Do you ever think about Uzza, or Phinehas? Since you can’t pull yourself away from “The Chosen” and the eroding fictional stories of the day

Thursday, April 10th, 2025

by Ken Pullen

ACP

“After the success of  “The Chosen,” Amazon and Netflix are converting Bible stories into films and TV shows with “Game of Thrones” style intrigue and romantic comedy elements.”

The New York Times

This is an oddity for me. I had the idea for this particular piece come to me back in early February as a result of my daily Bible reading and study.

An oddity because I usually see something, read something, hear something, and sit down and may or may not add my bit to it, just putting the words down and publishing it in this place. This piece has been different. And I now know why.

Because today, April 10th, in my daily work I came across “The State of the Bible 2025” compiled by The American Bible Society, and the opening of the first chapter of the .pdf was the quote from The New York Times. This will become evident in its timely importance as you read on, providing you haven’t already jumped off this and are now on a website looking for a new swimsuit or sandals, or a travel website planning your next vacation.

This was the opening I wrote about a month ago:

Do you ever think about Uzza? How about Phinehas? Two men of great contrasts with two distinct fates.

Do you know who Uzza and Phinehas are and what their role is in history? I don’t ask this to embarrass anyone. I hadn’t thought of Uzza or Phinehas except when I came across them in my recent Scripture reading.

We’ll get to Uzza and Phinehas shortly, but first; I don’t like saying or writing about factual historical Biblical events as stories. We do a great disservice to the Lord and the integrity of God’s Holy Word, and the teaching of His Word — beginning in children’s Sunday schools — to always approach the historical events, the real people, and the real events as stories. It creates within the mind and soul a starting point that is ingrained and carried through life, so that what they have heard or read may not be factual. It could be made up. Embellished. Even just a fairy tale. Just ask most adults. Because, well, they’re only stories, right?

The life and death, the historical accounts of Uzza and Phinehas, are not mere stories.

Nothing in God’s inerrant, infallible, unchangeable, eternal, living, and active Word needs to be improved upon. Added to. Or anything omitted. Or embellished. To entertain. Under the guise, the lie, the delusion, it must be added to, things omitted, altered, embellished, and fictionalized in order to be better understood and received today.

Utter rubbish! Where do you think such so-called logic and rationale emanate from? The heart of God? Or the rotted spirit of Satan?

To make anything in the Holy Bible a story lessens God because every word within the Holy Bibe is from God Himself — yet people vainly, foolishly imagine they need to edit God, they can improve upon God’s Word, they can make it so it works better to save people, bring them to the LORD! How vain and foolish! How lost and deceived can people who profess faith be? Well, in times such as these? GREATLY DECEIVED.

All these stories erode. Pollute. They become LESS REAL and people easily gravitate, are prone to wander to fictional accounts of Bible contents, watering things down, muddying things up, and pulling them away from God when they delude themselves that they are drawing closer to Him. It all begins to border on the unreal. Just another story.  There’s already far too much conforming to make people comfortable. This ridiculous compunction that everything must be said in a manner approved by the world in order to relate to a person.

The real problem? Reducing anything in God’s Word to a story lessens God.

And the contents of the Holy Bible don’t need to be dumbed down, reduced to a story for children or anyone else. Where is the faith in the God Who created all things to then work in the heart and spirit of a child, a young person, an adult? Cannot the God Who made everything by His mere words, Who parted the Red Sea, made it so the Israelites clothing, sandals and feet showed no wear for 40 years, that defeated every more powerful enemy, that spoke to Noah, that put a prophet in a lion’s den safely, a God Who came to earth to live among us, die, to conquer death on the third day and walk out of the tomb — that can forgive and save an individual destined for the depths of hell by their faith and obedience in Him — and we vainly beleive we have to reduce, alter, make more digestible God and what is contained in His Word for everyone? From children to young people to adults? Because God can’t work in them if they are told the facts, the real truth contained in Scriptures?

Seriously? Think deeply about this. How can such a finite, feeble being as a man, a woman, determine they know better, they know how to administer God’s Word, because it’s just too much, too difficult to know unless they alter it?

Children are not as dumb or incapable of grasping the truth as adults imagine they are. Try it sometime and find out.

