Irony Thy Name is Iron Man

The first comic book my father bought for me was Captain America #117. My dad was a voracious reader, for pleasure and entertainment he particularly loved reading science fiction. He used to take me to a used bookstore named “Big Books” the place he copped what he was literarily jonesing for.

It was there that he purchased Cap 117 for me. He bought that particular comic because it featured a black superhero prominently on the cover named “The Falcon” —it was The Falcon’s first appearance. I was seven at the time and the comic was already a couple of years old and a tad dog-eared, but I loved it. I remember reading it that very evening while waiting at the laundry mat with my big sister.

Five years later when my father died, my family sold his collection of science fiction books back to Big Books on Cass Avenue, much to my consternation I might add. But today, Captain America is still my favorite superhero, (I’m emotionally fond of the Falcon as well) and that first comic lead to a lifetime love of comics and sci-fi that eventually lead to me actually becoming the co-owner of a small chain of comic book stores in Metro Detroit for ten years during the 80s and 90s. Which may make it seem odd for me to say, I am not at all looking forward to the new Iron Man movie.

Those who know me fairly well are quite aware that I hate just about every superhero movie made so far. But, I still look forward to them. And like the hapless fan boy I am, I zombie walk mindlessly to the theater (usually the very first day) to see them all. And then, some months later, I open my eyes in time to realize I am walking out of a store with the most expensive version of the movie’s Blu-Ray. (Again, usually the first day it goes on sale.)

So why do I not quiver with restless anticipation for Iron Man 3? Frankly, there is something subversive about Iron Man being produced by a Communist Chinese company. DMG, a Beijing headquartered multi-media concern, is the primary partner with Walt Disney/Marvel in this production, There is something rotten in the state of American film making.

In 1963 America, the year Iron Man was conceived by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and subsequently drawn by Don Heck in Tales of Suspense #39 and the Golden Avengers first outing—Iron Man and Tony Stark his alter ego, were the comic book exemplars, the vanguard of American/capitalist opposition to Communism.

It was a Red booby trap that injured Tony Stark’s heart in Vietnam leading to the birth of Iron Man. Stark’s company was the constant target of Red aggression. The Black Widow (Now an Avenger) was introduced as a Soviet spy and assassin, ever bent on capturing American weapons secrets, most often Iron Man’s armor. I never liked the Widow even after she defected.

Notably, Iron Man’s greatest enemy, the malicious “Mandarin”, was a backhanded swipe against Chinese communism. Though the Mandarin was half Chinese, he bore resentment towards The Red Chinese government because the commies usurped the power of his aristocratic Chinese family. The Mandarin aligned himself with the Reds only when it suited his purposes—the partnership, always fraught with distrust, the Reds feared the villain, even while they needed him.

While Captain America more often than not dealt with villains like the Red Skull and Baron Zemo, relics of fascist Germany seeking to reassert the Third Reich, Iron Man fought Communist villains like the Crimson Dynamo and the Titanium Man. The Red Chinese Radioactive Man was created to destroy Thor and the fiendish Yellow Claw led Chinese forces against American heroes in commie plot after commie plot.

So excuse me if I'm reticent in accepting a film portraying historically one of the most patriotic heroes in comicdom, produced by an entity springing from the same political culture that was quite often his deadliest antagonist. Just doesn’t smell right. A red star on a cap throughout my formative years meant enemy of my way of life.

This subversion is not limited to the latest film—for some inexplicable reason, the producers of the second Iron Man film thought it was cool to say that the Repulsor technology, the basis for Tony Stark’s power, was stolen from a Soviet scientist by his father Howard Stark. So much for pride in good old Yankee know how!

The Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt vehicle “Looper,” was also produced by DMG—it was revealed that the Chinese demanded references and elements of the story meant to take place in a future France, be changed instead to China, with the requisite communist red stars insinuated into the background.

Similar Sino-political weight has been brought to bear on films like Disney’s Kung Fu Panda 3 where every script change has to be vetted by the Red Chinese on pain of not being allowed access to the enormous Chinese market. I have no problem with American companies seeking to expand into a burgeoning market, but at the price of cultural integrity? I do take issue with that.

