With the death of Rob Reiner, why don't we review my spiritual theory of what the 1960s were all about. When I was 11 years old, "All in the Family" was the number one show on television. It was the first I had seen of people arguing about politics. But Rob Reiner was also a liberal activist in real life and is a personification of what the Sixties were all about.
We have seen how the glorious time known as The Sixties was actually God giving humanity a chance to see if they could build the Millennium Kingdom on earth themselves, without going through the Apocalypse foretold in the Bible.
We saw my view of the Sixties as the beginning of a would-be Millennium in the two sections of the compound posting on this blog, "New Insight Into Bible Prophecy" October 2016, sections 17) CROSSING THE RED SEA and 18) THE PENTAGON PROPHECY.Jesus foretold that when the Jews regained control of Jerusalem from the Gentiles that would begin the countdown to the Return of Jesus to set up the Millennium, when the earth would finally be the godly paradise that it was always intended to be. But, due to our sinfulness, that meant that most of civilization had to be destroyed in the Apocalypse first.
But maybe the Baby Boom generation, that would come of age during the Sixties, might be different. This would be the generation that had heard about the recent cataclysmic world war, the genocide, the new weapons that ended the war but could destroy the world at the touch of a button. Before this there had been the terrible time of the Great Depression and before that, the First World War.
Maybe the Baby Boomers, the generation born beginning just after the end of the Second World War as returning soldiers settled down and started families, would be the generation that had learned it's lesson and would be different.
I conclude that God decided to give them a chance to build the Millennium themselves. Maybe we could call Hitler the Antichrist and the Second World War the Apocalypse, and the Baby Boomers would bring about the Millennium. That is why the nation of Israel was reestablished in 1948, after nearly two thousand years, but the original city of Jerusalem itself remained under control of the Gentiles so that the prophetic countdown, Jesus return to set up His Kingdom while people were still alive who had been alive when Jerusalem was taken back from Gentile control, had not begun.
But we just couldn't do it, we were just too sinful. There was no way that the Sixties, despite the commendable idealism, was going to bring about the Millennium without going through the Apocalypse first.
Many of the Sixties generation had their hearts in the right place, there was a seeking not only for personal fulfillment but for a better world. At the Woodstock concert, in the summer of 1969, 400,000 young people got together for three days and there was not a single act of violence. There was even an effort to "levitate" the Pentagon by people surrounding it in meditation, in order to bring peace to the world starting with ending America's Vietnam War.
Most of the Sixties idealism was not focused on Christianity but there was a Christian side to it, in the Explo 72 concert of Christian music and sermons. It was held in Dallas in 1972 and was kind of the Christian version of Woodstock.
But the Millennium was not to be. It was not mainly a time of God. A famous 1966 cover of Time Magazine asked "Is God Dead"?
The year after that, 1968, a popular movie was Rosemary's Baby, involving Satanism.
The summer of 1967 was optimistically called "The Summer of Love" but drugs and crime ran rampant. Cities across America were convulsed by urban riots. Time Magazine referred to 1967, which should have been around the beginning of the new Millennium of Jesus, as "That long, strange year".
Four of the most prominent rock stars, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and, Jim Morrison died right in a row of drug-related issues.
Clearly, humans bringing about the promised Millennium by their own power just wasn't going to work. It was in June 1967 that the Six-Day War resulted in the return of the old city of Jerusalem to Jewish control, in the state of Israel. That thus began the prophetic countdown to Jesus' promised return to earth, with people who were alive at the return of Jerusalem in 1967 still being alive at Jesus' return.
That is why there was the 19-year delay between the reestablishment of the nation of Israel and the actual return of the original city of Jerusalem to Israel. That delay was to see if we were able to being about the Millennium ourselves, without going through the devastating Apocalypse, but it was not to be.
There was another unsuccessful would-be Millennium before the Sixties.
There was once a glorious time in the western countries. It lasted from about 1865 to 1914. It was called by various names in different countries. In France it is known as the Belle Epoque, "The Beautiful Era". In Britain and the U.S. it was known as the Victorian Age, coinciding with the reign of Queen Victoria. In America it was also known as the Gilded Age.
There were no major conflicts during this time. It was an extended time of relative peace like the world had rarely seen.
Many of the technical developments that shape our world today came to be. Movies, radio, cars, electricity, aircraft and large ships that made travel for many people common were developed. Mass production in factories was perfected so that the masses, instead of the few, could benefit from manufactured goods.
