These Celebrities Are Hiding Something...

The Moral Shock of Celebrity Blasphemy

Strange things are happening in the world around us. Let's take a look at four recent examples, progressing to the most shocking at the end. At number four, there's Madonna, who continues to have absolutely no shame in mocking everything that is sacred.

Here's Madonna at the Grammys, taking pride in her blasphemous behavior.

Here's what I've learned after four decades in music. If they call you shocking, scandalous, troublesome, problematic, provocative, or dangerous, you are definitely onto something.

Very recently, Madonna was in the news once again for being a part of a photo shoot that blatantly and unashamedly mocks Jesus and Christianity.

But she is now recently in the news for doing a photo shoot with Vanity Fair that features dead babies, and I'm just going to show you some photos from this disturbing shoot. If you're wondering whether or not there is a hell, Madonna's certainly going to find out after this one.

Here's the first photo. She is just on the cover there, and it looks demonic. It's meant to be demonic. It's a photo of her dressed as the Virgin Mary holding a heart with what looks to be daggers, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven daggers into the heart and a thorny crown upon her head.

Let's just mock Christians. Let's just put demonic nature of everything that you represent by using Christian imagery. Here's another photo from that shoot. It's obviously meant to replicate The Last Supper.

She is on a table, and she is supposed to be Jesus Christ, except she is surrounded by what looks to be non-binary people. There seems to be a cross that's draped around her neck. I mean, you get the idea.

This is supposed to be catchy and forward, I guess, in the world, the demonic world that we live in. It's very sensual and sexual. She's got a woman that she is holding towards her bosom. She's trying to mimic Christ while also being Madonna and being perverse, and, of course, this is supposed to drum up conversation and Vanity Fair publishes because, like I said, she's pushing the edge of what it means.

This is what is applauded in Hollywood.

Madonna may think she is being brave and standing up to the oppressive religion that is Christianity, but the reality is that her war against God and Christianity will ultimately end with God's severe judgment, not the applause of Hollywood.

God nice? Certainly he is. That's not all he is. Our God is a righteous king. Our God is a warrior who deals with sin. We know this inherently. That's why one of the first things we learn to say is, that's not fair, because we believe that things need to be set right.

It's not nice for things to go unsettled, for crime to go unpunished, and for sin to go undealt with. Is God nice? Certainly he is, but he's a lot more than that.

The Tension Between Christian Success and Worldly Celebration

At number three, there's Maverick City Music winning awards at the Grammys on the same stage as Sam Smith's blatantly satanic performance. The juxtaposition of Maverick City Music, a group of Christian musicians sharing a stage with a blatantly satanic performance that unashamedly blasphemes their God and mocks their religion, as well as performing a song together with Quavo, who is another blatantly non-Christian musician, is pretty disturbing, and raises some important questions we need to ask about what it means to be in the world, but not of the world.

Maverick City, Quavo, last night at the Grammys. There's a tension here. Spiritually dead people are going to do what spiritually dead people are going to do. We know that. The flip side to that is, do we have to participate in their spiritual blindness and potentially enable it?

That is the tension that I think we're seeing exhibited here. And I get it. The Grammys is the top of the top, the cream of the crop. I am friendly, but some of the folks from Maverick City Music, congratulations to them for winning the Grammys and Kirk for winning the Grammy.

That is awesome. Shout out to them. That's big. Okay? The flip side is, I think people are genuinely fighting with this desire to say, all right, there's overtly satanic stuff. There's fairly clearly blasphemy with Jay-Z and rapping about being God and kind of depicting himself as Jesus at the Last Supper.

There's Beyonce thanking God after making an album completely anti-God, in my opinion. She's talking about church girls being thots and all that kind of wild stuff. The challenge comes in, how do we participate on platforms like this?

How do we engage with places like this?

I'm not going to assume anything about the motives of the musicians at Maverick City Music. I'm simply going to ask the question, should Christians be excited to be praised and celebrated by the same people who praise and celebrate blatantly satanic performances and to be recognized at an event that is also hosting such blasphemous and anti-Christian behavior?

I think it's foundational to all of us. We understand this. There are two kingdoms in the world, right? Kingdom of light and darkness, kingdom of God, kingdom of Satan, and they are separated by a gulf that is really impassable.

Public Faith, Reality TV, and the Temptation to Compromise

At number two, there's Adrian Houghton, a well-known television personality, singer, and actress who professes faith in Jesus Christ.

So a lot of you may wonder, like, what is my religion? I would consider myself a Christian, a follower of Christ, and a lot of you also may be wondering what role did religion play in my life growing up?

I would say it played a huge role. I was raised in not just a Christian household, but a Pentecostal household.

I'm glad that someone as well-known as Adrian was afraid to talk about Christ and her faith publicly in front of hundreds of thousands of people. At the same time, Adrian will be the host for an upcoming reality TV show called Love for the Ages, which has an incredibly disturbing concept.

