Yep…a little humanity here, a little leaven there…Satan’s plan is working wonderfully. 🙁
I totally agree with everything. I’ve watched the first two seasons. my only quibble is with your not agreeing with the Messianic rabbi (page 4?) who believes that God has made an eternal covenant with Israel. The promises God made to Israel still stands. Otherwise God is a liar.
“The Chosen strips Jesus of his divinity by accentuating the supposed human frailties of their version of Jesus…”That false version of Jesus without “the God part” fits very nicely with the Mormon view that Jesus was just a man who attained divinity.”
Agree that the TV show seems to accentuate the human side of Jesus and leaves out His divinity at times. This seems to appeal to the Hi-Tech-World in being introduced to the Savior prior to His Second Coming.
Disagree about the reference to the “Mormon” view of Jesus being “just a man who attained divinity.” Both earthly parents had been visited by angels telling them of their son’s Divine Mission, so we can only imagine some of the family discussions as He was growing up. At age 12 He was found at the Temple “being about His Father’s business” while teaching the “experts” about the gospel. The Bible skips to Him as an adult starting His Divine Mission, merely touching someone, or giving a verbal “take up your bed” and other examples to heal the blind-deaf-lame-leprosy, etc., or merely givng a verbal command “Come forth,” to those who were deceased. Jesus inherited this Divine attribute from His Heavenly Father (Who can, and does, the same thing).
To see more examples of how the “Mormon” view is about Jesus, the Savior, the Son of God, go to the website, and watch their free Bible videos for the Old Testament and New Testament and the “Come, Follow Me” Sunday School manual.
After seeing how sacred the “Mormon” view is about the Savior, you can understand why the transition from being used to perceiving Jesus as a Divine child and Divine adult to seeing the new TV-version of Jesus’ alleged-every-day-life-on-Earth is sometimes a little difficult to accept, especially when it’s being more apparent with each passing season, as compared to the first couple of seasons, and that’s why I quit watching. But if the TV show helps only one person to “heal” from a Babylonian-Worldly style of Earthly life, it’s worth it.
I was presented this article by a friend who is, like you, opposed to the Chosen series and tells me that I should stop watching it so as not to fill my head with false doctrine. I read your whole article and I am replying to inform you that I was not impressed. You sound like a really smart guy who fully believes what he says, so please humor me by hearing my take on your argument.
First of all, have you even watched The Chosen? It can be easy to pick and choose from the comments you find on the internet. Forgive me if I’m wrong, what it looks like to me is you taking a line here and there and attacking them for several paragraphs. It makes it look like you know much more than you really do, which in my opinion could simply be your thoughts on negative reviews from online. I, however, have watched The Chosen and I believe that it is good, wholesome entertainment though NOT meant to replace the Bible in any way, as Mr. Jenkins says. In your article you quote Revelation 22:18-19 as if the producers of the Chosen are somehow altering the Holy Bible, but that just isn’t true. Any Christian with a good head on their shoulders will take information from sources other than the Bible itself with an open hand and not store it into their brain as facts. Have you ever considered that that could be the problem? Not the producers of a television series, but the naïve viewers who believe anything they see?
Of course, since this show is based on the Bible it would be wise to create it as authentically as possible. It would be impossible to make a five plus season show that matches with a book detail for detail, but I think we can agree that the main thing is to stand firm on the basics. The Chosen takes the main outlines from Bible stories and adds plausible details to make it viewing length. How would you suggest they do it? I assume you would just say that they shouldn’t do it at all, but that really isn’t an answer. The Chosen aside, do you think it’s wrong to adapt the Bible into any other form? Take a Children’s Bible storybook! Do you honestly think that everything in those stories, down to the illustrations, are 100% true? Of course not! The only way to get the raw, unfiltered truth is to read the Bible. Which The Chosen is not meant to replace.
One of your main points is the supposed evil behind the fact that The Chosen is a work put together by several religions besides Christianity. (For the record, I am a Christian, so I believe in your core ideas here.) These religions believe in the Bible, do they not? The Chosen is based on the Bible! Of course, these other religions also believe things that aren’t in the Bible (such as that Jesus and Satan are siblings, Mary is a goddess, etc.) but that is really beside the point because that isn’t what they’re basing the show on. They are working together to take the Bible for what it is, and doing their best at adapting it into this show.