Some people got fantastically wealthy. Great exhibitions were held in major cities that showcased the wonderful new developments. Perhaps the best symbol of this time would be the Eiffel Tower, which was built as the entrance arch to the 1889 Paris Exhibition, the centennial of the French Revolution. It was the tallest structure ever built. The Eiffel Tower was actually intended to be only temporary, to be dismantled after the exhibition was over, but was probably saved because radio had been developed and it was the ideal place for a broadcasting antenna. In nearby Buffalo was the Pan-American Exhibition.
There was amazing advances in science, particularly chemistry. Treatments for disease were developed continuously and life expectance increased dramatically.
Maybe the rapid development of industry during this fortunate time of peace would even allow humans to bring about the godly paradise that was promised in the Millennium themselves.
The secularism and hostility to organized religion of the French Revolution also had it's long-term effect, particularly in Europe.
The good times were not to last. It all came crashing down into the horrors of the First World War, a war like the world had never seen before. The technical developments that had contributed to the prosperity of the Victorian Age also made it possible for humans to kill each other on an industrial scale, and that is unfortunately what happened.
The war, at least on the Western Front, bogged down into the deadly stalemate of trench warfare. Neither side could break the impasse. Before this war, guns could fire only a single bullet at a time. But the new machine guns multiplied the deadliness of the war many times over. During an offense to break the deadlock, thousands of soldiers might die over a hundred meters of ground.
Hideous new weapons were developed in an attempt to break the deadly stalemate. Tanks with treads all around the body of the tank that could pass right over a trench. One way to take out an enemy trench was to sneak up to it with a flamethrower. At sea, newly-perfected submarines sank ships unexpectedly.
The most infamous development of the war was poison gas. Lethal gases, such as phosgene, mustard and, chlorine, were heavier than air. So if a shell containing the gas could be landed near an enemy trench, the gas would seep down into the trench.
Instead of creating a man-made Heavenly Millennium, humanity had turned it's attention to creating a man-made Hell. Evolutionary theory had humans as the highest form of life but there are no animals that kill each other like this in a war that was essentially over nothing.
What I have always found to be so disturbing about the First World War was that, first, the war wasn't really over anything of great significance. It is sometimes called "The war over nothing that changed everything".
The second thing that is especially disturbing is that so many people, in capitals like London and Berlin, actually gathered to cheer the declaration of war. It was as if all that time of peace was getting boring. Both sides were under the delusion that the was would only last a few weeks. But the war would turn into far and away the most devastating and deadly war that the world had yet seen.
The First World War became simply known as "The War to End All Wars" although, of course, it wouldn't be.
The war eventually ended, and the good times returned. In fact, the good times were better than ever because the now-unneeded manufacturing capacity that went to supply the war effort could be turned to making consumer goods. The result was that fabulous decade known as the "Roaring Twenties". If the Eiffel Tower could be considered as the icon of the Victorian Age (or the Belle Epoque or the Gilded Age), then the Empire State Building could be considered as the icon of the "Roaring Twenties".
But, once again, it wasn't to last. Factories were producing, in great quantities, all kinds of goods from cars to radios. The trouble this time would be economic. While some were becoming fantastically wealthy, the workers who were actually producing the goods were not being paid enough to be able to afford to buy them. Manufactured goods were just piling up in warehouses and factories began cutting back on production, meaning that workers had even less money, and it spiraled into a devastating economic crash in October 1929.
Following was the terrible time of the Great Depression. There were long lines at soup kitchens. Many who had gained, but then suddenly lost, great wealth during the 1920s were dead by suicide. Germany was now a democracy, the Weimar Republic, but had it's postwar economy devastated by this crash.
There is one sure way out of an economic depression. Unfortunately, it is to have a war. A party emerged in Germany that had the answers. They were the National Socialists, or Nazis. They absorbed unemployment by drastically increasing the size of the armed forces, and got factories back to full production by making war equipment for them.
It was simple and brilliantly effective, except that it was part of the reason that there would be another war, even more terrible than the First World War. The reason that the Second World War would be even worse than the First is that now civilians were considered as a legitimate target.
When this war finally ended, millions of soldiers returned home and began families. That is what brought about the Baby Boomers and the Sixties. I have concluded that God decided to give them the final chance at building the promised Millennial Kingdom on earth, without going through the horrors of the Apocalypse which will make the two world wars seem like minor conflicts by comparison.
