How Woodstock 50 Years Ago Explains Where We Are Today

How Woodstock 50 years ago explains where we are today in America. That is the topical discuss right here on the Christian worldview radio program where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to share the good news that all people can be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ.

I'm David Wheaton, the host, and our website is thechristianworldview.org. Well, thank you for joining us for another edition of the Christian worldview radio program. I'm going to talk about today how Woodstock, the music festival, 50 years ago this year explains where we are today. You know, 50 years ago it was in August of 1969. It was just weeks after man, an American man, first set foot on the moon that a rock music festival known as Woodstock took place in upstate New York in a small town called Bethel.

Interesting name for the town, Bethel, house of God. Nearly half a million young people descended on the town for three days of what would be an iconic event in American history. In the public broadcasting system, PBS recently released a film entitled Woodstock, three days that defined a generation. So what took place at Woodstock that defined a generation? And why is this music festival known for drug use and, quote, free love considered to be a, quote, handoff of the country between generations with far different values and ideals, unquote. That's from the PBS preview on the film, a handoff of the country between generations with far different values and ideals. And what were those values and how are they different?

It's an important question to ask. And how does it help explain where we are today? So today in the program, we're going to examine the impact of Woodstock on our culture and see how the sprigs, the little grass blades that emerged from the ground back in 1969, how they broke the soil, that those have become the full grown weeds in full bloom today in our society. So over the summer, I watched this special on Woodstock on PBS is one of their American experience specials they do.

I think it was a two hour special, you can find it online. I think it's you have to actually pay to watch it now. It's a film.

And so I always like to watch these kinds of things. It gives you an understanding of, you know, things that happened in the past and how they're impacting life today and, you know, moments in American history. And if you're over 60 years old, you'll probably remember Woodstock, because it was a really legendary event that took place in 1969. If you're under 50 years old, you probably just heard about it or maybe even seen pictures of it.

So we're not talking about the Snoopy's buddy in the Peanuts cartoon today. We're talking about the the music festival. So the question is, as I play some sound bites here, how could a disorganized, overcrowded three day music festival without adequate sanitation, ran out of food, no shelter during the rainstorms?

It was held in a mud filled field crop field in upstate rural New York. It was rife with hundreds of thousands of young people using drugs, overdosing on drugs. How could that be considered a seminal moment in the, quote, progress of American history? That's my question as I watch this and learn more about it from this special on PBS. How, why is this, why is this progress in the way this whole thing went down? And why was this such a momentous sense? Why is it considered such a moment of progress in America?

Let's go to first, the trailer from PBS on Woodstock, three days that defined a generation. We started to hear rumors that this thing was more or less out of hand because no one knew the amount of tickets that were sold. We were on the state highway, cars were stopping, and we realized that this was parking for the concert.

I had never seen that many people in my life in one place at one time. Everything that could possibly go wrong was happening. There was a sanitation crisis, and then it's a medical crisis.

The governor was considering sending in the National Guard. They said it was a danger to the community, it was a danger to public health, it was a danger to anything they could think of. I just kept thinking, which direction is this thing going to go? By 1969, it really did feel like we were finally winning some kind of cultural war against the establishment. Young people were rejecting the status quo. The one thing that affected everybody was the war in Vietnam. I knew a lot of people who just felt we have to do things differently. We were looking for answers, we were looking for other people that felt the same way as we did. The outside world thought it was a disaster area.

Well, that's not what we thought. It was the freedom of being able to be who you were, not feeling that somebody was going to judge you. I hope you heard some of the things that were said in this trailer from PBS about Woodstock. We were finally, they said, finally starting to win the culture war. What culture war were they fighting against? What was the culture war? Well, the culture war at the time was the traditional America in the 50s.

After having won World War II, it was a prosperous good time in America for most people at least. Of course, the whole racial problem in America was a big negative on the country. That was significant, of course, but this was not just against that. This was not not primarily a pushback against the racial policies of the day. This was a pushback against the Christian worldview, as they would call it, the patriarchy, authority, the church, Christian values.

