Last night, in the third installment of The History Channel’s “The Bible” series, some new characters came on the scene. Most notably: Jesus! [For our online study on the series, click here!] The episode covered his birth, his baptism, his temptation, and the beginning of his ministry.
But today, no one is talking about Jesus.
Instead, they’re all talking about the other new character on the scene: Satan, and specifically how the character who plays Satan resembles President Obama.
image source: http://www.newser.com/story/164634/internet-freaks-over-bible-s-obama-satan-resemblance.html
I have to admit, I thought it too. But, it was a fleeting thought, I shrugged it off, and quickly got back into the story. Today, however, I was surprised to see just how much buzz this lookalike conundrum has created!
It’s been all over Twitter, and several articles have appeared on the web about it today. (Click here, and here to read a couple). The producers of the show even had to come out and make official statements to insist that the resemblance is purely coincidental.
But I want you to see what’s really happening here. This issue is not really about whether or not Moroccan actor Mohamen Mehdi Ouazanni resembles Barak Obama.
This issue is about spiritual warfare.
What do I mean? Well, let’s see. When “The Bible” series began, it was a ratings hit! The success was such a surprise to the media, they’ve been speculating what this means for the future of TV and movies. Do people want more biblical entertainment? Do they want more wholesome entertainment? Maybe a break from the questionable entertainment that’s been so successful lately? In fact, the most popular headlines before this have been versions of “The Bible beats Zombies!” referring to the fact that the series beat out the popular “The Walking Dead” in ratings.
Now, some are thinking they may stop watching altogether because of the Satan/Obama similarities and the focus has completely shifted. If someone were bold enough to write a similar headline, I’m afraid it would have to read: “Satan beats Jesus.”
The entire Bible points to one central man: Christ. But no one is talking about him today. No one is talking about how their hearts beat in their chests when the angel appeared to Mary and Joseph. No one is talking about Mary’s realistic screams as she stumbled and crawled into the manger. No one is talking about how powerful and touching the whole nativity scene was when Jesus was finally born. No one is talking about the heart-wrenching scene when Mary, Joseph, and young Jesus were traveling and passed the hills littered with crosses and executions. No one is talking about the shivers they got when Jesus was being tempted and he imagined an alternate, pain-free ending where he succumbed to temptation and avoided the cross.
No. No one is talking about all of that. They’re not talking at Jesus at all. Instead, they’re focused on what Satan looked like.
And that, my friends, is how Satan works. Isn’t it subtle?! Isn’t it minimal? Isn’t it… clever? For Satan, the worst thing in the world is for us to focus on Christ. So he tries to come up with anything at all for us to focus on instead – ourselves, our problems, our success, our blessings. Silly little lookalike actors. Anything is better than focusing on Jesus.
When we’re sitting comfortably on our couches, eating a snack and enjoying a biblical docudrama on our high resolution flat screen TVs, it’s easy to forget that there is another dimension still at work. The spiritual dimension. The realm of good vs. evil where evil so desperately wants to triumph.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Ephesians 6:12
I haven’t started watching the series yet, but I am DVRing it, and I plan to watch them one after the other. I was quite surprised when this started on Facebook, because the question was “who does this look like”. Call me slow, but it took me reading some of the comments before I got it. How sad it is that as Christians we would compare Him to someone else, especially someone who is running our country, whether we like him or not. I didn’t vote for him, but he is who he is, and we have to accept that right now. I wholeheartedly agree with you – let’s put the focus BACK on JESUS where it belongs. Afterall, this is a series about HIM, not Satan. We need to keep those ratings up so that we can get more wholesome shows to choose from on television. I was so excited last week to hear that the show was doing so well, and very hopeful that we would get more like it. I’m still hopeful that we can turn this around. 🙂 Thank you, Laurie for posting your perspective to hopefully help bring the focus back to JESUS where it belongs.
or maybe God wants us to wake up and see what is going on in America. He knows all and he will not let Satan win, open your ears and eyes and see what is going on.