But it was not to be. We will get to the Millennial Kingdom, where the world will finally be the godly paradise that it was always meant to be, but only by going through the Apocalypse first, as we saw in the posting on this blog, "The End Of The World As We Know It".
Notice the chronological placements of newsworthy mass murders like the killings of Jack the Ripper, in 1888 London, and the Manson murders, in 1969 Los Angeles. Both happened right at the height of one of these two failed Millenniums.
Jack the Ripper was in the news in the autumn of 1888, right in the middle of the Victorian Age in London. Times were good, but people in general had been getting more and more secular since the publication of "On The Origin of Species", in 1859. The general movement was away from God.
Could it be possible that these shocking killings, which really jolted society, were allowed to happen to make people start thinking that something was very wrong with society and that it needed God? The reason that Jack the Ripper got so much publicity is that the murders took place just as newspapers were becoming widely read.
Likewise the Manson murders, actually an attempt to set off the Apocalypse foretold in the Bible as a race war beginning in the U.S., which would conclude with Charles Manson reigning over the world as Christ.
In July 1969 there was the epic event of America landing astronauts on the moon, and then getting them safely back home. The following month was the signature event of the idealism of the Sixties, the Woodstock concert in New York State. Woodstock was all about the better world that we could have if we would all live in peace. It does deserve a lot of credit that 400,000 young people got together for three days and there was not a single act of violence.
But what happened right in between those two events? The country was horrified by the Manson killings. The best-known of the victims was actress Sharon Tate. The members of the Manson "Family" wrote "PIG" on the wall in the blood of the victims. The intention being to get it blamed on black militants and thus begin the race war that would be the Apocalypse that would end with Manson ruling over the world as Christ.
Once again, could it be that these horrific killings were allowed to happen between these two great events to remind us that, despite the accomplishment of putting men on the moon and the commendable idealism of Woodstock, something was very wrong with society and we needed to return to God?
I was only a boy during the 1960s but could feel what a special time it was, and have always been fascinated by the Sixties and it's music.
The Sixties were the youth of the Baby Boom generation, the demographic bulge in the population brought about by millions of soldiers returning from the Second World War and starting families. The first of the Baby Boom generation reached adulthood in 1964.
This is why there was such an emphasis on youth culture. But the devastation, horrific weapons and, genocide of the Second World War were recent memories. Before that there had been the market crash and the Great Depression, and before that the First World War.
Could the new Baby Boom generation be the one that had learned the lessons and would change the world for the better?
Considering the world wars, and countless other wars, can you believe that, as secularism spread in the late Nineteenth Century, many people thought that it was a very good thing, since wars were primarily religious in nature, that secularism would bring peace to the world?
The Bible foretold that, far in the future, the nation of Israel would be reestablished and this, particularly the return of the original city of Jerusalem to Jewish control, would initiate the one-lifetime countdown to the Return of Jesus to establish His Millennial Kingdom on earth, when the world would be the godly paradise that it was intended to be. But, of course, the world had to go through the reign of the Antichrist and the Tribulation first.
My speculation was that there was a 19-year delay between the reestablishment of the nation of Israel in 1948 and the addition of the original city of Jerusalem in 1967 to give the idealistic Baby Boom generation a chance to see if it could build the Millennium itself, by following God, without going through the Antichrist and the Tribulation. It would follow the pattern of the establishment of the Millennium in the Bible, with Hitler representing the Antichrist and the Second World War the Tribulation.
Of course it was not to be because we were just too sinful. The return of the original city of Jerusalem marked the beginning of the countdown, and the world will go through the reign of the Antichrist and the Tribulation, before Jesus returns to establish the Millennium.
The Baby Boom generation saw material prosperity like no generation had before. International travel, other than with the military, had previously been limited to the relatively wealthy. But with the postwar development of passenger jets, global travel became widespread. People saw the world outside their own countries like never before.
Mass movements of idealistic young Baby Boomers began. The Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco became the epicenter of 1967's "Summer of Love".
In the U.S. there was the Woodstock concert, in New York State in 1969. 400,000 young people converged on a farm for a great concert. Certainly their hearts were in the right place to change the world, they were together for three days and there was not a single act of violence.
Later in 1969, there was a west coast version of Woodstock at Altamont Speedway. Unfortunately it didn't go as peacefully as Woodstock.
