This is my third post on the recent film adaptation of the stage play....The Hiding Place. Independent Christian films have made a lot of news lately. The Jesus Revolution stunned Hollywood with the numbers that flocked to see the movie. I saw it twice....and wholeheartedly recommend it to Christians to see what part of the origins of the revival of the gospel in America in the 70s and 80s was like. We need to know what we once talked like....and what we once thought like.
The Chosen has been making news for a few years. I haven't viewed any of this as of yet....and really do not have the desire to do so....although I may eventually have to....for from what I have read about it....it is a glimpse of evangelicalism today....which is far removed from our reliance upon God's Word....with more reliance upon what a little imagination can do to help God's Word. The latest religious blockbuster so to speak would be Sound Of Freedom.
The importance of this adaptation of The Hiding Place is not in the heroism of the Ten Boom family as they sacrificed their lives to save Jewish people from the concentration camps. That has always been the essence of Corrie Ten Boom's story....as it should have been over the years and even decades....but time has moved on. The Holocaust might not outrage us today if that outrage conflicted in any way with our primary goal to make America great again. We show little compassion for the people of the Ukraine....and we actually became....deniers.....of the pandemic!
The Hiding Place is the most important of all these films of late....for we are the focus of the hate today. America is not that dissimilar to the culture of the Weimar Republic that preceded the violent Nazi takeover of both Germany and much of its church.. We are a cabaret culture....and the lyrics of the that famous song could be sung by us....
"What good is sitting
Alone in your room?
Come hear the music play
Life is a cabaret, old chum
Come to the cabaret
What good permitting
Some prophet of doom
To wipe every smile away?
Life is a cabaret, old chum
So come to the cabaret."
We terribly need the message from this stage play/film The Hiding Place....and we need it now! We need to see Casper Ten Boom's dissatisfaction with the preaching in his country. We need to see him stand up from the table to thank God for the food in front of him! We need to see the arrogance of that young German youth....Otto....so prideful in his country that he had been blinded....as many of we ourselves have been blinded by Christian nationalism. We need to see the thankfulness over the simple delicacy of marmalade....or a cup of tea....or potted flowers....for the day is coming when we will yearn for a taste of butter....or a piece of fruit! We need to see the treasure of that small Bible on a chain around Corrie's neck. We need to see God's glory manifested in people like the Ten Booms. We need warned of what is ahead....and we need to know that Christ will be with us through it all.
"And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (the last half....of the last verse....in the Gospel of Matthew)
We merely acknowledge how life can change in one hour....but it never really hits home. We need reminded of what God's Word says about the future of the....City of Destruction....as John Bunyan described the world that we live....
"They will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say, "Alas! Alas! You great city, you mighty city, Babylon! For in a single hour your judgment has come." (Revelation 18:10)
