KNOWING, released in March 2009 and starring Nicolas Cage, is a film that is closest to the truth, but still mixed with a great deal of darkness. It is one of the easiest films to sort into analogies, because its scenes bring complicated concepts to life with hardly any effort.
You can get a great summary of the film on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowing_(film).
You’ll notice in the reviews that one of the main criticisms of the film was “plausibility”. That’s a strange criticism for a science fiction film, because the critics seem to be saying that what happens in KNOWING couldn’t possibly happen. But that’s not the point. For a film to be a great source of analogies, it doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be completely plausible. THE MATRIX certainly doesn’t pass the plausibility test, and yet it’s one of the most potent sources of analogies on the subject of reality ever made. (See the analogies from THE MATRIX and follow the light.)
I’m not here to do film reviews, but to make analogies. That means I take scenes from the film and use them to illustrate truths from the BIBLE. I’m not saying KNOWING is true, I’m saying the BIBLE is true, KNOWING just happens to have usable footage to make my point. There are so many good analogies in KNOWING it’s hard to know where to start.
For one, when John Koestler (played by Nicolas Cage) gives his riveting lecture on determinism vs. randomness , he sums up exactly the difference between what the Bible teaches and what secular humanism (atheism) teaches. The Bible teaches there is an all-wise creator God who created the Universe for a purpose, and atheism teaches the Universe is the result of random chemical accidents produced by a mindless process called Evolution. The Bible speaks of design and purpose whereas evolution speaks of unplanned uncertainty.
I’m not interested in getting into a long debate between the two belief systems. There’s plenty of that on the internet. But I have been on both sides of the fence, and I can tell you from experience what it’s really like to live in Darwin’s pointless universe. I was an atheist until I was 30, and I can tell you the despair and pointlessness of my life pushed me to the brink. When a guy as popular and well-off as Robin Williams contemplates suicide, there’s some darkness in his soul that came from somewhere. (see the WHAT DREAMS MAY COME analogy).
Unless you have tenure and drive a Mercedes, a universe without a designer is pretty bleak. What’s odd is that atheists like nice cars but wouldn’t think of buying one thrown together by an invisible “force”. They look for a nameplate… Mercedes, BMW, Maserati. But they are offended when the Creator of the universe puts his name on his creation. El Shaddai (meaning, in Hebrew, The God of Enough) is one of the Old Testament names of God, as is the familiar English name, Jesus Christ. By the way, it’s said of Jesus Christ in the New Testament that “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” (John 1:3)
So who are we supposed to believe? Charles Darwin or Jesus Christ?
John Koestler is asked by a student, “what do you believe?” Koestler’s despair shows on his face.
So the classroom scene in KNOWING is an exact example of what is going on in classrooms all over the world. Students are asked to pick between the two systems. This sounds so fair. The problem is, the students don’t have enough facts to make an informed decision, so they inevitably decide in favour of Evolution. Why? Because the case for the Bible is generally so poorly made, the Bible explanation for reality sounds implausible. (Wasn’t that what the critics said of the film? “Implausible”?)
So what makes something implausible?
We say something is implausible when the explanation doesn’t make complete sense. So in the case of KNOWING there are elements in the film that don’t make complete sense. Now there’s a difference between hard to believe and doesn’t make complete sense.
Is it hard to believe that a little girl can list the exact details of all the major disasters that will happen in the next 50 years? Yes, it’s hard to believe.
But when John Koestler studies Lucinda Embry’s time capsule letter, he discovers that every prediction to date has come true. It’s hard to believe that Lucinda could have done this, but it’s not implausible. Because the facts back up the predictions. This is exactly the case with the BIBLE. Approximately 2500 prophecies (predictions) appear in the pages of the Bible, about 2000 of which already have been fulfilled to the letter—no errors. That’s one of the main reasons we know the Bible was written by God— only God can accurately predict the future.
So the situation in KNOWING, whether such a thing as prophecy is possible, is entirely plausible, from a Biblical perspective. The Bible is full of prophecy, and in fact the unfulfilled prophecy concerns YOU, dear reader. I wouldn’t be writing these ANALOGYMAN essays if there were no need.
Speaking about need: notice that when John Koestler discovers the accuracy of these prophecies, he takes steps to warn folk of the last three disasters. That’s the nature of prophecy: it’s supposed to be a warning so that folk can do something to avoid the coming disaster. Another analogy from KNOWING is that the film accurately portrays the problem people have with prophecy. Those who know the prophecy and believe it are compelled to warn others. But those who do not believe in prophecy will not believe those sent to warn them. KNOWING does an excellent job of portraying the Cassandra Complex. (The Cassandra Complex occurs when valid warnings or concerns are dismissed or disbelieved. In Greek mythology, Cassandra, the daughter of Priam, king of Troy, was given the gift of prophecy, but although she had accurate knowledge of future events, she could neither alter these events nor convince others of the validity of her predictions.)