It seems particularly creepy that you have North Korean sabre rattling, with threats against America, a seemingly preposterous idea, yet escalating daily—when you again remember it was the Chinese that forced the film makers responsible for the remake of the cold war classic “Red Dawn” to delay the release of their film until they made the North Koreans the invaders of mainland U.S.A, forcing them to digitally replace every Chinese flag and uniform emblem with North Korea’s.

Well I don’t like it! Unfortunately, most of those born after the baby boom have no real understanding of what it was like living in a cold war world. Our youth can’t access the concept of communist/socialist subversion. We thought we won the cold war with the collapse of the Berlin Wall—that seems rather naïve in light of our growing fiscal and now artistic subservience.

I remembered an old series of sci-fi books featuring a character named Perry Rhodan, my father loved that series. I spent decades trying to find them in Metro Detroit’s used bookstores out of nostalgia for dad. Never could find the early books especially the first few.

For some reason I'd stopped going to Big Books after my dad died, so I'd never checked there. I happened to be driving down Cass Avenue one day just about a year ago and on a lark decided to stop and visit my dad’s old haunt.

Well it just so happened that the bookseller was a guy I knew from the comic book community. I asked about Perry Rhodan while we chatted. “Funny you should ask,” he said, “We have a set of the early ones that in the 20 years I’ve worked here, as far as I know, no one has ever so much as touched.”

Owing to my father’s penchant for buying second hand books, they often had the previous owners marks in them and for some reason I always thought it cool that someone would bother to have a stamp made up to discern their books. And sure enough, there was a mark I recognized.

                                                EX LIBRUS

                                                     D.G.D.

So not only had I finally found copies of Perry Rhodan from the time period I’d longed for, it appeared I was reacquiring my late father’s own copies, sold to that very store decades earlier. Pity the political and cultural integrity of our great nation can't be so perfectly restored.

Digital Publius

President Obama's Latest Loss Leader

I grew up in a home that by any measure would best be described as black nationalistic, politically, ideologically and spiritually. My father was a Muslim and he raised my sister and I as Muslims because Islam was a black man’s religion and Christianity was the white man’s religion and the vehicle used to oppress the black man.

Christianity is the white man’s religion, however I was assured that make no mistake, Christ himself was black as were all of the other men of the Bible. It never occurs to people who make spiritual decisions based on this reasoning that Christianity outdates Islam by some 600 years—and it was a Christian, African King, the Negus of Abyssinia, (Ethiopia) that kept the early Muslims from being slaughtered when they were forced to flee Mecca.

If Christianity is the white man’s religion, why was it being practiced for centuries all over Asia Minor and in Africa before being imported to and spreading across Europe? We know from Scripture that one of the very first converts to Christianity was an Ethiopian (Acts chapter 8) which makes sense when you consider that 600 years later, the king and that very country were in fact Christian.

Further, if Christ and all the other Biblical figures are black as proclaimed by black nationalists—I as a black man would be more inclined to reclaim what was mine, rather than adopt a faith whose existence contemporaneously is owed to a lie of omission used to curry the Negus’ favor in an act of Islamic self-preservation. (And thank God, I did choose Christ and I don’t care if He’s purple!)

Not to mention the fact that Islam’s earliest practitioners, Arabs from the Saudi Peninsula, were then and are still to this day the parties most responsible for trading in African slaves. Thankfully I am not inclined to choose my faith based on something as arbitrary as race. A rather silly notion in light of what the Holy Bible says on such matters.

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: Acts 17:24-27

Rather makes the whole race thing silly doesn’t it?

Growing up in a black-centric home, I was fully immersed in all of the usual reading that such an upbringing entails—I was saturated with “From Superman to Man” and the history books penned by J.A. Rogers. Exposed to the writings of George G.M. James, the allegories of Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright… My interest in learning to fence came from stories of Chevalier de Saint-Georges and General Alexandre Dumas, fantasies of swashbuckling that ended with a torn lateral meniscus in my late thirties. There was no shortage of black history in my home.

One of my favorite giants of history has always been Harriet Tubman. She reminded me of my Granny—a tough little lady who brooked no insolence, taught me to cook and to behave myself. Perpetually aproned and in motion. With wire spectacles perched on her nose she regarded you and you were always happy when those eyes did not find you wanting. All this while being the sweetest creature to ever walk the earth in shoe leather.