That's what this was a pushback against. They wanted to go their own way. So fundamentally, Woodstock was the tangible emergence of what we see in society today.

It's fundamentally a rejection of God and his word. That's what Woodstock was about. We'll get into how that was manifested.

It was really the best man can do without God. We'll see some people that talked about it. That's really what they're saying without actually saying that sentence. In that soundbite we just heard, it was when we were starting to win the culture war. We're rejecting the status quo. We have to do things differently. We're there looking for answers, and we're with other people who felt the same way we did. It was the freedom of being who you were, not feeling someone was going to judge you.

Did you notice all those lines? Those are the same exact things that are said today. We need change. We need to be the freedom of who you are. It's about being who you are.

Take pride in who you are. These lines are pulled right out of 2019 today. That's the worldview behind Woodstock. Understanding the context is really important as well. As they mentioned in that soundbite, there was a very indecisive, poorly led war against the communist North Vietnamese going on in America, and so were they, taking lots and lots of casualties. There was indecision at the highest ranks of the military and the political leadership in this country.

Instead of either getting in and winning the war or getting out and letting the communists take over, they chose the middle route, which is the bad route, standing on the fence. This was constantly being broadcast back to America. What are some of the other things that were going on?

Well, actually there's a soundbite in an AP documentary on Woodstock as well, and this gives the idea of what, they called it a soup, but what was boiling in the soup that led to Woodstock. We had assassinations. We had riots.

We had birth control pill. We had the anti-war movement. We had the civil rights movement.

It just was a soup that was about to boil over. They were young kids who were, I think, deeply misunderstood, myself included, by their parents who were deeply threatened by birth control pills, free love, sex, marijuana, the fact that the kids didn't want to serve in the war. It was a generational shift, and the recognition that you were in a field with a half a million people with a similar point of view was profound for so many people. That's exactly right. So the big question here is, and we'll get to this in our listener phone calls today.

This is the question I want to put out there. What happened in the country? What changed to go from this, what's called the greatest generation that won World War II, where the country came together and everyone pulled together to defeat Nazi Germany and the Japanese and the Russians and so forth. What happened in the country to go from this greatest generation that emerged in the late 40s and 50s to just 25 years later, the next generation was basically in complete rebellion against traditional America. I'll even say traditional Christian America, because Woodstock was nothing about anything Christian at all. It was the opposite of that.

What happened to go from the greatest generation? Was it permissive parenting? Was it that the church wasn't preaching the gospel? Was it just the default nature of mankind? Was it success and affluence? What was it that led from this greatest generation to go from this complete rebellion that took place at Woodstock?

I wish I could show you the video. Of course, we can't do that on our radio, but the video of, if you've never seen scenes from Woodstock, go on YouTube, watch a few videos about what it was like. It was just a disorganized, chaotic, rock music, drug laden, free love, sex festival for three days with people, you know, miring around in mud. That's what it was, and now it's considered a seminal moment in American history and, quote, progress. So think about that question. We'll get to that later in the program. So just let me give you a few facts before our first break on Woodstock.

This is just straight from Wikipedia. It was held, Woodstock was held on a man named, interestingly enough, Max Yazger's dairy farm in Bethel, New York. This was 43 miles southwest of actually Woodstock, New York. So it wasn't actually held in Woodstock. The original plan was for it to be in a different town, but once the town got wind of, you know, how many people will be coming, they're expecting like 20 to 50,000 people. It turned out to be over 400,000 people. The town put in a regulation, they wouldn't allow that.

And so they were scrambling to find another place at the last second. And so this guy, Max Yazger, who's a dairy farmer, who's actually a Republican, he didn't see, his worldview was not the same as this worldview of the Woodstock concert. He offered to rent a field of his dairy farms, like an amphitheater, for them to hold this festival. So it was, let's see, how was it built? I want to read how that was built. It was, oh yeah, it was built as this, an Aquarian exposition, three days of peace and music, attracting an audience of more than 400,000 people.

