1. The Bible says, "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God" (I Cor. 10:31).
2. Does the music you listen to glorify God? Or does it appeal to the flesh?
3. David Merrell, a high school student from Suffolk, VA., won top honors in regional and state science fairs for his experiment involving mice, a maze, and music.
4. After establishing a baseline of about ten minutes for the mice to navigate the maze, David started playing music ten hours a day, then put the mice through the maze three times a week for three weeks.
5. His findings: the control group of mice, which did not listen to any music, were able to cut five minutes off their time.
6. The mice that listened to classical music cut 8 1/2 minutes off their time.
7. But the mice that listened to hard-rock music took 20 minutes longer to navigate the maze.
8. David said, "I had to cut my project short because all the hard-rock mice killed each other...None of the classical mice did that at all."
9. God’s Word has much to say about music. It is mentioned more than 550 times. A large portion of the Bible is composed of spiritual songs. The book of Psalms was the songbook for Israel, and for many Christians as well. "Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs..."
10. Music is a very important part of our lives. It can be either a very positive force or a very negative force.
11. Approximately 400 BC, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote, “If one listens to the wrong kind of music, he will become the wrong kind of person.”
12. Unfortunately, many people (even many Christians) listen to the wrong kind of music and if they do not deal with this they will become the wrong kind of person.
13. It bothers me that many Christians have accepted rock music. Even many pastors listen to it. Many churches have brought it into their services, etc.
14. Tonight, when I refer to rock music, I am including pop, hip-hop, rap, CMM, and all sensual, worldly dance music.
15. I would like to speak tonight about the need to avoid all worldly music -- rock and roll, rap, pop, rhythm and blues, jazz, etc.
16. Even modern country & western music is worldly. It sounds just like rock music, and the words are just as bad -- drinking, adultery, etc.
17. It is wrong to listen to worldly music. It is sinful and people who listen to it should repent of it and then throw it away.
18. Before I was saved I listened to rock music. I grew up in the days of the Beatles, when rock music was all over the television and radio, in juke boxes, etc. My family was Roman Catholic and did not object to it.
19. But when I got saved, I realized rock music is from the devil, and those who listen to it are in trouble with the Lord.
20. Someone said, "Evangelicals have a tendency to first separate themselves from the popular culture and then to imitate it" (Christianity and Rock & Roll). Churches started accepting so-called "Christian rock," and now many compromises have followed -- no dress standards, accepting evolution, accepting homosexuality, etc. (Illustration: World Vision, rock music, and homosexuality).

