TV Series “KINGS” Based on Bible’s King David and Saul Story

Those  watching the TV series Kings are witnessing a rare event–a series based on a story in the Bible.

Kings chronicles the downfall of an evil king and the rise of a young man of humble origins, destined to ascend to that very throne. Of course, this is the story of Saul and David, found in the book of   I Samuel.

I couldn’t help but wonder just how close the writers of the show were following the story.  They have Rev. Samuels taking the prophet Samuel’s part in the story.  King Saul has become King Silas, who is an ex-general like Saul was.

David, the shepherd king, has become David Shepherd, a young man in the army who takes out an enemy tank named “Goliath” and becomes a national hero.  This earns him, like in the Bible, a spot in the king’s court.  Instead of playing the harp to soothe the king, David is a pianist.  He falls in love with Michelle, the king’s daughter, whose character parallels Michal, Saul’s daughter.

I certainly don’t blame the series’ producers for wanting to adopt this story.  The rise of King David is a wonderful story.  I would hope that it will prompt viewers to go back and read the original story in the Bible.  There is so much revelatory truth to be received.

Setting the Scene in  I Samuel

In I Samuel, we find the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob already in the Promised Land of Canaan, being persecuted by the Philistines around 1060 B.C.  God has allowed this because of their sins.

Instead of loving and reverencing the LORD (Yahweh), they ask His prophet Samuel to anoint for them a king, like the other nations around them.  Here the people want to have one of their own rule them as king and not hearken to the prophet of God, who had been guiding them for decades.

The LORD (Yahweh) speaks to Samuel, Do what the people want.  They have rejected Me–not you.  But warn them from Me as to what their new king will do to them (I Samuel 8: 5-9).

So Samuel told the people: King Saul will “take your sons” and put them in his army to fight foreign wars.  He’ll have you fabricating “instruments of war.”  He will “take your fields” and tax you and “give it to his servants.”  He will, in other words, redistribute your wealth.  He’ll make you his servants (8: 10-18).  Sounds eerily familiar, as in what President Obama is doing and will do.

But the people loved their new king, and rejected the man of God’s warning.  And so, Samuel anoints Saul to be king of the 12 tribes of Israel.  Saul was a “choice young man,” standing taller than most.  But he did evil in the sight of the LORD, fulfilling all that was prophesied of him.

This Speaks to Our Day

The parallels are striking.  By studying divinely inspired writings, we may clearly see our own time.  For the scriptures are applicable for us in the latter days.

Our current President is like King Saul.  He carries himself like a king.  He is popular, trusted, and well-spoken, but he serves the interests of men who are against the principles of our forefathers, as Saul did.

Like Saul, his origins are tainted.  I think of Barack Obama sitting in Jeremiah Wright’s church, soaking in those spewings of hate, prejudice, and resentment for twenty years.  Whatever a man joins himself to, that he becomes.  For “how can two walk together except they be agreed?”  And yet, the sheeple still follow blindly this new “anointed” king Obama.

Oh, how America has fallen from the precepts of our ancestors.  And we, like they of old, will pay the price.

But out of the ashes will arise the spiritual sons and daughters of God, who will help Him usher in His Kingdom that will supplant the current puppet-masters’ world government scheme.

So, yes, study the story in I Samuel.  For it speaks to our day, of a new King coming, of which David, the shepherd king, is a type.  Christ, the Anointed One, shall return.

Untraceable: A Movie Review with a Christian Perspective

   Let’s see.  You take a computer wiz with a grudge against a society that he feels doesn’t care.  Then watch the geek’s hatred transform himself into a serial torturer/murderer/exhibitionist.  Yes, he puts the horror live on his website for all the world to see.  The catch?  The more the masses clamor to see the victims writhing in agony, the quicker the death comes.

     The killer says to one of his victims, “I’m not killing you.  The people clicking on to the website are to blame.  If no one wanted to view your death, then you wouldn’t be dying today.”  The cruel madman seems to take more of a sadistic pleasure in implicating society in the murders than the killings themselves.

     Diane Lane plays Jennifer Marsh, a recently widowed FBI cyber-agent who tracks down internet criminals, and, of course, gets heavily involved in this particular case.

En route to the predictable ending, we must endure three slow, gruesome murders.  We viewers of this movie are not alone for 15,000,000 people in the movie click on and view it with us as we see the counter rushing the poor victims to oblivion.