There were 32 acts that performed outdoors despite rain. The festival has become widely regarded as a pivotal moment in popular music history. And this is important as well as a defining event for the cultural, counterculture generation.

And it goes on and on and on with this. Maybe I'll read more after this first break, just to give you a sense of what actually took place. Sometimes we can think of Woodstock and just think, oh yeah, music festival. There was a lot more to it than that. So we'll get to that today in the program. We'll get to the worldview behind it.

What is the triad of things that really were the supporting worldview drivers of Woodstock? And then your phone calls, a lot more coming up today on the Christian worldview, back after this. There's an abundance of resources available in Christian bookstores and online.

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Or you can call us at our in our office at 1-888-646-2233. So today in the program we're talking about how Woodstock, the music festival 50 years ago, explains where we are today. And I'd watch this PBS special on Woodstock that was entitled Three Days That Defined a Generation.

And I put a dot dot dot and say that paved the future and where we are today in America. Not necessarily Woodstock per se, but what was manifested. It wasn't Woodstock specifically that changed everything in the country, but what came out of the ground there, what emerged, is what we are seeing radicalized and in full force in America today. If you want to keep it really simple, what's going on in our society is a rejection of God and His Word.

That is what it is fundamentally. The country was much more traditionally Christian, not necessarily born again biblical Christianity, but there was a reverence for God and His Word. Ten Commandments were in schools and prayer was in school and there was much more a sense of Christianity in the public square and people were open about their faith. Again, not a perfect country, we're not trying to say that at all, but there was a different cultural moray back in the 40s and 50s before things changed in the 60s. And that's what Woodstock manifested, this big change. And the people who were there, as you heard in the sound bites in the last segment, were saying the exact same thing. I was going before the end of the break, I was in the first segment there, I was going into just some of the facts on Woodstock and I actually have a news report from that, I think it's from that particular time that took place and what the media's view of Woodstock. This is from that AP documentary on Woodstock. Perhaps the year's most incredible event was the Woodstock Music and Art Festival in New York's Catskill Mountains in late August. It was a gathering of the hippie element with leading rock performers, the advertised attractions.

Promoters rented land from a dairy farmer and made plans for a turnout of a hundred and twenty thousand for the three-day event. But four hundred thousand of the now generation turned up. They came by car, truck, bus and hitchhiker's thumb. When traffic became hopelessly tangled, they travelled on foot. Torrential rains turned the area into a swampland. There was a shortage of food and sanitary facilities and no shelter except for makeshift tents.

Most could not get close enough to the stage to hear the performers and the size of the throng made it impossible for the promoters to police the gate. Drugs were so prevalent that one youngster said you could get high just by breathing. So was this progress for America or was this regress for America? I mean even though he tried to put a happy spin on it, it sounds to me like it's regression not not progression. And so he mentioned in this this soundbite about how the organizers and back to the Wikipedia article here and this was brought out in the PBS documentary that Woodstock was initiated through the efforts of four men, four guys in their 20s, Michael Lang, Artie Cornfield, Joel Rosenman and John Roberts. It was designed as a profit-making venture. It became a quote free concert only after the event drew hundreds of thousands more people than the organizers had prepared for. They had to change venues and then they realized when so many people are coming they had a choice. They could do one of two things. They could either create fences around the venue so people would have to pay to come through the gates to get in but then the music stage wouldn't be built.

Or the second option was to not build fences. People could just walk in and the music stage would be built. So they had to do one or the other because they were so out of time and so disorganized and they chose to build the musical stage and let everyone in who hadn't bought prepaid tickets for free. Now this man who operated the site, Max Yazger, he spoke at the event how nearly half a million people spent three days with music and peace on their minds. He stated quote, if we join them we can turn those adversities that are the problems of America today into a hope for a brighter and more peaceful future. And I fail to see how this event and what this event represented offers a brighter and more peaceful and hopeful future for America. That's what I could never understand like any reasonable person look at this and think this is a bunch of young people, hundreds of thousands of young people on drugs, free sex, rebellious music, getting together in the mud, overcrowded, no sanitation, no food.

