Jeff Patty

As a self-proclaimed movie geek, I prepared to watch a movie the other night, just to relax and try to forget some of the recent stresses I have been dealing with. I like a wide range of movies, but this night, I decided to watch a sci-fi movie. I didn’t really know what it was about — just who starred in it and that it was sci-fi. I never realized that I would be tying it into scripture and end-times events. Sure, I’m always looking for a connection and ideas, but this one was very strong (in my opinion) and very unexpected.

It was the recently made movie starring Nicolas Cage, “Knowing”. I was interested in the movie simply because I was in the mood for sci-fi and, I sometimes enjoy Nicolas Cage. I say “sometimes,’ because, for me at least, Nicolas Cage tends to be a hit-or-miss actor. Either he does a great job, good script, acting, etc., or it’s painful to watch. It’s just an interesting phenomenon for me.

But back to the movie and the point I want to make. Essentially, the movie is about a young girl, possibly ten years old, who along with her fellow students, is preparing some drawings and other items for a time capsule. You see, the time is 1959, and it isn’t to be opened until 2009. Well, the last thing the teacher asks each of them to do is draw what they believe the future will look like in 50 years. All the children are excited and start right away. But this particular little girl, who’s been hearing voices in her head for a while now apparently, begins to write on her paper. Very rapidly.

We don’t see immediately what she’s written but, when the teacher says she’s out of time, we see nothing but numbers. Line after line of numbers, front and back.

Now we’re in the present, and the time capsule is being unearthed, and Nicolas Cage’s on-screen son is in the same grade, and school, as the little girl was and actually gets her “drawing” when they are passed out to the children. Nicolas Cage’s character is a college professor of science, physics or something that’s way beyond my understanding. When he finally begins to see a pattern to the numbers, he begins to slowly believe that maybe things in the universe aren’t just random.

I guess I should back up a little. You see, his character basically doesn’t believe in God in the beginning of the film, and he tends to drink heavily. He’s a single parent. He lost his wife to a tragic accident a year earlier and is still grieving and bitter. And his dad is a retired pastor and Christian, as are his mom and sister, who still pray for him. They weren’t portrayed as crazy or weird, which is a nice change for Hollywood standards!

Anyway, he begins to see that any real major catastrophe from the time the little girl of 1959 wrote these numbers until the present, is listed. Even the hotel fire that claimed his wife, and many others, a year earlier. There are only a few numbers left, and he finally sees the dates they all represent, except the very last one of course, come to pass.

He manages to find the daughter of the little girl from the fifties, and she happens to have a daughter herself who is his son’s age. Her mother died when she was young, and basically went insane because of the voices and the numbers. They find out that both of their children are now hearing voices and having very strange experiences with strangers. Tall blond men dressed in black.

Nicolas Cage realizes that the last numbers represent the end of the world by fire, and that the strangers are actually aliens that were warning people. It seems that young children (it’s unknown if it’s all the children around the world) are hearing these “alien” voices and are to be saved, and beamed aboard alien ships around the world.

But only the children, not the adults. Shortly after being rescued, Nicolas Cage’s character, his family (he reunites with them) and the rest of the world, are totally destroyed by fire from a solar flare.

I just found it curious that this was a very strange version of the Rapture, that most Christians believe in. The aliens, once they showed their true form at the very end, even seemed to have very faint glowing wings — at least an indication that angels have been aliens all through history, Biblical and otherwise.

Several professors and so-called experts, offered their opinions, ideas and theories about Christianity and the end of the world in the extra features on the dvd. One professor in particular caught my attention: Sabina Magliocco, Professor of Anthropology at Cal. State Northridge. She said, “ I think the alien mythology offers humans a great deal of hope. They offer the hope of human survival against a backdrop of a planet that appears to be doomed, whether because of nuclear annihilation, or environmental degradation, or the indifference of governments to our problems. Whatever it is that’s bad here on earth, the aliens are going to come, they’re going to pluck us off the planet and somehow, in some different place, in some faraway universe, human beings are going to survive, and they are going to live on.”

Now this particular professor may not believe in aliens but, many average citizens, as well as those in the scientific community, take very seriously the idea of aliens, and possible alien contact in the future.

More now than ever.

And Professor Magliocco’s quote shows that more and more people are looking to aliens, not God, for hope. For salvation from the evils coming on this planet. To take us to a far away place (Heaven) where we’ll live happily ever after.

And while I, and many others, enjoy a little sci-fi now and then, and see it as what it is — entertainment — I truly believe that more and more people each day see these “ideas” as real possibilities. Because of the magic of special effects today, and great writing, and acting, it’s becoming more believable, and more accepted. I believe it is preparing the lost souls of this world for a supernatural happening (The Rapture of the church) and whatever delusion and supernatural happenings that Satan will then bring on the world.

I just set out to relax and watch an entertaining movie. And by the end, realized the groundwork is being laid, and the world is being prepared for a very supernatural happening. Only it won’t be aliens rescuing people from a doomed planet, it will be the God of the Bible. And it won’t just be children.

It will just be the children of God.