I have to be honest; when Prince died, it hit me kind of hard. There were so many thoughts from the past and different angles about Prince’s life coming to mind that my wheels just started spinning in a lot of directions.
First of all, when I was a lost person, I loved to listen to Prince. It was party music. It was dance music. It was sexual music. Perfect material that a lost person is drawn to. That sensual music is one thing that feeds the flesh of the unsaved.
Another thing that hit me about Prince was his reputation as probably one the most talented musicians to come out of the music industry in a long time. On one of his records, he played every instrument on the recording and sang every tune! At the time he recorded that album, he was just starting his career. He had incredible talent. If you are old enough to remember, Michael Jackson and Prince were battling it out for who was going to be the biggest superstar of the early 80’s. Even though Michael seemed to have greater fame, many, many people thought Prince was the more talented of the two.
One other angle to all of this took place while I was visiting my grandparents out in Colorado. A bunch of teenagers and early twenty year olds were there. Someone popped in the movie Purple Rain, which won Prince an Oscar and two Grammy Awards for the soundtrack. My grandfather looked over at one point, saw the sexual content in that movie, walked over, yanked it out of the player, and said, “We don’t watch that kind of stuff in this household. I was a little miffed by what he did. I was a lost person and didn’t really see the problem. Looking back on that moment, I love my grandfather’s take-charge attitude which didn’t tolerate that kind of filth in his house or allow his grandkids to watch junk like that.
Psalm 101:3
I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.
One more angle that hit me was the drug use Prince was involved in. There are a lot of different reports out there speculating about what he did and didn’t do. Some of the reports said he used both illegal drugs and legal drugs, but it definitely looks like he was involved with opiates.
There was actually an opiate detox specialist at Prince’s house the morning of his death who, along with two of Prince’s staff members, found him in the elevator of his home. Either Prince or his people had reached out for help from a California-based opiate specialist, who sent his son immediately to begin the process of getting him off of these drugs and then, more than likely, moving him to their clinic in California to give him further help.
But this begs the question: When did the drug use start? There is speculation that he started using legal opiates for hip pain that developed from his dance moves on stage. Okay, let’s go with that. But when did he stop using them? The answer seems to be never. Which doctor, or doctors, kept prescribing them to him? Why weren’t they trying to get him off of these drugs? Or were they more concerned about being friends with Prince than giving him the right medical advice?
Here is more information about the dangers of opiates if you are interested:
We had a guy get a hold of the ministry a few weeks ago who had just come out of rehab, and he said he had spent $240 a day on his opiate addiction!! Think about that for a second. He got hooked on them after a bicycling accident and couldn’t get off of them. While he was in rehab, someone sent him One Heartbeat Away and it, along with some other things, was used by God to get his full and complete attention! He has been sober for 60 days and has been a godly husband, a godly father, and a soul winner ever since! Praise ye the Lord!!
I recently had a major tooth problem. Bad news. My cheek swelled up to the size of a golf ball on that side of my face! Not good. If you’ve ever had a toothache, you know that I am talking about serious pain. Second worse pain I have ever had in my life. I am not going to lie to you. I was taking a heavy-duty pain killer to knock that pain down. It was not working. And, of course, this happened on a weekend when you can’t get much help! I started popping those pain pills like they were coming from a Pez dispenser! If you don’t know what that is, ask your parents. They still weren’t working. I could barely fall asleep at night. Well, once I finally got to the root canal specialist and he did his thing and the pain subsided, I got as far away from that pain medication as I possibly could. Why? I don’t want to get hooked on any drug down here. None of them. I need to keep a clear mind as I do my work for the Lord. I don’t need to be fuzzy headed as I serve the King.
Revelation 9:20,21
And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.
The word sorceries used in this passage is the word pharmakeia in the Greek. We derive the word pharmacy from this word. Drug use puts you in an altered state of consciousness, which can happen with legal or illegal drugs.
If you want to know more about the opiate epidemic we are facing, here is an informative article:
http://www.naturalnews.com/054125_opioid_addiction_over-prescribing_accountability.html
And one other angle to all of this is that Prince does not care about opiates anymore. He does not care about hit records anymore. He does not care about being some sex symbol anymore. All he cares about now is where he will be spending eternity.
Fascinating though, Prince was a very spiritual person! He was a committed Jehovah’s Witness. You can find a picture of Prince at a Jehovah Witness conference by clicking here:
Prince is sitting next to Larry Graham who introduced him to the Jehovah’s Witness faith. Well, who is Larry? Larry is a bassist that Prince befriended, and he ended up playing music with him. Prince began to study the Bible with Larry, who was a devout JW, and the rest is history, as they say.
