December 4, 2001
Being the science fiction fan that I am, I
recently made special arrangements to see the SciFi channel’s presentation of
the movie EPOCH. I am not sure what
it was about the advertising that interested me in the movie, but I was under
the impression that it had to do with a meteor on a collision course with Earth.
The movie opens in the wilderness of Bhutan
(Mongolia) where a mother is weeping over the death of her son.
Suddenly, the earth begins to tremble.
The father steps outside to witness a bizarre event.
He is joined by the mother and they see a huge chunk of something rise
out of the earth. The deluge of
fallout from the thing stops just short of them and they turn to find
that their once dead son is now standing with them fully restored.
A team of top U.S scientists and military
envoy race to the scene to figure this thing out.
When we (the viewers) finally get a glimpse of this thing, it is
an enormous rock like mass that appears several miles high. It is wide at the top and tapers to a point at the bottom and
it is hovering several meters above the ground.
Their analysis determines that this thing
is four billion years old. They
manage to get inside and encounter strange energy beings.
Generally speaking, the thing is docile.
It will retaliate against any aggression, but refuses to kill or harm.
And everyone who comes near it is healed.
This
thing begins emitting a mass of dust or smoke in the upper atmosphere.
The scientists determine that this cloud cover will encompass the globe
in a matter of days causing, in effect, another ice age.
From this, they determine that this must be
what we call “god.” It has been
the driving force of all the ages or epochs past, and will periodically wipe
everything out and start over.
Well, the humans won’t stand for that!
After all, nobody, not even god, can tell us what to do.
So, the military commander of the envoy places a nuclear charge inside
the thing.
Our hero and heroine have both decided that
if this thing is god, they shouldn’t fight it, even if it means their own
demise. So, they arduously attempt
to disarm the nuclear device. In
the final seconds of the countdown, they decide that they cannot disarm it, so
they might as well make out.
When the counter hits zero, the thing
apparently completely absorbs the blast. Our
hero and heroine are next seen in a heavenly place where there is no pain and
all is well. Moments later they are
back inside the thing and
manage to get out of it before it
withdraws all of the smoke cloud and zips off into space.
Our hero determines that the thing
decided that humans were good enough to keep
and does not destroy everything after all.
Instead, it allows us (and the rest of creation) to proceed.
And they all lived happily ever after…
Well, I enjoyed the movie just for the
special effects and such, but I couldn’t help but notice that this movie had a
strong message.
If
you recall, critics panned Left Behind because they said it was a
message-movie. They said the
Christian message was so heavy that the movie lost its appeal.
I submit that the same is true of New Age movies.
The
movie Epoch had such a strong New Age religious message that it
couldn’t be described as subtle.
Let me explain.
The
New Age concept of god is that god is energy and sometimes has intelligence.
It is not personal, it does not love nor hate, it simply is.
It causes things to be or not to be, but does not appear to have a
purpose for mankind.
Mankind, it would seem, is just a blip in the whole cosmic scheme.
The
irony is that New Agers consider themselves so important while claiming that
humankind is insignificant.
In
the movie, this idea is brought out big time.
The thing, which we are invited to believe is god,
indiscriminately heals and preserves life, while at the same time has plans to
destroy it all.
It is unconcerned with individuals.
It has no personality.
It merely does what it does, like a hurricane passing over an island.
In
true form, this movie represents the evolutionary concept.
It further addresses the ideas of cyclical generation—a Hindu concept.
It also advocates “punctuated equilibrium”; the notion that organisms
remain stable for long periods but undergo massive, radical evolution in
relatively short bursts.
The thing was given credit for those short bursts of evolution.
The hero even mentions that people are expecting the next evolutionary
stage and It must be here to make that happen.
In
the New Age, there are no moral absolutes.
And in this movie, since the god It was totally impersonal, it was
also moral-less – not immoral, just without any moral code.
I
have mentioned our hero and heroine, but there was also a villain.
In this case, the villain was the commander of the military envoy. This was a by-the-book, flat-top military man.
He had his orders and nothing was going to stop him.
He is the first one to advocate blowing this thing up since we don’t
know what it is. His answer to
everything is might-makes-right. And
pretty much throughout the first two-thirds of the movie, we are made to think
of this guy as a real jerk.
Well,
this is the guy that pulls out a Bible when things start getting scary.
He is made to represent the Christian ethic and ideology.
So, New Agers view Christians as hard-headed, self-absorbed, bigots who
won’t “open their minds” to see the truth.
The guy who was reading the Bible in times of trouble was the one who
wanted to blow up the god It.
So, in short, the theology of the New Age
movement has moved beyond conveying ideas to creating hate for Christians.
You will see this theme grow more prominent as time progresses.
I am so disappointed that movies which feature special effects and futuristic ideas are so thoroughly and blatantly laced with New Age philosophy.