You also say that it would completely implausible for Jesus to ask “what does your heart say?”. I agree with how listening to your heart over your head is usually bad advice, but you have to remember that Jesus would have known what Nicodemus’s heart was saying! Nicodemus was unsure of what to do because he was weighing what Jesus said with logic. It is perfectly plausible that Jesus could give him a bad feeling about doing something that wasn’t the right decision.
Next point: Jesus is a “worldly party animal”? I honestly had to laugh at this. Mister Willcock sounds disgusted at the idea that Jesus could be dancing with His disciples at the wedding from John 2:1-12. He calls it a sinful betrayal, as if Jesus’ holiness would be beyond dancing at this wedding. This is the same man who made wine for them to drink! Dancing is not sinful. Ecclesiastes 3:4 says that there is a time to mourn and a time to dance! Jesus mourned the loss of Lazarus at his death. He could certainly dance with His friends to celebrate a wedding.
“To make Jesus say there are things He is unable to do is blasphemous!” says Mr. Willcock to Jesus’ line from after the wedding “Some things even I cannot do.”. This was when a disciple asked Jesus to make Andrew a better dancer. The way its worded doesn’t even let the readers of your article know that this was a joke! Do you believe that Jesus doesn’t have a sense of humor? This is found in article of Biblical humor from When Did Jesus Laugh? (biblestudy.org) :
“Good, clean humor celebrates the goodness of God. It is the key component to joy, one of the primary attributes of the Holy Spirit which proceeds from our Father (Galatians 5:22 – 23). The Christian walk should be a joyful one.
God the Father and Jesus do indeed have a healthy sense of humor and do laugh! We, therefore, can be assured that even after we are resurrected from the dead we will continue to have one as well.”
“The Chosen has a feminist agenda,” you say. The reference you included says that Jesus would have never asked Mary Magdalene to lead in prayer. Are you aware that there are female prophetesses in the Bible? Undoubtedly they would pray publicly! There is but a small handful of female characters in the show, and “feminist agenda” isn’t exactly how I’d put it. Unless, perhaps, the Bible has a feminist agenda too!
“What does Jesus Christ think about The Chosen? ‘I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes.’ Psalms 101:3.” To put words like those (that Jesus never even said!) into His mouth is a big deal, even for someone who didn’t just plea the wickedness of coming up with further detail for Jesus’ television character.
One thing I want to point out is how you say that Jenkins argued that “God told him The Chosen is supposed to be ‘the definitive portrayal of My people’”, when in fact, his exact words were that he felt God was saying that. There is a distinction, and I think it’s an important one. There is a big difference between sharing your feelings and claiming to be some kind of prophet. Furthermore, you cannot base all your opinions on this one person. You seem to really like to assault what he says, and it appears to make up the majority of your article! Are you opposing The Chosen or Dallas Jenkins?
Another rebuttal I have is your objection to The Chosen’s marketing campaign “get used to different”. You are taking this as evil and referencing scripture that warns us to beware of false christs. That is certainly not what they meant. I could be wrong here, but how I understood that was this: before Jesus came to preach to the people of Israel, religious citizens had a very set way of doing things, such as how they treated the Sabbath. They were not to do any kind of work, no matter the consequences. A man who picked up sticks on the Sabbath was stoned! Then came Jesus. When He healed the sick and diseased on that day, that made the religious leaders very angry, and they accused Him of breaking the Sabbath. Scripture records Jesus healing on the Sabbath seven times!
1. Simon Peter’s mother-in-law in Peter’s home (Mark 1:29–31).
2. A man with a withered hand in the synagogue (Mark 3:1–6).
3. A man born blind in Jerusalem (John 9:1–16).
4. A crippled woman in a synagogue (Luke 13:10–17).
5. A man with dropsy at a Pharisee’s house (Luke 14:1–6).
6. A demon-possessed man in Capernaum (Mark 1:21–28).
7. A lame man by the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1–18).
In response to their rebuke, Jesus responded,
“If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:11).
Not only did the religious leaders get told, but it was by a man who claimed to be the very Son of God! To them, that idea was very different!
Jesus told of how he was the fulfillment of the Law in Matthew 5:17. That is how I understood the line from the season three trailer “I am the Law of Moses.” Obviously, Jesus is not the literal stone tablets of the law. But he is the fulfillment of them! Because of Jesus, we are no longer bound to the consequence of sin: eternal separation from God. I do not agree with your idea that this is paraphrasing the Book of Mormon or any other book, and honestly, from the quotes you put in from Mr. Jenkins it sounds like he just made it up. Is that okay? That depends. As I said earlier, it’s impossible to base a television show 100% on a book. So maybe you aren’t just opposed to the Chosen, but to all Bible adaptions in general. And if that were the case, I understand and respect your opinion. But what you are saying is that the Chosen is an evil agenda created to lead its viewers astray, and that’s where I had to shake my head and begin to doubt the legitimacy of everything else you said.
