And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:14)
Dee and I watched ‘The Resurrection of Gavin Stone’ over the weekend. After an abysmal stretch of movies that we’ve watched of late, it wasn’t a simple thing for us to press ‘Buy’, let me tell you. The director of the movie, Dallas Jenkins, has talked about that movie being the low point of his career and how in two hours after its release in 2017, he went from being a director with a very bright future in Hollywood to a director with no future.
Even with that dark cloud hanging over its head, we decided that since he is also the director of our favorite new series about Jesus, “The Chosen”, and since the movie includes one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, Shawn Michaels (I was a big time ‘80s wrestling fan), the time had finally arrived to give it a go.
As we braced for more movie-viewing torture, imagine my surprise to find a smile etched on my face from the beginning to the end as Dee and I both loved it. We’ve seen our share of horrible Christian movies, and despite being incredibly biased, I’m not afraid to admit that. However, this film was quite simply the complete opposite of a horrible Christian movie.
Although there was a smile etched on my face, there was also a deep sadness in my heart, as I realized that this movie brought such pain to a person I’ve come to truly care about. It just didn’t seem fair for a person to be brought to the lowest of lows, over a movie that in my opinion, was actually quite good.
But as I’ve come to learn more and more over time, God’s ways are nowhere near my ways. He had a plan to take someone who presided over a complete box-office failure and redirect his talents to a show that would become the first-ever multi-season series about Christ, one of the largest crowdfunding projects in history and a show that is well on its way of reaching its goal of being seen by over one billion people in every country on earth.
In Matthew 24:14, Jesus states: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Leave it to the Lord to use even the rejection of Gavin Stone to help make that happen.