I think the producers saying that the look alike was coincidence is utter bull. And I find the “coincidence” completely offensive and wrong. I was excited to watch a new interpretation of the bible, to compare it to my own bible knowledge, to maybe discuss it with my family and friends. However, now I plan to delete the recordings and pick up my personal bible. This was not the place for a political commentary on America and her leaders.
It does seem to me that people will use anything and everything to bash our President, or turn something into a political battle. It is really a shame. I try to ignore the comments as much as possible and try to focus on the positive. No matter what is said about the resemblence between Satan and the President, I won’t let Satan win by not watching the program. I will continue recording it, and I will watch it all at once without comparing it to anything other than God’s word. That is all that matters. It doesn’t matter to me if the President looks like Jesus in the series. They are only actors picked to play a part of the most important book ever written. I want to watch for the right reasons and not let anyone or anything deter me from that reason. I pray that you will not delete the series but matter. Don’t let Satan win; if you stop watching, then he does win.
Thank you, Emily for sharing your thoughts on this. I agree that Satan will do anything to pull our focus off Christ and distract us. The more we recognize this and truly desire to be God-focused the more we will honor the Lord each day and have a closer walk with Him. May the Lord continue to bless Priority Ministries and those you reach though your faithfulness to the Lord. I love reading and sharing emails from you and Laurie each week. They are such a blessing to me.
Amen Merinda!
Absolutely- we should keep our eyes on Jesus, not on the enemy, and this is a major distraction.
Thanks for sharing this.
I watched it with lots of friends. No one (even the democrat politician there if you want to make it political which no one did) saw anything remotely like a similarity to our president. It never even came up as a discussion topic. I agree that it is a distraction from the Truth and if we fall for the distraction, well…we fall.
I agree with you in terms of the way satan distracts us to take our eyes off Jesus. I personally have not watched the series, it hasn’t been aired in my country yet but been following the reviews closely. I always find it funny how we as Christians misinterpret the attacks of the enemy. We get so caught up in the small distractions & tactics of Satan that we lose sight of the most important person “Jesus”. Satans plans are always to cause rebellion and bring about division in the body of Christ. His tactics are always the same, i.e. to tempt us to violate Gods authority (in its entirety), interfere & prevent understanding, cause disobedience & ultimately divide the church. Thank you for blogging on such an important topic. Its easy to forget the real reason we are living & were created. May we never take our eyes off the only true living God, Jesus.
Thanks for reminding us where our focus should. I have been watching. I am excited about the miniseries and the opportunity to host a bible party. We witnessed Satan’s presence throughout the Old Testament (without a face) and just when we see that God has broken His silence over 400 hundred years and we should on the Messiah, our focus is on Satan. WOW!
While i agree that the focus of the miniseries ought to be on Jesus, I’m also acutely aware of a great divide among political and even racial factions in this country. Whether anyone wish to admit it or not, the current president since he became so in 2008 has been called many things by many by many factions (including Christian evangelicals) and ironically, the names “the Antichrist, and Satan has topped the list of the vicious names called. There have been satrical cartoons depicting him as being less than human, a communist, and having a satanic agenda for this country, and purely taken over by evil. All of which were the expressions of people who won’t accept the fact that (since we wish to focus on Jesus) that God allowed him to become president for whatever reason god wanted it to be so. So excuse me and others who feel the way we do when we see a character in any movie, especially of a Christian genre that (whether coincidental, intentional, or not) cast a extremely negative image not only on our current sitting president, especially one that as you said “coincidentially” looks like Satan. I have several collections of different movies that portay Jesus and Satan in them and none of the actors that played Satan in them resembled any one living or dead that has the high profile as the President of the United States. It is my personal belief that Jesus Christ was and is the central focus of this movie, however, remember, in any movie, there are sibliminal messages, and subplots that are displayed as well. and an asute movie watcher will many times pick up those subplots and sibliminal messages. Remember this, from a movie critic standpoint, whatever the movie, if that movie intential or not sends a message or cast any known public figure, acto, president or civilian person in a negative image light (intentional or not) you can always expect outrage and a negative response from the public in reference to that movie, regardless of the primary message it was suppose to portray. Maybe some of your responders can gloss over this but I couldn’t.
Did you know Obedama was a daemon? Obedama, take out the E and D.