Question

Are movies like The Omen or the more recent TV series Revelations helpful? Even though they are not always biblically sound or historically accurate, cant we glean some good things from them anyway?

Answer

I once heard a man describe the Hollywood crowd as a bunch of crooks and robbers with the morality of a pack of jackals. I concur with this assessment in general, so it is hard for me to conceive of anything redemptive coming from a Hollywood interpretation of one of the gravest and most important teaching of the scripture. One of the ways the arch- deceiver has succeeded in luring even the most cautious and circumspect of people, is to mix just enough truth in with his lies to subtly seduce the hearer. It is a sort of garnishment or embellishment that makes the most poisonous plate look palatable after all. The seriousness of billions of people meeting their doom, earthquakes leveling every city on the planet and the destruction of every major institution of man should hardly he trusted to the Hollywood crowd.

It is even harder to address some of the well meaning Christian authors who have introduced some very popular fiction about the second coming. Books like, Left Behind may be very entertaining but the bottom line is still that they are after all, only fiction. Over thirty years past I made a statement in some of my messages that didnt seem well received or even believed. I repeat it now with an ever increasing frequency, but now I find more acceptances for what I am saying. Americans who have their eyes wide open and their hearts tuned by God are now concurring with me when I say that, We have come to the place where entertainment is so important to us that we are losing sight of where fantasy ends and real life begins.

When the comedic movie mogul Charlie Chaplin 1889- 1977, was at the peak of his career, a Chaplin look-alike craze was sweeping the world. In America, Europe and South America tens of thousands of people dressed in the garb of the famous actor and imitated his well known walk and his extravagant antics. It is a well known fact that many times Chaplin entered his own look-alike contests. He never won any of them, and it is said that many times he couldnt even make the finals. Our ability to see the difference between the look alike and the real thing is quite ineffective as this story shows. Why would anyone trust our skills to differentiate between the real and the unreal concerning something as important as the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ?

When the events start to unfold at a pace that no one can imagine there will he no time to debate which of the portents that are unfolding came from the Bible, and which came from the Hollywood version of things. That would only leave people more confused, more vulnerable and in the end, more dead. If you want the truth, doesnt it make sense to go to the source of truth? Hollywood even at its best has never been heralded as a source of truth. God is always the best source to find Gods will and plan.