Unpacking John Rich and Tucker Carlson’s Discussion on Revelation Song, Part 2

Read part 1 and part 3.

John Rich, country singer and songwriter, released his latest song on July 12 entitled Revelation. Rich explains the source of the song: “‘Revelation’ is a song inspired directly from the prophecies of the apostle John about the future of our planet, and the eventual return of Jesus Christ. I hope this song brings strength to the saved, conviction to the lost, and fear to the truly wicked. The real war is not between left and right, it’s between good and evil, and God wins in the end.”

The opening verse focuses on mankind’s idolatry and rebellion against the Lord. We have refused to worship him and have chosen instead to follow the Father of lies, Satan. The chorus sings of the coming of Jesus Christ as a dark train drawing closer and closer, bringing with it the inevitable judgment. Verse 2 sings of the judgment itself: fire and brimstone, earthquakes, the trumpet sound, and inescapable terror culminating in Jesus’ return to the earth. The final verse emphasizes the swiftness of God’s judgment, coming in like a lightning bolt with fiery destruction to burn up all of man’s evil desires. The suddenness will leave no time for repentance as the heavens and earth are shaken with the sounding of the 7^th trumpet. Rich’s message is summed up in the last line, which he echoes at least ten times, “The King is coming, and it won’t be long.”

Revelation, like many (most?) songs, is not a great medium for propositional truth. The imagery is largely taken without context from the book. This isn’t surprising, since the song contains just 262 words, several of which are repeated in the chorus (4x), while John’s book contains some 9,851 words in the original language.¹ It does communicate the basic theme of Christ’s second coming to judge the world, and the need for repentance now, while there is still time.

We might quibble with the last part of the 3^rd verse, which says, “the veil is torn, with the sounding of that seventh horn.” This appears to be a reference to Revelation 11:19, where, after the 7^th trumpet is blown “the temple of God which is in heaven was opened; and the ark of His covenant appeared in His temple, and there were flashes of lightning and peals of thunder and an earthquake and a great hailstorm.” But there is no mention here of a veil being torn.² Otherwise, the song’s imagery does all seem to be taken pretty much directly from John’s prophecy.

But what is really interesting is how Rich explained the song’s origin in his interview with Tucker Carlson on July 17. He said that last November he was at home when suddenly he felt as though a hammer had struck him in the head, and the melody and chorus lyrics came to his mind in an instant. On the video Rich glances upward, as though speaking to God and says, “And I said, ‘Ok, I hear ya.’ I grabbed a guitar off the wall, a pencil, a notebook. Went and sat in a quiet room in the house, and in about sixty minutes the entire song had come out.”

Tucker interjects a question at this point: “Is this how—pardon my ignorance—but is this how songwriters write songs?” And Rich answers, “You know, when He hits ya, you know it. It is, it is, you cannot mistake when the Lord slaps you upside the head with something, you have a physical reaction to it. I do. I have a physical reaction to it.” He says this is a very rare occurrence, something that has only happened to him twice since he began writing songs. “So you felt like you were channeling this,” Tucker asks, trying to clarify what Rich believes was happening. And he responds, “I feel like He slammed it right through me.”

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”

2 Timothy 3:16

What should we make of this? Is this what it is like to receive prophetic messages from God? Is this inspiration akin to that of the biblical writers? If not, then what is it? There are many questions. To answer them, we need to consider how the Bible describes the process by which prophecies came and by which the Scriptures themselves were revealed.

In 2 Timothy 3 the apostle Paul speaks of the sacred writings, which are able to bring us to salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, and says that “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” At the very least this means that the Bible’s origin is in the mouth of God rather than men.

It might be possible to explain this as God “slamm[ing] it right through” the human authors, but 2 Peter 1, which speaks about not only the divine origin of the Scriptures but something of the method by which they came, seems to contradict this. He says that the prophetic word is “completely reliable” (v.19), and therefore “you will do well to pay attention to it.” But he says, “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (v.20-21).

