TBA: Antichristfest music lineup

The Antichrist will use music to gain worshippers and promote his agenda. Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, a picture-type of the Antichrist, employed loud, beat-driven music to engender the mass idolatrous worship of his “beast” image by the rulers of the nations—it’s judges, police, politicians, etc.

When Daniel and his three Hebrew compatriots—Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego—were about to be cast into a fiery furnace, Nebuchadnezzar implored, as Bible scholar Noah Hutchings writes, "I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’ll have the band play my song one more time, and if you fall down and worship the image, we will forget all about this first offense. But if you are still stubborn and refuse to worship the image, when the last note is played I will order the guards to overpower you and throw you into the furnace."

“We notice in these last verses that the musical portion of this false and idolatrous worship service is stressed twice again," observes Hutchings.

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Norwegian author Berit Kjos presents this excerpt from her book, “How to Protect Yourself from the New Age and Spiritual Deception”:

“Man's attempts to transcend the boundaries of the physical world through music are intricately interwoven with the history of mankind. While God encouraged His people to enter His presence through genuine worship and songs of praise, Satan offered seductive counterfeits.

“Thus, pagan societies used music as a conduit to help them connect directly with the occult spirit realm. Neville Drury, who promotes New Age meditation and visualization in his book, Music for Inner Space, points to ancient cultures as models for today:

" ‘In societies where magic and myth define and influence everyday existence man aspires to be like the gods and to imitate them.... [Magical] incantations and songs are a source of Power.’

“In primitive Africa and South America, witch doctors function as mediators between the tribe and demonic spirits. The sacred drum (credited with magical powers) together with hallucinatory drugs (sorcery) induces trances, which transports him into the spirit world where he receives occult guidance and power.

“Nanci des Gerlaise, author of Muddy Waters, is the daughter and granddaughter of Cree medicine men. Now, as a believer in Christ, Nanci warns others about the occult music in Native Spirituality:

" ‘Now when I hear powwow music, my spirit recoils, and I know that it is because there are spiritual forces of darkness at work.' "

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My church, Shorewood Bible Church, is located in Rolling Meadows, IL. Interestingly enough, Pete Townshend, the brains behind the Who, recalled in his 2012 autobiography, Who I Am, that he stayed “in a room of a Holiday Inn in an Illinois town called Rolling Meadows.”

He wrote of this self-proclaimed monumental experience (in the late ’60s), “I heard the voice of God. In an instant, in a very ordinary place at an unexceptional time, I yearned for some connection with a higher power. This was a singular, momentous epiphany—a call to the heart. Why did God favor this particular place in America? Because it was so new? Because it was so sunny? Suddenly it became clear that I longed for a transcendent connection with the universe itself and with its maker. This was the moment I had longed for. My mind was being set alight by the psychedelic times, but revelation came to me in the quietude and seductive order of Middle America.”

Townshend admitted once in an interview, “When I am on the stage I am not in control of myself at all. I don’t even know who I am. I am not this rational person where I can sit down and talk to you. If you walked on stage with a microphone in the middle of a concert I’ll probably come close to killing you.”

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John Lennon, who readily confessed he “made a deal with the devil” and referred to himself as a “hollow temple in which the spirits inhabit me,” once explained, “When the real music comes to me it has nothing to do with me ’cause I’m just a channel. It’s given to me and I transcribe it like a channel.”

Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones once told The Los Angeles Times that his song, Demon, was biographical and that he himself was possessed by four or five demons. In Demon, Richards declares, “It’s such a mess. Demon in me, demon in me. It’s living’ in me, the demon in me.”

Jim Morrison of The Doors believed he was a sort of shaman for spirits to use him for his music, according to the book, Break on: The Life and Death of Jim Morrison. Morrison’s producer, Paul Rothschild, said the most pivotal part of the singer’s life was in Venice Beach “when this spirit entered him, an intense visitation of energy.”

The Door’s photographer, Frank Lisciandro, was quoted in the book stating, “Jim drank to quiet the ceaseless clamor of the demons, ghosts and spirits. He drank because there were demons and voices and spirits shouting inside of his head and he found that one of the ways to quell them was with alcohol.”

Angus Young, lead guitarist for AC-DC, nicknamed the “guitar demon,” admitted to Hit Parader magazine once “that something takes control of the band during their concerts: it’s like I’m on automatic pilot. By the time we’re halfway through the first number someone else is steering me. I’m just along for the ride. I become possessed when I get on stage.”

"Elvis Presley is believed to have been demonic possessed," according to a website. "He openly admitted that he was used by a hierarchy of spirit beings. People who knew him personally said he had occult powers.

"Prince admitted he has 2 other people living inside him [really evil spirits] and that he changed his name to Formerly Known as Prince because he didn’t know what the spirits wanted to call him."

Ozzy Osbourne told Hit Parader in 1984, “I really wish I knew why I’ve done some of the things I’ve done over the years. Sometimes I think that I’m possessed by some outside spirit. A few years ago, I was convinced of that – I thought I truly was possessed by the devil. I remember sitting through ‘The Exorcist’ a dozen times, saying to myself, ‘Yeah, I can relate to that.’ ”

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“Every piece of living creation has music to it; has a vibration—that’s what music is,” says Richard Jordan. “Music is really just math in regard to the tonal vibrations.

“When the Bible says back in Ezekiel 36 about the trees singing, well, they literally do. Music is so engrained in the creation that it’s everywhere.

“Music is called the universal language. You can thoroughly affect people with music. One of the most dangerous things that happens with your children is the music they listen to, because it communicates ideas and you don’t even need to have words to go along with it.

“Listen, baroque music is considered to be the highest form of musical expression, but Mozart was an ungodly wreck. They’ve done experiments where if people have Mozart in the background, they actually do better in their learning curve. You think, ‘Oh, that must be godly music.’ You ought to go find out something about Mozart!

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“Music is not an issue of sacred and secular. Lazy Christians have made secular and sacred out of life, but you don’t have a sacred life and a secular life; you only have a life in Christ, and in the Bible music is music. It’s not church music and ‘Saturday-night-boogie-oogie-woogie’ music.

"As Job 22: 15-17 says, 'Hast thou marked the old way which wicked men have trodden?
[16] Which were cut down out of time, whose foundation was overflown with a flood:
[17] Which said unto God, Depart from us: and what can the Almighty do for them?'

“What I’m trying to get you to see is God created music and from the Creation to the Flood, music didn’t go up, it went down and it degenerated from the Creation morning until it debauched the world and filled it with violence. They weren’t praising God; they didn’t want to know Him and He wound up wiping them out."