You say in your concluding paragraph that Christians are commanded to keep away from idols. What does that even mean? We are watching a TV show here, not partaking in satanic rituals. Contrary from what you are implying by your reference to 1 Corinthians 10:19-21, I would have to strongly disagree with the comparison between The Chosen to the table of devils. And as for your comment about The Chosen presenting a false gospel, I don’t even know where to begin. So I’m just going to hope that the rest of my rebuttals have sufficiently proved my point.
Out of everything you said against the Chosen there’s really only one thing that I really agree with, and that is the fact that Jesus is presented a bit more human-like than how he is portrayed in the Bible. How he seems insecure and rehearses His sermons is one thing I wish they had done differently. But keeping the fact that this is not Scripture but entertainment in mind, I can say confidently that I enjoy watching the show and I encourage others to the same.
I may not be a lawyer, but I do have a functioning brain. I am open to opinions and thoughts that differ from my own. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be reading your article in the first place. I am usually able to respect the opinions of others, but it gets hard when I’m dealing with a man who called an entire production team evil, and claims that they are under a curse from God.
In fact, I did watch several episodes of The Chosen with a Christian group who initially thought it was a good idea to watch it. It became clear to me early on that the The Chosen was misrepresenting the gospel and Jesus Christ. The first striking example of the false portrayal of Jesus was when they showed him rehearsing the sermon on the mount. Jesus Christ is God. He does not need to rehearse. I also thought it was false that the disciples were passing out promotional pamphlets for Jesus’ upcoming sermon. God effectually draws his elect to him. He does not need promotional material. There were so many other examples that I cannot recall now. But it became clear to me that there was something devilish about The Chosen. I voiced my objections to the portrayal, some in the group agreed with me, while others, like you, found that The Chosen was worthwhile watching. That is when I began to research the series and discovered what is really behind the production. I would show up for fellowship, but, in protest, I refused to accompany the group to watch The Chosen when the group recessed to watch succeeding episodes.
In order for the new world order to be ushered in there would need to be a one world religion.
Yep…a little humanity here, a little leaven there…Satan’s plan is working wonderfully. 🙁
I totally agree with everything. I’ve watched the first two seasons. my only quibble is with your not agreeing with the Messianic rabbi (page 4?) who believes that God has made an eternal covenant with Israel. The promises God made to Israel still stands. Otherwise God is a liar.
“The Chosen strips Jesus of his divinity by accentuating the supposed human frailties of their version of Jesus…”That false version of Jesus without “the God part” fits very nicely with the Mormon view that Jesus was just a man who attained divinity.”
Agree that the TV show seems to accentuate the human side of Jesus and leaves out His divinity at times. This seems to appeal to the Hi-Tech-World in being introduced to the Savior prior to His Second Coming.
Disagree about the reference to the “Mormon” view of Jesus being “just a man who attained divinity.” Both earthly parents had been visited by angels telling them of their son’s Divine Mission, so we can only imagine some of the family discussions as He was growing up. At age 12 He was found at the Temple “being about His Father’s business” while teaching the “experts” about the gospel. The Bible skips to Him as an adult starting His Divine Mission, merely touching someone, or giving a verbal “take up your bed” and other examples to heal the blind-deaf-lame-leprosy, etc., or merely givng a verbal command “Come forth,” to those who were deceased. Jesus inherited this Divine attribute from His Heavenly Father (Who can, and does, the same thing).
To see more examples of how the “Mormon” view is about Jesus, the Savior, the Son of God, go to the website, and watch their free Bible videos for the Old Testament and New Testament and the “Come, Follow Me” Sunday School manual.
After seeing how sacred the “Mormon” view is about the Savior, you can understand why the transition from being used to perceiving Jesus as a Divine child and Divine adult to seeing the new TV-version of Jesus’ alleged-every-day-life-on-Earth is sometimes a little difficult to accept, especially when it’s being more apparent with each passing season, as compared to the first couple of seasons, and that’s why I quit watching. But if the TV show helps only one person to “heal” from a Babylonian-Worldly style of Earthly life, it’s worth it.
I was presented this article by a friend who is, like you, opposed to the Chosen series and tells me that I should stop watching it so as not to fill my head with false doctrine. I read your whole article and I am replying to inform you that I was not impressed. You sound like a really smart guy who fully believes what he says, so please humor me by hearing my take on your argument.
