum.

You know a basketball or football game can change drastically with 1 fumble or 1 turnover.

The whole game can change, the mood can swing, the momentum goes the opposite way, and 1 team that was clobbering the other team can then become the 1 being clobbered.

It's the same thing in the spiritual realm.

The devil is always looking in our lives for opportunities to change our spiritual momentum.

And 1 of the ways he has learned to do that is that he has learned that if he comes at you as if he is the enemy, your guard goes up and you often become more spiritual.

So what the devil has learned to do is to garb his disturbances, to clothe his disturbances in the garb of Christian rhetoric and wording so that when he comes at you, your guard is down and you take his momentum changing disturbances as if they come from God.

So that he can distract you and mislead you and so as I was preaching there and this woman did this and again I don't really mind people saying amen I actually prefer to know that the audience is alive and awake but this was getting to the point of being ridiculous and I knew that it was not the Spirit of God.

It's happened to me many times actually I could tell you stories from places even around the world I remember being in Jamaica and a lady coming out of the darkness of the wooded area there in Frankfield, Jamaica and walking out in front of...

I'm preaching, doing slides and everything, crusade, evangelism, And this woman walks out right in front of the pulpit right in the middle of the service.

And I have to admit, if you know anything about Jamaica, you know that they don't do voodoo, they do something called obia.

And it happened that my sermon that night was entitled, Duppies, Dummies, and Demons.

Duppie is the Jamaican popular word for ghosts.

So I was talking about spiritualism and I was railing on Obeah and Voodoo saying it has no power, God is all-powerful.

Now in Jamaica they don't have, at least where we were in Jamaica, they didn't have sound ordinances.

So they had loudspeakers on top of the tent.

People would come out of their houses in their pajamas when I made altar calls because they could hear the sermon so far away.

I'm not sure it was, you know, the nicest way to do it, but somebody probably wanted to sleep.

But this woman came down, and I remember the same principle, that it was a distraction.

The way it was done, how it was done, it was a distraction.

I remember preaching at Compton and a man standing up in the audience and arguing my sermon and in the middle of what I was preaching, and again it was the same spirit that clothed in the garb of Christianity, someone would challenge or come against.

So that the appeal, the process of calling people to God would be watered down or it would be distracted.

Ah, now, because it's obvious when it's like that.

So I set that up so that you can see that it's obvious.

Paul and Silas were, they were doing a good work.

I want to read, I want to read what she was saying again.

A certain damsel with the spirit of divination, verse 16, met us.

Now she was someone who predicted the future and made her master's money.

I'm gonna quote the book A Trip into the Supernatural again by Roger Murneau that if you read it that was the power he asked the demons for.

When he was a demon worshiper he asked for the power to predict the horses.

And he made so much money that in the book or in the videos he tells that he eventually got kicked out of some of the betting houses in French Canada because he was winning so much.

The demons have the ability, not so much in my opinion to tell you the future, but they are very wise and can analyze what is most likely to happen.

And of course the devil can predict what he can then make happen.

So the devil can pick the horse to win and cause that horse to win Because God isn't into horse racing That's why I would never gamble on sports because I don't know who does whose side the devil might really be on I'm not picking sides So he was able to do that.

So this this is not that she was just a lucky person or something, she truly had a spirit in her.

There was a demon at work in her and the demon saw that Paul's preaching was a threat to his is his anti-christian anti-biblical influence that he was having on the area.

He had the people in a lot over money and over the power to divine the future and so he did not want Paul to come in and mess that up.

But the demon was wise enough to know that if the demon came out and said these are the enemy these are our enemies they are of God we should destroy them that somehow people would have probably sided with Paul so instead the woman says in verse 17 she followed and said these men are the servants of the Most High God would show us the way of salvation.

That's exactly what they were trying to do.

Yet Paul, if you just go down a little bit more, after many days Paul being grieved, he was patient with her.

I did too, a half a sermon in Birmingham.

I tried to hint, but eventually he turned and said to the Spirit, he didn't speak to the woman, he said to the Spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.

So here she is saying the right things under the unction of the enemy.

The right words are being spoken but they don't come from a converted heart.

The words are correct but they are coming, literally coming, from the enemy.

Ah, so let me fast forward because we're talking about the high price of holiness this morning.

