If you keep up with the news or social media, you have probably heard by now about Oliver Anthony. That’s his stage name; his real name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford.

The lyrics of “Rich Men North of Richmond” contain multiple uses of the “d**n” word and the “s**t/bull****” words. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater: God is using this song powerfully anyway.

Anthony’s viral single has been hailed far and wide because it cuts to the bone.

More than that, however, it echoes the pain and struggle of working Americans — and working America is responding to it.

Here’s why: 🔴The Church has tried though not very hard to unite America around morality. The problem is, many in the Church fail to believe what the Bible says about sin, deviant lifestyles, social issues, etc.

🔴However, when people fail, God always succeeds. And where the Church and the world have proved unable to unite the people around their causes, God can do it.

I believe that the Lord is sneaking the sound of revival and freedom into the hearts of the American people through the arts — yes, through music, and He is clearly using this song from an anointed, everyday Virginia farmer to put the cry for freedom from oppression in the hearts of Americans.

Look at what God said to Moses when He set the Israelites free from 400 years of slavery:

So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites.

Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt” Exodus 3:7–10

And don’t you think He was the one who caused their discontent with their slave status? Of course He was. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. It is God who gives us the desire for freedom.

He did not release a new televangelist to proclaim the need for freedom. He didn’t release the newest, most charismatic politician with a billion-dollar PAC behind him.