God has a solution for everything
When Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania sang their way to freedom in the late 20th century, did they know they were repeating a pattern of spiritual warfare laid down 3,500 years ago, a pattern to defeat the work of Satan and free their nation from the bonds of slavery? In their case, communist Soviet union.
But that is what happened. It’s a long story. And right on time to hear too as Vladimir Putin envisions Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the rest of the former Soviet Union return of what he considers his legal property. But just as they did once before, these tiny nations have at the ready the very thing to overthrow the tyrant.
It is music. In what seems to us to be ancient history the original Hebrews in Israel went to war with a choir. A choir?
Yes, because sound is the thing which breaks the barrier between heaven and earth, between eternity and space-time The chords of music wrapped the chords of control around the Soviet inept, devious, lacking in leadership and unable to maintain control of government either with or without public approbation. .
We all know about King David’s guitar-playing calming the demons in King Saul who as often as not tried to kill him. That was a small personal war. The Baltic States are facing a much larger threat now.
Overlooked is the fact that the Jews hired full time employees for the temple worship as singers. Their job was to praise God and keep up a song barrier against their many military enemies. Praising God has one immediate effect – God inhabits the praises of His people. Have you ever heard a shofar horn? That noise itself scared their enemies to the bone.
Psalm 22:3 “But you are holy, you who inhabit the praises of Israel.” If your enemies are close, praising God keeps Him closer. Against the largest nation on earth, Russia, the smallest nation can sing its way to freedom.
Paul and Silas were in prison. When their singing actually broke the iron claws lashing them to the wall of their cage. The jailer planned to kill himself, a proper response for that culture and time to having failed in his job in ancient Rome. The imprisoned people who also were jailed were cheering the God of Israel. Acts 16: 16ffMaybe the authorities did not want men who escaped being chained to a wall having anything more to do with their city!
If singing your way to political, economic and religious freedom semonstrates , every nation with word of mouth and song can throw off the predatory political behemoth. God wants individual nations (not globalization) and says so in Acts 17:26.
God will judge and free any nation that keeps his people in bondage, and not just the Jews! (Acts 7:7) His people are scattered over the face of the earth. We don’t hear sermons about sheep and goat nations but God is keeping score. As we face the onslaught of national border wars and political intrigue, the Sheep Nations and the Goat Nations will begin to be identified.
On a personal note, years ago I worked at a juvenile prison. My library aide was a young man regularly berated by the staff – “he has a record, you can’t trust him, he’s a bad one,” they said. But I knew he was a genuine Christian, so I kept him bucked up each day in his grief. Finally at Christmas time he asked to sing “O Holy Night” for the holiday play.
The next day things changed. The staff could not believe their ears. His singing had moved them to tears and in two months he was on his way home with their blessing. He won his freedom from their reproach. God’s rules work for individuals as well as nations.
God is not spoon-feeding anyone anymore. He told Paul we have everything required saying, “My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9
It is our job to look for it. The cure for cancer may be in some obscure marine animal at the bottom of the Marianna Trench but for sure it is out there. Because God said so, that’s what.
Did the Estonians know what they were doing? Did some wise singing master have a revelation of the secret to national deliverance from evil rulers? Why is it that Yemen, or North Korea, or the people of Venezuela don’t know this? They could have discovered it just as well.
If you want to learn more about The Singing Revolution in the Baltic States, see YouTube for free videos.
Consider Kim Cheol Woong, 38, once the first pianist of the Pyongyang Philharmonic Orchestra. When a colleague heard Kim practicing romantic ballads and the jazz piece “Autumn Leaves”—music unsanctioned by the North Korean regime—Kim was reported to the Ministry of State Security and forced to write a 10-page apology and self-criticism. This was it for Kim, who had had been closely monitored for years, denied the right to play certain composers like Sergei Rachmaninoff, and forced to attend weekly self-criticism sessions at the North Korean embassy while studying abroad in Moscow. In December 2001 he decided to flee over the Tumen River in a midnight escape to China.
Like all defectors, Hwang paid a heavy price for fleeing. “More than three thousand of his family members, friends, and associates were arrested, including distant relatives who had no idea they were even related to the defector,” Kirkpatrick writes. “Hwang’s wife was said to have committed suicide. So, too, the reports said, did one of his daughters. She was said to have jumped off a bridge to her death while being transported to a prison camp. Two other daughters, his son, and his grandchildren were lost in the gulag.”
