Hollywood at the Second Coming of Christ – The Blind Leading the Blind

Question

Are movies like The Omen or the more recent TV series Revelations helpful? Although they aren’t always biblically sound or historically accurate, can’t we glean some good things from them anyway?

Reply

I once heard a man describe the Hollywood crowd as a bunch of thieves and thieves with the morality of a pack of jackals. I agree with this assessment in general, so it’s hard for me to conceive of anything redemptive coming from a Hollywood interpretation of one of the gravest and most important teachings of Scripture. One of the ways the arch-deceiver has managed to attract even the most cautious and circumspect people is by mixing just enough truth with his own lies to subtly seduce the listener. It’s a kind of garnish or garnish that makes the most poisonous dish look appetizing after all. The seriousness of billions of people meeting doom from it, the earthquakes that level every city on the planet, and the destruction of every major institution of man should hardly be entrusted to the Hollywood crowd.

It is even more difficult to address some of the well-meaning Christian authors who have introduced some very popular Second Coming fiction. Books like Left Behind can be highly entertaining, but the bottom line is that they are just fiction after all. Over thirty years ago I made a statement in some of my messages that did not seem to be well received or even believed. I repeat it more and more often now, but now I find more acceptances for what I am saying. Americans with eyes wide open and hearts tuned to God now vie with me when I say that we’ve gotten to the place where entertainment is so important to us that we’re losing sight of where fantasy ends and real life begins.

When comic movie mogul Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) was at the peak of his career, a Chaplin-like craze was sweeping the world. In America, Europe and South America, tens of thousands of people dressed in the famous actor’s clothing and imitated his well-known gait and outrageous antics. It is a well-known fact that Chaplin often entered his own stunt contests. He never won any of them, and it is said that many times he didn’t even make it to the final. Our ability to tell the difference between what looks like and what is real is pretty ineffective, as this story shows. Why would someone trust our abilities to differentiate between the real and the unreal in something as important as the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ?

As events begin to unfold at a pace no one can imagine, there won’t be time to debate which of the unfolding gatekeepers comes from the Bible and which comes from the Hollywood version of things. That would only leave people more confused, more vulnerable, and ultimately more dead. If you want the truth, doesn’t it make sense to go to the source of the truth? Hollywood, even at its best, has never been heralded as a source of truth. God is always the best source to find God’s will and plan.