I. ROCK AND ROLL DESTROYS PEOPLE

1. The American Academy of Pediatrics has said that rock music contributes to "new morbidities" in young people, including depression, suicide and homicide.
2. The American Medical Association released a report that concluded that music is a greater influence in the life of a teenager than television. Those involved in the rock culture were more likely to be low achievers, involved in drugs, sexually active, and involved in satanic activities.
3. The American Medical Association voiced concern about "the possible impact of destructive themes depicted in certain types of popular rock music. The vivid depiction of drug and alcohol use, suicide, violence, demonology, sexual exploitation, racism and bigotry could be harmful to some young people."
4. "The National Education Association estimates that many of the 5,000 teenage suicides each year are linked to depression fueled by fatalistic music and lyrics," the report said.
5. Furthermore, the report said only a small handful of the most popular CDs were free of profanity or lyrics dealing with drugs, violence and sex.
6. Dimitri Tiomkin was a famous composer and conductor. You may not recognize his name, but if you like Western films and television programs you would recognize his music. He composed the music for High Noon, Gunfight at the OK Corral, Rawhide, The Alamo, and many other films and programs.
7. Dimitri Tiomkin said, “There is actually very little melody, little sense in the lyrics, only rhythm (in rock music). The fact that music can both excite and incite has been known from time immemorial...Now in our popular music, at least, we seem to be reverting to savagery...and youngsters who listen constantly to this sort of sound are thrust into turmoil. They are no longer relaxed, normal kids" (Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, Aug. 8, 1965; cited by David Cloud).
8. Music affects people in various ways -- romantic music, sentimental music, folk music, patriotic music, classical music, and of course old-fashioned hymns, all move people differently.
9. For example, a man who owns a nightclub will not play hymns in his night club. He knows that will chase away his worldly customers.
10. One day a friend invited his unsaved aunt to our church. She came all the way from Manhattan, but she ran out during the song service. I asked my friend what was wrong and he said his aunt was involved in the occult and the congregational singing upset her.
11. Music affects people. Good music affects people positively, and bad music affects people negatively.
12. When the United States invaded Panama in December 1989, the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega took refuge in the Vatican's embassy on December 24.
13. America troops surrounded the embassy but Noriega refused to give himself up. In order to drive him out, our troops tortured him by bombarding him with rock music, including a song by Van Halen called "Panama." If that wasn't horrible enough, they played “The Howard Stern Show” for several days. Finally, Noriega couldn't take it any more and he surrendered on January 3, 1990.
14. Many similar examples could be given. In 2007, the Pentagon purchased 50,000 copies of a Paris Hilton rock music album to use against terrorists in the Anbar province in western Iraq.
15. For many years now, our military has been using rock music to torture captured terrorists. It is more horrible than water-boarding.
16. This type of rock music torture became so commonplace that in 2008, various rock musicians went to the United Nations to condemn torturing terrorists with their music. They called on governments and the UN to uphold and enforce the Convention Against Torture and other relevant treaties.
17. But what about people being tormented in stores and restaurants?
