A "Crystal Blue Persuasion" Kingdom Coming?

Bob Russell
Jul 7
3 min read

Updated: Aug 4

A New Vibration of Peace and Brotherhood

Northern lights in purple and teal sky over silhouetted pine trees, creating a serene and magical nighttime scene. — © Bob Russell

The year 1969 release of the song, “Crystal Blue Persuasion” by Tommy James and the Shondells conveyed a deeply soulful message of hope for a world in transition. During those days it was usual to see such songs by youthful rock bands as representing the age of psychedelics.

Indeed, the song was credited with promoting the use of blue LSD microdots, which were popular at the time. Later, the title was associated with “Crystal Meth” as popularized in the popular series “Breaking Bad.”

The true story behind the song can be found here.

Tommy James had recently started his life in Christianity and had read a passage in the book of Revelation. His inspiration was Revelation 4:6 and the sea of glass expanding in front of God’s throne. The glass was of pure crystal, which led to the title. He added blue to help the song title resonate.

The lyrics of the song describe a world that suddenly becomes peaceful, and everyone starts to care about one another. All wars stop, greed disappears, and a total community of brotherly love is created. The song doesn’t say what actually caused this change other than a “persuasion” that occurred.

Afterward, God comes down to Earth to see what has occurred. It’s a beautiful transition and all is good and God smiles. To James, this was a view of the new heavenly kingdom on Earth; some may see the description as a composite of both the final kingdom beyond the Millennial Kingdom as described in Revelation, chapters 20, 21, and 22.

To be truthful, I personally love the song and highly recommend that readers listen to it. It’s very peaceful and mostly — hopeful! It gives hope that one day the world will change and become an absolutely wonderful place — a type of Nirvana, Elysium Field, or Paradise. All of this without wars and conflict to create the change — it just happens!

From the true Biblical perspective, it simply isn’t that easy. Evil has to first be dealt with in order for a transition to occur. There will not be an easy seamless transition into the Kingdom of God. The forces of evil, both unseen and sinful humankind, will not give up their possession of the Earth without conflict. All of the book of Revelation is a story of accelerated conflict and world upheaval. Jesus warned of this in His Mount of Olives discourse in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 24.

Scripture simply doesn’t proclaim a redemption of the present world without the removal of sin and the desolations due to sin and rebellion. This includes world values, policies, desires, and ambitions. These things must be utterly eliminated before peace can arrive -and it will arrive!

Dangerous Teachings!

The very teaching of an easy transition into a peaceful kingdom has the potential for great harm! If we become convinced that the world will just become a genuinely nice place, we’ll be more inclined to take on worldly values and seek status and reward in the current age.

We’ll seek to anchor ourselves in this world and wait out the transition. This is opposed to what Jesus instructs us to do- we are not to love the current world.[1] Seeing a transition to good without ending corruption only furthers the corruptive influences of evil.

Corruption is not something a “free-willed” being just gives up. Once sin and evil settle in our hearts, without true repentance, we become an unclean being, a dark spirit, and a force of corruptive influence that will not be tolerated in the final kingdom of God.[2]

There will be no harmony between the Kingdom of God and the forces of this evil age. We will not wake up to a ‘Crystal Blue Persuasion” but a period of increasing evil and hostilities until Jesus comes down and dishes out the “Wrath of God” and cleanses the earth of all that defiles it.