[truthandlife]

Have you ever thought that this was God's plan all along?

God gave a famous actor a yearning to seek him again and brought a vision of a movie of the Resurection of Jesus Christ. Mel Gibson faithfully went along with this vision and made the film the way God gave it to him. God gave Mel the resources ($$$), gave him the idea, gave him every graphic detail. He went ahead and made the film and made it in Aramaic (a dead language). The Hollywood elite were laughing at Mel and said he had gone nuts. He was making a religious movie about Jesus Christ in a dead language with subtitles. He was also using $25 million of his own money. The Hollywood left was laughing and could not wait for it to fail. First, Gibson couldn't find a distributor because Satan had started to put up many roadblocks. The first roadblock was that the movie was so called, "anti-semitic." The ADL comes out and tries to torpoedo the movie. As this happens, it creates great buzz. Gibson decides to distribute the movie himself (as an act of faith) because none of the big distributors would touch this movie. Gibson goes to the evangelical Christian community to get their opinion about the movie and starts showing the movie to over 20,000 evangelicals. This kind of marketing is unheard of. What is Gibson doing? ("With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26).

Satan tries to torpoedo the movie again with leftist anti-Christian movie critics saying this movie has too much gore, blood and is just awful for children. This even creates more buzz and people become even more curious.
Now the movie is finally out and many people get to see who Jesus is ("The Savior of the World") and gets to see to the ultimate in sacrificial love. It is not pretty to see but it shows how much God truly loves us.

If I was Gibson, I would be pretty giddy myself because he took a true faithful walk with God and it was quite an unorthodoxed walk but look where it got him. Gibson was able to produce the biggest grossing Christian movie of all times as well as sharing what Jesus did for us on the Cross. True sacrificial love.

"Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends"

John 15:13

[fortress]

The way you describe it, makes me think of Mel Gibson as a present-day Noah.
O how much ridicule Noah received and yet he was obedient to the Lord, but in the end, Noah's creation (the Ark), was man's only chance to escape God's wrath.
Similarily we have a choice now: do we accept the message that this movie portrays or do we reject it?

Could this be God's last call?
Fortress

[texas booster]

More on the money thing. According to Drudge, the movie ended Wednesday at over $26,556,573 showing in 3,006 theaters. No other movie that has opened on a (non-holiday) Wednesday has grossed more. This total may not include the Monday and Tuesday matinees, which sold about $3,000,000 in tickets.

To compare, Matrix Revolutions grossed $24,311,365 playing in 3,502 theaters, opening on the first Wednesday in November. I seem to recall theaters having midnight showings on Tuesday night, partly offsetting the Monday and Tuesday matinees of The Passion.

On its first day, also a Wednesday, ROTK grossed $34,450,834 showing on 3,703 theaters. ROTK had multiple, full price midnight showings on its first day, which inflated the totals. It also had subtitles, but was mostly in English. OTOH, it is a 3+ hour long movie.

The Passion beats out the other two LOTR, all Star Wars flicks (possibly including Phantom Menace), and most other main stream movies. I am now hearing estimates of ticket sales approaching the $100,000,000 mark by the end of the weekend.

Incredible!

[Elsie]

Now the movie is finally out and many people get to see who Jesus is ("The Savior of the World") and gets to see to the ultimate in sacrificial love. It is not pretty to see but it shows how much God truly loves us.

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"He's praying for YOU!"

TPOTC