Excellent Movie The Passion of Christ (108 views) Subscribe   
  From:  David (DavidABrown)    Feb-24 10:12 pm  
To:  ALL   (1 of 15)  
 
  820.1  
 
2/24/2004

David,

I am thrilled to report that since launching our "Passion
Congressional Outreach", members of Congress are calling
our office by the hour for their reservations to see "The
Passion of the Christ".

(to read the full report on our news conference click here):

http://www.faithandaction.org

Already, about 10 percent of the Congress is sponsored, but we
still have a long way to go.

I believe this could be one of the most effective evangelistic
initiatives to elected officials that weve done in the ten years
weve been on Capitol Hill, and I have to tell you I am ecstatic
over the possibilities.

+ + Everyone Must Be Sponsored by Tomorrow Evening!

David, if we are to realize the full potential of this
outreach, we need approximately14 sponsorships per hour over
the next 30 hours.

As you can see, I need your help.

Please take a moment to help Faith & Action send your member
of Congress to see "The Passion of Christ." Your actions right
now could change a life for all eternity!
http://www.grassfire.net/2044/offer.asp?rid=1246062

+ + Powerful follow-up meeting planned

I'm also pleased to announce that following our outreach,
Faith & Action will spearhead a follow-up meeting where
we will be inviting members of Congress to join with us
to discuss Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of the Christ".

Right now we are still finalizing these plans, but I expect it will
give us a wonderful opportunity to water the seeds that were
sown as a result of your generosity!

Please consider sponsoring your members of Congress right now
by clicking here:
http://www.grassfire.net/2044/offer.asp?rid=1246062

Thanks for taking immediate action.

Rev. Rob Schenck
Your Missionary to our nations leaders
Faith & Action

+ +
To sponsor your Congressman to see "The Passion of Christ":
http://www.grassfire.net/2044/offer.asp?rid=1246062

+ +
For the very latest news and information on how Faith & Action
is making a difference in our Nations Capitol and beyond, click
here:
http://www.faithandaction.org




David A. Brown
Basic Christian: Forum
www.BasicChristian.org




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Edited 2/25/2004 1:43:17 AM ET by David (DAVIDABROWN) 
  
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  From:  David (DavidABrown)    Feb-24 10:40 pm  
To:  ALL   (2 of 15)  
 
  820.2 in reply to 820.1  
 
I just came home from seeing the movie The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson.

 

It is an Excellent movie, more than a movie an event. 

 

From the eye-catching opening scene set in the midst of the Garden of Gethsemane all the way until the arrest, trials, beatings, crucifixion and until the resurrection the movie is one stunning performance.

 

Probably my favorite part is after Jesus has been severely beaten bloody and just prior to His proceeding to the cross as He is laying on the courtyard floor Mary comes to comfort Him and she finds herself without words and Jesus looks at her and says behold I am about to make all things new.

 

Thought the backdrop of the cross other scenes of the Gospels are plaid out, for instance at the cross it shows Jesus giving the sermon on the Mount and saying to Love your enemies it is an extremely powerful and effective format.

 

The movie works and works well. There is a scene where Judas gets the rope to hang himself with from the bridel of a dead and decaying camel, it is very powerful.

 

Also it is interesting that Mel chose to show the demonic infestation that was taking place at that time and some demonic activity is shown and at various times Satan is shown taunting Jesus.

 

The movie is an incredible film, an incredible statement, and an incredible event.

 

It is a movie that the Church has been waiting a long time for. It is a must see movie.



God Bless you all,
David A. Brown



David A. Brown
Basic Christian: Forum
www.BasicChristian.org






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Edited 2/25/2004 1:47:55 AM ET by David (DAVIDABROWN) 
  
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  From:  jpirie3    Feb-26 9:44 pm  
To:  David (DavidABrown)    (3 of 15)  
 
  820.3 in reply to 820.2  
 
I can't wait to see it!
 

God Bless,

John

 Bush in '04
 


 
 Our Life in Christ(Gojabber)  



 




 
    

 
 
 
  
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  From:  David (DavidABrown)    Feb-26 9:56 pm  
To:  jpirie3    (4 of 15)  
 
  820.4 in reply to 820.3  
 
Hi John,

 

Looking forward to your insights from the movie.

 

I want to post a little more about the movie but thought I would wait until some more people post their reactions.

 

God Bless you,
David



David A. Brown
Basic Christian: Forum
www.BasicChristian.org

 
 
From:  David (DavidABrown)    Feb-28 9:08 am  
To:  ALL    
 
    
 
Source: www.tothesource.org
   February 27, 2004 
Dear Concerned Citizen, 
There have been several reasons given by leaders of the cultural elite why the American public 

should not see Gibsons Passion.

A few months ago we werent suppose to see Passion because Gibson and his film were anti-Semitic. 

The movie had the power to turn Americans, the most philo-Semitic people in the world, into 

brutal Jew-hating predators. It was Gibsons lethal weapon against Jews. 

Now Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League says that though he is still troubled by the 

film be doesnt believe Gibson is anti-Semitic and he does not believe this is an anti-Semitic 

film.

Then a few weeks ago we werent suppose to go see Gibsons Passion because, well, no one else 

would. Frank Rich of the New York Times not only ridiculed Gibson for making the film but 

believed that the controversy would have a negative effect on the films impact and box office 

success. 

Now Passion has already broken records. It opened on over 4000 screens, the most ever for an 

independent movie. On the first day it took in $26.6 million and should clear $70 million within 

the first full week of its release. It will undoubtedly be the highest grossing foreign language 

film of all time, surpassing Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. 

Now that Passions box office success is not in question, Andy Rooney quipped on 60 Minutes last 

week: My question to Mel Gibson is: How many million dollars does it look as if youre going to 

make off the crucifixion of Christ?

Todays raison du jour for not seeing the film is that it is nothing more than exaggerated 

violence. The Goriest Story Every Told. Passion is Gibsons Mad Max assault on our civilized 

sensibilities.

Finally they got it right! Unfortunately for Passion opponents, this is exactly the reason TO see 

the film.

A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the 

ministrations of a Christ without a cross.
      H. Richard A. Neibuhr

Professor Neibuhr was just one in series of great minds to lament the success of the Protestant 

purification of the world, isolating moderns from the ugly underbelly of life. In an effort to 

remake the world anew, the great Protestant project to purify our homes, our lives, our jobs, 

even our loved ones has largely worked. The world today enjoys less violence and suffering than 

it did 500 years ago. If you dont agree read some history. But it has come at a cost. Our lives 

are a bit too planned, too predicable, too punctual, too pretty, and too polite. Paradoxically, 

we are not all that comfortable in this perfect world. 

Dont you sense this a bit yourself? 

Why else would middle aged coach potatoes watch grotesque Fear Factor food feats while their kids 

sneak off to the tattoo shop for haute couture Gothic body art or to the mall for the latest glow 

in the dark spiked body studs and patent leather witch shoes?

Why else would Max Weber call modernity (Christianitys rebellious and often atheistic 

step-child) an iron cage? Nietzsche considered Christianity a hideous perversion of our true 

nature because it turned great men like Pascal into subservient slaves to a life denying moral 

ethic of feigned niceness and foolish banality.

Every week millions of Christians attend Protestant churches where Jesus has long been taken down 

from the cross. In the 16th century Puritans decided that displays of the body of Jesus 

represented Papists idol worship. Visual images were be stripped off the altars, walls, and 

windows of sanctuaries. The spoken word became the preferred medium. A white washed, 

minimalistic, over-intellectualized spirituality resulted. No one should get too excited. And 

nothing unexpected should take place.

Today, parishioners want their pastors to refrain from contentious or controversial subject 

matter. Sermons that run long should be the exception, not the rule. The service should end at 

twelve. The parking lot should empty by 12:15. 

Mel Gibsons The Passion of the Christ drives a Mack truck through this pleasantness. His intent 

from the films conception is to visually offend our cultured sensibilities. I wanted it to be 

shocking, Gibson tells Diane Sawyer last week on ABCs Primetime Live.

For the following scholars and film critics, Gibson succeeds. 