This is the hope for America and I just couldn't get it. Now they had some of the top musicians of the day there. If you're older you recognize some of these like Joan Baez and Creedence Clearwater Revival and Santana and the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin and Jefferson Airplane and Crosby Stills and Nash and the guitarist Jimi Hendrix. And by the way Jimi Hendrix at this at this point in his life was in his 20s was considered probably one of the greatest rock guitarists of all times, kind of a legendary figure.

He would die the next year of an overdose of drugs in England. So this was the culture taking place at the time. So what was Woodstock really about? Well I mentioned that it was really ultimately about a rebellion against God and really anyone in authority. It was I want to do what I want to do. I want to be free of all constraint. I don't want anyone telling me how to live my life.

I don't want anyone telling me I should wait until marriage to be involved sexually. I don't want anyone telling me I can't take drugs and rock and roll is the fuel that inspires me to live the way. And so it's that triad you've all heard sex, drugs, and rock and roll that really were manifested of what if you want to understand Woodstock, understand those three things sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Going backwards starting with the rock and roll aspect of it, music had gone through a big change in this country. You know back in the 30s and 40s you had gone from more classical and big band. Of course jazz was emerging too, yes, but it really changed from more big bang music to rock music with Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley came in in the 50s and he completely changed music. He sexualized music, and so now you come into the 60s. The 60s with all the everything going on in the culture radicalized music. So not only was it sexualized, but it also had a humanistic, spiritually rebellious tone to it.

It was a political statement. So the 60s music changed. And if you think music is amoral, like there's no real it's just you know music is music and well maybe if the words say one thing rather than another it's not there's not really a morality music. You're really grossly underestimating the power of music.

We're going to play a sound bite here in a second to show that music was the glue. Music was the fuel, almost like a drug if you will, that was the unifying element around Woodstock. Music is more influential, by the way, than even the written word. I think in some cases or even the spoken word, because music engages more of us than just the mind and the intellect. It engages the emotions and the will and it stirs us.

You know the book of Psalms was a songbook for the Jews. It's a powerful, moving force, music is. And so the music of that day by Jimi Hendrix and Janet, all the musicians I mentioned, promoted this anti-authoritarian, anti-God worldview. It inspired their rebellion. It was like a drug itself. It just fed the crowd. And this is exactly what it said.

Let's see, where is that sound bite? Yeah, here we go, right here again from that AP documentary talking about how big the music had on the people. Young people were trying to get old people to understand how they felt. And the music of that time was a great source of trying to figure out how young people felt. So the music was a great source. This was the unifying element. There had been no music at Woodstock.

No one would have come. It was the music why they came. So that's why I kind of reversed the triad. That's what rock and roll ultimately represents, is rebellion. Rebellion against God and His Word. And that's why it's so dangerous, by the way, in my personal opinion. I'll give my opinion on this, why the church has really, I think, gone way too far with the style of taking the world's music and trying to Christianize it, bringing the church. You still can't get away, even if you change the words to rock music and the kind of music today, you cannot get away from what the actual rhythm and the music communicates and what it does to someone physically and emotionally. And so what was sown back then, back at Woodstock, has reaped today a musical culture that is 10 times at least more bombastic and graphic than back then.

As rebellious as the rock and roll music was back then, it is exponentially greater today and has even a deeper influence. It's like you reap what you sow, right? So you sow that back then, things progress, so to speak, and now you have what you have today. And I want to read a passage from Exodus chapter 32, right after this next break, that really, I think, when I saw this Woodstock Festival and what the scene looked like, the mass of people and the music and what was taking place, the dancing and the nakedness and the skinny dipping and everything going on around this particular festival, it really reminded me what Moses and Joshua saw as they came down from the mountain when God had given them the Ten Commandments. I'm going to read that passage, but I think there's a real connection there. And so really, what happened at Woodstock in the hearts of man was really nothing new. That's been in the heart of man forever.

