T. A. McMahon & Ed Newby (Part 2)

Program Description:

Tom and TBC Staff member Ed Newby continue their discussion of the History Channel miniseries The Bible.

Transcript:

Gary: Welcome to Search the Scriptures 24/7, a radio ministry of The Berean Call featuring T.A. McMahon. I’m Gary Carmichael. Thanks for tuning in. In today’s program, Tom continues his discussion with TBC staff member Edwin Newby on the topic “Is the History Channel’s Mini-series ‘The Bible’ Biblical?” Now, along with his guest, here’s TBC Executive Director, Tom McMahon.

Tom: Well, this is a continuation of our discussion of The History Channel’s The Bible mini-series. I have in the studio with me Ed Newby, who’s on our staff and who has previewed the first part of this series. I think there’s—what—how many parts, Ed?

Ed: Five.

Tom: Five…

Ed: It’s a five-part series.

Tom: It goes for, well, it’s a 10-hour mini-series. Now, Ed, for those who missed our earlier program, which Gary will tell us later where it can be heard, nevertheless, for those who haven’t listened to our first program, give them a—just a brief overview of the series, but although it’ll be brief, Ed, I want to quote from a Charisma magazine article promoting the series. In the article, the writer says, “They had a measure of creative license available to them.” So, just give us a brief overview, and give us some elements that you didn’t mention last week of so-called creative license.

Ed: All sorts of creative license. I did mention last week that when Abraham was called to sacrifice Isaac in the Bible, it said it was three days journey away. No, it’s the hill right next to the tent that they’re climbing, so Sarah can view that, so they can get the full emotional impact when she realizes what’s going on, and she begins frantically clawing her way up the hill. There’s that.

And I mentioned the grievous things—the grievous things are the omissions of the elements of the gospel foreshadowing the full and complete sacrifice of Christ. Where Isaac asks his father, “Father, here’s the wood for the sacrifice; here’s the, you know, the fire for the….Where’s the lamb?”

Abraham—he’s very, you know, he’s very emotionally wrought, and it almost seems like he’s being rough to his son as he’s taking him up the hill to kill him. And he says [speaking roughly], “God will make a sacrifice.”

And then, in the Bible—I didn’t touch on this—in the Bible it says that after he had bound Isaac and laid him on the woods, it said he lifted his knife; at that point, the Lord says, “Abraham! Hold your hand. Stay your hand, for now I know….”

In the video, no, he not only raises the knife, but he brings it down and God interrupts him at the last moment so he misses Isaac and stabs one of the logs underneath Isaac. And then, instead of in the Scriptures where he turns and sees a lamb—excuse me, a ram with its horns caught in a thicket—no! He turns and there’s this incredibly spotless white lamb—and they must have used computer graphics on this thing because it looks like it’s glowing, you know, out here in the desert, there’s this incredibly spotless lamb. It’s just a…

Tom: Well, it’s just creative license.

Ed: Creative license.

Tom: Right. Wow. You know, folks, if you think we’re pushing this, think about it for a second. People, I don’t care how sincere they are, but to take creative license with the Word of God? I mean, folks, really, it’s just unfathomable.

Look, there are two options when it comes to hearing from God. We either have Him speaking to us directly through His Word, which is what the Word of God claims—you know, more than 4,000 times we have “Thus saith the Lord,” or “The Word of the Lord came to me.” Okay? So, what’s the other option? Well, the other option [is] man’s opinions, guesses, maybe a combination of what they think God said, or so on. And this is what’s called “creative license.” It’s man. “There’s a way that seems right unto a man,” Proverbs tells us twice, “but the end thereof are the ways of death.”

And that “death” doesn’t mean necessarily physical death. It means a separation from truth. In other words, men are putting their own ideas—introducing them to the Scriptures, the Word of God. Scripture says we’re not to add to the Scriptures; we’re not to subtract from it. Why? Because it is God’s Word! “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” That’s what we’re dealing with here, and that’s the problem.

Ed: Amen.

Tom: Now, Ed, again, I’m referring to Charisma magazine, and they are very enthusiastic about the production. Last week you mentioned Focus on the Family…

Ed: And they’re enthusiastic too!

Tom: Yeah. And there are others. They list the support that this production had—I’m talking about the Charisma magazine—Joel Osteen…

Ed: Now, he was one of the biblical advisors.

Tom: Whoa! You mean the guy who was on Larry King when Larry asked him some really good questions, but controversial questions, and over and over again, Joel said, “Well, Larry, I just don’t know. I just don’t know, Larry.”

