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The Vision Movie (Update 2)

April 15, 2010
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The Vision Movie Update 2

Movie Messaging

by Manny Edwards

Why Christians must master film craft!

By and large, the church has lost its Biblical worldview without even knowing it. If you were the devil and you wanted to create a generation gap in the church, how would you do it?

Almost every institutional church in this country fractures worshipers by age and demographic just like the secular academic institutions do. You have “college groups,” “teen groups,” “young married’s class,” “recently divorced groups,” “empty nesters groups.” We use religious language and call the assembly a congregation, but we don’t actually carry out a Biblical process of congregation; we use a secular process called segregation. We say one thing, but do the opposite. Is it any wonder there’s a disconnect between the Christian lifestyle taught in the Bible and the life actually lived out in the church?

In his letter to Titus, Paul lays out a blueprint for the structure of the church. Among other things, he tells Titus that the elder should teach the younger, but now they have no opportunity to do so. The older folks are in their empty nesters class keeping their wisdom and experience to themselves, the young couples are in their young married class pooling their ignorance, and the children are in their own classes coloring pictures of Noah’s ark. Responsibilities that God gives to parents are now sloughed off to Sunday School teachers. Real social security is a large extended family clan, but now even Christians look to the state for health care insurance, housing assistance, and food stamps. They’re used to having institutions care for them, instead of a family.

With the family and church now out of the picture, people learn their lifestyle principles from media. The 2002 Barna Research Group reported that media are the most influential forms of communication today. Movies use story craft to advance a message, and the message Christians are getting in theaters rarely reflects a Biblical worldview. At home, opportunities to spend time together and interact are eaten up by TV shows and computer games. There goes the chance to teach your children the words of God. You can’t “talk of them when thou sittest in thine house” unless you’re talking to each other in the first place.

We must change that. The objective is to turn Christians to the task of living out the Word of God; to restore the words of God in their hearts; to make them effective bearers of the gospel of salvation. Because they’re watching movies anyway, our strategy is to master film craft and take a Biblical worldview to the audience.

The theatrical adaptation of Debi Pearl’s The Vision is a rare opportunity to make an entertaining film rich in story, with an epic theme that will motivate Christians to treasure the words of God and save the lost.

Join us. Visit The Vision Film Blog and click on the “Insiders” tab. Then fill in your e-mail address so you can help promote our next movie.

Mel Cohen Update

We have created a line item budget for The Vision movie. We have been looking for creative ways to fund it. We have found that the State of Tennessee has two specific grant programs. One offers a 17% rebate on qualified expenditure while the other offers a 15% rebate.

In addition to this we have applied to our local county for seed money to get this project started. The return to the county would be in excess of $1,000,000 of new revenue, so we are praying that they will come through with the initial funding.

If we can answer any questions on The Vision movie, send me an email at: [email protected] or go to The Vision Film Blog.

[Note: The Vision Film website is no longer at the following address: www.TheVisionFilm.com.]

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5 comments on “The Vision Movie (Update 2)”

  1. Thank you for writing this, Mr. Edwards. A friend of mine and I were just praying about how to include our children in our main church meeting. We felt impressed in our prayers that not including them is sin, since Jesus said to let the children come to him and to not forbid them! I am hopeful for this movie. I am also hopeful that my children and all children will know how vital they are to the body of Christ and that they will not see a gap between generations, but a bridge of relationships on all sides!

  2. The second time that you mention the website (in the last paragraph), it is in error. The first time is correct: Use the word "film" (not 'movie') in the web address.

    I hope you don't have any problems since there's already a movie with that same title.

  3. As a former Army intel type, Mrs. Pearl's book shook me with its accuracy. I struggled through understanding a lot of the doctrinal assertions in the book (I hadn't heard some of them before, so they frequently take some Scripture-searching to understand), but the political maneuverings depicted in "The Vision" are creepily accurate, and verifiable by anyone with a computer at a library. If you have any questions as to the veracity of her descriptions of radical Muslim methodology, go back and examine Egyptian politics for the last 70 years. Sad to say, it is now accepted in Egypt that when applying for many jobs, there is inevitably a section where there are only two boxes to check: "Muslim" or "Christian". You check "Christian" and you can just forget about the job. I have friends who have had to leave Egypt for this very reason- and it isn't even a "radical" Islamic state like Iran or Yemen. If you have further disputes, look at Great Britain, where the push to institute Sharia law as a parallel (and superceding) court system is already in motion. "The Vision" as a movie would be profoundly decried as an anti-Islamic, intolerant, pro-fundamentalist Christian film whose lack of acceptance of all faiths and shameless portrayal of faith in Jesus Christ as being the only way to Heaven demonstrates the filmmakers' stubborn refusal to join the worldwide movement toward breaking the fetters of old-fashioned morality and the narrow-minded view of Christianity as the sole hope of the world.

    ...those are some pretty good reasons for making this movie.

    As to the other portion of this article: My wife and I have been trying for several years to find older Christian mentors to teach us each how to become more God-focused...but the standard response is usually, "We're too busy" or "You should really join a young married's group." The concept of following the Biblical pattern given in Timothy is apparently thought to be disposable by much of the present-day Church. We've actually left a church because of the garbage taught by unsupervised Sunday school teachers, and are at the point where our kids above infant age are staying with us unless we know and trust the individual teacher AND their material. Of course, finding adult mentors willing to sacrifice the comfort zone of studying only with their own age group is still a challenge, so keep us in prayer.