First of all, have you even watched The Chosen? It can be easy to pick and choose from the comments you find on the internet. Forgive me if I’m wrong, what it looks like to me is you taking a line here and there and attacking them for several paragraphs. It makes it look like you know much more than you really do, which in my opinion could simply be your thoughts on negative reviews from online. I, however, have watched The Chosen and I believe that it is good, wholesome entertainment though NOT meant to replace the Bible in any way, as Mr. Jenkins says. In your article you quote Revelation 22:18-19 as if the producers of the Chosen are somehow altering the Holy Bible, but that just isn’t true. Any Christian with a good head on their shoulders will take information from sources other than the Bible itself with an open hand and not store it into their brain as facts. Have you ever considered that that could be the problem? Not the producers of a television series, but the naïve viewers who believe anything they see?
Of course, since this show is based on the Bible it would be wise to create it as authentically as possible. It would be impossible to make a five plus season show that matches with a book detail for detail, but I think we can agree that the main thing is to stand firm on the basics. The Chosen takes the main outlines from Bible stories and adds plausible details to make it viewing length. How would you suggest they do it? I assume you would just say that they shouldn’t do it at all, but that really isn’t an answer. The Chosen aside, do you think it’s wrong to adapt the Bible into any other form? Take a Children’s Bible storybook! Do you honestly think that everything in those stories, down to the illustrations, are 100% true? Of course not! The only way to get the raw, unfiltered truth is to read the Bible. Which The Chosen is not meant to replace.
One of your main points is the supposed evil behind the fact that The Chosen is a work put together by several religions besides Christianity. (For the record, I am a Christian, so I believe in your core ideas here.) These religions believe in the Bible, do they not? The Chosen is based on the Bible! Of course, these other religions also believe things that aren’t in the Bible (such as that Jesus and Satan are siblings, Mary is a goddess, etc.) but that is really beside the point because that isn’t what they’re basing the show on. They are working together to take the Bible for what it is, and doing their best at adapting it into this show.
You also say that it would completely implausible for Jesus to ask “what does your heart say?”. I agree with how listening to your heart over your head is usually bad advice, but you have to remember that Jesus would have known what Nicodemus’s heart was saying! Nicodemus was unsure of what to do because he was weighing what Jesus said with logic. It is perfectly plausible that Jesus could give him a bad feeling about doing something that wasn’t the right decision.
Next point: Jesus is a “worldly party animal”? I honestly had to laugh at this. Mister Willcock sounds disgusted at the idea that Jesus could be dancing with His disciples at the wedding from John 2:1-12. He calls it a sinful betrayal, as if Jesus’ holiness would be beyond dancing at this wedding. This is the same man who made wine for them to drink! Dancing is not sinful. Ecclesiastes 3:4 says that there is a time to mourn and a time to dance! Jesus mourned the loss of Lazarus at his death. He could certainly dance with His friends to celebrate a wedding.
“To make Jesus say there are things He is unable to do is blasphemous!” says Mr. Willcock to Jesus’ line from after the wedding “Some things even I cannot do.”. This was when a disciple asked Jesus to make Andrew a better dancer. The way its worded doesn’t even let the readers of your article know that this was a joke! Do you believe that Jesus doesn’t have a sense of humor? This is found in article of Biblical humor from When Did Jesus Laugh? (biblestudy.org) :
“Good, clean humor celebrates the goodness of God. It is the key component to joy, one of the primary attributes of the Holy Spirit which proceeds from our Father (Galatians 5:22 – 23). The Christian walk should be a joyful one.
God the Father and Jesus do indeed have a healthy sense of humor and do laugh! We, therefore, can be assured that even after we are resurrected from the dead we will continue to have one as well.”
“The Chosen has a feminist agenda,” you say. The reference you included says that Jesus would have never asked Mary Magdalene to lead in prayer. Are you aware that there are female prophetesses in the Bible? Undoubtedly they would pray publicly! There is but a small handful of female characters in the show, and “feminist agenda” isn’t exactly how I’d put it. Unless, perhaps, the Bible has a feminist agenda too!
“What does Jesus Christ think about The Chosen? ‘I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes.’ Psalms 101:3.” To put words like those (that Jesus never even said!) into His mouth is a big deal, even for someone who didn’t just plea the wickedness of coming up with further detail for Jesus’ television character.
