Mike Huckabee has learned well from his modern evangelical training that the way you gain affection and allegiance is through rock music.

Of course, this is exactly what the Antichrist will use as a core campaign strategy in his bid to gain the blind obedience of the nations and worship of all humanity.

In a New York Times Sunday magazine cover profile on Huckabee appearing Dec. 16, the reporter recalled that when the two met for their interview at a Manhattan Olive Garden (Huckabee was offered lunch at any place in the city and this is what he picked!), Huckabee started in immediately talking about rock 'n' roll.

As the Times writer Zev Chafets revealed, “This is his regular warm-up gambit with reporters of a certain age, meant to convey that he is a cool guy for a Baptist preacher.”

Chafets continued, “Naturally I fell for it, and asked who he would like to play at his inaugural.’I've got to start with the Stones,' Huckabee said. The governor regards 1968 as the dawning of 'the age of the birth-control pill, free love, gay sex, the drug culture and reckless disregard for standards.’ The Rolling Stones album Their Satanic Majesties Request provided the soundtrack for that annus terribilis. But Mike Huckabee wanted me to know that he believes in the separation of church and stage.

“The governor's musical wish list also included John Mellencamp, who, he noted, would be welcome despite their differing political views; the country duo Brooks & Dunn; Stevie Wonder; and, surprisingly, Grand Funk Railroad. 'That's a groundbreaking group,’ he said earnestly. 'The bass player, Mel Schacher, is very underrated.’

“Our food arrived and Huckabee poked at his croutons while gamely turning the conversation to issues. He mentioned three: tax cuts, financing for arts education and energy independence. ''We have to get to the point where we need the Saudis' oil about as much as we need their sand,'' he said. It was a standard line, delivered without any particular passion.”

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In a recent sermon on music, preacher Richard Jordan confirmed, “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.”

In this same sermon, Jordan quoted Job. 22: 15-17: “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?”

Jordan explained, “They’re saying exactly what the people in Genesis 21 say but the context is some people who were overthrown in the days of Noah in the Flood.

“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. You have to be careful about music. Just because you like it don’t make it good for you.”

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From the book of Daniel, we know 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 all the rulers of the nations—it’s judges, police, politicians, etc.

“It was a regular ‘rock festival,’ ” writes Bible scholar Noah Hutchings in his 1998 book Daniel the Prophet. “Now, why would Nebuchadnezzar accompany this anti-God mass with loud music? Satan knows the power of music to stir the emotions of man and to deaden his natural senses.

“Loud and discordant music brings out the worst beastlike qualities in man and drives him on to godless pursuits and inhuman behavior. It is no wonder that Nebuchadnezzar used loud and harsh music at his worship service that was base and godless. And this is why we question the wisdom of using modern rock music in the worship service today.”

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When Daniel’s three Hebrew compatriots held in Babylonian captivity—Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego—remained true to God and refused to worship Nebby’s image, they were by the king’s law to be cast into a fiery furnace.

Hutchings writes, “The king was absolutely furious, but he doubtless liked his three Jewish governors, and he said to them, ‘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 which we read that the musical portion of this false and idolatrous worship service is stressed twice again. Music can be used to create any type of specific mental attitude that is desired . . . ”

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I was walking on the Upper East side of Manhattan yesterday, enjoying an unseasonably warm (56 degrees) January afternoon. As is usual in this neighborhood, there were scores of rich, elderly people, identified by their ultra-expensive clothing, shoes, pocket books, etc., on the sidewalks, in the restaurants and boutique shops, etc.

It reminded me of something Jordan said in a recent sermon: “I’ve observed this through the years—the closer you get to death the harder you try to prove you’re not dying. And that’s not just the physical things, you’ll see that in spiritual things. And the harder people try . . . ”

Hutchings writes that Nebuchadnezzar “did not like idea that his great wealth and power would fall to another. Kings never do. The more they accumulate, the more they become reluctant to face the reality of death. We read the words of Solomon in Ecclesiastes 2:18: ‘Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me.’

“The Chaldeans tickled Nebuchadnezzar’s ears by always giving him their traditional greeting, ‘O king, live forever.’ This salutation was subsequently altered to ‘Long live the king,’ because it became apparent over the centuries that kings, more or less, live threescore and ten years like everyone else.

“But Nebuchadnezzar, like so many, was pleased by this deceiving flattery of these spiritists. He preferred fiction to fact. He certainly entertained the idea that he was divine and would live forever; so in his unrealities, he sought to alter God’s plan.”