That is how I imagined Harriet Tubman. The heroic eight years she spent as a conductor on the Underground Railroad and the life she lead afterwards should never be forgotten. I am very pleased the great lady is being recognized by having her memorial declared a national monument by President Obama. But the cynic in me can’t see this action as anything more than a political loss leader.

In commerce, a loss leader is a product or service offered as a device to get a customer into the store so you can sell them something of greater value. It is generally something that costs the business very little, but is significant enough to garner attention.

That is precisely what the Harriet Tubman announcement has done. It has gotten lots of Black folks excited, sparking tweets and status updates praising President Obama for taking a memorial that already exists and elevating it. Praising Harriet Tubman costs the President absolutely nothing in political capital, but it gives the illusion that he cares about black history and by extension his black constituents.

This reminds me of what is probably Harriet Tubman’s most famous quote: “I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.” I can’t think of a time in history when that reflection is truer than it is today!

So many of the President’s apologists make excuses for why he doesn’t address the ills of the black community, “After all” they say, “he is not just the President of black people.” No he is not, but everyone who now says that in light of his perceived apathy towards the issues concerning black folks, were in their inward parts and amongst their own saying: “Now we’ll get some stuff done!” when the President was first elected.

Well if naming Harriet Tubman’s already existing memorial a national park is getting stuff done, more – power – to – you.

I’d prefer seeing President Obama support practical economic policies that would promote job growth! I’d like to see him cease advancing policies that increase the cost of energy, a promise he made on the campaign trail that he actually kept, though I wish he hadn’t, it is adversely affecting the poor a great deal more than the elites he surrounds himself with.

How about not denouncing policies that give urban youth access to better educational alternatives like school vouchers? This way the inner city kids can go to the same kinds of schools the President sends his daughters to. If you are allotting funds for each student's education, why not allow those funds to be spent in the school of the parents choice instead of condemning them to the never-changing liberal petrie dish that public schools have become?

Or perhaps he could take a trip once a month to an urban area and deliver a speech denouncing the self-destructive behavior decimating the black community. Maybe get in the face of urban youth and send them a message that you care by telling them the truth.

He could find time to do this if the President dialed back a few of those golf trips he takes every month. Tiger Woods and the rest of his fairway cronies are already set, they have the resources to isolate themselves from the communities that could benefit most from his attention!

That doesn’t appear to be the kind of venture the President is willing to risk his political capital on. Ah well, I suppose the inner city could always use another Rosa Parks Blvd.

Digital Publius

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Progressive...Really?

Progress.

Is there a nobler word?

Haven’t we all at some point stood back, chest expanded, beaming at the fruits of our labors with contented satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment. “Today I have made progress.” Man has always celebrated the relentless effort to improve, to advance.

 For the Roman Emperor Hadrian, the decisive Battle of Beitar, sounding the end of the Jewish rebellion and Hadrian’s subsequent renaming of Israel to Palestine meant progress. So progressive were those actions taken in 136 AD, we didn’t see the nation again called Israel for some 1800 years.

Likewise, when Adolf Hitler requested a situation report from his subordinates regarding his “Jewish problem,” they were able to report to him with confidence “Mein Führer we are making progress."  History augurs for progress being in the eye of the beholder–one man’s progress can be another’s tragic, even deadly set back.

“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” Proverbs 14:12

Social “progress” is rarely benign. Especially when it springs from man’s ideas of right and wrong. This is why a morality derived form a source greater than man is capable of is necessary when plotting a society's course.

We know the Founders of our great nation understood this principal; it is the very reason why the United States of America has always been self-correcting. It was the basis for the institution of slavery for example ending after centuries of it’s practice in the Americas in such a relatively short time following the birth of our country.

God condemned slavery when He said, “thou shalt not kill, steal and covet.”

These are unavoidable activities when one participates in the trafficking of human beings. God also in no uncertain terms condemns slave traders.

The surest way to spot an unbelieving Bible scholar is by finding one who uses the ordinances imposed on the rebellious Israelites regarding slavery, to suggest the God of the Holy Bible advocates for the institution. You have to recognize you can’t condemn slavers without also condemning slavery.