18. Rap music is even nastier and dirtier than rock music. Most of the songs are full of profanity, and promote immorality, violence, crime, killing policemen, drugs, etc. Women are referred to as whores, etc.
19. A study published in the May 2003 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that students who listen to violent music are more likely to act violently. Lead researcher Craig Anderson of Iowa State University said, “Across five studies, we found that violent lyrics do increase violent thinking and aggressive feelings.”
20. David Cloud wrote, "Rap is violent music, and it is not surprising that it is accompanied by violence." He listed some of the rappers that died untimely deaths, and there were hundreds in the list, including some that were very popular.

• MC Rock, rapper with The Almighty RSO, was stabbed to death in 1990 at roughly age 28.
• Eazy-E (Eric Wright) of N.W.A., one of the founders of Gangsta rap, died of AIDS in 1995 at age 31. His lyrics focused on themes such as guns, drugs, anti-law enforcement, and deviant sex. He had seven children by six different women.
• Tupac Shakur, a gangsta rap superstar who founded the Outlawz Immortalz after he was released from prison in 1995. Time Warner Music helped pay Shakur’s $1.4 million bail, and he was shot to death a year later at age 25.
• Notorious B.I.G. (aka Biggie Smalls) (real name Christopher Wallace), gangsta rapper, was shot to death in 1997 at age 24. This was only three years after the release of his successful album “Ready to Die.” This album was filled with cursing, violence, and immorality. One cut was titled “Suicidal Thoughts,” and Notorious B.I.G. sang, “When I die, -----, I wanna go to hell.”
• Freaky Tah (Raymond Rogers), member of Lost Boyz, was shot to death while leaving a nightclub in New York City at 4 AM on a Sunday morning in March 1999 at age 27.
• Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, singer with rap group TLC, died in a car crash in April 2002 at age 30. A few days before her own death, Lisa had hit and killed a 10-year-old boy with her car in Honduras.
• Jam Master Jay (Jason Mizell), rapper with the popular group Run-DMC, was shot to death outside his recording studio in Jamaica, Queens in October 2002 at age 37 by an unknown assailant.
• In November 2003, Anthony “Wolf” Jones,” 38-year-old former bodyguard for “P. Diddy” Combs, was shot to death in a gunfight outside an Atlanta nightclub. $7,000 was found on Jones’ body. Jones and Combs had been acquitted of gun possession and bribery charges stemming from a 1999 shooting inside a New York nightclub.
• In December 2003, federal prosecutor Jonathan Luna was gunned down during the trial of rapper Deon Lionnel Smith, who was accused of running a violent drug ring.
• Rapper Juston Potts murdered his promoter on June 7, 2004, because “she told him he didn’t have the talent to sell records” (“Aspiring rapper arrested in killing,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 8, 2004).
• Rapper Holy Quran was shot and killed in 2004. He was about 25.
• Russell Tyrone Jones (aka Ol’ Dirty Bastard) of Wu-Tang Clan died in November 2004 of a drug overdose at age 36.
• Rapper Andre Hicks (aka Mac Dre or Dr. Dre) was shot to death in 2004 at age 34. A news report said, “His death was as violent as the lyrics to some of his most popular songs.” Police say that Hicks was part of a gang that robbed banks and pizza parlors, and in 1992 he was sentenced to 5 years in prison. His rapper nickname, Mac, describes a man that women would pay to have sex with. Police say that at least three people were killed in retaliatory shootings after Dre’s death.
• There is a “List of Dead Rappers” on “Hip-Hop Database Wiki” on the Internet. Dozens of dead rappers are listed.