There was the "Hippie Trail", which began in Istanbul and proceeded across central Asia. The Hippies were in search of adventure, enlightenment and, of course, drugs.
But then, in 1967, just as Hippies were converging on Haight-Ashbury, Jerusalem opened up as it came under Israeli control due to the Six-Day War. Pilgrims had been going there before that, but the number of visitors now greatly increased.
Could it be that God planned it this way? God knew that this generation was looking for the way to a better world, the world as God intended it to be. Young people had access to international travel like never before. So God opened up His Holy City, Jerusalem, in the hope that they would make a pilgrimage there.
Maybe God intended Jerusalem to be the catalyst that would spur the Baby Boom generation on to building the Millennium themselves, so the world would not have to go through the reign of the Antichrist and the Tribulation.
God was not to be found at Haight-Ashbury, nor on the Hippie Trail, nor at Woodstock. The Sixties ironically had the patterns of the Kingdom of God. Notice the close similarity between psalms and rock songs. But the rock songs mostly put romance in place of God. Finding the Holy Spirit was replaced by getting high. The angels of the Sixties were girls in miniskirts.
There was a Christian side to the Sixties counterculture, the Jesus Movement, and there was a Christian version of Woodstock, Explo 72 in Dallas. But this was a relatively minor part of the total counterculture movement.
What I find most interesting about the Rock Music era came well after the Sixties. Ethiopia is the original homeland of humans. It has been proven that the first humans walked the earth right around where Addis Ababa is now located. In 1985, Ethiopia was suffering from a devastating famine and rock musicians came to the rescue. Live Aid was organized to raise money for Ethiopia. There were two major concerts, in Philadelphia and London, and various other concerts.
Another very interesting thing about the connection between rock music and early humans is that the oldest identified human remains, in East Africa, was named "Lucy". This is because, when the discovery was first noticed, the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" was playing on the tape deck. The title of the song is understood to represent LSD, which was an illegal drug that was widely used in the Sixties.
So, in the Book of Genesis, Eve ate the forbidden fruit and ended the Garden of Eden paradise that God had made for humans. Lucy, her scientific counterpart, ended up being inadvertently named for the illegal drug that was a major factor in ending the possibility that the Sixties could be the beginning of the biblical Millennium, without going through the Apocalypse first.
19 AND THE LAST DAYS
But can you believe the predominance of the number 19 in relation to the prophecies of the "Last Days"?
7 is an important number in the beginning of the Bible. There were 7 days in a week and the Book of Revelation describes the 7 spirits of God. 12 is another important number, there were 12 tribes and then 12 apostles and the Book of Revelation describes the 12 precious stones used in the foundations of the New Jerusalem.
If we add 7 and 12 we get 19. So shouldn't 19 also be an important number, maybe later in the events leading up to the "Last Days"?
We saw that there was a 19-year delay between the prophecied reestablishment of Jerusalem and the addition of the original city of Jerusalem. There is a 1 and a 9 in 9/11 when, with 19 days left in September, 19 hijackers flew planes into buildings. This changed the world 19 years before a virus, Covid-19, would also change the world.
On October 21, 1967, at the height of the Sixties, hundreds of people gathered at the Pentagon, in Washington. They began chanting and meditating, in an effort to levitate the Pentagon and purge it of "the evil within". They didn't get what they wanted, at least in terms of gravity but 34 years later, right where they had been standing, a plane flew into the building as part of the 9/11 attacks. This started the world on the path to the Apocalypse and also showed how we were not able to get to the Millennium by our own efforts, but would have to go through the Apocalypse.
The attempt at levitating the Pentagon happened in 1967, during the Vietnam War and just after Jerusalem had come back under the control of Israel. This war was the heyday of army helicopters and they were trying to levitate the Pentagon just as a helicopter "levitates". Years later one of the planes of 9/11 would crash into the Pentagon right where they had been standing. In January 2025, a passenger plane crashed into an army helicopter near the Pentagon, and 67 people were killed. Could this be a reminder of the Pentagon and prophecy?
THE 27 MESSAGE
We often hear about the notorious "27 Club". This is the unfortunately continuous parade of musicians who have died, due to drug usage, at age 27.
But what do you notice about the number 27? It is the number of books in the New Testament. The New Testament refers to the approximately one-quarter of the Bible that was written after the life of Jesus. The rest, the Old Testament, was written before the time of Jesus.
