return of the king of darkness

I do not like scary movies, gory movies, or violent movies. I do however reserve the right to revoke the previous statement, as I have done for the likes of Fight Club and Kill Bill. Once upon a time, a friend named Irby (no, the title is not in reference to him) convinced me to watch a little horror flick despite my protest. Mind you, I believe that Hellraiser was one of the selections for that evening, and the parts of it I unfortunately glimpsed are still stuck in my brain to this day. However, in one of his moments of wise decision-making, he introduced me to one of my favorite movies ~ The Prophecy. Now if you haven’t seen the movie, be careful going to find it. It has been known to get mixed up at Blockbuster with a film by a similar name about some furry alien creatures or something like that. I also would recommend not bothering with the sequel, or with The Prophecy III, which really were not very necessary additions to the first. Luckily, I own a personal copy, which sits on the shelf right next to Stephen King’s The Stand.

I realized last night that this movie had a little too much impact on my psyche. Last night at my women’s bible study we were discussing the Holy Spirit and Satan and all of that good stuff. Also, last Sunday’s sermon was about the origins of Satan. So I’m all in the mood to pull out The Prophecy and brush up on my quotes. The movie is a great illustration for the lack of power that Satan actually holds in the world. Is he evil? Sure. Is he powerful? Sure. But he is not all-powerful, and like it or not, he is still under God’s control.

Just to give you an idea of how entertaining this movie is, you have Eric Stoltz as the angel Simon, and Adam Goldberg & Amanda Plummer as undead. But most importantly, you have Christopher Walken as Gabriel and Viggo Mortensen as Lucifer ~ need I say more? Anyway, on to the point of my post… without trying to summarize the whole movie, Gabriel is fighting the humans (specifically one named Thomas) over an evil soul. (“but I thought Gabriel was a good angel” – just watch the movie). We were talking in our study about being aware of the warring principalities around us, and if that awareness should be a source of fear. My mind automatically shifted into movie illustration mode, where in the opening sequence of the movie Thomas asks the question: “Some people lose their faith because Heaven shows them too little. But how many people lose their faith because Heaven showed them too much?”

The movie gives us a glimpse of the spiritual warfare occurring around us, but it simultaneously gives us a glaring vision of Satan’s lack of power. Lucifer, trying to establish comradery withThomas in an attempt to gain his compliance, confides: “You know what Hell really is Thomas? It's not lakes of burning oil or chains of ice. It's being removed from God's sight. It's hard to believe... so hard.” Satan knows what Hell is – that is his realm, after all – and he knows that it’s hard to be removed from God’s sight. If Satan were an all-powerful being, he would be confronting God on His own plane, but Satan has been completely removed from God’s sight. God has basically given him the hand, and Satan can’t do anything about it. As if his personal knowledge of his pitiful state were not enough, Gabriel also confronts Lucifer about his separation from God: “Lucifer. Sitting in your basement. Sulking about your breakup with the boss. You're nothing.” You almost want to feel sorry for the guy, excepting that he’s the prince of darkness and all that.

Its really quite an empowering thing to know that all of God’s power is accessible to us through His Spirit that lives within us, and that the power we fear (or at least blame) the most really has no power at all ~ Other than the power to sway our weak minds and even weaker emotions ~ but hey, the guys gotta have a little fun…