The Whole Bible on Film
John C. Rankin
(February 2, 2013)
Across several millennia the Bible was written through the checks and balances of thousands of eye-witnesses, the writings of perhaps hundreds, and the final redactions of some dozens. This was how the Holy Spirit inspired a fully trustworthy written account of the acts of God in history, of his relationship to us, and of us to one another in his sight.
This reflects the marvelous investment of God into the image of God, even into a broken humanity (e.g., 2 Corinthians 4:7: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us”). The Bible was not “dictated” through passive vessels (which is the claim of the Qur’an through Muhammad), but rather, the true Creator, Yahweh Elohim, worked his revelation through the storylines of so many people across the years.
And this is the power of the Bible. Only when we know the whole storyline of creation, sin and redemption can we know life-giving doctrine. “Doctrine” or “teaching” starts first with us knowing the storyline, and then makes application. Thus, prior to the giving of the Ten Commandments, Yahweh said through Moses: “I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). The Hebrews could not grasp the doctrinal and life-giving power of the Ten Commandments, apart from the nature of deliverance from 400 years of slavery in Egypt.
The vision of the TEI is to start an immensely large project across many years, where the storyline from the Garden of Eden to the Island of Patmos is covered in film, faithful to the text. Here, all of us can imagine ourselves inside any given moment of the story as the shared humanity from then to now has been shown well.
In the vision to first see my book, Jesus, in the Face of His Enemies (jfemovie.org), an example of getting inside the storyline is shown.
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