When people study and understand the precepts of God in their entirety, you cannot argue for slavery with legitimacy from a Biblical perspective. That is why so many of the Founders made statements like:

"That men should pray and fight for their own freedom and yet keep others in slavery is certainly acting a very inconsistent as well as unjust and perhaps impious part." - John Jay

 And:

"Domestic slavery is repugnant to the principles of Christianity... It is rebellion against the authority of a common Father. It is a practical denial of the extent and efficacy of the death of a common Savior. It is an usurpation of the prerogative of the great Sovereign of the universe who has solemnly claimed an exclusive property in the souls of men." - Benjamin Rush

This is the only conclusion drawn when you take in the breadth of the Holy Bible and the gospel message—and why it is when Americans return to Biblical truths, we get things inevitably right. It’s when we ignore those tenets we elect bad people and disastrous policy ensues.

The Democrats, the left in general, have co-opted the term “progressive” to brand their ideas and the course they would set for our nation. They’ve been frightfully successful at framing their ideology in a progressive light, due mostly to their allegiance with popular media. It doesn’t matter that everywhere their ideology rules, you find unprecedented failure in every measurable sense.

In the upcoming week, the nation’s highest court will be hearing arguments for and against the preservation of the Biblical/traditional definition of marriage. We therefore once more find ourselves standing at a moral precipice—will we stand with God? Or will we do what seems right to man and perpetuate spiritual bondage after having abandoned subjecting our fellows to physical slavery?

Notwithstanding the fact that the overwhelming majority of states after putting this issue to a popular vote have upheld the traditional definition of marriage, the unremitting left has sold many on the idea that holding such views will place you on the wrong side of history. They make these arguments with little patience for history actually playing out. Hence a drive for a federal solution decided in the courts, rather than leaving it to the will of the people.

I suppose the very idea of government of the people, by the people and for the people, not perishing from the earth, has itself ceased to be progressive. I have no problem ceding the term “progressive’ to the left, I’ve never appreciated adopting terms too often nebulously defined.

I think the right needs to coin and perpetuate it’s own conceptual brand to describe our philosophy, our worldview. I vote for the term “realist”! Let’s us who hold to Christian/Conservative/Republican ideology refer to ourselves as the “realist wing” of political discourse—How do you counter reality with any semblance of legitimacy?

I know from a realist’s point of view, following God always leads to being on the right side of history.

Now therefore fear the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the LORD. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. Joshua 24:14,15

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U.S. Socialism and the Politics of Arms

If I may, I would like to play the socio-political theoretician. The modern American leftist dismisses the idea his beliefs are socialist and is able to get away with it, (much to the chagrin of sober-minded realists) because U.S. style socialism is a new species. Not unlike some heretofore undiscovered tree frog found enjoying flies in the Amazon. New coloring, different markings, yet still very much a frog.

Traditionally when one thinks of socialists, images of bearded men and hairy women—sweating in some dark Café, plotting to do away with the bourgeoisie come to mind. Or perhaps a figure, hunched over a camp fire in a jungle somewhere, (sweating) dressed in olive drab beside his comrades, inspiring the proletariat to rise up and overthrow their capitalist oppressors by force in a violent upheaval, ¡Viva la Revolución!

And that is the way it has happened in most of the places stricken with socialism. It begins with an intellectual degenerate, inspiring revolution amongst the lower classes in a society, who are then armed—socialism normally attacks from the bottom up.

In a society as powerful and throughout most of our history, incredibly prosperous like the United States, socialism cannot rely on the old ways. The old ways work well in underdeveloped nations, but in the West, a softer revolution was in order.

"You Americans are so gullible. No, you won't accept Communism outright; but we'll keep feeding you small doses of Socialism until you will finally wake up and find that you already have Communism. We won't have to fight you; we'll so weaken your economy, until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands." ~ Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita was right in as much as we are all but completely there, he was wrong in that America is not awake. So well has the left's agenda worked in America, wakefulness is a state beyond reach for far too many people.

In America socialism doesn’t rise from the bottom, it is a pincer with power infecting the top of our society, manipulating the bottom. The pincer's target however is unchanged—the middle class, the true bourgeoisie.

The middle class in western societies controls the means of prosperity, the capital. Whether it manifests as goods, services…Or the most important capital of all, productive working people.

The middle class is not just the strata controlling capital, it is also the largest in the nation and the population most vested in maintaining stability. It is therefore the most frightening element in a society for socialists and therefore undermined at all cost.

