Way ahead of his time, Herbert W. Armstrong wrote, “Few people stop to realize to what extent the teenagers have taken over today. They pretty well dominate the world picture” (God Speaks Out on “The New Morality”). He wrote that 45 years ago!

Today, American teens spend an estimated $200 billion every year—an eye-popping figure that makes marketers and advertisers salivate. According to one report several years ago, the food and beverage industries alone spend between $10 and $12 billion per year marketing to youth.

Marketers target young people not only for what they spend directly, but also for what they influence adults to spend. It is estimated that American children goad their parents into spending another $200 billion per year. According to Marcel Danesi in Forever Young—the Teen-Aging of Modern Culture, “Virtually the entire media-entertainment industry today depends for its economic survival on capturing the ‘teen dollar.’ For this reason, it caters primarily to the adolescent market. There is a veritable synergy today between that industry and adolescent lifestyles—they influence each other in tandem.”

Yes, indeed. Teenagers pretty much dominate Western culture. And what many do not realize, as Mr. Armstrong wrote almost a half century ago, is that this adolescent influence on Western society is predominantly sexual and violent. With the benefit of divine guidance, Mr. Armstrong saw the very beginning stages of a society-wide cultural revolution—spearheaded by teenagers—and where it was leading.

Society Upside Down

With about 35 million in America today, teenagers make up our fastest growing demographic. In a godly society, we would be enthusiastically encouraged by that trend. God, after all, has always intended for children to be a blessing to their parents—like “olive plants” around the table (Psalm 128:3)—and to society (Proverbs 20:29; 1 Timothy 4:12).

In these latter days, however, prophecy points to our youth as being a burden on society. Instead of helping to build it up, our own offspring are tearing it down. Isaiah 3:12 describes our children as being oppressors.

This prophecy is being fulfilled in two ways, primarily. One is in the more literal sense of youth oppressing society by their rebellious disregard for adult authority (see verse 5). The pervasive attitude young people have toward their elders in Western society is one of rebellious disrespect. In the most extreme cases, it can become violent. Teens commit three times as many crimes as adults, which is why our prison system is filled with young people.

The other fulfillment of this prophecy is even deadlier than the most violent youth killer. It’s described in verse 4: “And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.” God isn’t talking about children with respect to age necessarily, but rather the way adults are ruling: like children! Read the first three verses of Isaiah 3 to see all the qualities of leadership that have vanished from our society: vision, prudence, judgment, wisdom, honor and eloquence. In this prophecy, God foresaw the near-extinction of mature-minded, biblically-oriented qualities of Christian leadership. And it’s because, in far too many cases, our leaders—whether in the home, within education, or business, or in government—have degenerated to a child’s level of understanding. Instead of preparing our children for the responsibilities of adulthood, we, as adults, are acting like children.

A few years ago, Time magazine reported on a new phenomenon among youths—about how long it takes them to transition into adulthood. “They’re not kids anymore,” the subtitle to the article says, “but they’re not adults either” (Jan. 16, 2005). So what are they? According to Time, they’re twixters—men and women (or boys and girls?) between the ages of 18 and 25 who don’t want adult responsibility. The American Psychiatric Association has even gone so far as to define the stage of adolescence as a period extending from puberty to age 34. In other words, adolescence today lasts about three times longer than it did just a few generations ago.

Jesus Christ—the most mature and gifted teacher there ever was—sacrificed His life for the world at age 33. What would He have thought about our immature, teen-dominated, sexually perverse, violent culture?

Even religion, the last place you would expect teens to dominate, is dumbing its message down to attract younger crowds. Here in Edmond, Oklahoma (where the Trumpet is headquartered), one evangelical minister surveyed the area and found potential churchgoers fed up with how boring religious services had become. “So he designed Life Church to counter those preconceptions, with lively, multimedia-filled services in a setting that’s something between a rock concert and a coffee shop” (Business Week, May 23, 2005). According to the article, even as Protestant and Catholic denominations are seeing their congregants leave—especially young ones—evangelical megachurches are booming because they are adapting to “contemporary culture.” “Kids are often a prime target audience for megachurches. The main campus of [Craig] Groeschel’s Life Church in Edmond, Oklahoma, includes a ‘Toon Town’ of 3-D buildings, a 16-foot-high slide, and an animatronic police chief who recites rules. All the razzmatazz has helped Life Church quadruple its Sunday school attendance to more than 2,500 a week. ‘The kids are bringing their parents to church,’ says children’s pastor Scott Werner.”

This is not an encouraging trend.

In 1 Corinthians 13:11, the Apostle Paul wrote, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” Today, instead of putting away childish things and preparing our own children for adulthood, adults are stooping to the level of immature, rebellious, sexually deviant teenagers.

“It’s the commercial media entertainment economy at work,” wrote Danesi in Forever Young. “Age is now considered a disease. Youth sells. There’s a big emphasis on having it all: good living, keeping your youth, having as much fun as you can. It’s empty because there is no wisdom behind it.” Worse still, he goes on to explain, “It’s a cultural disease. And now we’re into the final silly stages.”

Seven years after Mr. Armstrong first published God Speaks Out on “The New Morality,” he updated and revised the text under a new title: The Missing Dimension in Sex. If you don’t have a copy, request one immediately. The pages within that book reveal the only safe passage out of our sin-sick youth culture.