Corporate singing has more power. The Hebrews singers went first into battle after the Ark of the Covenant that being the indication God was supporting the war effort on behalf of the Jews. Occasionally they sallied off to war without divine approbation and suffered accordingly. Then in line marched the singers. King David could handle King Saul’s demons alone, but corporate singers, a form of worship was required for a national war effort.
One has to wonder if the corporate singing of the Messiah every Christmas by local chorus groups has any effect on unbelievers. Those words and music are planted on the soul to be called up later.The Soviets paid for these public song fests hardly cognizant of what was actually going in – sowing the very seeds to bring down their system which is a consistent Biblical principle – evil eventually destroys itself. It’s a scary thing to think that your words never die because sound never dies. It simply reverts back to energy. No wonder the Bible says, “Let your words be sweet” if you must eventually eat them at some future time.
Prayer then is anointing energy.
Since the Baltic States singing victory the internet is packed with information on similar musical revolutions in Chile, Cuba, and Poland. Cold War politics and its use of music is now everywhere being researched.
Music was believed to be subversive to foreign governments. The granddaddy being Radio Free Europe.
Music associated with wars, Star Spangled Banner, God Bless America (ww2) Johnny comes marching home –ww1, jazz and jeans were considered black market in the Soviet Union but the younger generation bought it. Glenn Miller was a figure in early ww2 and Bob Hoe, don’t you just love that nae, was a beacon of America to the troops in ww2 Vietnam and Korea.
Slaves in the Old South were singing in the fields, “Let my People go” and “Deep River” a cry for death and freedom from bondage. The Beatles too from England humanized the enemy to the nations behind the Iron Curtain.
More recently a flash mob of Russians sang and danced their way to “Putin on the Ritz” which did not look very Slavic to me. It is available on YouTube.
Her book shows that nationalist sings endue and bring people together but partisan do not Peter, Paul and Mary began with evangelical (Michael Row Your boat Ashore” and gained international popularity and fame and then went to antiwar songs and their popularity deteriorated. Partisan art has a reputation for being sterile. I enclose a photo I took in northern China for some Soviet era sculpture which is boring and predictable.
My son had a school friend who was mentally unbalanced. He seemed obsessed with sex and could not stop talking. I became worried about him hanging around the house as my son was everybody’s friend and was never crude or sharp with anyone. So to get rid of the kid I put on an old vinyl record of religious songs. It drove him away and he never came back.
I learned later his father was obsessed with porn, to the point that his marriage folded. Porn is like painting the inside of your brain with feces. Good music, in contrast soothes or energizes or makes us happy is it comes from one of these genre.
Black Americans used music to move into white society
Black Americans won their way to freedom with music. “Go down, Moses let my people go,” sung in the churches, a musical plea to God to free them from slavery. “Ride on King Jesus,” sung in the fields as the white boss on his horse managed the farm workers with his rifle in his hand.
Black people formed the bridge to the white community using music – first gospel at the turn of the century (1900) then swing in the 20s then jazz in the 30s and 40s and finally full acceptance in the media in the balance of the century, including the high tones classical world. But first, they won their freedom from slavery by singing black spirituals which are popular today, the wail of the slave to God. This progression is outlined in the film series Country Music” by Ken Burns.
According to Wikipedia, when he (Wynton Marsalis) met Miles Davis, one of his idols, Davis said, “So here’s the police…: For his part, Marsalis compared Miles Davis’s embrace of pop music to “a general who has betrayed his country.” He called rap “hormone driven pop music” and said that hip hop “reinforces destructive behavior at home and influences the world’s view of the Afro American in a decidedly negative direction.”
Marsalis responded to criticism by saying, “You can’t enter a battle and expect not to get hurt.” He said that losing the freedom to criticize is “to accept mob rule, it is a step back towards slavery.” Blacks continued their bridge then using sports and other entertainment media.
We know that music “says” something. We often comment on how music speaks to us in some way. Some friends of Michael Jackson (d.) reported that he claimed to be singing “the devil’s music,” a reference I have lost, and he should know. He was accused of singing sexually seductive music many times. Even unbelievers know that the singing of the Messiah has an uplifting effect on the listeners. It changes the spirit in a room. These are dimensions and when you consider the vast number of musical pieces, or anything aural or oral, you have added another billion or so of dimensions.
There is no music in real life
Except for an elevator, or a shop on the mall, music is not played throughout the real world, and yet every movie ever made, many videos, and TV programs have background music. In fact, the absence of music creates an intolerable tension in a video but in real life we do not notice its absence. On the other hand, maybe there is an aural dimension parallel to our inner hearing that we hear at another level.