Were the prophets mindlessly channeling God’s words? Was their experience like that which John Rich described? That’s not how Peter describes it. He says that the prophets themselves spoke, not as ciphers but as men, not being overcome by the Spirit but being carried along. Here he uses the same word that Luke uses in Acts 27 to describe a boat being carried along by wind in its sails. That is the picture of the Spirit moving the prophets to proclaim God’s word.

Instead of separating the act of inspiration from the minds of the human prophets, the Bible affirms that God worked through their minds and mouths to declare his perfect word. This is exactly what Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 14. He says in v.32 that “The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets.” This is why, according to Paul, if one prophet was speaking in the church at Corinth and another received a revelation, the first prophet was to stop talking and sit down, while the second spoke. This was not God slamming messages through people outside of their control.

Even in places where the Bible describes prophets going into some kind of trance-like state, the messages they received were always delivered to them and by them with their minds fully engaged. For example, in Acts 10:10 Peter is described as going into a trance and seeing a vision of a sheet filled with unclean animals let down from heaven. While he may have been oblivious to his immediate surroundings, he was far from being mindless as he responded to the vision (v.14). And it was after the vision was complete, when he was no longer in a trance state, that the Spirit spoke to him explaining what the vision had meant (v.19-20). Peter’s testimony to Cornelius shows that he was cooperating with the Spirit in this revelation (v.28-29). It was not slammed through him by any means.

“You know, when He hits ya, you know it. It is, it is, you cannot mistake when the Lord slaps you upside the head with something, you have a physical reaction to it.”

John Rich

So if John Rich’s description of how this song came to him is not really consistent with the way the Bible describes God speaking through his prophets, then what was it? It is interesting that Carlson uses the term “channeling,” in his response to John Rich’s account. This term is defined as “the practice of professedly entering a meditative or trancelike state in order to convey messages from a spiritual guide.”³ This and similar practices were explicitly forbidden for the Israelites in the OT (see Lev. 19:31; 20:6; Deut. 18:10-12).

Now I recognize that Rich does not use the term channeling?that comes from Tucker?but his description of a process where this song comes through him almost apart from his conscious mind is concerning. Tucker prompts him again, “So you’re describing a creative process in which you’re kind of like not driving the train at all,” and Rich answers, “At all! No. No. Cause I didn’t come up with the song. I did not lay out some marketing strategy for the song. I was given instructions as to what to do with it.”

I need to be very clear in what I am saying. John Rich did not say that he was channeling a song from a spiritual being, at least not in so many words. But his description of the circumstances definitely seems to fit that account. He obviously believes that this was something given to him by God himself, that he has been raised up to his position of popularity to be able to disseminate this word of warning to mankind prior to Christ’s return. However, since his own description does not appear to be consistent with the way the biblical writers spoke of the process by which they received and preached the prophetic word, I find it highly unlikely that this is the case with the song Revelation.

There are many today who believe that words of prophecy continue to be given from God outside of Scripture. Whether you believe in the continuation of the prophetic gift or not, careful discernment is required at all times. Paul warned the Corinthian believers that false prophets would disguise themselves as apostles of Jesus Christ. “And no wonder,” he said, “for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will correspond to their actions” (2 Cor. 11:14-15). I do not want to falsely accuse a brother in Christ, but I think we would do well to be cautious before accepting his claim to have received a special revelation from God in the form of a popular country song. We would do well to examine any claim of a divine revelation, no matter who makes it, remembering Paul’s instructions to another church: “Do not treat prophecies with contempt. But examine all things; hold fast to what is good. Stay away from every form of evil” (2 Thess. 5:20-22).

1 https://overviewbible.com/word-counts-books-of-bible/ As an interesting aside, Jeffrey Kranz offers a helpful chart and information about his method of calculating word counts for every book of the Bible.

2 This image seems to have come from the synoptic Gospels, which state that the veil of the temple in Jerusalem was torn in two the moment Jesus died (Matt. 27:51; Mark 15:38; Luke 23:45).

3 https://www.dictionary.com/browse/channeling