The graphic, brutal, unrelenting violence was deeply disturbing. I found it difficult to really 

do much thinking or meditating simply in the face of the visceral sort of torture that I 

witnessed.
      Philip Cunningham, Boston College

The problem with The Passions violence is not merely how difficult it is to take, its that its 

sadistic intensity obliterates everything else about the film. Worse than that, it fosters a 

one-dimensional view of Jesus, reducing his entire life and world-transforming teaching to his 

sufferings, to the notion that he was exclusively someone who was willing to absorb unspeakable 

punishment for our sins. 
      Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

A surprisingly violent narrative that falls in danger of altering Jesus message of love into 

one of hate.One of the cruelest movies in the history of cinemaThe movie Gibson has made from 

his personal obsessions is a sickening death trip, a grimly unilluminating procession of 

treachery, beating, blood and agony.
      David Denby, The New Yorker 

Mr. Gibson has departed radically from the tone and spirit of earlier American movies about 

Jesus, which have tended to be palatable (if often extremely long) Sunday school homilies 

designed to soothe the audience rather than to terrify or inflame it.

The Passion of the Christ is so relentlessly focused on the savagery of Jesus final hours that 

this film seems to arise less from love than from wrath, and to succeed more in assaulting the 

spirit than in uplifting it. Mr. Gibson has constructed an unnerving and painful spectacle that 

is also, in the end, a depressing one.
      A. O. Scott The New York Times

For Scott, the film is more about Gibsons sado-masochism than his religious piety.

Reviews from Christian web sites and publications have been equally cautious.

This is definitely not a date movie; it is a think flick. Church folks should be warned, this is 

not a family-friendly Christian movie such as Chariots of Fire or The Ten Commandments. The 

Passion is the most brutal movie you will probably ever see. People will be sobbing in the 

theaters or running out to get sick in the lobby.
       Steve Beard, Good News

There are critics who agree with Gibsons decision to graphically portray Christs Passion. They 

see Americans as increasingly jaded people who crave increasingly sensational reality based 

shows. Therefore, a film that does not realistically depict Jesus crucifixion would not be taken 

seriously by todays audience. 

For example, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert said that Gibson provided for him for the 

first time in my life a visceral idea of what the Passion consisted of. He thinks that those who 

criticize the film for concentrating on the death of Jesus and not his life teachings, miss the 

point. This is not a sermon or a homily, but a visualization of the central event in the 

Christian religion. Take it or leave it.

Joel Siegel, film critic for ABC's Good Morning America, who is Jewish, said that he "did not 

sense any anti-Semitism". He noted that "many critics use the words excruciating to talk about 

the violence of the film. I wonder if they know what I have learned, that the root word for 

excruciating is the same as for crucifixion. This is a very powerful film."

Christs death holds a mirror up confronting us with the brutal capacity within our human 

condition that must be honestly faced.
 
We live complex lives. We strive to sort out priorities that sometimes conflict or seem 

incompatible. A moral framework is needed to help us understand the reality around us. Our 

Judeo-Christian heritage provides a framework to help us comprehend the choices we make and the 

conflicts that arise over them. It is not only the main source of our spiritual values, but also 

many of the secular values we depend on.

tothesource is a forum for integrating thinking and action within a moral framework that takes 

into account our contemporary situation. We will report the insights of cultural experts to the 

specific issues we face believing these sources will embolden people to greater faith and action. 
  
We invite you to subscribe to our free email service
that features informed opinion on current cultural issues. 
 
tothesource, P.O. Box 1292, Thousand Oaks, CA 91358
Phone: (805) 241-3138 | Fax: (805) 241-3158 | info@tothesource.org 
 




David A. Brown
Basic Christian: Forum
www.BasicChristian.org

 
From:  David (DavidABrown)    Feb-28 11:17 am  
To:  ALL   (6 of 15)  
 
  820.6 in reply to 820.1  
 
Email Subject: FW: Fw: Chonda Pierce- About Mel 's Movie: "The Passion"

Chonda is a very funny comedian - if you ever get a chance to see her or one of her videos, you will laugh your head off.  This is something a little more intense, though!

Christian comedian, Chonda Pierce's 'Roadkill report'. She got to go to a
sneak preview of the coming Mel Gibson movie "The Passion", showing the
final pain in the life of Jesus. Here's what she wrote about it:

I plan to write an extensive Road Kill Report about this later.. right  now
my heart is still pounding and I'm ready to stand on the street corner and
sell tickets if I have to -- so for now, a quick note will suffice.  I don't
think I have words to convey to you the overwhelming  observations I had
last night at "the movie." It is interesting to fill up a room with
"somebody's" -- they're hugging Movie reviewing folks, shaking hands,
talking shop -- but barely looking each other in the eye, because everyone
is too busy looking over one's shoulder to see "who else" might be in the
midst!

And I'm the worse -- I'm such a geeky fan! It's obnoxious...  I don't want
to exploit anyone's privacy -- but the room was filled  with an array of the
biggest names in entertainment from the Nashville community. Producers,
songwriters, artists -- most from the Country music world. But a few from
Christian music as well as TV, Radio, Print media... If  you were looking
for a record deal, an autograph or a photo-op... it was the place to be. But
in a room of less than 250 people -- you couldn't find a camera or an
inkpen.

The whole thing was so secretive that we had to sign a form that we wouldn't
take pictures,or call the National Guard. .. Someone did ask if we can tell
about the experience and they said, "Yes, we need to get the word out!" So,
of course -- I'm on a mission!!

A country entertainer named, Ricky Scaggs made some opening comments and
then began the night in prayer. The lights went out and the movie started. I
have to tell you that in a room full of people that sometimes sing about it,
read about it, write about it -- you would think that they had just
understood it for the first time because less then ten minutes into the
movie -- you could hear literal sobs across the room. As the story unfolded
and the brutality of what we were watching set in -- people were moaning -- 
I will never forget it.

I had invited my Pastor and my brother. Both men that have dedicated their
lives to "Go ye unto all the world and preach the gospel.." and several
times I saw them wipe tears away, and stir in their chairs at the impact
that a piece of magnetic tape rolling through a  projector had on them. It
was incredible....   Me? I had a good cry for sure. I had heard bits and
pieces about it  -- so I came prepared with two packs of tissue. I used both
of them. My husband and I sat throughout this thing mesmerized by all that
was taking place on the screen, and off.

When the movie was over -- no one moved. It was as if the room could not
take a breath. There were no words -- silence. A few minutes later a man
stepped up to the microphone as they slowly turned the lights on and quietly
asked, "Do you have any questions?" Still  silence. ... He broke the ice by
saying, "Well, maybe Mel could answer your questions" And in walked Mel
Gibson -- less than 10 feet away. He was incredibly humble, yet excited; as
he took the  microphone and sat on the edge of the stage. The room erupted
with applause, and shouts of gratitude. I looked at my Pastor and said, "I
wonder if he has a clue to what he has just done. No wonder he is coming up
against persecution, brick walls, slammed doors. -- He has just unleashed
hell on himself."

Pastor Allen said, "Our God is greater." I knew that!  I guess a reminder is
good!!

It's a brutal movie. It will be rated R; and half the Christian community
will stew over it! Mel Gibson's comment to the brutality, "If you read the
Bible -- the whole thing is pretty much rated R!"

He's right.  And to truly express artistically what Christ went through? You
have to be brutal. (He was no wimp, like people today.) When he was asked
what his goal is for the movie, what he hopes people will glean from it, he
said,"I hope they watch the movie and want to read the book!" ... "I hope
they are changed."

When asked what he's doing to combat some of the persecution in getting this
movie distributed he said, "You know, I just pray for my enemies. I don't
pray for curses on their heads -- I pray the good angels will go beat up the
bad angels that are making them say and do evil deeds."

Mel's a better person than I am. After watching what Christ went through for
me, -- I was ready to knock someone in the head!  I'm thinking Lethal Weapon
Part 5!

He spent over 35 million dollars of his own money, risked the doors of his
world being slammed in his face and when asked "why?" he simply said, "It
was time. I just had to do it. It was just time to tell this story."

--- I for one, will love others more strongly, work harder, live bolder, and
embrace the sacrifice made for my sins... (to be forgiven by His Father
because of His perfect Son taking our punishment.)

I am changed forever. We'll talk more about it later; but make plans now and
DO NOT miss this movie..... The Passion of the Christ, released Feb. 25th,
2004.

