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I recently watched the movie "Knowing" with my wife. It stars Nicolas Cage, Rose Byrne and others. Then, out of curiosity, I read a bunch of the viewer reviews on Netflix. That was an education indeed.
One point that was raised on many of the negative reviews was the way the movie ended. The complaints were all some form of the following: the ending didn't make any sense, it was completely inappropriate, it ruined the movie because it didn't gel with the rest of the story, it was nothing more than an a big, fat 'deus ex machina.' I was dumbfounded by how so many people could miss what was to me obvious. Then I remembered something: actual knowledge of the contents of the Bible, as opposed to spurious anecdotal knowledge provided by atheists and popular culture, is steadily being lost to the very societies that were founded on its principles. It's interesting the movie wasn't released as a Christian film, or at least as a 'spiritual' one. I think the producers must have feared the work being pigeonholed, and thus automatically garnering less box office success. So-called religious movies have long been saddled with lesser production values, acting and writing included. Plus, there's the common standard most moviegoers seem to possess, of steering away from 'preachy' movies. As a person who spotted a lot of biblical symbolism in the film, I greatly appreciated a decently budgeted movie that wasn't afraid to make a clever connection between our fascination with disaster movies and the Bible's own commentary regarding specific events and entities. That the movie was still just entertainment is not in question; I wouldn't presume to indicate to anyone that it is truly prophetic with its story. What the movie was though, was an excellent exercise in 'what if.' It not only took concepts directly from the Bible, but also from the possibility that the experiences of the Bible patriarchs may have been interactions with 'Ancient Astronauts,' as theorized by Erich von Däniken and others. Or better yet, the writers could have been advancing the idea that the 'technology' of God might, in some instances, appear to us as the technology of some other advanced civilization, given our current scientific knowledge. Who knows? If the Rapture actually occurs as expected by Christians, who can really say for sure if the chosen will rise from the earth by personally defying gravity, or via spaceships? There were many subtle visual touches that brought the whole story into focus, such as the picture of Ezekiel's wheel in the mother's abandoned house, and what could be discerned as wings on the backs of the space entities at the end of the film. Even the blinding light and trumpet-like sound that emanated from the stranger's mouth in one scene are concepts that were culled directly from biblical texts. Nicolas Cage's character (a college professor) is clearly conflicted; the writers chose to have the one lecture to his class in the movie be about random chance versus organization (design). His father just happens to be a pastor, so the internal struggle for someone whose wife recently died could easily be imagined. This struggle is actually stated out loud by Cage's character later in the film. Subtle examples of biblical influence appear throughout, such as Cage's character finally realizing that certain death with his own family during the coming cataclysm is not something to be feared. The many visual clues, such as the centrally featured tree in the midst of a beautiful golden field, seem to be lost on people who don't know what is actually in the Bible. What was truly the saddest aspect of this experience for me though, wasn't the mere ignorance of the reviewers. It was the tragically misled anti-religious comments posted on the Netflix site by some reviewers. It seems likely that most individuals tossing darts at those who believe in God are simply jumping on a bandwagon. I find the high level of acrimony of the anti-religious very disproportionate to the meager amount coming from the opposite direction. The debate over the existence of God has been raging as long as people have been able to argue with each other, and it didn't require the Bible or "On the Origin of Species" as a catalyst. The recent rise from obscurity of certain publicly vocal proponents of atheism has only given one side of the debate more fuel to continue squawking. Their intellectualized nattering is proof of nothing more than our own tendency to avoid whatever we don't find amenable to our own selfish desires. What's my bottom line on all this? In this 'wondrous' digital age of instant information, the false idea that history can't be rewritten is even stronger. How ironic that the original written source of the highest aspirations for human beings has been earmarked for complete abandonment, via socially engineered and agenda-ridden vilification, for several decades. The Bible is not a dispenser of falsehood, ignorance and evil. Those things are what the absence of biblical tenets produce. Keep your eyes on the rotten fruits of apathy regarding God, and you will see, through the years, how the only thing that prevents the world from slipping into total chaos is a return to the values in that unsinkable book. The values themselves are not exclusive to the Bible, but for any person to claim that the Bible is a (or the) cause of humanity's problems only serves to clearly display that person's intentional ignorance of what is actually written in its pages. For any reader of this blog who's never really taken an earnest look in the Bible, I offer a challenge: Be brave, be different, and think for yourself; find out for yourself, once and for all, what is really written on those pages. Don't make the common blunder of letting others interpret them for you. The Bible will change your life in the best of ways... unless you really don't want it to. As it was in the beginning, so it shall be unto the end of the world: the choice is yours. |