Gabriel, The Fallen vs The Arcs

Two of my favorite books of all time were written by Frank Peretti. Piercing the Darkness and In This Present Darkness thrilled me with fictional accounts of spiritual warfare based off the authors (and my) Biblical interpretations. Those brought to life for me the angelic and demonic competition that occurs for the human soul. So when I saw the movie Gabriel and read on the DVD box that it was a movie about angels and demons, I decided to watch it.

IMDBs website summarizes the movie as follows:

In the tradition of Underworld, Garbriel reveals the battle between good and evil and the fight for the human soul. Set in purgatory, there is a struggle between Arc and Fallen angels for control over the city and its population of re-born souls. At present, darkness rules and Garbriel, the last of seven Arcs sent to return light, must assume a human form for the first time. In the darkest places of the human soul, this lone arc angel's battle with his human feelings and emotions will prove as perilous as facing the Fallen.

This movie has a very Goth look and feel to it. It vividly depicts the dark and despair of a world without Christ. However, the movie never mentions Christ or God. Instead, they simply refer to the good force as “The Light.”

In the slums of some major city, a drug riddled, prostitution infested, decaying world barely exists. The scales of power have clearly tipped in favor of the Fallen and Gabriel is the last of the seven Arcs sent to wage war for human souls.

The acting in this movie was maybe a B or B-. There was one Fallen female actress that was terrible and one male Arc that wasn’t great either, but beyond that, the acting was acceptable. I was a little put off by some of the vulgarity, but I think that at least part of it was necessary to drive home the despondency of the darkened existence. The fight sequences were unimpressive to me; and the fact that angels and demons would do battle with guns really turned me off. There is one sex scene in the movie (no nudity) that I found offensive as a Christian. It wouldn't have hurt the movie without the sex scene. In addition, I hated the revelation of the main character’s true identity near the end of the movie.

What I loved about this movie, however, was the stark parallel between light and darkness, decay/despair and the absence of goodness and/or light. The battle that takes place in the spiritual world for the human to be able to choose freely how he/she will live and if he/she will accept the full grace of God or reject salvation and be doomed to an eternity in Hell. Many things in this movie are questionable or just plain off Biblically, but if you watch this movie solely from the perspective of how a life without the Light of the World decays, withers, and dies a slow and tormented death, it can have a powerful message.

With all the news that floods our media about terrorism, moral depravity, corrupt politicians, starving nations, senseless violent acts against others, lives that have been destroyed because of sinful choices, weather related disasters, economic crisis, wars and rumors of wars, and the list goes on and on, it is easy to feel hopeless and be full of inner strife and despair. There is no clear line for what is morally acceptable and/or reprehensible anymore. I watched this movie and was easily able to channel some of my own despair, strife and hopelessness into the theme and relate that to the world around me in real life.

More and more the world seems hopeless to me, lately. I picked up a small child from a home overnight to transport for vomiting. All the people in the house with this young boy was intoxicated or stoned. My heart broke for this innocent child who will in all likelihood become a product of his environment. I see things like this every single day.

Friends, the Fallen and the darkness are gaining in strength and strategy. Christians can no longer freely exercise our beliefs and traditions. We are giving those rights away, that has emboldened the darkness and perpetuates the decay. We have to bring the Light back into this world by doing battle against the Fallen.

We have got to learn to do the right thing, because it is the right thing to do, instead of doing the politically correct thing just to appease everyone. We must introduce people to the Light of the World and restore their hope. The best way to do that is for those people to see the Light of the World in us; our witness, our walk, our encounters with people, our attitudes, our postures, our words, our care, our concern, our reaching out.