 



David A. Brown
Basic Christian: Forum
www.BasicChristian.org

 
  
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From:  David (DavidABrown)    Mar-1 7:02 am  
To:  ALL    
 
    
 
THE MENACE OF THE RELIGIOUS MOVIE 

By A. W. Tozer (1897-1963) 

From Tozer's book: On Worship and Entertainment 

[This is a remarkable article, especially in the light of the recent indiscriminate, love-affair the Christian world embraced with Mel Gibson's movie The Passion. This article was written over 40 years ago and yet it is eye-opening to see the lack of spiritual discernment among many of today's Christian leaders. Oh how far we have gotten away from the Word of God!] 



When God gave to Moses the blueprint of the Tabernacle He was careful to include every detail; then, lest Moses should get the notion that he could improve on the original plan, God warned him solemnly, "And look that thou make them after their pattern, which was shown thee in the mount." God, not Moses, was the architect. To decide the plan was the prerogative of the Deity. No one dare alter it so much as a hairbreadth. 

This is a remarkable article, especially in the light of the recent indiscriminate, love-affair the Christian world embraced with Mel Gibson's movie The Passion. This article was written over 40 years ago and yet it is eye-opening to see the lack of spiritual discernment among many of today's Christian leaders. Oh how far we have gotten away from the Word of God! 


The New Testament Church also is built after a pattern. Not the doctrines only but the methods are divinely given. The doctrines are expressly stated in so many words. Some of the methods followed by the early New Testament Church had been given by direct command; others were used by God's specific approval, having obviously been commanded the apostles by the Spirit. The point is that when the New Testament canon was closed the blueprint for the age was complete. God has added nothing since that time. 

From God's revealed plan we depart at our peril. Every departure has two consequences, the immediate and the remote. The immediate touches the individual and those close to him; the remote extends into the future to unknown times, and may expand so far as to influence for evil the whole Church of God on earth. 

The temptation to introduce "new" things into the work of God has always been too strong for some people to resist. The Church has suffered untold injury at the hands of well intentioned but misguided persons who have felt that they know more about running God's work than Christ and His apostles did. A solid train of box cars would not suffice to haul away the religious truck which has been brought into the service of the Church with the hope of improving on the original pattern. These things have been, one and all, positive hindrances to the progress of the Truth, and have so altered the divinely-planned structure that the apostles, were they to return to earth today, would scarcely recognize the misshapen thing which has resulted. 

Our Lord while on earth cleansed the Temple, and periodic cleansings have been necessary in the Church of God throughout the centuries. Every generation is sure to have its ambitious amateur to come up with some shiny gadget which he proceeds to urge upon the priests before the altar. That the Scriptures do not justify its existence does not seem to bother him at all. It is brought in anyway and presented in the very name of Orthodoxy. Soon it is identified in the minds of the Christian public with all that is good and holy. Then, of course, to attack the gadget is to attack the Truth itself. This is an old familiar technique so often and so long practiced by the devotees of error that I marvel how the children of God can be taken in by it. 

We of the evangelical faith are in the rather awkward position of criticizing  Roman Catholicism for its weight of unscriptural impedimenta and at the same time tolerating in our own churches a world of religious fribble as bad as holy water or the elevated host. Heresy of method may be as deadly as heresy of message. Old-line Protestantism has long ago been smothered to death by extra-scriptural rubbish. Unless we of the gospel churches wake up soon we shall most surely die by the same means. 

Within the last few years a new method has been invented for imparting spiritual knowledge; or, to be more accurate, it is not new at all, but is an adaptation of a gadget of some years standing, one which by its origin and background belongs not to the Church but to the world. Some within the fold of the Church have thrown their mantle over it, have "blessed it with a text" and are now trying to show that it is the very gift of God for our day. But, however eloquent the sales talk, it is an unauthorized addition nevertheless, and was never a part of the pattern shown us on the mount. 

I refer, of course, to the religious movie. 

For the motion picture as such I have no irrational allergy. It is a mechanical invention merely and is in its essence amoral; that is, it is neither good nor bad, but neutral. With any physical object or any creature lacking the power of choice it could not be otherwise. Whether such an object is useful or harmful depends altogether upon who uses it and what he uses it for. No moral quality attaches where there is no free choice. Sin and righteousness lie in the will. The motion picture is in the same class as the automobile, the typewriter, or the radio: a powerful instrument for good or evil, depending upon how it is applied. 

For teaching the facts of physical science the motion picture has been useful. The public schools have used it successfully to teach health habits to children. The army employed it to speed up instruction during the war. That it has been of real service within its limited field is freely acknowledged here. 

Over against this is the fact that the motion picture in evil hands has been a source of moral corruption to millions. No one who values his reputation as a responsible adult will deny that the sex movie and the crime movie have done untold injury to the lives of countless young people in our generation. The harm lies not in the instrument itself, but in the evil will of those who use it for their own selfish ends. 

I am convinced that the modern religious movie is an example of the harmful misuse of a neutral instrument. There are sound reasons for my belief. I am prepared to state them. 

That I may be as clear as possible, let me explain what I do and do not mean by the religious movie. I do not mean the missionary picture nor the travel picture which aims to focus attention upon one or another section of the world's great harvest field. These do not come under consideration here. 

By the religious movie I mean that type of motion picture which attempts to treat spiritual themes by dramatic representation. These are (as their advocates dare not deny) frank imitations of the authentic Hollywood variety, but the truth requires me to say that they are infinitely below their models, being mostly awkward, amateurish and, from an artistic standpoint, hopelessly and piteously bad. 

These pictures are produced by acting a religious story before the camera. Take for example the famous and beautiful story of the Prodigal Son. This would be made into a movie by treating the narrative as a scenario. Stage scenery would be set up, actors would take the roles of Father, Prodigal Son, Elder Brother, etc. There would be plot, sequence and dramatic denouement as in the ordinary tear jerker shown at the Bijou movie house on Main Street in any one of a thousand American towns. The story would be acted out, photographed, run onto reels and shipped around the country to be shown for a few wherever desired. 

The "service" where such a movie would be shown might seem much like any other service until time for the message from the Word of God. Then the lights would be put out and the picture turned on. The "message" would consist of this movie. What followed the picture would, of course, vary with the circumstances, but often an invitation song is sung and a tender appeal is made for erring sinners to return to God. 

Now, what is wrong with all this? Why should any man object to this or go out of his way to oppose its use in the house of God? Here is my answer: 

1.  It violates the scriptural law of hearing. 

The power of speech is a noble gift of God. In his ability to open his mouth and by means of words make his fellows know what is going on inside his mind, a man shares one of the prerogatives of the Creator. In its ability to understand the spoken word the human mind rises unique above all the lower creation. The gift which enables a man to translate abstract ideas into sounds is a badge of his honor as made in the image of God. 

Written or printed words are sound symbols and are translated by the mind into hearing. Hieroglyphics and ideograms were, in effect, not pictures but letters, and the letters were agreed-upon marks which stood for agreed-upon ideas. Thus words, whether spoken or written, are a medium for the communication of ideas. This is basic in human nature and stems from our divine origin. 

It is significant that when God gave to mankind His great redemptive revelation He couched it in words. "And God spake all these words" very well sums up the Bible's own account of how it got here. "Thus saith the Lord" is the constant refrain of the prophets. "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life," said our Lord to His hearers. Again He said, "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life." Paul made words and faith to be inseparable: "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." And he also said, "How shall they hear without a preacher?" (Romans 10:14) 

Surely it requires no genius to see that the Bible rules out pictures and dramatics as media for bringing faith and life to the human soul. 

The plain fact is that no vital spiritual truth can be expressed by a picture. Actually all any picture can do is to recall to mind some truth already learned through the familiar medium of the spoken or written word. Religious instruction and words are bound together by a living cord and cannot be separated without fatal loss. The Spirit Himself, teaching soundlessly within the heart, makes use of ideas previously received into the mind by means of words. 

If I am reminded that modern religious movies are "sound" pictures, making use of the human voice to augment the dramatic action, the answer is easy. Just as far as the movie depends upon spoken words it makes pictures unnecessary; the picture is the very thing that differentiates between the movie and the sermon. The movie addresses its message primarily to the eye, and the ear only incidentally. Were the message addressed to the ear as in the Scriptures, the picture would have no meaning and could be omitted without loss to the intended effect. Words can say all that God intends them to say, and this they can do without the aid of pictures. 

According to one popular theory the mind receives through the eye five times as much information as the ear. As far as the external shell of physical facts is concerned this may hold good, but when we come to spiritual truth we are in another world entirely. In that world the outer eye is not too important. God addresses His message to the hearing ear. "We look," says Paul, "not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:18). This agrees with the whole burden of the Bible, which teaches us that we should withdraw our eyes from beholding visible things, and fasten the eyes of our hearts upon God while we reverently listen to His uttered words. 