For the socialist oligarchy on top, it is about power and maintaining power—For the lower strata it’s about envying what they have not achieved by their own energy, it is resentment, a destructive force readily and habitually used by the socialists on top. Grant entitlements and you will be loved, believed and rewarded with power. 

The leftist top is therefore vested in maintaining a sense of victimhood and entitlement in the lower classes. so the leftist elites work tirelessly to subvert the hard work of the middle class.

This is why the gun-control issue is so vitally important today. You see, leftists, socialists in general, are not at all against guns, not the ones on top at least. No ruling socialist is. It is important to arm the people, until you have reached your ends, then it is important to disarm the people, just in case enough of them do shake off their state of somnolence.

The elites have to keep the guns in the hands of those it controls. They cannot control the middle class, so the guns must be eliminated or at least reduced in the largest and least controllable strata. The strata standing in the way of complete control.

The leftists now control much of law enforcement and the military at the top, but in a more circumspect manner they also control the weapons on the bottom of society.

You see, crime is a part of that lower pincer exerting pressure on the middle. Criminals cannot be effected by gun laws, because they don’t obey them. The criminal, like law enforcement and the military, will always have access to firearms.

The poor who are not criminals, and a great deal of the gullible in every strata, are taught through liberal agitprop to hate guns. This is accepted by many of the poor even while they themselves are often the victims of the crimes they are most likely, due to circumstances to encounter personally.

The number of those guns on the bottom rises commensurate with the economic pressure exerted from the liberal’s failed economic policies at the top. Crime rises when those of already questionable character, react to fewer opportunities and choose destructive behavior.

Oppress the free market with out of control taxation and the threat of more of the same. Compound it with absurd regulations as a reaction to false science and woefully bad business models, all working to weaken job growth and reduce opportunity and voila, you increase your pool of victims/voters.

Tragically, the middle, the key to prosperity, is trapped between a government it fears is becoming too powerful and criminality growing ever larger and bolder. All while facing an assault on their ability to defend themselves with any level of equality from either point of the pincer.

Why are elements of the government working to undermine the group of American citizens least responsible for the misuse of firearms? Because that is what socialists do.

When I read the Vice President is quietly pressuring the state of Colorado to enact some of the strictest gun laws in the nation in order to have a state in the West, a state other than liberal bastions like, California, New York and Illinois comply with the President’s gun agenda, I am as always reminded of Scripture:

And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Ephesians 5:11-16

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The "Holly" Bible

A major reason for my becoming a Christian was that I was shown the Old Testament prophecies concerning Christ, beginning with the first telling of the gospel in Genesis 3:15: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

This passage is known as the Protoevangelium.  Proto meaning first and evangelium refers to the gospel message, the good news of salvation through Christ—In other words the "first gospel."

Here God is telling Satan, from the beginning, exactly what his demise will be. God tells Satan he is destroyed by the seed of a woman, this is Christ born of a virgin. The serpent is told he is dealt a deathblow by the seed while Satan will only be able to temporarily hurt the seed. Though the seed is struck down, He would again rise.

As a Muslim, I was taught to believe that Jesus was a prophet--But when confronted with the reality of the vast number of Old Testament prophecies concerning Christ that were 100% fulfilled in the person of Jesus in the New Testament, I had to ask myself a very important question.

If the Holy Bible (in the Old Testament) was prophetically 100% correct in foretelling the first coming of Christ and as no historian, (that is not on the fringe at least) secular or otherwise disputes the historicity of the person of Jesus, wouldn’t it be logical to assume the Holy Bible likewise correct regarding His return?

This compelled me to seek after Christ for no other reason beyond self-preservation. When I found Him and understood how much God loved me through Christ Jesus, I loved Him! This is what is meant by: "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." Romans 10:17

Christ is the Word! Christ is the Message in both Old and New Testaments!

Which is why I am so sorely disappointed in the History Channel’s mini series titled “The Bible.” In removing all of the foreshadows and types of Christ from the Old testament narrative, as this mini series did in what I saw of it, it does exactly what a Facebook friend, Bolo Fifth Column Cheung said:

"God can use anything, yes. But so can the enemy. The enemy is a roaring lion seeking for someone to devour. Or rather, how about the parable of the sower - the enemy is the bird - quickly devouring the seed. The problem with such programming is that it is WITHOUT the Word. It is not evangelical. It is academic. It fills the head with knowledge but not with the conviction for salvation.”