Now, Bishop T.D. Jakes, a supporter of this. He says it “draws us to the Divine Author.” Now, again, going through this article, if you’re familiar with Charisma, you would expect this, but still. Throughout it, it says (I’m quoting): “It was clear that something supernatural and wonderful had just arrived and shown up.” They talk about “an encounter with the Holy Spirit that day.” “Throughout the process, the filming, God made His presence known [I’m quoting]. They had people praying…” Now, look, you want people to pray. We’re not putting down prayer. Everything should begin—begin with prayer, continue with prayer, and end with prayer. We believe…we’re a praying ministry here.

Now, nevertheless, they are saying that God had put His stamp of approval, His imprimatur, and more than that, He has supernaturally helped the production here.

Ed: Yes.

Tom: Ed, based on what you’ve said, it’s your opinion, nevertheless, what you’ve described is so far removed from the Word of God it’s incredible.

Ed: Well, absolutely. I’m holding back on the examples I could give…

Tom: Just give us a couple of other ones, and then I want to talk about filming the Bible in general. Go ahead…

Ed: Okay. Well, Moses. We know the account. Pharaoh had commanded all male babies to be thrown in the Nile River, and his parents hid him until he was too large to hide any more, so they put him in an ark and hid him in the bulrushes…

Tom: Right. It was a basket, basically, that…

Ed: Well, in, of course, their haste to get to what they view as the part that they’re going to concentrate on, they omit all of that stuff. And so what they have is Moses growing up in Pharaoh’s court, fighting a running battle with Pharaoh’s natural-born son all the time, and they’re fighting all the time. And they reach a point where they’re—the heir to Pharaoh won’t back off, so they’re having a duel, and Moses whacks him on the face and scars his face badly. And so Pharaoh’s son runs to Moses’s stepmother, i.e., Pharaoh’s daughter that adopted him, and says, “It’s time. You tell him who he belongs to. You tell him he doesn’t fit here.”

And so, he doesn’t know anything about his ancestry, but yet we forget in the Scriptures, the Lord, in His wonderful, miraculous provision, ensured that his own mother could nurse him—and in those days, take care of him, that would probably be four or five years, maybe even six years old. I find it hard to believe that his mother didn’t tell him about their people. Or didn’t tell him about the Lord.

Tom: Well, the scenario that you described, give me chapter and verse for it.

Ed: It’s not there.

Tom: It’s not there. And again, folks, that’s the problem. Now, Ed, I want to launch off on something that’s I think, not just germane, it’s critical to the idea that the Bible, the Word of God, can be presented visually. Folks, my take is that I recommend a Bible that is a literal translation, because you can check it out. You can go to Strong’s Concordance or you can actually look at the verse, you can get back to some basics.

And look, you don’t have to know Hebrew or Greek, because there’s a lot of helps out there that help you find, “What does this word mean in the Greek?” And “What does this word mean in the Hebrew?” So you have that option with regard to checking things out. You know, our ministry here is The Berean Call. They searched the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. And so, my view is you start with a literal translation, and then as you move away from that, whether it be a Bible that’s a dynamic equivalent, which is kind of by committee. You know, this is they believe what God said, you know—the group got together and said, “Well, here’s what we think it means and what it said.” And then you move—again, we’re moving from objective, the objective Word of God, to something that’s very subjective and becomes more and more subjective.

So from the dynamic equivalent we move on to something like a paraphrase. Now you’ve got a problem because, whether it be Kenneth Taylor, whether it be, well—I would put him in a separate group, he wrote…

Ed: A trans—The Living Bible.

Tom: The Living Bible, right, for his children, and so on. Nevertheless, some problems. We’ve moved into Kenneth Taylor’s view of how this should be. Then you move into what I think is the worst Bible out there, and I wouldn’t—I hate to even call it a Bible—but that would be The Message by Eugene Peterson, and so on.

Ed: Yes.

Tom: But, again, you see, we’ve moved from the objective Word of God to the more subjective, more subjective, and so on. Well, for all—as bad as The Message is, and so on, to me, even worse—it’s like going over the cliff, and that would be a visual presentation of the Bible.

Now, it isn’t just the example that we’ve been talking about, the Bible Series, and so on, but it’s not valid to describe, to put on the screen—because it’s an interpretation—to take something that ought to be understood literally, first and foremost, objectively, to move something into the…into a medium that…well, what are we talking about here? What? We’ve got a director, we’ve got art directors, we’ve got actors, we’ve got all these people who are making decisions as to what should go on the screen.