"The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach" (Romans 10:8). Here, and not somewhere else, is the New Testament pattern, and no human being, and no angel from heaven has any right to alter that pattern. 

2.  The religious movie embodies the mischievous notion that religion is, or can be made, a form of entertainment. 

This notion has come upon us lately like a tidal wave and is either openly taught or tacitly assumed by increasing numbers of people. Since it is inextricably bound up with the subject under discussion I had better say more about it. 

The idea that religion should be entertaining has made some radical changes in the evangelical picture within this generation. It has given us not only the "gospel" movie but a new type of religious journalism as well. It has created a new kind of magazine for church people, which can be read from cover to cover without effort, without thought--and without profit. It has also brought a veritable flood of religious fiction with plastic heroines and bloodless heroes like no one who has ever lived upon this well known terrestrial ball. 

That religion and amusement are forever opposed to each other by their very essential natures is apparently not known to this new school of religious entertainers. Their effort to slip up on the reader and administer a quick shot of saving truth while his mind is on something else is not only futile, it is, in fact, not too far short of being plain dishonest. The hope that they can convert a man while he is occupied with the doings of some imaginary hero reminds one of the story of the Catholic missionary who used to sneak up on sick people and children and splash a little holy water on them to guarantee their passage to the city of gold. 

I believe that most responsible religious teachers will agree that any effort to teach spiritual truth through entertainment is at best futile and at worst positively injurious to the soul. But entertainment pays off, and the economic consideration is always a powerful one in deciding what shall and what shall not be offered to the public--even in the churches. 

Deep spiritual experiences come only from much study, earnest prayer and long meditation. It is true that men by thinking cannot find God; it is also true that men cannot know God very well without a lot of reverent thinking. Religious movies, by appealing directly to the shallowest stratum of our minds, cannot but create bad mental habits which unfit the soul for the reception of genuine spiritual impressions. 

Religious movies are mistakenly thought by some people to be blessed of the Lord because many come away from them with moist eyes. If this is a proof of God's blessing, then we might as well go the whole way and assert that every show that brings tears is of God. Those who attend the theater know how often the audiences are moved to tears by the joys and sorrows of the highly paid entertainers who kiss and emote and murder and die for the purpose of exciting the spectators to a high pitch of emotional excitement. Men and women who are dedicated to sin and appointed to death may nevertheless weep in sympathy for the painted actors and be not one bit the better for it. The emotions have had a beautiful time, but the will is left untouched. The religious movie is sure to draw together a goodly number of persons who cannot distinguish the twinges of vicarious sympathy from the true operations of the Holy Ghost. 

3.  The religious movie is a menace to true religion because it embodies acting, a violation of sincerity. 

Without doubt the most precious thing any man possesses is his individuated being; that by which he is himself and not someone else; that which cannot be finally voided by the man himself nor shared with another. Each one of us, however humble our place in the social scheme, is unique in creation. Each is a new whole man possessing his own separate "I-ness" which makes him forever something apart, an individual human being. It is this quality of uniqueness which permits a man to enjoy every reward of virtue and makes him responsible for every sin. It is his selfness, which will persist forever, and which distinguishes him from every creature which has been or ever will be created. 

Because man is such a being as this all moral teachers, and especially Christ and His apostles, make sincerity to be basic in the good life. The word, as the New Testament uses it, refers to the practice of holding fine pottery up to the sun to test it for purity. In the white light of the sun all foreign substances were instantly exposed. So the test of sincerity is basic in human character. The sincere man is one in whom is found nothing foreign; he is all of one piece; he has preserved his individuality unviolated. 

Sincerity for each man means staying in character with himself. Christ's controversy with the Pharisees centered around their incurable habit of moral play acting. The Pharisee constantly pretended to be what he was not. He attempted to vacate his own "I-ness" and appear in that of another and better man. He assumed a false character and played it for effect. Christ said he was a hypocrite. 

It is more than an etymological accident that the word "hypocrite" comes from the stage. It means actor. With that instinct for fitness which usually marks word origins, it has been used to signify one who has violated his sincerity and is playing a false part. An actor is one who assumes a character other than his own and plays it for effect. The more fully he can become possessed by another personality the better he is as an actor. 

Bacon has said something to the effect that there are some professions of such nature that the more skillfully a man can work at them the worse man he is. That perfectly describes the profession of acting. Stepping out of our own character for any reason is always dangerous, and may be fatal to the soul. However innocent his intentions, a man who assumes a false character has betrayed his own soul and has deeply injured something sacred within him. 

No one who has been in the presence of the Most Holy One, who has felt how high is the solemn privilege of bearing His image, will ever again consent to play a part or to trifle with that most sacred thing, his own deep sincere heart. He will thereafter be constrained to be no one but himself, to preserve reverently the sincerity of his own soul. 

In order to produce a religious movie someone must, for the time, disguise his individuality and simulate that of another. His actions must be judged fraudulent, and those who watch them with approval share in the fraud. To pretend to pray, to simulate godly sorrow, to play at worship before the camera for effect--how utterly shocking to the reverent heart! How can Christians who approve this gross pretense ever understand the value of sincerity as taught by our Lord? What will be the end of a generation of Christians fed on such a diet of deception disguised as the faith of our fathers? 

The plea that all this must be good because it is done for the glory of God is a gossamer-thin bit of rationalizing which should not fool anyone above the mental age of six. Such an argument parallels the evil rule of expediency which holds the end is everything, and sanctifies the means, however evil, if only the end be commendable. The wise student of history will recognize this immoral doctrine. The Spirit-led Church will have no part of it. 

It is not uncommon to find around the theater human flotsam and jetsam washed up by the years, men and women who have played false parts so long that the power to be sincere has forever gone from them. They are doomed to everlasting duplicity. Every act of their lives is faked, every smile is false, every tone of their voice artificial. The curse does not come causeless. It is not by chance that the actor's profession has been notoriously dissolute. Hollywood and Broadway are two sources of corruption which may yet turn America into a Sodom and lay her glory in the dust. 

The profession of acting did not originate with the Hebrews. It is not a part of the divine pattern. The Bible mentions it, but never approves it. Drama, as it has come down to us, had its rise in Greece. It was originally a part of the worship of the god Dionysus and was carried on with drunken revelry. 

The Miracle Plays of medieval times have been brought forward to justify the modern religious movie. That is an unfortunate weapon to choose for the defense of the movie, for it will surely harm the man who uses it more than any argument I could think of just offhand. 

The Miracle Plays had their big run in the Middle Ages. They were dramatic performances with religious themes staged for the entertainment of the populace. At their best they were misguided efforts to teach spiritual truths by dramatic representation; at their worst they were shockingly irreverent and thoroughly reprehensible. In some of them the Eternal God was portrayed as an old man dressed in white with a gilt wig! To furnish low comedy, the devil himself was introduced on the stage and allowed to cavort for the amusement of the spectators. Bible themes were used, as in the modern movie, but this did not save the whole thing from becoming so corrupt that the Roman Church had finally to prohibit its priests from having any further part in it. 

Those who would appeal for precedent to the Miracle Plays have certainly overlooked some important facts. For instance, the vogue of the Miracle Play coincided exactly with the most dismally corrupt period the Church has ever known. When the Church emerged at last from its long moral night these plays lost popularity and finally passed away. And be it remembered, the instrument God used to bring the Church out of the darkness was not drama; it was the biblical one of Spirit-baptized preaching. Serious-minded men thundered the truth and the people turned to God. 

Indeed, history will show that no spiritual advance, no revival, no upsurge of spiritual life has ever been associated with acting in any form. The Holy Spirit never honors pretense. 

Can it be that the historic pattern is being repeated? That the appearance of the religious movie is symptomatic of the low state of spiritual health we are in today? I fear so. Only the absence of the Holy Spirit from the pulpit and lack of true discernment on the part of professing Christians can account for the spread of religious drama among so-called evangelical churches. A Spirit-filled church could not tolerate it. 

4.  They who present the gospel movie owe it to the public to give biblical authority for their act: and this they have not done. 