But what happened at Woodstock sort of gave it approval, and then it became more broadly approved in our society. Now, here we are today. More on the Christian Real View after this. The prosperity gospel is a prominent false gospel that God offers health, wealth, and prosperity if you just have faith and give money. Costi Hinn grew up on the inside of the prosperity gospel movement.

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Your email and mailing address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time. Call 1-888-646-2233 or visit thechristianworldview.org. How the Woodstock Festival Music Festival 50 years ago explains where we are today in America. That is our topic on the Christian World View radio program. Thanks for joining us.

I'm David Wheaton, the host, and our website is thechristianworldview.org. And so before the break there we were talking about how the three elements of Woodstock, rock and roll, drugs, and sex, the reverse of the typical way it said sex, drugs, and rock and roll, were really the defining elements of what this was about. And fundamentally all those things are rejection of God and His Word.

And so we saw how the music powerfully was the uniting inspirational force that was promoting what they wanted to do. The sin they wanted to do, that's what it was promoting. It was a rejection of authority. And again, not all government authority is good.

It can be used for bad purposes. But this was, we want to go our own way. We want to go, we want what we want. That's ultimately what's in the heart of man. We don't want to be under the accountability of God and that's what Woodstock represented.

And so what was sown back then is totally radicalized today with regards to music. And so looking at the scene at Woodstock with the music and the people and so forth, it just reminded me of probably a similar scene to what Moses saw as he came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments for the first time. It says in Exodus 32, now when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, they're down there thinking, you know, where's he going to go with the Ten Commandments?

He's been gone a long time. The people assembled about Aaron, Moses' brother, and said to him, come, make us a god who will go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. Aaron said to them, tear off the gold rings which are in the ears and of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me. Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. He took them from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf, and they said, this is your God, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. How quickly we can be deceived, how quickly we can be deceived as people, to have seen what took place in the Exodus out of Egypt to what happened so quickly. They've already lost touch with God and so willing to worship a false god. This is in our hearts.

We're so prone to wander. Now, when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before the calf, and Aaron made a proclamation and said, tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord. So the next day, they rose early and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And here's an interesting phrase, and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and they rose up to play.

And if you look at this phrase, what it means is it means a carnival festival atmosphere with a lascivious, sinful element to it, a sense of dancing, and music, and sex, and these kinds of things. This is what this led to, descended to, regressed to. And then the Lord spoke to Moses, who's up on the mountain, and says, go down at once for your people whom you brought up from the land of Egypt. What have they done? They have corrupted themselves, have corrupted themselves.

They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made for themselves a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed it to it, and said, this is your God, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. The Lord said to Moses, I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people.

Now then let me alone, in that my anger may burn against them, and that I may destroy them, and I will make of you a great nation. So then skip forward to verse 15, Exodus chapter 32. Moses comes down the mountain with Joshua, and here's what happens. Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain, and the two tablets of the testimony, the Ten Commandments, were in his hand. Tablets that were written on both sides, they were written on one side and the other.

The tablets were God's work. So here's God's Word written by God in stone in his hand, and you've got Moses walking down the mountain to see people who were rejecting what Moses was carrying in his hands. Now when Joshua, his assistant, so to speak, Moses' assistant at the time, heard the sound of the people in the camp as they shouted, he said to Moses, there is sound of war in the camp. Joshua thought there was a war going on, like they were killing each other, a civil war. But he said, Moses said, it is not the sound of the cry of triumph, nor is it the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing I hear. And it came about as soon as Moses came near the camp that he saw the calf and the dancing, and Moses' anger burned, and he threw the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain. He took the calf which they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it over the surface of the water and made the sons of Israel drink it. And then skipping down to verse 25, now when Moses saw that the people were out of control, for Aaron had let them get out of control to be a derision among their enemies. And this scene coming down, you can just picture that scene, Moses and Joshua coming down and seeing the camp, hundreds of thousands of Israelites who had just come out of Egypt corrupting themselves through the music, the dancing, the idol worship, the illicit sexual immorality. This was the similar scene that was taking place in 1969 in Woodstock that was the launching point for where our culture is today.