One of the reasons the film KNOWING is rated implausible is because prophecy does not fit into the secular humanist world view. An atheist or evolutionist has no basis for there being any pre-knowledge of the future. That’s why I say KNOWING contains a lot of LIGHT. Although it is fiction, and full of inaccuracies (as relates to the Bible) , it is 100% correct when it portrays the predicament of those unable to believe in prophecy. Prophecy is supposed to be a warning from God about what will happen in the future, and if you have been taught that prophecy is impossible, you cannot be forwarded.
What most people don’t know about the Bible is that a predominate theme is what is called THE DAY OF THE LORD. You’ve probably come across this on the Web. There are all kinds of warnings that these are the Last Days. Well, they’re not all bogus. The coming Day of the Lord will come “as a thief in the night”
“But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. ” 1Thessalonians 5:1=4
“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” 2Peter 3:10
These are as yet unfulfilled prophesies. I can’t go into detail here for lack of time, but the Day of the Lord is coming. The point is, are you ready? The weird thing is, if you’re like most people you keep running into this theme, and yet you do everything you can to suppress it. The Bible calls this willful ignorance. Why would people be wilfully ignorant? The Bible explains why: “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not”. John 1:5 This means people don’t make an effort to listen or understand when they are given truth (“light”). The book of Romans adds, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18 ) To “hold the truth in unrighteousness” means to suppress the truth. Our secular humanist system suppresses the truth about the day of the LORD. People simply don’t want to hear it.
Which raises another issue. The final disaster in KNOWING is probably the source of a lot of mocking and criticism. In the film the Earth’s atmosphere is burned away by a solar flare. Critics are quick to say, “couldn’t happen”. But that’s not the point. The film could have used any other of a dozen disaster scenarios. Hit by an asteroid. Demolished by an alien invasion. Frozen in another ice age. (See the analogy of THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW). Drowned in a global flood. Burned away when the sun goes nova. What difference does it make?
Destruction is destruction. The point of KNOWING is not to predict accurately that the earth will be destroyed by a solar flare, but to illustrate what it would look like and feel like to be caught in a global disaster. That’s the whole point of films. To make you see and feel things that would sound dull and uninteresting in the clinical language of science. Do the words “an extinction-level-event” (see the analogy of DEEP IMPACT) convey the sense of awe and fear that can be depicted in a film?
What is amazing to me is how the experts can bandy about such keen scientific observations as “an asteroid striking the earth? It’s not a matter of can it happen. It’s inevitable. It’s only a matter of when.” So in their clinical scientific language they make it sound like they have it under control. “No problem, piece of cake. We’ll just fly up there and nuke it out of the sky.” For a second there, they have us believing it. But there’s been a terrible drought in California since 2013 and nobody has been able to do anything about it. If we can’t do anything about rainfall on the West Coast (right beside the biggest ocean on the planet) what’s the chance of deflecting a killer asteroid?
The point is even those people who don’t believe in prophecy spend a great deal of time making predictions. How is a prediction different from a prophecy? A prediction is a forecast based on past and current trends. So a trend toward global warning results in a prediction of world-wide drought and possibly famine. But some unknown factor could change it all. The change can’t be predicted.
A prophecy, on the other hand, is a forewarning of what is going to happen in the future. The film KNOWING does a good job of reminding us all that disasters are one thing, but the most frightening thing of all is our human ability to ignore credible warning. So KNOWING doesn’t have to be scientifically accurate to provide us with what we need the most: the realization that even if God forewarned us of coming doom we would most likely ignore it. So really, folks, there’s no helping the human race, unless we all do what the Bible tells us and warns us to do:
“Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.” Matthew 24:44 Prophecy tells us to be ready. The last global disaster, God warned the whole world for 120 years, but nobody (except 8 people) listened : “For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” Matt. 24:38,39
There are still other analogies can be made from the movie KNOWING, but there’s no more time. However, I will make one more point before I end. The movie depicts the children as being drawn out by “the whisperers“. The “whisperers” take the child off in spaceships to another world, before the disaster begins. This is not “Biblically accurate”, but it is remarkable close to the real truth. (And that’s of course the whole point of an analogy. An analogy is not an EXACT EQUIVALENT, but it is a REASONABLE PARALLEL. Since people refuse to read the Bible, an analogy can be used to bring light to people who would otherwise be in total darkness.)
The author of KNOWING must have guessed that special provision would have to be made for innocent children. After all, if the adults who are supposed to be the guardians of children are too blind to prepare them, the whisperers will have to collect them. This is actually close to the Biblical truth. Jesus taught that children before the age of accountability, if they die, go immediately to heaven because they’re covered . That’s why Jesus was able to say,”Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 19:14) But of course, I’d have to explain this further elsewhere, and I do in a analogy of the film, HEAVEN IS FOR REAL.