BACK TO THE 1960s DOWN MEMORY LANE, THEN BACK TO THE PRESENT!
This article may be a trip down memory lane but in hindsight, it reflects the present. Some of us are still around to remember the lyrics presented here. Music usually reflects the atmosphere of the time, more so among the younger generations, each in their time.
The purpose of this post is not just a recollection of what the world fed on some 6 and 7 decades ago, but an endeavour to tap into what this was then, the pervading expression of human souls and reasoning.
[A]. MUSIC OF THE 1960s
Many of the songs of the 1960s especially in the folk song era, recognised the changes that were coming into the world. Many of the folk songs of that time focussed on the rather dismal things, the matters of despair and apprehension. That was the decade of the new disconnect as people began to feel a fracturing in society and bewilderment with the future, though people of the time did not understand the context, or where the world would end up in 60 years time.
In the 1950s and 60s movies were made that involved mutated creatures like monsters from the deep and “It came from the Sea”, and other (for that time) challenging aspects for people involving nuclear testing. Many movies looked at the destruction of the world from aliens and catastrophes in space. These movies were a poke at the nuclear development programs and bomb testing.
At the same time the contemporary songs were also on the dismal side, not positive and uplifting. That is just how it was back then. In that era, there was more of an opened door to preach the gospel and the positive message of the gospel resounded against the pessimistic view of the folk singers and the world. Billy Graham and others reigned in outreach preaching at that time.
We will explore that time for a little to see where it places us today. In the 1960s one of the greatest names in this folk movement and influence on people was Bob Dylan who wrote and sung. In 1964 he released one of his best known songs, “The Times They are a-changin” -
“Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
FOR THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’
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The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
FOR THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’”
Bob Dylan understood his generation and knew that the fabric of society was being shaken and expressed it in the words, “The order is rapidly fadin’”. He had no idea where it was heading. If you study his lyrics here you will see he has no answer to the gloom he raises, apart from “Then you better start swimming,” . . . but swimming where? And to whom? And in what direction?
The 1960 was the decade of protest songs. There were protests against nuclear testing, war, politics, racial issues, poverty and injustice. The writers and singers were not wrong to take up these issues for the Old Testament prophets did the same, but there was one great difference.
The prophets knew the solution lay in God so they could speak what the Lord had given, “Thus says the Lord”. The writers of these protest songs raised the issues, quite valid ones perhaps, but never gave the answers, for the answers lie only in God, and they never ventured there.
Young people were questioning their existence. “What is life all about?” but their answers often were not found in the bible but in pop culture. Higher education was coming under the influence of rationalists and humanists and those people give no hope to any one. The release of these unanswered questions was found in the music of the time.
Bob Dylan spoke out and wrote well I think, but what was the solution he had to mankind’s ills? Look at this song – 1963 “Blowin in the Wind”
“How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they're forever banned?
THE ANSWER, MY FRIEND, IS BLOWIN' IN THE WIND
THE ANSWER IS BLOWIN' IN THE WIND.”
If ONLY the answer was blowing in the wind; then we could capture it and all our problems would go away! The solution is nebulous because it is fanciful. It is as meaningless as those who talk about “the great someone in the great somewhere out there”. It might as well be nowhere, as somewhere!
That is the language you find with those who don’t have a faith in God. Sometimes it is the language of hopelessness, of inevitability, of resignation to a future they do not know. Sometimes it is an expression of their own hatred of society. The solution they do not know, for they live in the present and don’t know the God of the present and the future.
In Bob Dylan’s song the answer is blowing in the wind. Well that is as useless as trying to grow a seedling on a stone. Wafting all over, and anywhere, and uncatchable, and nebulous is what many young people of that generation were receiving.
In the 1960s I was in my later teens and early twenties and I saw all that. I was never involved in any of it because I had a firm Christian faith that rejected the world’s pessimism and uncertainties. We followed the bible and those who follow God’s word know their way, and don’t need to try catching whatever it is that is blowin’ in the wind!
Christians are definite about their future because the Holy Spirit has confirmed in their spirits the truth of Almighty God. That is why Paul could write these words with the greatest assurance – {{2 Timothy 1:12 “For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed for I KNOW WHOM I HAVE BELIEVED, and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.”}}. Christians have a hope that is not of themselves; it is of God. Hope is a light that shines in uncertainty and despair; that looks to the certainty of the future, not inwardly to the world’s problems.