21. “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (I Cor. 15:33).
22. “My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. ... My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path: For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood” (Proverbs 1:10, 15, 16).

II. ROCK MUSIC IS ANTI-CHRISTIAN

1. Some people would object to that statement, and attempt to defend rock music by saying that Elvis Presley and other rock singers have recorded Gospel songs.
2. It is true that Elvis Presley recorded Gospel songs. It is also true that Elvis was an adulterer and a drug addict. He abused barbiturates and other narcotics so heavily that he overdosed in 1977 at the age of 42.
3. Fourteen different drugs were found in his body during the autopsy, including toxic or near toxic levels of four. Dr. Norman Weissman, director of operations at Bio-Sciences Laboratories, where the toxicity tests were performed, testified that he had never seen so many drugs in one specimen.
4. Elvis’s doctor, George Nichopolous, had prescribed 19,000 pills and vials for Elvis in the last 31 months of his life.
5. Elvis required 5,110 pills per year just for his sleeping routine. Elvis also obtained drugs from many other sources, both legal and illegal. It was estimated that he spent at least $1 million per year on drugs and drug prescribing doctors.
6. Elvis's wife Priscilla divorced him in 1973 because of his frequent adulteries. Incidentally, the term "rock-and-roll" itself is a vulgar slang word for sex.
7. John Lennon, the leader of the Beatles, was probably just as big as Elvis Presley. Lennon said, “Rock music has got the same message as before. It is anti-religious, anti-nationalistic and anti-morality. But now I understand what you have to do. You have to put the message across with a little honey on it” (Pop Goes the Gospel, cited by David Cloud).
8. Frank Garlock wrote, “If any music has been guilty by association, it is rock music. It would be impossible to make a complete list, but here are a few of the ‘associates’ of rock: drug addicts, revolutionaries, rioters, Satan worshippers, drop-outs, draft- dodgers, homosexuals and other sex deviates, rebels, juvenile criminals, Black Panthers and White Panthers, motorcycle gangs, blasphemers, suicides, heathenism, voodooism, phallixism, Communism in the United States (Communist Russian outlawed rock music around 1960), paganism, lesbianism, immorality, demonology, promiscuity, free love, free sex, disobedience (civil and uncivil), sodomy, venereal disease, discotheques, brothels, orgies of all kinds, night clubs, dives, strip joints, filthy musicals such as ‘Hair’ and ‘Uncle Meat’; and on and on the list could go almost indefinitely” (The Big Beat, pp. 12, 13).
9. Donnie Brewer of the rock group Grand Funk Railroad said, "We take the kids away from their parents and their environment to where the only reality is the rhythm and the beat" (Lowell Hart, Satan's Music Exposed).
10. Gene Simmons of Kiss said, “What I write is pretty much a belief in a certain lifestyle which is a free soul, a free person, doing basically what he wants to do" (cited by David Cloud).
11. "A free soul doing basically what he wants to do" -- that has always been Satan's philosophy. Aleister Crowley was a notorious Satanist. He popularized the Satanic rule of "Do What Thou Wilt."
12. By the way, Beyonce’s husband Jay-Z has been photographed with "Do What Thou Wilt" emblazoned on his shirt. Both he and Beyonce have admitted to being demon-possessed.
13. Rolling Stone magazine published an article about her demon-possession entitled, "A Woman Possessed." The writer said, "Offstage, she's a shy, quiet girl who talks about the family she wants to raise...But when she steps onstage, Beyonce Knowles is gripped by a spirit so powerful, it even has a name: Sasha!"
14. Beyonce says her spirit is called "Sasha Fierce," and that when she performs on stage this demonic spirit takes over. A video of her devilish performance at the 2013 Super Bowl half-time can be seen on the Internet. Her facial expressions are frightening. You can literally see the demons controlling her.
15. One writer said "her outfit was extremely slutty, and she gyrated around like an animal in heat."
16. While many writers were shocked at the vulgarity and lewdness (which people have come to expect from these worldly half-time shows), Christian writers also noted the performance was filled with pentagrams and other satanic symbols and imagery, Illuminati hand signs, and many disturbing, sinister images (see "Good Fight Ministries").
17. When Michael Jackson was asked why he did his vulgar, sexual hand gestures on stage, he said, "It's the music that compels me to do it. You don't think about it, it just happens. I'm a slave to the rhythm" (The Evening Star, February 11, 1993).
18. Michael Jackson was an accused child molester. He spent $35 million to keep it out of court.
19. He died in 2009 of acute drug intoxication after suffering cardiac arrest. He was 50-years old.
20. Ephesians 5:11 says, "And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them."
21. Rock star Frank Zappa said, “Rock music is sex. The big beat matches the body’s rhythms” (Life, June 28, 1968).
22. John Oates (of the rock duo Hall & Oates) said, "Rock ‘n’ roll is 99% sex” (Circus, Jan. 31, 1976; cited by David Cloud).
23. His partner, Daryl Hall, said, “The main purpose of rock and roll is celebration of the self” (cited by David Cloud).
24. The Bible teaches the exact opposite. Our Lord said, "Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me" (Mark 8:34).

