April 14, 2005

Revelations

A few days ago, I arrived home to find a FedEx package on my front porch. Inside, a DVD and a letter from a Los Angeles PR firm that began, "Dear Blogger..."

The DVD was of the first episode of NBC's new miniseries Revelations. Their hope, obviously, was that I'd watch the DVD and write about it on my blog. My guess is they sent the same DVD and letter to hundreds of bloggers.

Interesting marketing tactic. But the DVD arrived only a couple days before the show aired, and I didn't have time to watch it and review it. In the future they need to give bloggers more lead time. Professional entertainment journalists may be able to turn a review on short notice, but most bloggers have day jobs.

By now, of course, I have had a chance to watch the DVD. It's slickly produced theological crap, with the added burden of the woodenly earnest Bill Pullman having a lead role as a scientist whose worldview has no room for faith until he comes in contact with a theologically renegade Catholic nun, played by Natascha McElhone, who is amassing evidence that the world is about to reach "the end of days." There's also a creepy satanist. Judging from the first episide, the story takes place in some alternate world where it rains all the time, everywhere, and light bulbs are extremely scarce.

Here's a good review of the theological mish-mash in the show. The miniseries is built around the notion that the last book in the Bible, Revelation, predicts in apocalyptic language how the world will end.

There are those who believe that is what the book of Revelation is all about. I'm not one of them. I think the book - a letter written by the apostle John to the Christians in Jerusalem in the first century A.D. - was a prophecy telling them of the imminent military conquest of Jerusalem by Rome, and assuring them of God's eternal providence. John was a prisoner of Rome, imprisoned on the island of Patmos, when he wrote the book, at a time when the Roman empire was increasingly forcing its subjects to worship the Roman emperor - a time when Christians, who would not worship the Roman emperor, were increasingly being persecuted.

The book is, foremost, a message to the Christians of John's day to urge them to resist emperor worship and to comfort them with the knowledge that, in the battle between God and the forces of evil, God had already won the eternal victory, a victory that would be consumated with return of Christ.

Revelation was written in apocalyptic language - language that is highly symbolic rather than literal. I believe John wrote in that style in part to get the book's incendiary message past his prison guards, who would deem it the crazed writings of a crazy man rather than understand that John was writing to encourage his fellow Christians to continue to refuse to worship the Roman emperor.

Interpreters of the book of Revelation generally fall into one of four camps: "Preterists," who believe the book applies exclusively to the time in which it was written and who believe most of the book's events have already occured. "Historicists" believe the book describes how history will unfold from John's day until the end of time. "Futurists" believe Revelation is primarily about the end times. And "Idealists" view it as a symbolic and timeless story about the triumph of good over evil.

I'm a preterist. But that's just me. And it doesn't matter if you agree with me or you believe the book of Revelation really is about the end of the world. You - or I - can be 100 percent totally wrong about that doctrine and still be saved. Because it is not doctrinal accuracy that saves, but God's grace, triggered by your belief in Jesus Christ.

If the book of Revelation really is about the end of days, then the miniseries's story line that the lead characters are racing against time in an effort to interrupt the sequence of events that will lead to the end of the world is one big giant plot hole.

I can buy the idea that Pullman's character might wish to extend the Earth's lifespan, but McElhone's nun is a believer in God who, if she really grasped what God has promised His children for after this world ends, would be welcoming the end of days, not trying to delay it.

If you're longing to watch a religious miniseries that isn't theological crap, you should rent the powerful three-DVD The Gospel of John from Netflix. Or, better yet, buy it from Amazon.

Why?

Because I don't know when the world will end, and neither do you. But we both know that the time each of us has on this earth one day will end. So do yourself a favor and don't waste a minute of the time you have watching Revelations.