We have seen how I believe that the very special time known as the Sixties was God giving humanity a last chance to build the Millennium itself before God set the events in motion to bring about the Apocalypse, which will be followed by the establishment of Jesus' Kingdom on earth.
An explanation of the scenario of events leading to the fulfillment of the Bible prophecies in our time, the Apocalypse followed by the Millennium, is thoroughly explained in the posting on this blog, "The End Of The World As We Know It".
Could the 27 Club be an indirect message from God? With God allowing it to happen to show the destructiveness of so much of the rock music way of life, and to lead to the Bible instead?
The 27 Club was very high-profile. It began in 1969-71 when four prominent musicians of the Rock Era, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and, Jim Morrison all died, right in a row, at the age of 27. Aside from being rock musicians the one thing that they were known to have in common was their wild way of life.
More recent musicians who have joined the 27 Club include Curt Cobain and Amy Winehouse.
Jesus foretold that the return of the Jews to the original city of Jerusalem would begin the one-lifetime countdown to the Return of Jesus to set up the Millennial Kingdom on earth. Before the Millennium was established there had to be the terrible Tribulation Period of the Antichrist and the Apocalypse.
The Antichrist will not be obviously evil, not at first. He will seem to have all of the answers to everything. The Antichrist will be allowed to reign for seven years, and the first half will actually be the best time that the world has ever seen. But it will all be a fantastic satanic lie and things will begin to fall apart. The second half of the reign of the Antichrist will be the worst time that the world has ever seen and the Gospels are clear that if Jesus did not Return to end the Tribulation and set up the Millennium, no one would be left alive on earth.
If a person finds themselves in the Tribulation Period, Christians will be removed before it in the event known as the Rapture, they can still be saved but will almost certainly be killed.
What I find to be significant is that the ancient nation of Israel was indeed restored, after the Second World War in 1948, but there was a 19-year delay before the original city of Jerusalem was added, in 1967. The period of the delay was the time of coming-of-age of the Baby Boomers, the generation that was born just after the Second World War.
My conclusion is that this delay was God allowing the world a chance to build the Millennium itself without going through the terrible Tribulation Period. The Baby Boomers were the generation that followed the one that had seen world war, genocide, economic collapse and, the development of weapons that could destroy the world by pressing a few buttons.
Maybe this could be the generation that had learned it's lesson and could build the Millennium without going through the Tribulation. God decided to give humanity a chance by delaying the inclusion of the original city of Jerusalem into the restored nation of Israel, which would begin the countdown.
But we just couldn't do it. We were just too sinful. When God saw that it just wasn't going to work, the world was only getting more sinful, the original city of Jerusalem was captured by the Jews, and added to Israel, to begin the one-lifetime countdown to the Millennium, with the Antichrist and Apocalypse preceding it.
Just after this happened is when the 27 Club began. 27 being the number of books in the New Testament. This looks like an effort by God to point the way away from the rock and roll way of life back to the Bible.
THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION AND THE SIXTIESWe saw the importance of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 in the posting on this blog, "The Great Revolution Of Our Time", January 2017. I see it as having an impact on the world that is comparable to the French and October Revolutions that completely changed the world. The world had been secularizing until the Iranian Revolution turned the tide of history back toward religion.
The effect has been spreading ever since, and has gone well beyond the Islamic religion.
But the Iranian Revolution actually has a close relationship to the Sixties in the west. It is a reflection of the Sixties in how the Iranians demonstrating against the U.S. were a mirror image of the U.S. protests against the Vietnam War the decade before. Bell-bottomed pants were even in style in Iran at the time. The U.S. administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were simply replaced by the unpopular government of the Shah.
The demonstrations outside the U.S. Embassy compound, after the Hostage Crisis began, were the Iranian equivalent of the attempt by antiwar protesters to "levitate" the Pentagon by meditation in 1967.
So the idealism of the Sixties in America and the west was a failed attempt at creating the promised biblical Millennium ourselves, without going through the Apocalypse first. But it turned out to have been reflected in the Iranian Revolution in the following decade. The world was moving away from religion but this is what turned it back. This has affected the entire world, including the Christian nations.
We will still have to go through the Apocalypse to get to the Millennium. But the Sixties were not a complete failure as it did inadvertently end up getting the world moving back toward God.
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