III. ROCK MUSIC IS DANGEROUS AND ADDICTIVE

1. Ted Nugent, a rock musician, said. “Rock is the perfect primal method of releasing our violent instincts” (Circus, May 13, 1976; cited by David Cloud). Ironically, this vulgar, mangy rock star now appears on FOX News and campaigns for supposedly conservative politicians!
2. In 1965, the British rock group "The Who" recorded a song entitled, "The Kids Are Alright." The writer of the song was the guitarist Peter Townshend, who said, "When I wrote this song I was nothing but a kid, trying to work out right and wrong through all the things I did. I was kind of practicing with my life. I was kind of taking chances in a marriage with my wife. I took some stuff and I drank some booze. There was almost nothing that I didn't try to use. And somehow I'm alright."
3. But he is not alright. He is a disciple of the Indian Hindu Meher Baba, a so-called "avatar" who claimed to be god in human form.
4. Townshend had admitted to being bisexual. He was divorced from his wife and is now living together with a girlfriend.
5. Townshend was placed on the sex offenders register for five years in 2003 after admitting he had used his credit card to access a pornographic website that had child porn.
6. On several other occasions he identified himself to the press as a communist. In an interview with a pornographic magazine, Townshend said he was a wealthy capitalist but his political views were communist!
7. In December 1979, eleven people were trampled to death at a Who concert in Cincinnati, Ohio. After the stampede, a writer named John Grant Fuller wrote a book entitled, Are The Kids All Right? The Rock Generation And Its Hidden Death Wish (1981).
8. In his book, Fuller suggested that rock music's hypnotic rhythms mean the music "ignites and is responsible for unprecedented and potentially disastrous concert violence on a regular and continuing basis." Note his words: "hypnotic rhythms...responsible for unprecedented and potentially disastrous concert violence."
9. Mr. Fuller also warned that rock music is addictive. “Rock music in particular has been demonstrated to be both powerful and addictive, as well as capable of producing a subtle form of hypnosis in which the subject, though not completely under trance, is still in a highly suggestive state” (Are the Kids All Right?, Times Books, 1981).
10. Rock music is just as addictive and just as dangerous as dope and alcohol.
11. Andrew Salter was a behavior therapist and psychologist. He was the first nationally recognized opponent of psychoanalysis, and he was a dedicated critic of Sigmund Freud.
12. Mr. Salter said, “Rock music is an ideal vehicle for individual or mass hypnosis” (John Blanchard, Pop Goes the Gospel; cited by David Cloud).
13. Rock singer Graham Nash (Crosby Stills & Nash) said something similar. He said, "Pop music is the mass medium for conditioning the way people think” (Hit Parader Yearbook, 1967; cited by D. Cloud).
14. He was right. People have been brainwashed into accepting drugs, homosexuality, adultery, pornography, communism, socialism, and many other wicked things, and rock music has had a lot to do with it.
15. William John Schafer wrote a book entitled, Rock Music; Where it's Been, What it Means, Where it's Going. He said, "What is undeniable about rock is its hypnotic power. It has gripped millions of young people around the world and transformed their lives.”
16. Schafer said to “earnestly desire to grow closer to the Lord you must forsake completely any hindrance to your spiritual growth. I believe that rock music is such a hindrance.”
17. We should pay attention when rock performers themselves tell us that their music is hypnotic and addictive and dangerous. Jimi Hendrix was a popular rock star till he died from choking on his own vomit at the age of 27 in 1970.
18. I saw an interview with one of his girlfriends. She said Hendrix heard voices and was demon-possessed. In a rambling, incoherent interview with Life magazine, Hendrix said rock music was "spiritual.. you hypnotize people to where they go right back to their natural state which is pure positive the subconscious what we want to say...People want release any kind of way nowadays. The idea is to release in the proper form. Then they’ll feel like going into another world, a clearer world. The music flows from the air; that’s why I connect with a spirit, and when they come down off this natural high, they see clearer, feel different things...” (Jimi Hendrix, Life, Oct. 3, 1969, p. 74; cited by David Cloud).
19. Jim Morrison of the Doors was also demon-possessed. He died in 1971 at the age of 27. There was no autopsy, so the exact cause of his death is still disputed. Some say he committed suicide. He was a drunkard and a drug abuser. His biographers claim he drank continually in an effort to drown out the voices of the demons that persistently tormented him.
20. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones said rock music "works in mysterious ways. Once it goes in (the ear) you really have no say about what it does to you” (cited by David Cloud).
21. A professor of neuropsychology at the Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas at Dallas did a study that verified what many of us have known for a long time -- smoking marijuana affects the brain and makes pot-smokers stupid.
22. But in many ways, rock music is even more dangerous than dope. Rock star Neil Young said, “Rock ‘n’ roll is like a drug. When you’re singing and playing rock ‘n’ roll, you’re on the leading edge of yourself” (cited by David Cloud).
23. Rock singer Janis Joplin died from an overdose of drugs in 1970. She was only 27 years old. In a newspaper interview, she described her first big concert in these words, “I couldn’t believe it, all that rhythm and power. I got stoned just feeling it, like it was the best dope in the world. It was so sensual, so vibrant, loud, crazy” (Wichita Eagle; cited by David Cloud).

CONCLUSION:

1. A number of years ago, I preached a message like this on a Sunday night like this. My assistant at that time was Larry Hobbs, now pastoring a church in Florida.
2. After the meeting, Bro. Larry saw a teenager who was seeing a young lady in our church that he knew from high school. Bro. Larry asked the young man what he thought about the message and the young man sneered at him, saying he didn't like it. He gave him the "brush off."
3. Not long after that, the young man stopped seeing that girl from our church and I never saw him again. But one day I saw in the newspaper that he had murdered both his mother and his father.