Am I just being nitpicky? No. If I met you, and we got to talking, and I said, “Let me tell you a story…” it is likely that something within is going to question the validity, authenticity, facts of what you’re about to hear. Do you agree?

If we met and I said, “There is a historical event I’ve been wanting to talk with you about…”

Do you have the same inner reaction as when I say I want to tell you a story about something?

I hear pastors, professed Christ followers of many decades, referencing everything in God’s Holy Word as a story. No, Moby Dick, Great Expectations, and the Raymond Chandler detective novels about Philip Marlowe are stories. Your grandmother watches her stories on TV — every word within God’s Word ought to be thought of and discussed, written of as actual factual history. Why? Because that is what every word truly is. Not merely a story.

I can hear someone saying, “Well, telling a story is the best way to teach or have people understand. Jesus spoke in parables or stories.” Yes, He did. Why did He? Find the answer in Scriptures, not in some fictionalized Christian novel, film, or TV program.

Jesus, God on earth, spoke the absolute undiluted, no embellishing required, no needing spicing things up to keep the audience listening. Parables were spoken by the LORD to divide the people into two groups. Those who understood and believed, and those who didn’t understand and refused to believe.

Jesus never added or omitted, embellished, felt the need to entertain. To add intrigue, or romantic comedic elements in order to hold His audience, or gain disciples. The pure unadulterated truth of God and  His words were sufficient.

When embellishments, fictionalized accounts, special effects, and made-up stuff are felt to be needed, it merely evidences a weakness within, an acceptance and satisfaction in falling prey to thinking that. Because it’s what the world does. It tells stories. And shies away from facts, reality, and actual history. It’s merely an ingrained, accepted, easy way of underestimating the listener or reader rather than knowing, truly understanding, and teaching, telling, and writing about such important history. A history of the past, present, and future.

The Holy Bible, the inerrant, infallible, unchangeable [as professed believers work to change it continually and see no problem in doing so], eternal, living, and active Word of God is the only book, the only history book of its kind. It doesn’t need any help in getting its message into the hearts and minds of feeble human beings; determined it isn’t adequate, isn’t enough, it needs freshening up, improving by them — to make it more exciting and relatable. All this denying the power of the Holy Spirit and reducing God the Father, the life, death, resurrection, and work of Jesus Christ the LORD, and the Holy Spirit.

You may strongly disagree, but when telling another person an adult, young person, or a child of the real people and events in the Holy Bible, of the Lord Jesus Christ and you approach it as a story rather than historical fact, the person, the child you are in front of will likely translate either in part or the whole in their mind from their conditioning — this is only a story, not really real — akin to any story they may be familiar with, like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Charlotte’s Web, Treasure Island, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and so on. Then wondering why the connection didn’t take as you had hoped.

All of this has a bearing on the modern-day mind towards God.

Nitpicking? I don’t believe so. The casualness with which God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Word of God are approached in times such as these is shameful.

We have reduced the Lord and His Word. Eroded it to make it more palatable to the human mind, soul, and heart that has become drunk with 19th, 20th, and 21st-century indoctrination in psychology, the world’s philosophies and ways,  technology, and the continual erosion of language, morals, and spiritual matters of the Lord. More and more casualness explaining it away, adopting, accepting, accommodating, and approving of such things under the banner of, “That’s how things are and how we can relate to people.”

That shows a lack of faith in the Supernatural power of the Spirit of God. To work in the speaker or writer, the teacher, the preacher, the believer, reaching out to an unbeliever. It shows a lack of reliance on the eternal Word of God that has never required changing in order to connect, relate to, and integrate the listener, the reader to begin to open their cold, dark heart to the Lord.

To stand firmly on the world’s ways, philosophies, and teachings demanding modernization in order to connect rather than standing firmly, faithfully in the Word trusting in the Holy Spirit to do what the Holy Spirit does [not us] is very dangerous and in reality detrimental to the hearer, the reader one is attempting to connect with.

Serious eternal matters require a serious mature understanding and approach.

