Killing Jesus Movie Was a Huge Disappointment

Killing Jesus Movie Was a Huge Disappointment

        Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus film was a huge disappointment which I knew it would be. I never read the book but I was hoping it would be accurate. The Jesus portrayed in his film was pretty much like any secular version of Jesus in other films: the whole idea that Jesus is confused or does not know his own plans, and that ideas come into his head randomly as if he had an awakening or epiphany. Also, there were no miracles done by Jesus in the film at all. Jesus was also never called Christ in the film because Bill O’Reilly arrogantly believes that no one called Jesus “Christ” except after the New Testament was written later. But in the gospel of Matthew (16:16) Peter is quoted calling Jesus “The Christ, Son of the living God.” The woman at the well also is quoted  calling Jesus this (John 11:27),  which O’Reilly completely ignored, or is simply ignorant about. Yet, in the movie Peter is seen saying “You are the anointed one, son of the living God.” So he switched out the words on purpose and misrepresented Scripture.

        The actor who played Jesus was a Muslim and it’s obvious he has no clue about who Jesus really was. He was a very weak Jesus who had no real authority or powers. He was quite reserved. It was if Jesus was simply playing by ear and making things up as he went without knowing what would happen next. It was really annoying. Nothing Jesus did in the films was impressive or would make me want to follow him. It made no sense why anyone would be excited over him.

        I will say that some of the acting was well done and the costumes were pretty good. The head pharisee Caiaphas was pretty good. Except Bill O’Reilly made a wrongful assumption that the pharisees simply were afraid of Roman rule and somehow Jesus would cause the Romans to kill all the Jews. That is the reason, O’Reilly claims, they were so upset about Jesus. Nothing about legalism of the grace of God replacing works. But that is to be expected from a “Roman Catholic.” So it made the pharisee seem less evil than he really was in the Bible. Judas was also portrayed as some sad or cowardly guy who simply made mistakes to where you feel sorry for him. So you feel sad and sorry as any trace of ultimate evil, greed, wretchedness and outright, shameless betrayal, such as the Bible teaches us about Judas Iscariot, is not seen.

        Many of the events portrayed in the film were randomly placed out of historic order, or simply mixed together into one event. Scenes such as a child who is demon possessed who people think died but wakes up. It was a mixing of one of the demonic possession stories with the story of the child who died whom Jesus brought back to life. O’Reilly purposely left out any true miracles Jesus did and avoided them and mixed up stories to hide them. Only one miracle is shown where Peter draws in a ton of fish, yet even that story was not correct and could be interpreted as Jesus not being divine but praying to God for the ability to catch fish. It was quite weak.

        A really weak event was when Jesus clears out the temple marketplace. Which he did not even clear, but just randomly ran into and dumped a table over and yelled some. Then his disciples without understanding anything start yelling at people and pushing people around as well. That never happened, nor would Jesus want them to help. It was completely out of character for O’Reilly’s good natured, happy Jesus who had no commanding power. Oh and he did not even command an evil spirit out of the boy in the above mention. He simply hugs him and somehow the kid wakes up later. Just stupid.

        Another interesting thing about this movie is that they used mainly tan actors. Most looked Arabic or even Indian. Not so much light skinned Jews as we see today. Jesus was played by an Arab actor. It seemed there was a mix of any tan skinned race such as Hispanic-Latino, Indian, Arabic/Middle Eastern, possibly native american and others. Most anglo-looking-actors were the Romans. I think this is fine since it seems more historically accurate that Jesus and most of the Jews in New Testament times would have a darker complexion. I thought this was interesting, but it seemed a little over board and almost looked like Jesus was in South Asia and not the Middle East. I am sure there would be more lighter “olive” complexioned people as well. The actor who played Caiaphas was actually hazel eyed and olive skinned.

        Just everything about the film was completely shallow, boring, uninteresting, falsely represented, and no real political concern was really described or anything truly historic. It was a very annoying film. I only watched it so I could know the stupid things O’Reilly added or the true things he left out so I could tell any person who does not know the Bible the truth, and engage in discussion.

        I will have to say that this movie was 10x better than the outright garbage that is “The Bible” and “The Bible AD” (coming soon) put out by  Roma Downey and Mark Burnett for the History Channel, and their “compassionate high eye-browed hippy Jesus who is simply clueless.” It seems there will never be a well done Bible movie that is true to Scripture.