Conviction starts in the heart, it is the heart that must change. Without the head making the proper connections, you never get to the heart. This is why Scripture says:“But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” Hebrews 11:6

A person, cannot believe that God is, you aren’t rewarded with faith, until you make the proper connections. Those connections are made through the Living Word of God­--This is not just an allusion to Scripture, but to Christ Himself, it is through Christ that our faith has meaning and is fulfilled.

Indeed, it was the Old Testament saint’s faith in the promises of those prophecies concerning Christ that is their salvation—even though Christ had not yet come, they looked ahead towards His coming. We today have the luxury of being able to look back at the actual fulfillment of the promise.

This morning the Today program on NBC did a brief feature on the mini series focusing on the success of the show, attributing the success not to the public hunger for God—but rather Mark Burnett’s prowess as a producer. Comparing the mini series to Burnett’s other shows like Survivor and the Apprentice.

NBC also praised the special effects and music, remarking what better way to celebrate the birth of Christ than by having Cee Lo Green mark the occasion with a song. I feel strongly that if the first show had actually given context to what it was depicting in a sincere and honest way, particularly the actual sin of Sodom—the reportage would not have been so kindly towards the broadcast.

What we got from Burnett and his wife and co-producer Roma Downey, is a sterile offering of the Pentateuch. Some of the many reasons this show fell flat for Christians who actually love the Word of God:

No context for Adam and Eve or Cain and Abel, No protoevangelium, No context for Noah’s story, no Melchizedek. No context for Sodom, No struggle of Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness and therefore none of the subsequent mercy from God towards them. No revelation on the person of Ishmael explaining his descendants and their present day barbarism and warlike nature.

Isaac was too young, in fact he was at least as large as Abraham at the time of his testing, Isaac carried all of the firewood for the sacrifice, a small boy couldn’t do that. The Holy Bible does not depict him entreating his father to spare his life, in fact Isaac’s faith was as strong as his fathers, he was a willing sacrifice. This is what made it a foreshadowing of God the Father offering His Son Jesus Christ another willing sacrifice for all of mankind’s sake. Without the proper context you never make the connection that God as Abraham bore witness, would provide His own Sacrifice.

No story of Jacob wrestling with God, another Old Testament allusion to Christ providing more contextual grist for evangelism. No Story of Joseph… The theological errors are enumerable. In fact what you have is a separation of the Bible’s theology from the narrative. Not exactly what you would expect when you read Roma Downey’s reason for making this program: "Three-and-a-half years ago, I felt the call to do this, I got my husband to share the vision. He is a great man for making things happen. He doesn't hear the word no."

Frankly, if I had realized ahead of time that Joel Osteen, T.D. Jakes and Rick Warren acted as consultants on this project I would have known to expect what I got from the show—These are not men known for their Scriptural fealty.

Roma and Burnett’s choices for consultants do serve smartly as a separator, distinctly demonstrating the difference between this show and sincere efforts like Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ”, which did by the way open with Genesis 3:15 laying the foundation for the “Passion”.

I was not surprised when I learned one of the men of God Mel Gibson used as a consultant for his film was Lee Strobel, the author of the wonderful book, “TheCase For Christ”, because I thought of Strobel’s book while watching the film in the theatre.

I find it interesting how God uses flawed men like Mel Gibson and King David before him, to deliver works of such profound worth—Whilst the outwardly good like Downey provide such utter tripe. It is indeed a puzzlement.

I enjoy a good sword fight as much as the next guy, but it would have been much more powerful to show what actually happened in Sodom that allowed Lot and his family to escape unscathed, instead of the angels fighting their way out. I can catch a good sword fight watching the History Channel’s new Viking program.

 The Holy Bible is filled to the rim with wonderful adventure stories as this mini series clearly illustrates. But without the spiritual context, making the whole thing the love story of God towards man in a desire to reconcile us to Him, it is just that, another adventure story.

“Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.” II Timothy 3:5 What you have in the History Channels “Bible” mini series is perfectly described by that passage. It is the “Hollywood Translation”   In fact, simply calling the show “The Bible” is apt, as the “Holy” has been removed from it, replaced with a holly. The sin of omission is often more harmful, indeed in some cases more deadly, than a plain dealing lie.

Digital Publius