Do not misunderstand. This has nothing to do with religion, pretense, or acting holy and pious. It has to do with being of the utmost sincerity and authenticity well grounded in the Word of God, trusting in the Holy Spirit to be there — in you — to help you preach, teach, write, and speak to anyone and everyone about the Lord Jesus Christ, Yeshua Hamashiach and what is the most important matter in every life.

Don’t agree? Pause and look around. Listen. Watch. Then get back to me.

Children can handle the truth. Especially the truth of God. There are countless examples of this in the Word of God. Why is it that adults, professed disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, Yeshua Hamashiach, have failed to see, know, and understand this in the teaching of children? Thinking children must be shielded, told a story in order for them to understand? From the beginning setting a foundation that is tainted rather than directly from the Word of God? Teach everything from the Word of God to all people no matter their chronological age as factual, actual history, and have the faith that the Spirit of God will translate and work in the heart, mind, spirit, and soul of the one hearing, reading that history. It’ll have a much greater, lasting impact, a factual impact than a story. Because the human mind at every stage of life translates a story differently than actual factual history.

What impacts more, and is truth versus fiction? The attack on Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, or the Hollywood movie, the story, From Here To Eternity?

Why we even have broken it all down into fiction and non-fiction in the last few years the lines have been blurred to where so-called Christian fiction is now being adopted, accepted, and approved as non-fiction in the human mind and heart. All part of the very last times of this world before the Rapture, the Great Tribulation, and then the Second Coming. Of He Who is not merely a story. Something soft and of a 20th, 21st century making.

I have had a believer, a retired pastor, become very excited and animated in discussing what transpired between Nicodemus and his wife with regard to the Lord Jesus Christ. Telling me how important that conversation was. As if it actually took place as it was written and presented in the fictional story The Chosen. Defending The Chosen as a vehicle to “bring many people to Christ who would not normally come.” [as the majority of folks who have viewed that Hollywood production are professed Christians and not the unbelieving populace].

Sure, I will never deny that the Spirit of God works in incredible ways in people through means we may not have ever considered. Such as a talking donkey. A Roman Centurion. A harlot. An adultress. A liar. And on and on. Oh, that’s right — all those examples are found in the inerrant, infallible, unchangeable, eternal living, and active Word of God, which works wonders in the hearts, minds, souls, spirits, and lives of those in darkness who are exposed to it. Never needing to correct anything, such as “No, I understand you may have seen that in a movie, but that isn’t in God’s Word,” adding to the already present tsunami of confusion present.

Again, where is the trust in the Word of God to be sufficient and trusting in the Holy Spirit to work?

From the earliest times, in commissioned paintings and great artworks to the written word, the erosion of portraying the actual factual history of Biblical events has been portrayed as mere — stories.

“Hey, I thought this was about somebody named Uzza!? Some guy named Phinehas? Whatever happened to writing this about them?”

Leading to where we presently are…

…That was the opening written over a month ago. Before even getting to Uzza or Phinehas.

There was a time in world history, in the majority of it, where there was little or no written fiction and if told a story the listener was being told something factual, historical, real.

That was how the world was for thousands of years. Even for a long time after the advent of Gutenberg’s printing press. Very little or no fiction.

It has only been within the last century plus some that fiction has become as prevalent as it has. With it becoming dominant with the advent of radio, TV, film, and the Internet, and current technology.

What once was a factual, historical telling, a story, has now become a fictional, made-up, embellished, created story where facts, the truth, and history need not apply. Merely entertain. Merely help one escape reality and the truth. Most stories are nothing more than lies and lack credibility. The times they have changed. Haven’t they? As have churches, pastors, what passes for the gospel, what we make of Jesus, of God, and of God’s Word. Why do we then flock to, desire, and approve so of all the fictionalized accounts, all the entertainment passing for the spreading of the gospel?

Because of such a time as this. The end. Coming soon to a world near you!

At this point, due to the changes that have occurred within, and awareness of length and the attention spans of folks these days — if unfamiliar with Uzza or Phinehas, get a Holy Bible and go to 1 Chronicles 13 and Numbers 25. What’s that? Where are those books? In something called The Old Testament — I realize that is foreign untread territory to most, but go there. Often. Daily even. You’ll be amazed at how the LORD will work in your daily life if faithfully going to The Old Testament daily.