And I want to tell you that it's the same principle I believe being used, the same efforts are being exerted against the Church of God in the last days.

I believe that when we look at some of what we call now called contemporary Christian music and recent gospel music, I believe that a lot of it functions under the same type of spirit.

Culture, Spiritualism, and the War for Your Soul

All right, this afternoon we're going to go through 1 of the later talks in the series I do on hip-hop music, and actually it'll cover other stuff than just that.

Most of the times when I'm doing this, I'm doing this in urban churches around the states, And what I've learned is that, as goes the United States, so goes the world.

And so even in the Caribbean and Europe, Africa, I was spoken Manchester, England, and I was amazed at how popular American rap music is in Western Europe, period, I mean, in France and in England.

So we're going to deal with some rather heavy issues.

And this is some of what we're going to be talking about will really seem kind of cutting edge as you were.

I mean, some of you are going to see things you probably don't ever see because you don't listen to the music or really aren't in this world.

I can tell you that growing up in Connecticut, I grew up about an hour from New York City.

It took about an hour, hour and 15 minutes to get to the Bronx from where I lived.

And when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, hip hop music came on the scene like a flood.

In 1979, a song was released called Rapper's Delight.

And it was 1 that said hip hop, hip hip hop, hip hip hop, don't stop rock.

Probably heard it even had an old lady do it in a movie.

Some movie, an old lady with her rap in the same song.

I mean after that, Russell Simmons, who we'll talk about a little later on, began Def Jam Recordings and then Run DMC, LL Cool J, and pretty quickly modern American culture began to really acquiesce to urban hip-hop culture.

And so now you have artists that are of all ethnic backgrounds.

You have artists that are really from all different kinds of neighborhoods.

If you go to the finest Hollywood event and they have an after party, you're going to hear hip-hop music.

This has become the music that has kind of taken over.

This particular talk focuses on the aspect of the music that actually encourages or kind of enables spiritualism to be taught to those who get into this music.

There was a time when you know black America really didn't get into anything that seemed like it might be spooky.

They had Parliament in the 70s, but there was nothing like when you look back at KISS, remember KISS, K-I-S-S, and other groups that were like just scary to look at.

There was no real equivalent, except maybe Bootsy Collins, in the black music world.

What I'm gonna show you is that this, obviously this phenomenon has changed and the devil has found a new way.

And I'm hoping that some of you now, when you, some of you as healthcare students, that when you deal with patients, if you're trying to witness, that you'll get a better understanding of kind of the thinking and the logic that pushes much of our culture today and be able to better witness to them.

So I know most of you don't listen to the music so I'm not gonna be probably beating you upside about the music itself but hopefully you'll be better able to relate to people who do listen to the music.

Before we go into this, let me just have a word, let us just have a word of prayer.

We ask for your Holy Spirit, and we ask Lord that you would show up in this place.

Be with this presentation, we pray, amen.

It says, let no man deceive you with vain words For because of these things come at the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience Be not therefore partakers with them For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are you light in the world.

Walk as children of light proving what is acceptable unto the Lord and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather reprove them.

That text is a statement not only about where we should take our stand on right and wrong.

It's clear that we ought to take our stand for right.

But it also is a statement about where we were as when we were in the world when we are contrary to God's will and what we have become when we accept God when we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior.

The scripture says you were once darkness, sometimes darkness.

I mean literally you were the source of evil, your actions, the old man in you was that and he says but now you are the light of the world.

So you can't say you've made the transition from darkness to light and then be a light bulb that doesn't give light.

You can't say you've made the transition from darkness to light and then be a light bulb that doesn't give light You can't say you've made the transition out of the world and yet all of your lifestyle all of your actions your tastes your ambitions Are all still the taste and ambitions of the old man.

Something's wrong with the process if what you desire is what you say you've escaped from.

And then it says we ought to reprove them.

We as Christians ought to be willing to stand up and say no that's not right.

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Series

Eric Walsh: Must Be the Music

Countdown to the Showdown

Transcript

Parent Series

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Recorded

Parts

Culture, Sex, and the Fight for Purity

1h 20m

Countdown to the Showdown

31m

Culture, Spiritualism, and the War for Your Soul

1h

Sound Doctrine