In the 60s decade another song was released by The Bryds with “Turn! Turn! Turn!” a look at an Ecclesiastes passage which conveyed the meaningless of Ecclesiastes in a floating life. The song was written by Peter Seeger in the 1950s. It utilised the biblical book but did not go beyond the vanity of man’s life to find the solution that is actually at the end of Ecclesiastes – {{Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 “The conclusion, when all has been heard, is:- FEAR GOD AND KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS, because this applies to every person, for God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.”}}
“To everything (turn, turn, turn).
There is a season (turn, turn, turn).
And a time to every purpose, under heaven.
A time to be born, a time to die.
A time to plant, a time to reap.
A time to kill, a time to heal.
A time to laugh, a time to weep.” Etc.
Around the same time the great hits of the time were also songs that could not supply answers. One can point out, and sing about, the feeling of emptiness but not have the solution to mankind’s emptiness. Folk singers could tap into the restlessness of the 1960s youth, but gave them no answers. Man without God can never have answers. Songs came like these:
[1]. “Lemon Tree” by Peter, Paul and Mary 1965
“Lemon tree, very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet,
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.
Lemon tree, very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet,
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.”
To sing about conditions of life and problems, even truths, but then, NOT to supply the answer is worthless. Lovely tunes and even lyrics that don’t probe the reason why such conditions exist, will help no one.
[2]. “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” 1963 by Bob Dylon another protest song about the fear of nuclear war.
“Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.”
That lyric is full of pessimism – “stumbled, misty, crawled, crooked, sad forests, dead oceans, graveyard, hard rain”. Again it is typical for its time in pop culture. In 1969 in one of my poems entitled, “Without Solution”, I set out some feelings the world was portraying. This has been slightly amended since them and the poem was expanded in 2022. It is not yet on SermonCentral where I am putting my poems. Here is that part done back then expressing the world’s pessimism –
“The world parades before us as an opened page;
And we are but actors on its sorrowful stage.
Its origin obscure; its destiny doubtful.
Fate’s unseen, unknown hand – is it purposeful?
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Could it be silent hands of invisible fate,
Which the unseen strings randomly manipulate?
Pulling and loosening, with its will infusing?
While to our questions, all our answers refusing.
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Can anyone explain to me why it should be,
That now, the present is as far as we can see?
May we be taught, and know with justified query,
The meaning of this life, so heartless and dreary?
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From whence come wars and such a pitiless disgrace;
A tortured expression on earth’s ugly, scarred face?
“They come from Fate’s predetermined script,” some will say,
“As it cruelly pulls all our strings to make us play.”
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An affinity exists between man and man;
“National co-operation”, few understand.
Can Fate be tricked, taken by surprise, and exposed,
By man’s inner consciousness, though it’s still enclosed.
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He said to me, “Questions flow fast; answers are slow.
Contemplations bubble up the older we grow.
Then perhaps in a coming day, the world will know,
What we to the world definitely can not show.”
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3. Sam Cooke. “A Change is Gonna Come.”
Here is the Chorus and a stanza from his song in 1964 –
[Chorus]
It's been a long
A long time comin', but I know
A change gon' come
Oh, yes it will
[Verse 2]
It's been too hard livin'
BUT I'M AFRAID TO DIE
'CAUSE I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S UP THERE
BEYOND THE SKY
One can almost sense the hopelessness of that situation – afraid to die, and not knowing what to expect “from whatever is up in the sky.” Those without the Lord in their lives do not have a positive expectation and that gloom is reflected in their songs.
{{Ephesians 2:12 “remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, HAVING NO HOPE AND WITHOUT GOD IN THE WORLD”}}. No matter what face a person puts on, if he/she is unsaved there is no positive future and no positive expectation. In the next verse Paul sets out the contrast – {{Ephesians 2:13 “BUT NOW IN CHRIST JESUS you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”}}
[3]. A SUMMARY CONCLUSION
The 60s saw the increasing rise of the civil rights black movement. In the 1960s these prophets of songs and lyrics would highlight the problems and concerns but the answer was just blowing in the wind. That was no help to anyone and just made people more fretful, and fed the hopelessness of a mind outside of God. In the rise of the nuclear age, it caused a fearfulness because all the absolutes of society were being broken up.