A Blessing Through Killing The Wicked

A Blessing Through Killing The Wicked

        The Word of the LORD:

“And Moses stood at the camp’s entrance and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.” And all the Levites gathered around him. ²⁷ He told them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says, ‘Every man fasten his sword to his side; go back and forth through the camp from entrance to entrance, and each of you kill his brother, his friend, and his neighbor.’”²⁸ The Levites did as Moses commanded, and about 3,000 men fell dead that day among the people.²⁹ Afterward Moses said, “Today you have been dedicated^[f] to the Lord, since each man went against his son and his brother. Therefore you have brought a blessing on yourselves today.” Exodus 32:26-29

        The Bible is against murder, but not killing. Killing can be done for various justifiable reasons whereas murder is unjustified and wrong. There is a difference. Any Christian who claims it is wrong to kill or soldiers are sinning because they kill enemies, or capital punishment is wrong because it murders criminals and life in prison is righteous, are not very intelligent or knowledgeable about what God’s Word says. Ecclesiastes 3:3 states that there is “a time to kill.” God commanded the Israelites all over the Old Testament to kill the wicked and commit mass genocide of wicked nations who were under God’s judgment. There were many wars fought with Israel against wicked nations. War then is much the same as it is now, except we do not literally have God commanding battles. Humanity is left on its own to figure it out. The problem is humanity is mostly sinful and the wars they start are for sinful causes. Even so, within this context there are righteous defenses to madmen. WW2 is one example of a righteous cause, a cause to fight the evils of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany led by madmen who wanted world domination and wanted to grasp it through murder and mayhem and the slaughter of innocent people. To allow such atrocities to occur and not stand up for it is insane. Hardly any normal person would claim it would have been better to let Germany and Japan do what they wanted and we should not have defended against them. All through history wars have been fought. Some wars have 2 sides who are both evil fighting each other much like what was described in the Old Testament where wicked nations fought other wicked nations such as described in Genesis 14.

        The key to being on the right side of any war is knowledge of the Bible and God’s standards of what is good. Obviously, if someone today wanted to fight the Islamic State most Americans would say that I.S. is an evil entity (whether or not one would think we should send troops or not). Being against them is righteous. Also, killing them is also righteous. Going to battle against I.S. and killing them is how you can stop them. In WW2 the Allies won the wars by going into battle and killing as many NAZIs and as many Imperialists on both the Western and pacific fronts. That is how you win wars. One side says, “we want to do this and will kill you to get it,” and the other says, “no you won’t because we will stop you and defend ourselves and kill you.” That is war. To win and to allow a better world to survive you must kill the enemy and as many as you can before have the advantage ot win so that they will surrender.

        It can be said killing is morally permissable also for capital punishment. Laws in the Bible over and over demanded the death of certain people who broke certain laws. Some laws were not punishable by death, but many were. Capital punishment is promoted by the LORD all over the Old Testament as well as supported by the New Testament when Paul states that “if you do wrong, be afraid, for [the government rulers] does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” Certain grievous sins deserve the death penalty. Wasting time on people serving life sentences is a waste of resources. God does not teach that we should provide life imprisonment for murderers or rapists, but they they should be put to death.

     God told Moses to command the Levites to kill everyone they could going forward to the other side of the camp, and then back to the first side of the camp. It was a forward and back clean sweep of everyone including their own family members and neighbors. God demanded the death for the horrible sin of idolatry right after God had rescued the Hebrews from Egypt. Moses stated that the Levites received blessing from God because of the act of killing approximately 3,000 people in 1 day. God demanded the execution of the wicked and it was just, because God commanded it, and they were under his righteous judgment. Sometimes it really is correct to kill people and God will bless those who do it.

        I believe God blessed America and the Allies in all the the killing of enemies in WW2 and provided a temporary time of prosperity for America. But like the Israelites America has become lazy, stiff necked, immoral, and idolatrous. America will not last much longer at the rate things are going.

        The only time killing is justified is if it is commanded by God, which today God is not physically present and audibly commanding things. God’s Word is how we receive God’s commandments. Any execution and any war fought needs to line up with Scripture. A soldier is under the command of his government and sent off to battle, they are not held accountable for killing enemies in battle. On the other hand, unjustified death such as mass genocide of innocent people is sinful. The only mass genocide commanded by God was in the Old Testament because the nations were under his judgment, not one person was innocent in those nations and God had deemed that it was their time to go. It was a specific time in Israel’s history for their nation and society alone. It is not a command by God to kill everyone who is in a false religion. God is perfect and absolutely holy. He is a righteous judge and allowed to make decisions on who lives and who dies. Nobody else! No one else in the Old Testament made these judgments, but simply followed orders from God who literally was there telling them what to do. Through Christ, now days we understand that vengeance is God’s and not ours, so we spread the Gospel. But when we are attacked by evil forces, or our family is in danger by criminals we are very justified in defending ourselves even to the point of killing a criminal or attacker, as well as justified in sending soldiers to war to face enemies and hopefully killing them. I believe today the truest evil in the world we are threatened with are the radical Islamists, the Islamic terrorists, who are torturing, raping, murdering, at an unbelievable rate everyone who does not perfectly fit their ideology. These enemies are named the Islamic State and Al Qaeda (including all their affiliates).  I believe it is morally justified to kill as many of them as we can before they kill all of us. And believe me they will kill as many Americans as they can if they get here. Our government has a God given obligation to protect us and defeat such types of enemies. Sending soldiers to battle is the right thing to do, yet our President does not care. The time to kill is now!