As you can see from the New York Times quote, Amazon, Netflix, and Hollywood can’t wait to begin cranking out fictional stories, with “Game of Thrones,” intrigue, special effects, and of course, ya gotta have the romantic comedy element thrown in to keep the masses entertained, right? Keep ’em in stitches. What’s coming next? Jesus marries Mary Magdalene, and the world is taken inside their marital spats and escapades? “All In The Family”, 21st century Jesus style? There have already been so-called Christian writers claiming Jesus was secretly married to her. Yeah, it’s gotten that eroded, false, deceiving, and watered-down [for the itching ears, the bored in the Word needing entertainment, stories!], but let’s crank out more fiction, more deception, more lies and confusion about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Bible because that’s what the world needs now, right?

The continual watering down. The continual erosion of God’s Word.

Watered down and eroded from the pulpits of America.

To where we’re told and believe people must get their Bible message in a fictional story, a visual story made by film and TV producers, major mega-corporations. Why? Because they are so godly and holy?

Or could their main motivation be the hundreds of millions, into the billions of dollars to be made?

Because they know there is a ripe, rich market for what they are peddling, and the overwhelming majority won’t question or pause to discern wisely. They will just hop on board and gleefully profess it’s wonderful. Ahh, the gospel is being preached and sent out among the unbelievers! A watered-down fictional account. That further erodes and gets watered down by the day.

Which appears all right for the overwhelming majority professing to be Christ followers.

I hope due to the broken up nature of this piece, having been started over a month ago and then added to today [April 10th] has not made it more unreadable or understandable.

If I have, forgive me.

But this is a most important matter and topic.

Enough of the fictional versions — THE LIE, ALTERING GOD’S WORD — enough of the watering down, enough of the dumbing down, enough of the eroding, enough of the stories already, and in these times go directly, totally, only to the whole Word of God.

And have some faith in the Holy Spirit, in God, to work in the heart, mind, spirit, and soul of others. And yourself. Or are you so weak in faith and in such need of fiction, of entertainment, that you can’t pull yourself away from the polluting of the world?

Have more faith in the LORD, more faith in the Supernatural power of the Holy Spirit of God, more faith in the whole Holy Bible, more faith in children, young people to understand without watering down, compromising the Word of God, more faith in yourself to discern well and wisely and more spiritual maturity, inward strength, more resistance to the world and more focus within God’s Word. More faith in others to understand because the Holy Spirit is the one to work in them — not you, not some film, TV program or fiction novel — the Holy Spirit, He Who is continually denied, ignored, reduced and pushed aside by willful people pushing their will rather than praying and believing, “Your will be done, on earth, as in heaven, Your kingdom come.” Without the individual thinking it is they who are bringing the kingdom of God to earth, it is they who save, it is a TV program, a film, a fictionalized account that saves.

Isn’t there more an enough delusion, confusion, dung flung about and ever increasing? Why are so many determined to add to it, approve it, celebrate it, and push it so? Why? Because of a time such as this. How close we are to it all being fulfilled. It’s all part of Bible prophecy being fulfilled daily before our eyes and ears. And just because someone, something claims to be of the Lord, it, or they, mention Jesus? Test all things. Discern all things. Judge all things against the whole Holy Bible.

And know this — it’s THE BOTTOM LINE with the people making these fictional stories. To sell. To be bought. To make $$$. And these stories make A LOT OF MONEY. These productions are not necessarily meant to bring the gospel to the unsaved because they are so concerned with where their soul are going to spend eternity. More concerned with where they are going to spend the profits made from the fictionalized, deceiving, eroding, watered-down Bible stories they are producing.

Ask yourself this — WHY ISN’T THE HOLY BIBLE ENOUGH FOR YOU? 

It would be better for you to watch a fictionalized murder mystery without profanity and overt sexual content [and that is possible, those productions do exist] than to spend time viewing and having your mind, your spirit eroded in a fictional Bible story. That continues to subtly, or not so subtly be eroded more and more with each passing production.

You might not agree. I understand.

But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD and not Hollywood, Amazon, Netflix, or any producer of continually eroding, fictionalized, watered-down stories of God, Jesus, Bible personages, and Bible accounts.