So what was going on here? A friend reached out to a friend with supposed spiritual truth. Graham gave his Jehovah Witness dogma to Prince. From what I have been able to find, Prince researched and studied it, and committed to the JW religion. He had come to the wrong conclusion about who Jesus Christ is. Here is a video of Prince talking about his faith, if you want to watch:
This video was really sad to watch. This man deceived Prince. Graham thought he had truth, and yet he didn’t. He was sincere, but he was sincerely deceived. And he totally misled Prince.
Deuteronomy 13:6-8
If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him
Prince was so committed to the JW religion that he even took time off from his concert tours just to study the Bible.
By the way, are you reaching out to your friends at work, school, and on your sports teams? Are you telling them the truth of Jesus Christ? Well if you are not, be careful. The enemy might just slide someone into their lives to give them untruths and yank them right away from the truth of God’s Word. And these false teachings have eternal consequences for so many souls.
One verse I use all the time with Jehovah Witnesses is:
1 Timothy 3:16
And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.
I always ask JWs to explain that verse to me. It says, “God was manifest in the flesh.” Remember, they do not believe that Jesus is God. They believe He is a created being. So they do not believe in the Trinity. So close to truth; yet so far, far away.
And, matter of fact, Prince was so into their teachings that he even went door to door witnessing!
Incidentally, if you haven’t been door to door witnessing before, Prince has actually done it more than you have.
One other thing that totally fascinated me was that Prince had a Knowledge Room inside of his Paisley Park complex!
http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/inside-princes-bizarre-life-paisley-233220
This room contained many religious books. Now, I have not been able to find out what books he had in there, but I have been wanting to know. Sadly, he now realizes there should have been only one book in that room. And if he would have interpreted it correctly, his eternal life would have been so much smoother.
After his death made the news, I was traveling somewhere. When I got back to the Atlanta airport, some JWs were there handing out literature. So I went over and asked them if Prince was a JW. One guy said, They say he was. I said, Come on, man. They have pictures of him at your conferences. He said, Okay. I said that I had a question “Why did he continue to play that sexualized music all across the world after he became a JW?” The guy immediately responded that Paul did plenty of bad things in his life. I looked straight at him and said, Yes, but he repented of those things. And when you look at his life after he got saved, he was a completely different man. That JW just looked at me and said, “Good point.”
Who challenged Prince? Who told him, Now that you are a JW, you cannot play that music anymore. You need to take all of those recordings, put them in your parking lot, and set them on fire. Or were they more worried about being friends with Prince than telling him the truth? Or was Prince their meal ticket, and they didn’t want to offend the bread winner?
While we are on the subject, do you love your friends enough to tell them the truth? Now you might lose a friend or two over it, but they will come to realize that you cared about them. If you need to challenge and/or encourage one of your friends to tighten their life up as they serve the Lord, go for it. And go for it soon.
Prince had a lot of women in his life. One of his proteges was Vanity. Well, lo and behold, Vanity got saved!!
Well, I guess all is not vanity is it!! She died a short time before Prince did. I wonder if she got the opportunity to tell him about the real Jesus before she took her last breath.
Prince was someone I always wanted to have the chance to witness to and chat with. It would have been a fascinating encounter. And he would have talked, too. You can tell that about him. But alas, that won’t be happening.
“When Doves Cry” as one of Prince’s most famous songs. Again, it was very sexually explicit; and I’m sure he regrets writing and performing it now. In the Bible, the Holy Spirit is represented by the dove. The true Dove guides us into all truth. That is one of His jobs that He faithfully accomplishes. Looks like Prince rejected the truth of who the real Jesus is. We know that Jesus wept. The God of the Bible is a God with emotions, as well. It was a sad day for our Lord when Prince rejected the true King of Glory. Please do not do the same by rejecting the biblical Jesus. Prince needed the real Prince of Peace and so does everyone else. If you are saved, keep presenting eternal truth to people as you live this life. They may not appreciate it here, but they will when they get to the other side.
Until the nets are full,
P.S. We just received this tragic news. Thank you, whichever one of you witnessed to this man at the end of May. You reached him with the gospel in the nick of time:
“I wanted to contact you. This little card means so much to me now. My fiancé and I were both handed this card in Columbus, Ohio on Saturday afternoon while we were walking back to our car. My fiancé was killed in a tragic accident that night, and this card was found in his pocket. He had kept it. I saw other people throwing them away when they were handed to them. I truly believe this was a sign from God to comfort us in our time of grieving. I just wanted to say thank you so much.”