The Church, as long as it is following the Lord, goes along in Bible ways and can give a scriptural reason for its conduct. Its members meet at stated times to pray together: This has biblical authority back of it. They gather to hear the Word of God expounded: this goes back in almost unbroken continuity to Moses. They sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs: so they are commanded by the apostle. They visit the sick and relieve the sufferings of the poor: for this they have both precept and example in Holy Writ. They lay up their gifts and bring them at stated times to the church or chapel to be used in the Lord's work: this also follows the scriptural pattern. They teach and train and instruct; they appoint teachers and pastors and missionaries and send them out to do the work for which the Spirit has gifted them: all this has plain scriptural authority behind it. They baptize, then break bread and witness to the lost; they cling together through thick and thin; they bear each other's burdens and share each other's sorrows: this is as it should be, and for all this there is full authority. 

Now, for the religious movie where is the authority? For such a serious departure from the ancient pattern, where is the authority? For introducing into the Church the pagan art of acting, where is the authority? Let the movie advocates quote just one verse, from any book of the Bible, in any translation, to justify its use. This they cannot do. The best they can do is to appeal to the world's psychology or repeat brightly that "modern times call for modern methods." But the Scriptures--quote from them one verse to authorize movie acting as an instrument of the Holy Ghost. This they cannot do. 

Every sincere Christian must find scriptural authority for the religious movie or reject it, and every producer of such movies, if he would square himself before the faces of honest and reverent men, must either show scriptural credentials or go out of business. 

But, says someone, there is nothing unscriptural about the religious movie; it is merely a new medium for the utterance of the old message, as printing is a newer and better method of writing and the radio an amplification of familiar human speech. 

To this I reply: The movie is not the modernization or improvement of any scriptural method; rather it is a medium in itself wholly foreign to the Bible and altogether unauthorized therein. It is play acting---just that, and nothing more. It is the introduction into the work of God of that which is not neutral, but entirely bad. The printing press is neutral; so is the radio; so is the camera. They may be used for good or bad purposes at the will of the user. But play acting is bad in its essence in that it involves the simulation of emotions not actually felt. It embodies a gross moral contradiction in that it calls a lie to the service of truth. 

Arguments for the religious movie are sometimes clever and always shallow, but there is never any real attempt to cite scriptural authority. Anything that can be said for the movie can be said also for aesthetic dancing, which is a highly touted medium for teaching religious truth by appeal to the eye. Its advocates grow eloquent in its praise--but where is it indicated in the blueprint? 

5.  God has ordained four methods only by which Truth shall prevail---and the religious movie is not one of them. 

Without attempting to arrange these methods in order of importance, they are (1) prayer, (2) song,  (3) proclamation of the message by means of words, and (4) good works. These are the four main methods which God has blessed. All other biblical methods are subdivisions of these and stay within their framework. 

Notice These In Order: 

(1) Spirit-burdened prayer. This has been through the centuries a powerful agent for the spread of saving truth among men. A praying Church carried the message of the cross to the whole known world within two centuries after the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Read the book of Acts and see what prayer has done and can do when it is made in true faith. 

(2) Spirit-inspired song has been another mighty instrument in the spread of the Word among mankind. When the Church sings in the Spirit she draws men unto Christ. Where her song has been ecstatic expression of resurrection joy, it has acted wonderfully to prepare hearts for the saving message. This has no reference to professional religious singers, expensive choirs nor the popular "gospel" chorus. These for the time we leave out of consideration. But I think no one will deny that the sound of a Christian hymn sung by sincere and humble persons can have a tremendous and permanent effect for good. The Welsh revival is a fair modern example of this. 

(3) In the Old Testament, as well as in the New, when God would impart His mind to men He embodied it in a message and sent men out to proclaim it. This was done by means of speaking and writing on the part of the messenger. It was received by hearing and reading on the part of those to whom it was sent. We are all familiar with the verse, "Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her" (Isaiah 40:2). John the Baptist was called "The voice of one crying in the wilderness" (Matthew 3:3). Again we have, "And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write" (Revelation 14:13). And the Apostle John opens his great work called the Revelation by pronouncing a blessing upon him that readeth and them that bear and keep the words of the prophecy and the things which are written therein. The two words "proclaim" and "publish" sum up God's will as it touches His Word. In the Bible, men for the most part wrote what had been spoken; in our time men are commissioned to speak what has been written. In both cases the agent is a word, never a picture, a dance or a pageant. 

(4) By His healing deeds our Lord opened the way for His saving Words. He went about doing good, and His Church is commanded to do the same. Faber understood this when he wrote: 

"And preach thee too, as love knows how By kindly deeds and virtuous life." 

Church history is replete with instances of missionaries and teachers who prepared the way for their message with deeds of mercy shown to men and women who were at first hostile but who melted under the warm rays of practical kindnesses shown to them in time of need. If anyone should object to calling good works a method, I would not argue the point. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they are an overflow into everyday life of the reality of what is being proclaimed. 

These are God's appointed methods, set forth in the Bible and confirmed in centuries of practical application. The intrusion of other methods is unscriptural, unwarranted and in violation of spiritual laws as old as the world. 

The whole preach-the gospel-with-movies idea is founded upon the same basic assumptions as modernism--namely, that the Word of God is not final, and that we of this day have a perfect right to add to it or alter it wherever we think we can improve it. 

A brazen example of this attitude came to my attention recently. Preliminary printed matter has been sent out announcing that a new organization is in process of being formed. It is to be called the "International Radio and Screen Artists Guild," and one of its two major objectives is to promote the movie as a medium for the spread of the gospel. Its sponsors, apparently, are not Modernists, but confessed Fundamentalists. Some of its declared purposes are: to produce movies "with or without a Christian slant"; to raise and maintain higher standards in the movie field (this would be done, it says here, by having "much prayer" with leaders of the movie industry); to "challenge people, especially young people, to those fields as they are challenged to go to foreign fields." 

This last point should not be allowed to pass without some of us doing a little challenging on our own account. Does this new organization actually propose in seriousness to add another gift to the gifts of the Spirit listed in the New Testament? To the number of the Spirit's gifts, such as pastor, teacher, evangelist, is there now to be added another, the gift of the movie actor? To the appeal for consecrated Christian young people to serve as missionaries on the foreign field is there to be added an appeal for young people to serve as movie actors? That is exactly what this new organization does propose in cold type over the signature of its temporary chairman. Instead of the Holy Spirit saying, "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them" (Acts 13:2), these people will make use of what they call a "Christian talent listing," to consist of the names of "Christian" actors who have received the Spirit's gift to be used in making religious movies. 

Thus the order set up in the New Testament is openly violated, and by professed lovers of the gospel who say unto Jesus, "Lord, Lord," but openly set aside His Lordship whenever they desire. No amount of smooth talk can explain away this serious act of insubordination. 

Saul lost a kingdom when he "forced" himself and took profane liberties with the priesthood. Let these movie preachers look to their crown. They may find themselves on the road to En-dor some dark night soon. 

6.  The religious movie is out of harmony with the whole spirit of the Scriptures and contrary to the mood of true godliness. 

To harmonize the spirit of the religious movie with the spirit of the Sacred Scriptures is impossible. Any comparison is grotesque and, if it were not so serious, would be downright funny. To imagine Elijah appearing before Ahab with a roll of film! Imagine Peter standing up at Pentecost and saying, "Let's have the lights out, please." When Jeremiah hesitated to prophesy, on the plea that he was not a fluent speaker, God touched his mouth and said, "I have put my words in thy mouth." Perhaps Jeremiah could have gotten on well enough without the divine touch if he had had a good 16mm projector and a reel of home-talent film. 

Let a man dare to compare his religious movie show with the spirit of the Book of Acts. Let him try to find a place for it in the twelfth chapter of First Corinthians. Let him set it beside Savonarola's passionate preaching or Luther's thundering or Wesley's heavenly sermons or Edwards' awful appeals. If he cannot see the difference in kind, then he is too blind to be trusted with leadership in the Church of the Living God. The only thing that he can do appropriate to the circumstances is to drop to his knees and cry with poor Bartimaeus, "Lord, that I might receive my sight." 

But some say, "We do not propose to displace the regular method of preaching the gospel. We only want to supplement it." To this I answer: If the movie is needed to supplement anointed preaching it can only be because God's appointed method is inadequate and the movie can do something which God's appointed method cannot do. What is that thing? We freely grant that the movie can produce effects which preaching cannot produce (and which it should never try to produce), but dare we strive for such effects in the light of God's revealed will and in the face of the judgment and a long eternity? 

