THERE has always been rowdy youth. But there is something behind the spirit of youth culture today which is beyond mischievous fun.

I believe it was Johann Strauss who said, if you want to know the spiritual climate of a culture, look at its music.

Today’s music has evolved into a world of rebellion, with rap music taking center stage. With lyrics that openly embrace suicide, murder, promiscuity, drugs, sexual abuse, rebellion, materialism, self-pleasure, and you-name-it, rap songs have become what I call “anti-psalms”.

I’m reminded of a documentary I did for CTV-Edmonton in 1998. Among youth, disturbing trends include a rapid increase in brutal teen violence, suicide, drug-use, and escalating STD’s. But there is a new statistic: for the first time ever, peers–no longer parents–are the main influence in teenage lives.

Many people talk about Matthew 24 and the bizarre trends in weather etc. when they speak of the “end times”. But few comment on 2 Timothy 3:1-5. It is a chilling description of this generation:

But understand this: there will be terrifying times in the last days. People will be self-centered and lovers of money, proud, haughty, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, irreligious, callous, implacable, slanderous, licentious, brutal, hating what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, as they make a pretense of religion but deny its power.