Part 6: The religious movie is out of harmony with the whole spirit of the Scriptures and contrary to the mood of true godliness

To harmonize the spirit of the religious movie with the spirit of the Sacred Scriptures is impossible.  Any comparison is grotesque and, if it were not so serious, would be downright funny. Try to imagine Elijah appearing before Ahab with a roll of film!  Imagine Peter standing up at Pentecost and saying "Let's have the lights out, please."  When Jeremiah hesitated to prophesy, on the plea that he was not a fluent speaker, God touched his mouth and said, "I have put My words into thy mouth." Perhaps Jeremiah could have gotten on well enough without the divine touch If he had had a good 16mm projector and a reel of home-talent film.

Let a man dare to compare his religious movie show, with the spirit of the book of Acts . Let him try to find a place for it in the twelfth chapter of first Corinthians.  Let him set it beside Savonarola''s passionate preaching, or Luther 's thundering, or Wesley 's heavenly sermons, or Edward''s awful appeals.  If he cannot see the difference in kind, then he is too blind to be trusted with leadership in the Church of the Living God . The only thing that he can do appropriate to the circumstances is to drop to his knees and cry with poor Bartimaeus, "Lord, that I might receive my sight."

But some say, "We do not propose to displace the regular method of preaching the gospel. We only want to supplement it."  To this I answer: If the movie is indeed to supplement anointed preaching, it can only be because God's appointed method is inadequate and the movie can do something which God's appointed method cannot do.  What is that thing?  We freely grant that the movie can produce effects which preaching cannot produce (and which is should never try to produce), but dare we strive for such effects in the light of God 's revealed will and in the face of the judgment and the long eternity? 

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