One thing I want to point out is how you say that Jenkins argued that “God told him The Chosen is supposed to be ‘the definitive portrayal of My people’”, when in fact, his exact words were that he felt God was saying that. There is a distinction, and I think it’s an important one. There is a big difference between sharing your feelings and claiming to be some kind of prophet. Furthermore, you cannot base all your opinions on this one person. You seem to really like to assault what he says, and it appears to make up the majority of your article! Are you opposing The Chosen or Dallas Jenkins?
Another rebuttal I have is your objection to The Chosen’s marketing campaign “get used to different”. You are taking this as evil and referencing scripture that warns us to beware of false christs. That is certainly not what they meant. I could be wrong here, but how I understood that was this: before Jesus came to preach to the people of Israel, religious citizens had a very set way of doing things, such as how they treated the Sabbath. They were not to do any kind of work, no matter the consequences. A man who picked up sticks on the Sabbath was stoned! Then came Jesus. When He healed the sick and diseased on that day, that made the religious leaders very angry, and they accused Him of breaking the Sabbath. Scripture records Jesus healing on the Sabbath seven times!
1. Simon Peter’s mother-in-law in Peter’s home (Mark 1:29–31).
2. A man with a withered hand in the synagogue (Mark 3:1–6).
3. A man born blind in Jerusalem (John 9:1–16).
4. A crippled woman in a synagogue (Luke 13:10–17).
5. A man with dropsy at a Pharisee’s house (Luke 14:1–6).
6. A demon-possessed man in Capernaum (Mark 1:21–28).
7. A lame man by the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1–18).
In response to their rebuke, Jesus responded,
“If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:11).
Not only did the religious leaders get told, but it was by a man who claimed to be the very Son of God! To them, that idea was very different!
Jesus told of how he was the fulfillment of the Law in Matthew 5:17. That is how I understood the line from the season three trailer “I am the Law of Moses.” Obviously, Jesus is not the literal stone tablets of the law. But he is the fulfillment of them! Because of Jesus, we are no longer bound to the consequence of sin: eternal separation from God. I do not agree with your idea that this is paraphrasing the Book of Mormon or any other book, and honestly, from the quotes you put in from Mr. Jenkins it sounds like he just made it up. Is that okay? That depends. As I said earlier, it’s impossible to base a television show 100% on a book. So maybe you aren’t just opposed to the Chosen, but to all Bible adaptions in general. And if that were the case, I understand and respect your opinion. But what you are saying is that the Chosen is an evil agenda created to lead its viewers astray, and that’s where I had to shake my head and begin to doubt the legitimacy of everything else you said.
You say in your concluding paragraph that Christians are commanded to keep away from idols. What does that even mean? We are watching a TV show here, not partaking in satanic rituals. Contrary from what you are implying by your reference to 1 Corinthians 10:19-21, I would have to strongly disagree with the comparison between The Chosen to the table of devils. And as for your comment about The Chosen presenting a false gospel, I don’t even know where to begin. So I’m just going to hope that the rest of my rebuttals have sufficiently proved my point.
Out of everything you said against the Chosen there’s really only one thing that I really agree with, and that is the fact that Jesus is presented a bit more human-like than how he is portrayed in the Bible. How he seems insecure and rehearses His sermons is one thing I wish they had done differently. But keeping the fact that this is not Scripture but entertainment in mind, I can say confidently that I enjoy watching the show and I encourage others to the same.
I may not be a lawyer, but I do have a functioning brain. I am open to opinions and thoughts that differ from my own. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be reading your article in the first place. I am usually able to respect the opinions of others, but it gets hard when I’m dealing with a man who called an entire production team evil, and claims that they are under a curse from God.
In fact, I did watch several episodes of The Chosen with a Christian group who initially thought it was a good idea to watch it. It became clear to me early on that the The Chosen was misrepresenting the gospel and Jesus Christ. The first striking example of the false portrayal of Jesus was when they showed him rehearsing the sermon on the mount. Jesus Christ is God. He does not need to rehearse. I also thought it was false that the disciples were passing out promotional pamphlets for Jesus’ upcoming sermon. God effectually draws his elect to him. He does not need promotional material. There were so many other examples that I cannot recall now. But it became clear to me that there was something devilish about The Chosen. I voiced my objections to the portrayal, some in the group agreed with me, while others, like you, found that The Chosen was worthwhile watching. That is when I began to research the series and discovered what is really behind the production. I would show up for fellowship, but, in protest, I refused to accompany the group to watch The Chosen when the group recessed to watch succeeding episodes.