I don't think it's hard to understand that what took place at Woodstock, how it regressed to where we are today in America, where all the things taking place there, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, has only advanced. That's the way things go. Once the quote-unquote genie is out of the bottle, it only tends to spread because you have willing, sinful hearts. We have sinful hearts and our hearts want to go the wrong way.

And when it's all of a sudden approved by a society, laws are made in approval of sin, it just expands and continues to leaven the society. But back to that question I asked earlier, I'm going to open up the phone lines now, is what changed or what happened so that we went from a traditionally Christian America, back let's say in the 40s and 50s, much more so, to all of a sudden the the worldview of Woodstock and then where it's progressed today? Do you have an answer for that question? What changed? Maybe even some of the older members of our listening audience would be able to answer that who lived through that particular time, who lived through the 40s and 50s. What happened? What was it? Was it really just the Vietnam War, just protesting the war?

Or was it something else at work in society that led to what emerged at Woodstock to what we have today? Our toll-free telephone number in studio is 1-877-655-6755. That's 1-877-655-6755. That's our studio number, not our office number, 1-877-655-6755.

Now while Bob is getting a few of you up on the the call screening board, let me just cover quickly those final two points. We had rock and roll, drugs and sex, all fundamentally a rejection of God and His Word. The drug aspect of it was just completely rife with drugs at Woodstock, like the guy mentioned in the in the video, you couldn't walk around and breathe air without getting high. You know, the point of taking drugs is to make yourself, just simply said, make yourself feel better. In other words, the sober reality, just regular life without an altered state, or maybe some pain, emotional pain you're feeling, is just uncomfortable.

So you want to alter your state. The point is you are unhappy in your own skin, you are unsettled in just the present reality. So you take drugs, and back at the time, back then, it was mainly LSD and marijuana, and they had what was called freak-out tents at Woodstock where people would overdose and go in there and try to be rescued and so forth. It is really a miracle that more people didn't die for how much drug use was going on. And so this was purposely to alter their state from the unhappiness and the lack of fulfillment or sense of life mission they felt inside. And this is exactly what Ephesians 5 says. You look at the comparison in Ephesians 5, chapter verse 18, where it says, Don't be drunk with wine, and you can probably add, don't get high with drugs, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit. In other words, you're either filled with the Holy Spirit as a believer, or you're going to be filled with some other kind of spirit when you take alcohol or take drugs.

You can't be filled with both. You can't be having your spirit altered with alcohol or drugs and be led by the Holy Spirit. So you have a lot of people here in this Woodstock, unregenerate people, not filled with the Holy Spirit, taking drugs, all of a sudden now you're completely filled with a different spirit. Okay, before I go on to the, oh, let me finish that by the say, to say that what emerged back then in the drug culture, now look at where we are today. Now marijuana is being legalized everywhere. You know, state after state is legalizing marijuana in this country, not just for medicinal uses, by the way, I don't have much problem with that. We take drugs to stop pain, but they're prescribed. It's the recreational legalization of marijuana that is taking place all over the country today. Opioid deaths, painkillers.

People take this for more than pain, to escape once again, to make themselves feel better. They don't want to be in sober reality. They're not right with God.

We never can be settled until we are right with the Creator who made us. And so opiates, the deaths are pandemic across this country for those kinds of things. All right, let's go, before we get to the last part of that triad, the sexual morality, let's go first to David in South Dakota.

Welcome to the Christian worldview, David. What do you think happened that changed from 40s and 50s America that turned into Woodstock? You know, in my family, I see a part of it when my uncles came back from World War II, the alcoholism, the abuse. They don't treat the post-traumatic stress like we do now. They were trying to now.

It was just shell shock. And I know they were very abusive. They're alcoholics. And I think they're, and this isn't all of it. This isn't a whole excuse, but I think it had a factor in there that I look at even, you know, my uncles. Yeah, David, thank you for your call.