7.  I am against the religious movie because of the harmful effect upon everyone associated with it. 

First, the evil effect upon the "actors" who play the part of the various characters in the show; this is not the less because it is unsuspected. Who can, while in a state of fellowship with God, dare to play at being a prophet? Who has the gall to pretend to be an apostle, even in a show? Where is his reverence? Where is his fear? Where is his humility? Any one who can bring himself to act a part for any purpose, must first have grieved the Spirit and silenced His voice within the heart. Then the whole business will appear good to him. "He feedeth on ashes; a deceived heart has turned him aside" (Isaiah 44:20). But he cannot escape the secret working of the ancient laws of the soul. Something high and fine and grand will die within him; and worst of all he will never suspect it. That is the curse that follows self-injury always. The Pharisees were examples of this. They were walking dead men, and they never dreamed how dead they were. 

Secondly, it identifies religion with the theatrical world. I have seen recently in a fundamentalist magazine an advertisement of a religious film which would be altogether at home on the theatrical page on any city newspaper. Illustrated with the usual sex-bate picture of a young man and young woman in tender embrace, and spangled with such words as "feature-length, drama, pathos, romance," it reeked of Hollywood and the cheap movie house. By such business we are selling out our Christian separation, and nothing but grief can come of it late or soon. 

Thirdly, the taste for drama which these pictures develop in the minds of the young will not long remain satisfied with the inferior stuff the religious movie can offer. Our young people will demand the real thing; and what can we reply when they ask why they should not patronize the regular movie house? 

Fourthly, the rising generation will naturally come to look upon religion as another, and inferior, form of amusement. In fact, the present generation Yahwist has done this to an alarming extent already, and the gospel movie feeds the notion by fusing religion and fun in the name of orthodoxy. It takes no great insight to see that the religious movie must become increasingly more thrilling as the tastes of the spectators become more and more stimulated. 

Fifthly, the religious movie is the lazy preacher's friend. If the present vogue continues to spread it will not be long before any man with enough ability to make an audible prayer, and mentality enough to focus a projector, will be able to pass for a prophet of the Most High God. The man of God can play around all week long and come up to the Lord's Day without a care. Everything has been done for him at the studio. He has only to set up the screen and lower the lights, and the rest follows painlessly. 

Wherever the movie is used the prophet is displaced by the projector. The least that such displaced prophets can do is to admit that they are technicians and not preachers. Let them admit that they are not God-sent men, ordained of God for a sacred work. Let them put away their pretense. 

Allowing that there may be some who have been truly called and gifted of God but who have allowed themselves to be taken in by this new plaything, the danger to such is still great. As long as they can fall back upon the movie, the pressure that makes preachers will be wanting. The habit and rhythm which belong to great preaching will be missing from their ministry. However great their natural gifts, however real their enduement of power, still they will never rise. They cannot while this broken reed lies close at hand to aid them in the crisis. The movie will doom them to be ordinary. 

In Conclusion 

One thing may bother some earnest souls: why so many good people approve the religious movie. The list of those who are enthusiastic about it includes many who cannot be written off as borderline Christians. If it is an evil, why have not these denounced it? 

The answer is, lack of spiritual discernment. Many who are turning to the movie are the same who have, by direct teaching or by neglect, discredited the work of the Holy Spirit. They have apologized for the Spirit and so hedged Him in by their unbelief that it has amounted to an out-and-out repudiation. Now we are paying the price for our folly. The light has gone out and good men are forced to stumble around in the darkness of the human intellect. 

The religious movie is at present undergoing a period of gestation and seems about to swarm over the churches like a cloud of locusts out of the earth. The figure is accurate; they are coming from below, not from above. The whole modern psychology has been prepared for this invasion of insects. The fundamentalists have become weary of manna and are longing for red flesh. What they are getting is a sorry substitute for the lusty and uninhibited pleasures of the world, but I suppose it is better than nothing, and it saves face by pretending to be spiritual. 

Let us not for the sake of peace keep still while men without spiritual insight dictate the diet upon which God's children shall feed. I heard the president of a Christian college say some time ago that the Church is suffering from an "epidemic of amateurism." That remark is sadly true, and the religious movie represents amateurism gone wild. Unity among professing Christians is to be desired, but not at the expense of righteousness. It is good to go with the flock, but I for one refuse mutely to follow a misled flock over a precipice. 

If God has given wisdom to see the error of religious shows we owe it to the Church to oppose them openly. We dare not take refuge in "guilty silence." Error is not silent; it is highly vocal and amazingly aggressive. We dare not be less so. But let us take heart: there are still many thousands of Christian people who grieve to see the world take over. If we draw the line and call attention to it we may be surprised how many people will come over on our side and help us drive from the Church this latest invader, the spirit of Hollywood. 


http://www.av1611.org/index.html 

http://www.av1611.org/Passion/menace.html 





David A. Brown
Basic Christian: Forum
www.BasicChristian.org

 
From:  David (DavidABrown)    Mar-5 12:53 pm  
To:  ALL    
 
    
 
Source www.JPost.com

The misreading of Mel Gibson


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MARK STEYN Mar. 2, 2004 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Benyamin Cohen, editor of the online publication Jewsweek, went to see Mel Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ and came out homicidal: "My first comprehensible thought was this: I really want to kill a Jew." 

Maureen Dowd of The New York Times agreed: "In Braveheart and The Patriot, his other emotionally manipulative historical epics, you came out wanting to swing an ax into the skull of the nearest Englishman. Here, you want to kick in some Jewish and Roman teeth. And since the Romans have melted into history...." 

Really? You want to kick in some Jew teeth? I mean, really want to? If you say so. It may be that elderly schoolgirl columnists at The New York Times are unusually easy to rouse to violence. 

But I reckon Dowd and Cohen are faking it. They don't mean that, thanks to Mel, Times marquee columnists and liberal Jewish New Yorkers will be rampaging around looking for Jews to kill, they mean all those rubes and hicks in Dogpatch who don't know any better will be doing so. 

I'll be reviewing The Passion for The Spectator when it opens in London later this month, so let me put Gibson's direction and James Caviezel's acting to one side, and just say this: Chances of any Jew getting his teeth kicked in by one of Mel's customers? Zero per cent. Okay, let me cover myself a little: Point-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-whatever per cent. 

When this film first loomed on the horizon, the received wisdom of the metropolitan sophisticates was that Mel Gibson had blown well over 30 million bucks of his own money on a vanity project of no interest to anyone but him and a few other Jesus freaks. A couple of weeks ago, when stories began to trickle out of amazing advance sales and Bible Belt multiplex owners booking it on to all 20 screens simultaneously, the received wisdom did a screeching U-turn: 

How about that Mel Gibson, huh? He claims to be such a devout Christian yet he's pimping his Saviour's suffering to the masses and raking in gazillions of dollars. 

As Andy Rooney, the ersatz controversialist on CBS's Sixty Minutes, enquired: "How many million dollars does it look as if you're going to make off the crucifixion of Christ?" Hey, if he's lucky, maybe as many millions as Michael Moore made off all those dead high-school kids with Bowling For Columbine. 

Throughout the whiplash U-turn, only one feature of the "controversy" remained constant: that the movie is "anti-Semitic." 

It's true that in Europe "passion plays" often provided a rationale for Jew-hatred. But that was at a time when the church was also a projection of state power. What's happening in America is quite the opposite: One reason why Hollywood assumed Mel had laid a $30 million Easter egg was because the elite coastal enclaves who set the cultural agenda haven't a clue about the rest of the country when it comes to religion. 

They don't mind Jesus when he's hippy (Godspell) or horny (Terrence McNally's "gay Jesus" play Corpus Christi) but taking the guy seriously is just for fruitcakes. 

SO, WHEN metropolitan columnists say Mel's movie makes you want to go Jew-bashing, they're really engaging in a bit of displaced Christian-bashing. 

Ever since 9/11, there's been a lame trope beloved of the smart set: Yes, these Muslim fundamentalists may be pretty extreme, but let's not frget all our Christian fundamentalists  the "home-grown Talibans," as The New York Times's Frank Rich called them, in the course of demanding that John Ashcroft, the attorney-general, round them up. 

Two years on, if this thesis is going to hold up, these Christians really need to get off their fundamentalist butts and start killing more people. 

Critics berating Gibson for lingering on the physical flaying of Jesus would be more persuasive if they weren't all too desperately flogging their own dead horse of fundamentalist moral equivalence. 