Eventually it led to the conditions we have today, world socialism, that not only dismisses God as these protest writers did, but actually hates God today. At the same time in that generation, you had a man of God in Billy Graham who had the answers, for they lay in Jesus Christ. Personally, I believe the work of the Holy Spirit in in the 1960s that turned many to God in the USA through His evangelist, gave the nation a generation of people that prevented the advance of evil to a considerable extent, but to use the words of the song, now, “the times, they are a-changin.”
More than that they have changed in our generation, and all for the worse all in these last few years because the virus was the catalyst to take socialist control over people’s lives. Evil governments used that for their own agendas, or could we say, for the agendas of the UN and the WEF. It was a huge step forward in the collapse and degradation of society,
Now I need not set before you the ills of our present generation. They are all to well known. The move of lawlessness is here; the times of wickedness that murders unborn children is here (Biden overturned Trump’s law and Trump is finding to difficult to restore what was); socialists with their humanist drive, destroy God’s declared gender status, and children’s sexuality is horribly shattered.
Our nations have lost their way and life for them is just as meaningless as some of the protest writers of the 1960s. The REAL answer is not just blowing in the wind; it is located on the solid foundation of God’s inspired word. The born again Christian knows that, but today’s world does not want to know.
(2 Timothy 3:1-6). In fulfilment of the Timothy prophecy about the last days, people have become arrogant (that is quality of the coming antichrist), lovers of self (this is the ME generation), revilers of what is good, unholy in thought and action, irreconcilable through pride, brutal in actions against others, treacherous, for this is the untrustworthy generation (you are lied to your face without any conscience from the liar), reckless, and conceited, especially seen more and more in politics, and the one that hurts Christians so much - haters of good – for all God’s standards and laws are trashed and abused, where evil has become good, and good has become evil.
[4]. A DISTURBING MATTER
It was the non-Christian who despaired, but today we see some Christians despairing about the times. Why is this? Why should it be? What can be done about it?
Well the answer is not difficult. It is part of our Christian inheritance. The bible speaks about “the God of peace” – {{1 Thessalonians 5:23 “Now MAY THE GOD OF PEACE HIMSELF SANCTIFY YOU ENTIRELY, and may YOUR spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”}}
AND it speaks about “the peace of God” – {{Philippians 4:7 “and THE PEACE OF GOD which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”}} That is the secret to contentment and not succumbing to the world’s pessimism. We can only know the God of peace and the peace of God through His word and faith based on that.
Sam Cooke did not know what was beyond the sky, and was afraid to die. The true answer is found in the bible and here is one reference – {{Titus 2:11-13 “The GRACE of God has appeared bringing salvation to all men, INSTRUCTING US to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, LOOKING FOR THE BLESSED HOPE and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Christ Jesus.”}} . We are looking forward to the coming of the Lord with hope and assurance.
Christians can worried about the times, perhaps not so much for themselves, but for their kids. My parents left us 3 kids in a better lifestyle than they had, for they really struggled. I think that was true for all of my generation. However the reverse is now here. The world is not getting better regarding decency, and declining initiative as communism and socialism are ruling people’s lives now. We think that the world we are handing to our kids and especially to the grandkids is going to be a much worse world.
Nations can’t balance budgets and national debts run into the trillions of dollars. Socialism has no financial awareness; big spending, big wages, money wasted on idealism and humanism. The Christians needs to be separate from all that.
Trump has been the best thing for the USA for many years. He replaced a wicked President but a wicked President replaced Trump. Then Trump replaced another wicked President BUT what after that?
Please note this. King Josiah (right at the end of Judah’s autonomy) replaced a wicked father and grandfather. Then Josiah was replaced by his sons, wicked rulers. I believe this is the end time for the USA. It is the last opportunity to repent before the nation falls apart. The coming of the Lord is so close.
THE WHOLE WORLD IS IN FREEFALL. THE COMING OF THE LORD IS VERY NEAR!
