Hollywood, The Omen, and the Mark of the Beast

We Americans are preoccupied with the Antichrist's identity. What if it turns out he's actually not a single individual?

(This very pertinent and timely article is from J. Lee Grady, Editor of Charisma Magazine.)

The people who market films to the American public figured it would be clever if they unveiled the new religious horror film, The Omen, on June 6, 2006. Get it? 6-6-06. Oooooh.

I had better things to do today than to watch a 6-year-old demon child throw his mom off a balcony. And besides, I saw the original version of The Omen when I was 18. I actually took a date to that movie. It was one of the dumbest things I ever did in high school, considering that the poor girl turned as white as a ghost in the theater and didn’t speak to me afterward.

The original Omen was a cheesy popcorn flick that features snarling black dogs in a cemetery, a demon-possessed nanny with an ice pick, and wild-eyed Catholic priests who run around quoting the book of Revelation. The plot involves a wealthy American ambassador named Robert Thorn (played by Gregory Peck in one of his most embarrassing roles ever) and his pretty wife, Katherine (Lee Remick), who adopt a baby from Italy and soon learn the hard way that the child is actually the spawn of Satan himself. (Yes, switched at birth!)

Based on the previews, the 2006 version stays true to the original, only this time the boy who plays Damien (you guessed it, the young Antichrist) looks a lot more sinister. And an aging Mia Farrow — who starred in the 1968 horror film Rosemary’s Baby — plays the evil nanny. Talk about typecasting!

Perhaps you are wondering why Hollywood decided to remake The Omen. After all, the 1976 version is regularly referred to as a “classic,” so why try to improve it?

My theory is that film executives, who were already salivating when they realized how much money could be made with The DaVinci Code, decided to capitalize on Americans’ fascination with quirky spirituality. Never mind if the theology is bad. Lights! Camera! Action!

These movie producers figure if they throw in a few biblical references and a soundtrack laced with creepy Gregorian chanting, they might attract some of the people who bought Left Behind and its sequels.

After all, we Americans seem preoccupied with the Antichrist. There is so much money to be made in preaching doom and gloom that it has become an industry. The publishers of the Left Behind series of novels, for example, have sold 67 million books so far. To keep that money flowing, Tyndale House decided to release the next installment, The Rapture, today — on 6-6-06.

Several Christian bookstores will be selling paperback copies of the other Left Behind books for $6.66.

I’ve never had much interest in movies or novels about the Antichrist, mostly because we’ve endured way too much ridiculous speculation on his identity. Christians in the 1940s believed Adolf Hitler was the “man of sin” mentioned in 2 Thessalonians 2:3. Fidel Castro got the title in the 1960s. In the 1970s, people thought Leonid Brezhnev was the Antichrist. Since then, Mikhail Gorbachev, Richard Nixon, Vladimir Putin, Bill Gates, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Bill Clinton have all been suggested for the role.

(Some Christians now are suggesting that Iran’s anti-Semitic president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, deserves the title.)

Actually, the Bible does not clearly say the Antichrist is one individual, and it never implies that he will be a mixed-breed child of the devil who is guarded by black dogs. The Scriptures, in fact, say that many will come as false Christs and false prophets (see Matt. 24:24) during the church age and that the “spirit of antichrist” has been at work in the world since the early church period (1 John 4:3).

And rather than being an all-powerful political leader of the European Common Market, or the head of an international corporation who plans to install computer chips in our brains and credit cards, the Bible says those who are motivated by the spirit of antichrist are religious “deceivers” who preach a gospel that denies Christ’s true identity as the Son of God (2 John 7).

In other words, the spirit of antichrist wraps itself in religious garb, quotes the Bible and invites people to find a cheaper road to heaven — one that denies repentance, biblical faith and genuine holiness. Using that definition, someone operating under the spirit of antichrist could have his own church, an important-sounding ecclesiastical title or even his own religious talk show. To me, that is more horrifying — and much more believable — than either version of The Omen. #

J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma Magazine, www.charismamag.com.