The more puzzling question is why so many American Jewish leaders started crying anti-Semitism months before anyone had even seen the picture. It requires a perverse inability to prioritize to anoint Mel Gibson as the prime source of resurgent anti-Semitism. Not to mention that it's self-defeating. 

As Melanie Phillips, a British Jew, recently noted in The Observer: "Let us all agree on one thing at least. The more Jews warn that anti-Semitism has come roaring out of the closet, the more people don't like the Jews." 

There's something to that. During the New Hampshire primary, I prompted the following complaint from Barbara Baruch of New York: "What motivated Mark Steyn to describe Joe Lieberman as the 'Yiddisher pixie'? As this has absolutely no relevance to Lieberman's political viability, it's obvious that Steyn's linguistic choice is nothing less than insidious anti-Semitism." 

Oh, phooey. I called him a pixie because, in contrast to John Kerry, he was jolly and beaming, and yiddisher is an allusion to the old song "My Yiddisher Momma," since Joe was always going on about his own momma. "Yiddisher pixie" is a term of affection, and the best way to demonstrate the preposterousness of Baruch's assertion is a simple test: 

Try to imagine Sheikh Akram Abd-al-Razzaq al-Ruqayhi, the A-list imam at the Grand Mosque in Sanaa, who does the Friday prayers live on Yemeni state TV, breaking off from his usual patter on Jews  "O God, count them one by one, kill them all and don't leave anyone"  to refer to one as a "Yiddisher pixie."
Or the members of Calgary's "Palestinian community" who marched through the streets carrying placards emblazoned "Death To The Jews." 

Or the gangs who've been torching French synagogues, kosher butchers and schools in an ongoing mini-intifada. 

Or Archbishop Desmond Tutu who says people should not be scared of America's Jewish lobby because other scary types like "Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust." 

Or the wife of European Central Banker Wim Duisenberg, who amuses herself by doing oven jokes in public. 

Mel Gibson's movie won't kill anyone. 

On the other hand, right now, at The Hague, the International Court of Justice is holding a show trial of Israel's security fence. At the very least, a European court sitting in judgment on the Jewish state is a staggering lapse of taste. 

But it should also remind Jews of the current sources of "the world's oldest hatred"  not just the Islamic world, where talk of killing them all is part of the wallpaper, but modern-day secular Europe, where antipathy toward Ariel Sharon long ago crossed over into a broader contempt for the Jewish state and a benign indifference to those who use European Jewry as a substitute target.
If Jewish groups think Mel Gibson and evangelical Christians are the problem, more fool them. 

The writer is senior contributing editor for Hollinger Inc.



David A. Brown
Basic Christian: Forum
www.BasicChristian.org

 
From:  David (DavidABrown)    Mar-7 1:00 pm  
To:  ALL   (9 of 15)  
 
  820.9 in reply to 820.1  
 
Source: www.cuttingedge.org

II. As "The Passion" set all records for new release (Up to $153,000,000+) as of the 3/5 Daily News Updates, we discovered significant Antichrist symbolism within the movie that fulfills Zechariah 11:17; additionally, the strong, bold, and thorough Roman Catholic nature of this film became so strong that the point is not even arguable right now! Finally, we have seen strong evidence that Evangelicals have been cooperating with Gibson to promote this film as an "evangelizing tool" for a very long time.

In -- we demonstrate that "The Passion" contains two very strong symbols of Antichrist by portraying strange events that are not found in the Bible, nor in St. Anne Emmerich's mystic writings, nor in any New Age literature! However, they are unmistakable as solid Illuminati symbols of the coming Antichrist. These are the two symbols:

1. Demonic Virgin Mother and Divine Child -- As the Roman soldiers who professionally scourge the enemies of the Empire are beating Jesus, the female Satan is suddenly seen gliding through the crowd opposite the Virgin Mary. Suddenly, as she emerges from behind the body of a soldier, you can see that she is carrying a very white child. Since the movie has made such a point to visibly juxtapose between scenes of the Virgin Mary and of the female Satan, and since Satan is dressed in the same type of Virgin Mother outfit, this demonic scene must be intended to depict a Virgin Mother - Divine Child scenario. 

If the female Satan is the opposite Virgin Mother to the Virgin Mary, then the awful white baby she is carrying must be the opposite of Jesus, whom the Bible calls Antichrist! This symbolism is quite strong. The baby suddenly turns to look upon Jesus' brutal beating with great glee. Then, when the scene shifts back to Jesus, Satan and her baby disappear, never to be seen again.

 

2. One-Eyed Messiah (Illuminati symbol of their planned Antichrist) was depicted for 110 minutes of this movie! About 10 minutes into this film, Caiaphas' guards viciously punched Jesus in His face so badly that His face was swollen and His right eye shut; for the rest of the movie, Jesus right eye is darkened! He is literally a one-eyed Messiah going to His death. Mac Dominick of Cutting Edge remarked about this one-eye phenomenon, not only because it was so strongly presented throughout the movie, but also because the Illuminati makes such a big deal out of their beloved All-Seeing Eye (look at the All-Seeing Eye on the back of an American One Dollar Bill, knowing that the eye hovering over the unfinished pyramid is the Egyptian god, Horus, the Lucifer of the Egyptian Mysteries -- "Masonic and Occult Symbols Illustrated, Dr. Cathy Burns, p. 326).

Then, during the Resurrection scene, in which Jesus is shown sitting at the foot of the place where the burial cloths lay, this fully restored Jesus is never shown with both eyes; the camera resolutely stays on his one eye. Then, as Jesus suddenly gets up to walk out of the tomb, you see His naked buttocks! The last scene you see is His buttocks! Now, how did this scene get into the movie, and why is it so important that Gibson would make it the very last scene you see?

Only when you realize that the Illuminati has long depicted their planned coming Antichrist as a naked one-eyed man does this scene make sense. This combination of scenes -- one-eyed Messiah and naked buttocks -- perfectly fulfills the Illuminist Antichrist symbol!

However, as we explain this depiction also fulfills Bible prophecy in Zechariah 11:17. What an amazing turn of events!

There can be no doubt but that the "Jesus" walking out of the tomb was a perfect representation of the Illuminist depiction of a one-eyed, naked Messiah! So here is the really deep question: was Messiah dying on the cross the Illuminati depiction of their coming Messiah? He was certainly one-eyed throughout the last 110 minutes, and in such a way as to fulfill the prophecy of Antichrist in Zechariah 11:17.

And, when "Jesus" walked out of the tomb, he was naked and one-eyed, the perfect personification of the CFR Antichrist.





David A. Brown
Basic Christian: Forum
www.BasicChristian.org

 
  
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  From:  LenBenHEAR/LIFE_or_death:SEE: John 3:36 (franknsense)    Mar-23 1:28 am  
To:  David (DavidABrown)    (10 of 15)  
 
  820.10 in reply to 820.9  
 
Hi David. Here's my basic take on this issue: 
GOD will certainly use this film to shock (and hopefully) 

save many lost people who need to enquire after the MEANING 

of the vicarious sufferings of Christ. - THIS is the responsibility 

of those who are called to witness and preach The Gospel. 

The other thing is that GOD will also use this film 

to SIFT those who adhere to Biblical truth and those who 

are part of the Catholic/ecumenical deception. 

In many ways, Mel Gibson's film is a very VERY Roman Catholic 

film and viewpoint: it is being used to "legitimize" the 

Roman take on the Gospel. - this, to say the least, is very 

dangerous. - that is why many Christians need to be forewarned 

about the inherent dangers. 

God bless. 