And then there’s the issue—I was a screenwriter in Hollywood for a number of years. I know the medium, and I know how you go about something. As a screenwriter, my job was to manipulate the emotions of the audience. That’s what good filmmaking is. You want to throw popcorn at the screen, you know, when the bad guy’s up there, or you want to hide behind something…it’s a manipulative medium that’s primarily for entertainment. Some films are okay and some are just absolutely bad news.

Now, what about—you mentioned earlier—describing Downey and Burnett. Weren’t they interested in drama and manipulating the emotions of people?

Ed: Well, in the interview at Focus on the Family, that’s what Mark Burnett said: “We hit the emotional high spots. We knew that was how to reach people.”

Tom: And could they do it with what they got specifically from the Word of God, or do they have to add a lot to it?

Ed: They added and subtracted, and of course, I think the subtractions are the worst part of this thing.

Tom: Folks, let me give you an example, because I heard this over and over again with The Passion of the Christ, which the evangelicals supported that movie—they actually brought it into a point where Mel Gibson, who put up his own money, got more than his share back, which was amazing, thanks to, again, the evangelical church who bought into it.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, this production was done in Morocco, okay? That’s not the Holy Land, all right?

Ed: Right.

Tom: Now, to give our audience an example, you usually scout locations, and if you want something accurate, if you want to do something about the…you want to present the Mount of Olives, for example, so you get a director and a cameraman, the art director, and they go to the Mount of Olives, and they start looking around and decide, “Hey, this is where it took place, okay? Let’s do it!”

But they’re looking around, and they’re saying, “You know what? I don’t think so. This won’t quite grab our audience. But I know this place in Italy, you know, where we could go. Oh man! That really would impress them.” That’s what the movies are all about. It’s not about truth, it’s not about accuracy. And, Ed, you articulated just earlier, all of the dramatic so-called presentations that you’ve seen thus far, and you’ve only seen one part of the series, and so on, but you cannot present—my point here is—you cannot present the Bible accurately visually. There’s not enough information.

What about dialog? Ed, talk about that for a minute. Do you find the dialog that you saw—was that true to the Scriptures? Was any of that in the Scriptures?

Ed: No. Again, there are numerous examples I could bring up. Sarah and Abraham—the dialog they had: then here’s Abraham. He’s being asked to sacrifice his son, and so here’s Abraham wandering around outside the tent, agonizing over the fact that he’s been asked of God to sacrifice his son, and he reaches this point of anguish, and he just calls out, “No! Haven’t I shown you enough!!”

Tom: Yeah, give me chapter and verse for that.

Ed: Not at all, not at all.

Tom: Yeah. You see, again, folks, what we’re trying to do is challenge this production on what basis? On the basis of we’re believers. We love the Word of God. We love the Bible. If somebody—if they could pull this off to accurately present the Bible visually, we’d have no problem with it. But in no way can this happen, as I mentioned. Now you have not just a translation, an interpretation—you know, whether it be a Eugene Peterson: problem there, big time; or by a committee trying to tell us what they believe God has presented in His Word. Now you have director, producer, art director, cameraman, actors, and so on, all giving you interpretations. Now—just visually—is that what Moses looked like? You mentioned in the first program, these angels looking like Ninjas, okay?

Ed: Yeah.

Tom: Is that what I’m to think? Now, here’s a stunning statement in Charisma magazine: Burnett, the producer says, “We live in a creative world, and our job was to make the most compelling visual storytelling of the Bible.” Wow. By corrupting it? By distorting it? By introducing things that are not true?

And he says, “The Bible is a living book…well, the writer…”

Ed: Is that like “living constitution”? We can change it according to our whim?

Tom: Exactly. “The Bible’s a living book. We’ve been able to breathe fresh visual life into it.” Wow! I mean, the Bible that’s been around for thousands of years—it doesn’t have life? But that’s the mentality of man. This is a marketing mentality. But the problem is—that’s why I feel bad for our young people. You get them so excited—so many marketing devices to get our children interested in the Bible by dramatizing it and adding things, like Captain America, but now we’ve got Captain Bible, you know, and so on…

Ed: Bibleman, yeah.

Tom: Bibleman. The problem is our kids say, “Well, wait a minute! That was exciting, but now I’m reading these words…” On the other hand, the Bible is the most exciting book that there is. Folks! Have you got any books at home, you that have major libraries of maybe works from antiquity, whatever it might be? Do you have any that claim to be the Word of God, given by the prophets? I don’t think so.

Just the Word of God. The B-I-B-L-E. Ed, there’s so many ways that we could critique this. Trying to be—well, we’re trying to be accurate, but we’re also trying to be somewhat compassionate. Because we don’t know the hearts of these people. We know what Roma Downey’s into, you know, it’s a false religion, a false belief system.

