Exodus: Gods And Kings

        What interests me most is that you have three movies released this year, each with a major actor, and all three films depict God's power in response to a rebellious world. Today I saw Exodus: Gods And Kings with Christian Bale as that major actor. The other two movies were Noah with Russell Crowe and Left Behind with Nicolas Cage.
         By his own admission the director has no belief in the verity of the story of a Hebrew baby saved amidst the reeds and bulrushes to be a prince in Pharaoh's Egypt. No belief, so he was free to embellish, to imagine and to deny, and he did, with great gusto. There were too many discrepancies from the Bible to mention. Well, I'll mention a few. There was indeed a burning bush and Moses was....laying down before it.....but the ground was not shown to be holy and even if it would have been, the Moses of this film would have shown no interest or belief in it. A voice did not emanate from the bush, rather a child appeared, supposedly God, who gave Moses instructions throughout the film. The child did not seem holy either, a little impish in fact.
         There was no covenant mentioned between the Hebrews who had been slaves for four-hundred years and their God and no particular importance, other than protecting the Hebrew first-born, in the blood on the doorposts that would become Passover, and certainly not even a hint that Moses and the Passover would point to Jesus Christ, without whom the world, Pharaoh and Moses would not even exist! Moses was rebellious at most and skeptical at least to the child's commands throughout most of the film. He chiseled the Ten Commandments himself, somewhat irritated by the child's dictation. Other than these things it was a great movie!
           I read some of the reviews before going and really didn't have any great desire to see it but I'm glad that I did. It was anything but boring. The plagues were filmed in a continuous fast-paced sequence and the special effects were intense.  The Red Sea was more 'shifted' than 'divided' but the result was the same as in God's Word. What about these differences, omissions and additions to the Bible? Didn't they bother me? Yes they did. God was not honored, but He may speak here to the recesses of the unbeliever's mind. This God that the world ignores did indeed bring a flood upon the whole world and He brought plagues upon Pharaoh that pale in comparison to  what this world will experience prior to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ! These two films about Noah and Moses were certainly not made for the Christian....they were not meant to illustrate a Holy God, but what they did for many, that was unintended, was bring to mind childhood memories from church or Sunday School lessons, memories now refreshed as this world follows the Bible's prophesies of chaos, violence, hatred and unbelief. Memories that may come to mind one last time as God moves again, not on a movie screen but on television newscasts.
          What also amazed me in all three of these movies being released this year is that as violence engulfs this world, as arrogance and atheism rule and as the hatred for the Jews and Israel abounds, Hollywood gives us very good depictions of God's judgements. There is no gospel in the two major movies and little in Left Behind but there is law. Since lawlessness is our forte today, we are reminded again, those who either see or read of these films, that God's judgement has never been stayed apart from His will, nor will they ever be! Surely some if not many squirmed in their seats.
           There were two scenes of intimacy between Moses and his wife Zipporah but very much unlike Hollywood they ended before they began, I treated the wedding night of Isaac and Anne in my short novel in the very same way. If our son were a pre-teen he certainly would not have been permitted to see Exodus, Gods And Kings and when he came of age he would have had two long (142 minutes for the film) sitting periods, one for the movie and one beforehand for my lecture!