Len 


~ CHOICES. ~


 
-----------------------------
* He is looking for REALITY: not pretense! * 


Daniel 12:10: Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried;

but the wicked shall do wickedly:

and none of the wicked shall understand; 

--> but the wise SHALL understand. <-- 


*LenBenHear/FranknSense/SEE: Romans 8:14 + John 3:8 and
~~~ I Cor.1:15-16; 4:3-5 ~~~

VINCIT OMNIA VERITAS: * There is a time for mercy...and a time for Judgement. * - (which one you get depends upon your honesty and humility before GOD)


sanctification. - who've got to have it: inwardly AND outwardly. fruit and motives are everything. 


 
  
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  From:  David (DavidABrown)    Mar-23 8:05 am  
To:  LenBenHEAR/LIFE_or_death:SEE: John 3:36 (franknsense)   (11 of 15)  
 
  820.11 in reply to 820.10  
 
Hi Len,

 

Nice to see you.

 

I did receive and read your group emails regarding the movie and my thought is that  Mel Gibson has made his movie his way as he is entitled to do.

 

We cannot expect someone else to make our movies from our doctrine and using our preferred actors for us, it just isnt going to happen.

 

This movie is one of the best outreaches that modern Christianity has had. It is an opportunity for the Church to provide the context and meaning of the events something the film barely has time to address.

 

My thought is that pure criticism for the movie is out of place. In the Bibles book of Acts when the disciples first ventured out of Israel into Antioch and gentile territory it was first Evangelists who brought the Good News of life in Jesus to the people then God brought Barnabas to Confirm and encourage the Good News among the new believers and lastly Saul  Paul was brought in to teach the correct doctrines and application.

 

Those who only want to correct shouldnt teach or correct unless they have in their heart an appreciation to confirm and to enjoy what God has already done and is already doing.

 

God Bless you,
David Anson Brown

 



David A. Brown
Basic Christian: Forum
www.BasicChristian.org




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Edited 3/23/2004 11:07 am ET by David (DavidABrown) 
  
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  From:  LenBenHEAR/LIFE_or_death:SEE: John 3:36 (franknsense)    Mar-23 10:07 pm  
To:  David (DavidABrown)    (12 of 15)  
 
  820.12 in reply to 820.11  
 
So you don't think there's any place for watchman to 
warn of the obvious Roman/Vatican-led ECUMENICAL agenda 
that is also very much present and within the film.? 
- nothing in that regard should be spoken of or pointed 
out? 


~ CHOICES. ~


 
-----------------------------



--> but the wise SHALL understand. <-- 


*LenBenHear/FranknSense/SEE: Romans 8:14 + John 3:8 and
~~~ I Cor.1:15-16; 4:3-5 ~~~

VINCIT OMNIA VERITAS: * There is a time for mercy...and a time for Judgement. * - (which one you get depends upon your honesty and humility before GOD)


sanctification. - who've got to have it: inwardly AND outwardly. fruit and motives are everything. 


 
  
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  From:  David (DavidABrown)    Mar-23 11:10 pm  
To:  LenBenHEAR/LIFE_or_death:SEE: John 3:36 (franknsense)   (13 of 15)  
 
  820.13 in reply to 820.12  
 
Hi Len Ben,

 

Yes, point it out but be certain to be just as quick to point out what is good about the film.

 

And no human teaching or production is 100% representative of God so I wouldnt buy that just because a few things seem odd that the entire work is flawed.

 

Its like if a non-Christian was walking and singing the Christian song Amazing Grace and another person hears it and says yes, I need God and becomes a Christian does it then make their conversion false because the guy singing the song is a sinner or is it a true conversion because ultimately it is the Holy Spirit that led the new Christian's heart.

 

I for one am rejoicing with God in this amazing tool and witness that this movie is and I also rejoice in God in the amazing work and fruit that you and your ministr are a part of.

 

God Bless you,
David



David A. Brown
Basic Christian: Forum
www.BasicChristian.org




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Edited 3/24/2004 2:15 am ET by David (DavidABrown) 
  
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  From:  LenBenHEAR/LIFE_or_death:SEE: John 3:36 (franknsense)    Mar-24 12:56 am  
To:  David (DavidABrown)    (14 of 15)  
 
  820.14 in reply to 820.13  
 
Actually, David, your illustration is not the same 
as the inherent dangers of attempting to "legitimize" the 
Roman sacramental "gospel" thru a powerful film with many 
images and symbols which are meant to do just precisely that. 
Please understand: I am not saying God cannot and will not 
use the film to draw the unsaved to the truth of the Gospel. 
- but it very definitely needs two things as a follow-up: 

1) The unsaved who see the film need to be ministered to 
as regards THE BIBLICAL GOSPEL TRUTHS within the film and their 
actual meaning, - INCLUDING the need for repentance 
and following Christ as Lord, 

and 

2) Christians need to be well aware of the Roman/Vatican/ 
ecumencial dangers inherent in this very very Catholic film. 

- those are my main points. 

all the best 
and God bless. 


~ CHOICES. ~




--> but the wise SHALL understand. <-- 


*LenBenHear/FranknSense/SEE: Romans 8:14 + John 3:8 and
~~~ I Cor.1:15-16; 4:3-5 ~~~

VINCIT OMNIA VERITAS: 

sanctification. - who've got to have it: inwardly AND outwardly. fruit and motives are everything. 




==================================

~ PLEASE NOTE: 

YOU will be EITHER the cross on His right...or the cross on His left. - these symbolize the whole of humanity in relation to Him: The Savior and Judge of every soul. And THIS I declare to you both in love and in the authority of His Holy Name and Word: for you *are* EITHER {and *WILL be* either}one or the other. ~ Selah. {pause and ponder that very carefully}

for IT IS AN ETERNAL TRUTH. 
 
  
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   From:  David (DavidABrown)    Apr-9 8:16 am  
To:  jpirie3    (15 of 15)  
 
  820.15 in reply to 820.3  
 
Source: www.tothesource.com

April 8, 2004 by Dr. Jennifer Morse 

Dear Concerned Citizen, 
The Passion of the Christ presents a radically counter-cultural view of love. The Established Church of Hollywood and much of current American culture holds to the Romantic creed that love is all about feelings. I am in love, if I like the way I feel when I am with the other person. Those enjoyable feelings are usually some variation of lust, or self-aggrandizement. When the pleasantness or the intensity fades, I have fallen out of love.

 By contrast, Jesus demonstrates a love that has nothing to do with feelings. The life of Jesus teaches that love is a decision. To love is to will and to do the good of another person. Jesus made a decision to love: to love His father, to love His immediate followers, and to love all of us. After seeing Gibsons movie, no one could believe that Jesus allowed Himself to be crucified because He felt like it. But He did it anyway, trusting in the goodness of His fathers will. 

When Mary, John and Mary Magdalene followed Jesus up the hill to Calvary, they probably didnt like the way it felt. Their love for Jesus didnt make them feel important or special on that particular Friday afternoon. But they followed Him anyway. They had already learned from Jesus that love is a good in itself. 

In Gibsons movie, everybody who acts on their feelings comes off looking like a loser. The unthinking mob demanded the death of Jesus. Pontius Pilate knowingly condemned an innocent man rather than risk his career. Peter acted on his fear, denied Jesus and ran away. Judas succumbed to despair and hung himself. 

The Hollywood image of love has only to do with feelings, and with acting upon the passions. An entire agenda of sex, marriage and family, flows directly from this view of love. Love is nothing but a feeling. 

But no one can sustain the intense euphoric feeling so common at the beginning of a relationship, and so commonly shown on the Big Screen. Marriage becomes nothing more than a temporary contract between people who love each other, because love is necessarily temporary. 

Since children dont always make us feel good, we certainly cant be expected to take the demands of childrearing seriously. We come to demand sexual activity unhinged from childbearing, as a constitutional right. In that frame of mind, sex comes to have no social or moral significance. Sex is merely a recreational good. 

Everyone wants love in their lives. But the more vigorously we pursue the counterfeit signs of love, the more frustrated were likely to become. We go through life feeling cheated, because we know in our deepest hearts, that we were made for love. We cant get it by chasing our feelings, but we dont know any other way. We convince ourselves we are entitled to have any kind of relationship with anyone, on any terms we choose, thinking that this time, perhaps, it will work. This is part of the impulse behind the demand for an unlimited right to divorce and remarriage, to cohabitation, and to same sex marriage. 

When Jesus tells His followers, love one another as I have loved you, he isnt telling us to parrot His feelings. He is telling us to make a practice of pursuing the good of others. He is inviting us to be attentive enough to others that we can actually figure out what is good for them. 

We have to be realistic about the limits of what we can actually do to be helpful to those we love. It means we sometimes have conflict with others, because we shouldnt always give them what they are asking for. We cant use other people as means to achieving our ends. 

Committing ourselves to doing the good of another draws us out of our natural self-centeredness and opens for us the possibility of being engaged with others. Jesus invites us to fling ourselves into the adventure of lifelong love with our spouses and children.

His idea is for us to take up the cross and follow Him, as The Passion makes clear.
 
 



David A. Brown
Basic Christian: Forum
www.BasicChristian.org

 
  
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