That's an interesting, I never really thought of that, that the trauma of World War II led, I'm sure some of those returning veterans to probably not be able to be good parents, permissive parents, children got away, maybe they were too authoritarian. Interesting to think about, of course, no one answer answers. All of it. We'll come back in the last segment, take more of your phone calls here on the Christian Real View. Environmental scaremongering is the favored tactic of the left to gain massive government control. After all, if you can convince people that we are imperiling our very existence by human caused climate change, there is no tax law or reordering of society that goes too far. Christians need to be fully informed of this nefarious climate change scheme. That is why we are offering two resources by Cal Beisner, founder of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, who brings a truthful biblical worldview to this issue. Climate Change in the Christian is an 80-minute DVD message, and The Cosmic Consequences of Christ Cross Work is a 15-page booklet. One or both are available for a donation of any amount to The Christian Worldview.

To order, go to thechristianworldview.org or call 1-888-646-2233 or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. The mission of The Christian Worldview is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to share the good news that all people can be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. For when Christians have a stronger faith and when unbelievers come to saving faith, lives and families and churches, even communities, are changed for the glory of God. The Christian Worldview is a listener-supported ministry. You can help us in our mission to impact hearts and minds by making a donation of any amount or becoming a monthly partner. All donations are tax-deductible. You can give online at thechristianworldview.org or by calling us toll-free 1-888-646-2233. When you give, we'd like to thank you by sending you a current resource.

Monthly partners can choose to receive resources throughout the year. Call 1-888-646-2233 or go to thechristianworldview.org. Thank you for your support. How the Woodstock Music Festival 50 years ago explains where we are in America today, that is the topic we've been discussing for the full hour. Based on a PBS documentary, or actually was a film, called Three Days That Defined a Generation on Woodstock, and I think it really did define that generation and went beyond that.

It really impacted where we are today in America. And so we've talked about the triad of sex drugs and rock and roll going backwards through it, saying that rock and roll was the glue, the inspirational source that brought it all together, and the drug use. And then finally, the sexual immorality aspect of it. I mentioned in those sound bites about the birth control pill and free love they talk about, and throwing off biblical restraints, be with whom you want to be with, be who you are.

It's not hidden, you know, as maybe sexual immorality was in a previous time in America, but this open shame, just in the open, let it all hang out. And so what was sown back then is what we are reaping today. It went from sexual immorality of that time to four years later, the legalization of abortion, of course, the birth control pill, 1973 Roe v. Wade, 60 million babies have now been aborted since then, no-fault divorce, living together before marriage, homosexuality, and now the outright promotion of transgenderism. And if you disagree today, well, you're the bigot, you're the crazy, crazy one. And so what is happening today since the time of Woodstock, people call themselves progressives. They're all for what happened at Woodstock to where we are today. This is not progression according to the Word of God.

This is regression. This is going away from God. The God-rejecting spirit that was at Woodstock is just more widespread today. It's not just some hippies, hundreds of thousands of hippies back then, it's really mainstream today. You hear it in the politicians on the left, and there's a real battle. This is a full-out war, burning like an inferno in this country at this place, not some isolated music festival back in 1979.

I have a few other comments on this, but I want to get to one more call. Rand in Texas, thanks for calling the Christian Real View today. What do you think changed in America to go from the 40s and 50s generation, kind of considered a high point mostly in American history, to where it came in Woodstock and where it's brought us today?

What changed? Good morning, David. Thank you for taking our call, and thank you for your ministry.

I agree with you completely on all the points you've made, but I would add to that list sex, drugs, rock and roll. A lady by the name of Madeline Murray O'Hare, who in 1963 by herself practically was responsible for the removal of Christian prayer from Republic schools, then it led to the Bibles being removed, then it led to the Ten Commandments. She paved the way, in my opinion, for other God haters and pagans to pursue their war against Christianity. And I think Madeline Murray O'Hare and people like her, of course, she's gone on to her reward.

