A call to Hollywood

While doing a study on the temple, I was struck by David's zeal for finding an appropriate site for its construction, a resting place for the ark of the covenant:

I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids, until I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob (Ps. 132:4-5).

We are given no details as to how David went about his search, but whatever method he pursued proved fruitless. God would reveal the location He had chosen when and how it pleased Him.

I then read 1 Chronicles 21 about David's sin of taking a census, and how God gave him a choice of punishment — three years of famine, three months of military disasters or three days of divinely-directed plague. David chose to fall into God's hands rather than man's. Through this incident God revealed the hitherto secret location. An angel was dispatched from heaven charged with the task of slaughtering thousands of Israelites. Towards the end of the angel's depredations, we read that,

And the angel of the Lord stood by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. Then David lifted his eyes and saw the angel of the Lord standing between earth and heaven, having in his hand a drawn sword stretched out over Jerusalem. So David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell on their faces (vss. 15-16).

The narrative relates that Ornan, the owner of the threshing floor, continued to thresh in spite of the angel's awesome presence, while his four sons “hid themselves” (vs. 20). I tried to picture in my mind's eye this angel stretching all the way from earth into heaven, sword outstretched. What a spitfire of a sight that would have been. David's personal prophet, Gad, instructed David to go and build an altar where the angel stood. He did just that, and offered up numerous

sacrifices which were consumed by fire from heaven, whereupon the angel sheathed his sword and vanished. God had, at last, after hundreds of years of Israelite occupation of the promised land, revealed the spot where He wanted the temple built. To add intrigue to the story, the site was one and the same as the spot where Abraham went to offer up his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice hundreds of years earlier.

Then I thought to myself, this whole story just cries out for a movie. Is anyone in Hollywood listening? Two or three box office hits could be made about the story of the temple through the ages. What would I give to see the Queen of Sheba meet Solomon. You chaps in Hollywood could make it real for me. Use the gift you have for a worthy cause.

And then you have the amazing account of the conquest of the promised land during the days of Joshua. To my knowledge, nobody has ever taken the detailed accounts in Scripture, together with the mass of information provided by archeological research, and turned them into a Hollywood epic. Why not? What's wrong with those film makers? Don't they realize that in the Bible they have all the material they could want for dozens, scores, even hundreds of brilliant movies? Sure, we've had Cecil B. De Mille's “Ten Commandments”, and I'm not sure whose “Samson and Delilah”. But they were made a long time ago, before modern special effects techniques had been perfected.

Come on you believers with clout; put pressure on Hollywood to get with the strength. Give us Bible lovers what we want. “The Passion” showed you what can be done. But please make sure you get the facts straight.

And hey, guys. Don't do it just for the money. Why not make a movie to the glory of God? Use your God-given gifts for a God-glorifying purpose, not for selfish ends.