Give me a ring!

Your marriage perhaps doesn't have maybe that fire that it used to have, that fuego, that passion, you know? Fun? Yeah!

Well, here they come. This experience I'm hoping will give a spark back to my husband.

I think living with these guys is going to be a fun experience.

Something will most likely happen, just a matter of time.

How do you think your wife would feel about this evening? Oh, my God. She's 23.

It is now your moment of truth. Do you in fact have a love for the ages, or will you decide to walk away?

The entire premise of this reality TV show is to tempt spouses into committing adultery with attractive singles who are much younger than their spouse. This is a show that is blatantly promoting sin and sexual immorality, and Adrian has agreed to be the host of this show.

Some might argue that the purpose of this show is to show that the love between spouses and a marriage will end up being stronger than the attractiveness of these single people living in the same house, but who are we kidding?

The purpose of this show is to attract viewers, which will certainly involve making sure there is real temptation and immorality that occurs in the house. No Christian should ever promote a show like this, let alone be the host of it.

Someone tells me I got a new relationship with God, I ask them this question, do you have a new relationship with sin? Because the evidence you have a new relationship with God is that you have a new relationship with sin.

It's like the illustration of marriage. I have a new relationship with her. Well, then that means you have a new relationship with every other woman on this planet, a relationship of no.

Tasha Cobbs, Beyonce, and the Problem of Platform Christianity

At number one, there's Tasha Cobbs, a gospel musician and songwriter who prayed for Beyonce, but not in the way we would expect.

So Tasha Cobbs, she posted this just yesterday. It says, I'm praying for Beyonce today. And it says, just to read the caption, it says, there are very few people who will ever understand the weight that comes with certain levels of greatness.

I can't imagine the amount of personal maintenance required in order to successfully manage a platform of such magnitude, referring to Beyonce. While most people are posting about her tour announcement today, I felt a tug to intercede.

Join me if you feel the tug too. So this is a prayer that she's sending to Beyonce. It says, Father, I pray that she would feel your presence very near to her today. I pray that your presence would fill any void and bring her unspeakable joy.

Let her home be a sanctuary for you to meet with her. I pray that she would find rest and safety in you. I pray that her home would be a place of peace. I pray that her family would grow strong together.

I pray that anything that would come to distract their peace would be canceled now in Jesus' name. I pray that you would ease her cares and concerns, make every burden light cover and protect her from all evil and harm and all sickness and disease.

Cover her heart and her mind from any thoughts or ideals that are not good and perfect. Protect her from the weight that comes with greatness. Allow her to enjoy the wins and grow from the losses. Lastly, the prayers that she may be praying in secret, hear her and allow her your will to be done in Jesus' name, amen.

Cobb's prayer for Beyonce was not that Beyonce would recognize her sin before God and come to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, which Beyonce is clearly not done, despite saying she believes in God.

Rather, Cobb describes Beyonce in terms of her greatness and only prays for God to bless Beyonce rather than to humble her before his moral law, which Beyonce flaunts on a regular basis with her anti-Christian songs and albums.

Cobb's unbiblical view of Beyonce is similar to her view of Nicki Minaj, another professing Christian who regularly mocks God with blatant sexual immorality.

And Nicki Minaj, you collaborated with her on that. And tell people how you got to know each other. You know, I went through social media.

Social media is absolutely amazing. And you know, God is connecting people through social media. And one day she just reached out to me and she told me how much that my ministry had blessed her life. And then she did a tweet to 90 million followers saying, Tasha, when you get ready, send me that album and I'm going to do 16 bars on a song for you.

And here you have it.

And then she, yeah, she did that. And I know now you said if you collaborate with somebody else, it'd be Celine Dion. Can you imagine you two together?

Put it out to the world. Celine, I want to sing with you.

And so, you know, she's still a newlywed. That's her husband right there, her husband.

Like Maverick City Music, Cobb seems to enjoy her music being recognized by the secular world. And instead of communicating the gospel and calling people to repentance, she instead praises these people for recognizing her and her music.

Again, we need to ask the question, what's the point of having an enormous platform as a Christian if we become so much a part of the world that the world completely accepts us as its own? If there is no confrontation and no persecution, which Jesus and all of the apostles experienced, then what exactly is the message we are communicating?

We think that the power of God unto salvation is popularity in the culture. We believe that what God really needs is for us to be powerful and popular so that God can use our name to get the gospel out.

That's why we get so inflamed and enraptured when we find out that some popular or powerful person is Christian. Did you hear that so-and-so was a Christian? No? Well, he is, okay? But do you realize how popular and how powerful he is and how God can use his name and his platform?

Stop right there. God already has a name that is above every name, the name at which every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

If God already has the name that's above every name, what makes you think he needs yours?