Nevertheless, as I mentioned last week, it seems that her husband’s heart or attitude was to get the Bible into the hands of many people—he’s just going about it in a wrong way. Now, why would I say that? Let’s take verses such as 2 Peter:1:19We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
See All...: “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation, for the prophecy came, not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” What does all that mean? It just means simply, this is God’s Word, coming from God! This is verbal, plenary inspiration, which is supported by 2 Timothy:3:16All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
See All...: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” This is God’s Word. And they’re not just messing with it, maybe with a sincere heart, but they are distorting it, destroying it.

Now, Ed, one thing we left out of this—and I want you to comment it—you mentioned that those who, in the production, those who met with Abraham outside of his tent—who were they?

Ed: Well, they were the two angels and someone who was called the Lord.

Tom: So would this come under idolatry? Is this an image? Is this a presentation—and, folks, you’re going to see it as the actor—you know, for example, in the other parts of the series, when they get to a Christ character—someone who plays Jesus—they have a Portuguese actor named Diogo Morgado, if that’s the way you pronounce his name—this is somebody attempting to play Christ? The God-man? A man so pure, you know, sinless God-man? How do you pull that off? It’s a false Christ! Jesus said in Matthew 24, there will be many false Christs. Here’s another one. I don’t care how sincere they are.

Ed: I wanted to mention one thing, because I know that when you wrote the book on The Passion of the Christ, we got a lot of input from readers who really loved the movie who pointed out, they said, “Well, look at the Old Testament! Look at the whole furnishings of the tabernacle. Look at the ark of the covenant. Look at all of the details that God commanded them to do.”

But the question that they need to ask themselves: Who saw it? The people didn’t see it! Only the high priest saw it, and when they disassembled the temple, it was covered up as they disassembled it. Nobody saw any of that. But if they wanted to find out what was in there, they had to go to the Word of God. And we see admonitions throughout the Old Testament—all those passages in Deuteronomy 5 about the Word of God: “You’re to be familiar with it.” Christ rebuked those two disciples on the road to Emmaus because they were slow of heart to believe all that was written.

Tom: Right. See, again, it had to do with the objective Word of God vs. man’s subjective ideas—his creative ideas, according to this article. So no matter how sincere, folks, I challenge everyone out there—I did a little book when The Passion of the Christ came out called Showtime for the Sheep, and if you get nothing else out of that book, I give you some instructions, some information, about how a movie is made, what the elements that play into it are, and how that couldn’t possibly work to present God’s Word, God’s truth, and so on. But anyway, you might pick up the book; ask us for the book. It’s called Showtime for the Sheep?

Ed, what do you see the outcome, in terms of the popularity? Fifteen million viewers, at least in their first part of the series. What’s your take? What’s the outcome going to be?

Ed: Well, we know that number’s probably going to go up as word of mouth spreads, but the end result is that people will have implanted in their minds erroneous ideas. And I don’t see a great turning back to Scripture. I know they’re pushing—“Have a home viewing of The Bible mini-series in your house.” They’re getting all the DVDs ready. They’re getting all the books ready. Roma Downey has a devotional based upon that. They have all of these things, but again, they’re seeded with their ideas.

Tom: Right. And the sad part is—well, there—I mean, tragic, I think would be a better term, this may be the only view of the Bible of the individuals that the Word of God presents the ideas about them—this may be the only thing that people ever get. They may not sit down and really get into the Bible. I pray that they would. But they’re going to be disappointed based on what they may have viewed, and looking for that in the Scriptures, because it’s just not there. On the one hand—if they persist, they’re going to find something far more exciting—I mean, this is the Word of God, and as you continue to read—and that’s our encouragement to those who profess to be believers, those who are believers, and those who are seeking God. It’s the Word of God It’s so exciting. Scripture interprets Scripture. We teach and encourage familiarity here—you read it and you read it and you read it. And you read it and you read it and you read it. And the more you read it, the more you understand it, the more you see Scripture interpreting Scripture, and it’s incredibly exciting!

Gary: You’ve been listening to Search the Scriptures 24/7, with T.A. McMahon, a radio ministry of The Berean Call. We offer a wide variety of materials to help you in your study of God’s Word. For a complete list of materials and a free subscription to our monthly newsletter, contact us at PO Box 7019, Bend, Oregon 97708; call us at 800-937-6638; or visit our website at thebereancall.org. I’m Gary Carmichael. Join us again next time as Tom addresses: “Does the Catholic Church
Teach the Gospel.” Thanks for tuning in, and we encourage you to search the Scriptures 24/7.