Bible Teaching aimed at helping you enjoy the Scriptures which are the Word of GOD!

Search BibleStudy.net


Bible Study Broadcast Info

Preaching by: John J. Malone, Sr - JABSBG*

XML Sitemap

God Is Not Dead - Comments (1)

Printer Friendly Category: Articles
Author: John Malone
Date: 21st April, 2014 @ 07:30:24 AM

I went to see the movie God Is Not Dead tonight.

(Karen and I flew with Michael Tate and his Australian logistics assistant to Dallas in 2009. We met him shortly after it was announced that Tait would be lead singer for both DC Talk and Newsboys.

Of course, Karen and I knew nothing about contemporary Christian rock, so we made perfect travel companions.

We were all in the back of the plane because Tait didn’t want to be disturbed in 1st class.)

I took some of my grandsons and their friends to the movie, 12 yrs and up. Before I submit all my criticisms, let me just say this movie was fun, the boys and I liked it, and I think Karen would have liked seeing Michael Tait in the movie because she and he hit it off pretty well on the plane ride.

This is a feel-good movie with some realism in it about the Christian life, but not much about the true conflict of content from the truth of Scripture and a hostile world.

However, the movies DOES depict the hostility against Christian thought – and the Christians who hold those thoughts – that has been running rampant on our campuses since the haters of God that now run our government first ruined our universities. Such people are my former mates in college, and I ran with them and the professors back in the early to mid 1970’s.

That being said, the way that hostility is portrayed is  little sappy and a lot unrealistic, principally because all the heavy lifting of that portrayal is all done by actor Kevin Sorbo, who’s character, Professor Radisson, is an avowed atheist who uses his Introduction to Philosophy class to browbeat freshmen into atheistic compliance. While college campuses are filled with people hostile to Jesus Christ and the Scriptures, it’s a big stretch the way Radisson goes about this, but once one suspends their belief enough, and gives this movie its required aesthetic distance, its entertaining enough, and makes it point.

This movie is not much about character development, apart from Radisson. Characters are one-dimensional, and lack depth. Dean Cain plays a money grubber. The central character, Josh Wheaton, plays a likable freshman who holds his faith against the ploys of Radisson. Wheaton’s girl friend, portrayed by Trisha LaFache, also lacks depth. The boys seemed to think Benjamin Onyango’s character as an African Missionary was their favorite. Onyango seemed to be a typical Luo Kenyan Christian leader to me.

The central drama of the movie is Wheaton’s debate in Radisson’s classroom over the existence of God. The debate itself is made up of vestiges of truth. If you want to see a debate on the merits – and who would, really, it’s the stuff of pseudo-science and phony intellectualism – this movie is not going to satisfy you. Frankly, faculty hatred against Jesus Christ is way underplayed in the movie.

And as a Christian, I’m a bit offended at the idea that “God is not dead,” is much of a message. That’s not the Christian message at all. Nonetheless, in important cameos, real people playing themselves like Tait and Willie Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame do make public proclamations of their faith through the drama.

If this movie is more informative to you and/or motivating to you in the faith than what you hear on Sunday morning, you should switch churches. On the other hand, it’s good entertainment with good music by the Newsboys, and when you’re done with it, you don’t feel as if you need to confess it as sin, or demand your money back.

Josh Brown, my favorite Husker kicker of all time endorses this movie. So does Andy Petitte, former Yankee pitcher – my favorite baseball team. Petitte is the only guy in major league history who pitched 18 seasons and never had a losing one, so I suppose he has street cred. Plus, he’s a lefty.

I’m not going to pay to watch it again, especially because it cost $9.50 on a late Sunday night for my twelve-year-old grandson, but I wouldn’t watch “Heaven’s For Real” or “Son of God” if you paid me to.

Comment by Mary Lynn » 21st April, 2014 @ 07:40:47 AM

Not going to see any of them. No desire.. great read PS movies cost 2.50 in Alliance Ohio LOL

1 Comment » Leave a comment

Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

  • There are some errors in your input.