     I was reminded of the gruesome games during the era of the Roman Empire.  Christians and other innocents were fed to the lions in the Colliseum and other venues.  The Roman citizens were guilty of the blood of these martyrs, for they gawked and cheered and revelled at the slaughter.  And yet, I am sure that if they had been asked about the spectacle as they strolled home, the Romans would protest their innocence.  Reading the emails of those who watched the live streaming video of these deaths, one got the same thought.

     Untraceable.  The killer thought that his deeds were undetectable.  He worked diligently at covering his cybertracks.  He put up an effective front, slipping back into “normal” society when convenient.  He was the ultimate hypocrite and deceiver.

     “The heart is deceitfully wicked above all things; who can know it?” the prophet asks, knowing the old heart of natural man.  Many humans think that their thoughts and deeds are untraceable and undetectable, hidden from the eyes of the Creator.  Because people cannot see the invisible Spirit God, they think that He can’t see them.  It’s the ultimate self-projection and self-delusion.  In their lofty imaginations, they think that He can’t see them do their shameful selfish acts.

     But all will “give an account of every idle word,” for God “is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”  And we’ll all stand before Him someday to answer for all the deeds done in our body, which actually is designed by Him to be His temple, His residence.  For some, there will great weeping and gnashing of teeth while those who got right with Him through the “death of self” will shine as the sun.

     Untraceable?  No.  Our deeds and thoughts are most detectable.  We humans cannot hide from the eyes of God.                        Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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No Country for Old Men–Movie Review from a Christian Perspective

         A movie’s theme is the most important feature for me.  Now if you go for good acting, this movie has it.  Real life dialogue like you are there–it has it.  Stark reality with the characters caught in the clutches of naturalistic mayhem–it’s got it.  Cinematography depicting the barren, endless South Texas landscape and thus a symbol of the characters lives–impeccable.  You like suspense?  It literally moves your body around in your seat. 

     And I like all these aspects of the motion picture art.  But when the credits rolled, I found myself smothered by a cloud of hopelessness.  This picture could have been called No Hope for Any Man.

     For hopelessness is the theme and heart of this picture.  It shows how an average Joe played by Josh Brolin, a welder, gets sucked into the greedy world of drugs and money.  While hunting out in the wasteland for deer, He stumbles onto a drug deal gone bad.  Dead men, dead dogs, and dead pickup trucks lie strewn about on the desert floor, all riddled with bullets.  One truck is loaded with bricks of cocaine.  And then he finds another man with the suitcase full of bundles of hundreds–$2,000,000 to be exact.

     So he takes it and runs.  The drug syndicate bosses dispatch an absolute madman assassin after him, and you are left clutching the armrests of your chair as you begin to swim in the wake of the bloodletting that entails.

     Old Sheriff Bell, played by Tommy Lee Jones, is overwhelmed by the dozens of murders in his jurisdiction.  He has spent his life keeping the peace.  Over coffee, he and another old lawman lament this new day of violence that has overtaken them.  They call it “the evil tide” that’s washing over America.  And their faces say it all.  “It’s hopeless.  The evil is flooding over our society like a scourge.  Where is God in all this?”

     In his despair, Tommy Lee Jones says at one point, “I thought that when I got old, God would come into my life, but He hasn’t.”  Those of an older time in America remember a more innocent day.  Now it has become no country for these old men. 

     And so it went.  The crazy bounty hunter murders at will unabated, symbolizing how evil in this country grows and no one or nothing can stop it.  He walks away scott-free, no one around, at the end of the picture. 

     But I’ve got news for the Coen brothers who wrote and directed this film.  There is hope.  All signs point to our King Jesus Christ returning to this earth in our lifetime.  And he will come back and terminate the evildoers and he will staunch the evil tide of this world system.  He will establish a government of true righteousness, justice, and judgement. 

     He will dry the tears from every eye; He will exalt His followers who have crucified their selfish hearts and walked with Him in a newness of life; He will hold and comfort all who mourn.  He will heal the afflicted; He’ll give “beauty for ashes,” for the evil will lie in ashes, and His sons and daughters shall shine as they sing His words:  “In the world you shall have tribulation.  But be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”  And by believing that He dwells and abides in us, we overcome the world, also (John 16:33; I John 5:4)                                                Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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