She's no longer an atheist, but she knows who God is now, but she definitely made a definite impact on our country. Thank you for taking our call. Yeah, Ran, thank you for your call. You know, I think there's probably lots of reasons, by the way. There's never necessarily one silver bullet that they'll just point to one thing. Oh, that's why the country changed because of one person. But it is, it's a lot of factors. Our previous caller mentioned, you know, maybe some of the veterans who came back from World War II were so traumatized by this horrible war that we fortunately won, that they came back and they just weren't prepared to re-enter society and be parents and raise kids the way they should have.

Maybe that's part of it. And what Ran was just saying, the influence of, you know, the emergence of atheism and the legal cases that took place in the school, taking the law, taking God's word out of the schools, prayer and all these different things, I'm sure, were factors. But I think there's another factor that I thought about to answer that question is that this is when media, particularly television, came into popularity. People all of a sudden had television sets in their living rooms. And so now what was taking place in certain pockets around the country, more, let's say, liberal pockets, liberal ideas, humanistic worldview, Elvis Presley on television, The Beatles, that kind of thing, this all of a sudden was disseminated to a very, very broad number of people where previously it couldn't be done. And so when that started to take place, all of a sudden, people were, yeah, that's how I think, you know, they were given an excuse inside themselves to say, that's what I want to be. And I think it helped at least, at least catalyze this rebellion that was taking place in this country.

Maybe that's not, again, the single factor behind it, but at least certainly contributed to accelerating it in the country. I heard a quote from Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas recently said, We are seeing a cultural jihad in America. It is a holy war, a jihad against people with traditional values. No longer are we people who have a traditional view, or a conservative view or a Christian view. We are people who have a view that is utterly unacceptable in today's increasingly leftist culture. So I would just say that what they, let me play one final soundbite, because what they were aiming for in Woodstock is something that Christians already have, and that we need to be more intent about sharing this good news we have.

Here's what Woodstock wanted. There was no merchandise to buy. There were no sponsors. There were no drinks. It turned out there were no bathrooms.

There were no cell phones. It was people being together in an environment, loving often each other, loving the music, which was the glue that brought them there, and loving being a part of a shared community that had an idea that they wanted a different kind of world that they wanted to live in. It is an abbreviated way of describing a gathering that's peaceful and loving in which nothing untoward happens that happens spontaneously. We want to be loved. We want to be loved. We want to have community. We want peace, and we want hope.

Everyone wants that. No one wants to be in conflict all the time and feel terrible inside of themselves and be a loner and so forth. God didn't create us to be that way, and Woodstock was a cheap imitation of what God's intention is for us. His intention, the things they were mentioning in that sound by a community and a loving, that's what the church should be like. That's what Christians, that's what we should be like. We should be loving one another and have that community and so forth, and that's how life can be good, even in our fallen world. But when we reject God and His Word, if we reject the purpose for which He created us to be in relationship with Him and to glorify Him, well, this is where it descends into a cheap imitation and the wrongheadedness of a Woodstock. So we better be, we better watch in our culture of today, this full bloom of Woodstocks in bloom today in our culture. We better watch our own hearts and our families. We need to be pursuing holiness. The church should be preaching this great message of love and hope that you can be really loved, and you really can have hope and community through being in a right relationship with God and being engaged with a body of believers. Rather than focusing so much on accommodating the culture, we need to offer something different, and that's what God does in His Word. Thank you for joining us for this program. You can hear the replay of it at our website, thechristianworldview.org. You know, we do live in a changing and challenging America.

I think Woodstock makes it very clear that things change then, and they've certainly changed today, but there is one thing we can always count on and trust in. Jesus Christ and His Word are the same yesterday, today, and forever. The Christian Worldview is a weekly one-hour radio program that is furnished by the Overcomer Foundation and is supported by listeners and sponsors. Request one of our current resources with your donation of any amount. Go to thechristianworldview.org or call us toll-free at 1-888-646-2233, or write to us at Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. That's Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Thanks for listening to The Christian Worldview. Until next time, think biblically and live accordingly.