Pastor Gabe's Old Blog

Unplanned is a movie based on the true story of Abby Johnson, the former Planned Parenthood director who famously became pro-life. The movie is produced by PureFlix, creators of such films like God's Not Dead, Mom's Night Out, The Case for Christ, and several rapture movies . Unplanned stars Ashley Bratcher as Abby Johnson, Brooks Ryan as Abby's husband, Doug, and Robia Scott as the wicked witch of the south. As far as the story goes, I rather liked the movie, but it was a hard watch. The violence of abortion is portrayed with chilling effect. With the formalities out of the way, let me be upfront about two things. First, the R-rating on Unplanned is deserved. I know the film's promoters made a big deal about the MPAA slapping an R-rating on their movie. Charisma News called the rating "devious." An award-winning producer of Schindler's List called it "biased." If the outrage was expressed to hype the movie and get attention, mor...

Each Monday leading up to holy week, the History Channel is airing a docu-series called Jesus: His Life. The show awkwardly mixes in dramatic reenactments of the story of Jesus with commentary from an assemblage of (mostly liberal) Bible scholars. The trailer to the show says that this is the life of Christ "told through the eyes of those who knew Him best." History has never done very well with the story of Jesus. Their mini-series The Bible (more accurately termed The Bobble) was terrible. In addition to biblical inaccuracies, it just wasn't entertaining. Jesus: His Life is equally dull. The mix of drama with commentary doesn't work. The thematic scenes fail to be captivating, and the theotwits do not add any life to the program. Given that the show is flat and fallacious, I don't know why you'd want to bother with it enough to even read my review. But I offer this up anyway! The following is a play-by-play of the first episode, examin...

Yesterday, Francis Chan responded to the harsh accusations that he has been aligning with heretics. A recent article published at The Cripplegate was entitled Farewell Francis . The author Jordan Standridge warned that Chan "is sharing the stage with false teachers who will spend eternity in Hell (Gal. 1:6-9)." He pleaded for Chan to repent and "come back to your first love!" Chan has been on a steady decline over the last few years. Preaching with Mike Bickle at the International House of Prayer may have been a head-scratcher, but it wasn't enough to denounce Chan as developing an alliance with the enemy. Maybe Chan didn't know that Bickle claimed to have gone to heaven and had a personal audience with Jesus . Maybe Chan didn't know Bickle teaches that we bring about Christ's return through prayer (according to what Jesus personally told him). Maybe Chan didn't know that Bickle has claimed there will be new apostles preaching things you w...

Last week, Bohemian Rhapsody was released on DVD, the Oscar-winning film about the band Queen and their lead singer, Freddie Mercury. The movie is titled after the famous song of the same name, a six-minute suite blending elements of rock and opera. It's only fitting that the album from which the song came was called A Night at the Opera , released in 1975. The star track Bohemian Rhapsody is considered by many to be Mercury's magnum opus. With the success of the film, I thought I'd revisit the lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody . What is this song about anyway? Plenty of legendary rock songs are nonsense (since a lot of these guys were probably on drugs when they wrote them), but Mercury was a meticulous and brilliant lyricist. A friend of mine recently said, "Sometimes a movie is just a movie." Well, sometimes a song is just a song. But there's more going on in Bohemian Rhapsody than meets the ears. In order to understand the underlying message, we need ...