The O’Reilly Factor found an excuse for two clerics to spend several minutes giving “Killing Jesus” a big thumbs up.
The TV movie based on Bill O’Reilly’s book will be aired in the near future. As Yahoo TV critic Ken Tucker noted, O’Reilly has spent the week hustling up viewers, both on his show and off. Last night, in O’Reilly’s absence, his show kept up the effort in a segment in which guest host Eric Bolling "asked," "Should churches encourage worshippers to watch it, even though it's a historic, not religious telling of Jesus' life?"
It was easy to predict the outcome even before it was revealed that the two guests for the discussion were pastor Robert Jeffress and Father Jonathan Morris, each a Fox News contributor. Before they appeared, Bolling gave us a sneak peek of the movie he said is “already getting a ton of buzz.”
Jeffress went a step further by encouraging everyone to watch the film. “If the movie follows the book, Christians are going to be inspired and enlightened by it,” Jeffress opined. “...Bill approached it as a journalist. ...I think everybody should tune in on Sunday night, watch the movie and then make up their mind for themselves about who they think Jesus is.”
And surprise! Morris agreed. “Some of the depictions of Jesus in film, I think, have been rather unfortunate,” Morris said. He thinks they paint Jesus as a “kind of an enigmatic, kind of a super spiritual, effeminate Jesus who’s kind of walking around in this daze. That’s not what we need.” But, Morris assured us, this film “is going to be helpful” because it focuses on “Jesus the man.”
Bolling revealed he’s “dying to see this movie as well.”
Watch the hype below, from last night’s The O’Reilly Factor.
I choose not to read/watch BOR’s spin on Jesus. But I talked to a few people today (all self-professed Christians) who did see the movie. They did not like how it deliberately left out a lot of Christ’s Christian narrative such as the miracles, the Lord’s supper body/blood aspect, his divinity (the basis on which he was charged with blasphemy), no physical resurrection and such.
One of them had me read this take on on the movie (part of which is below w/link) that they all agreed with. Now I don’t know for sure but I can’t imagine that BOR would have been okay with the screenplay if it didn’t present his book as he wanted it to – which is making some of his Christian fans wonder out loud about BOR’s faith considering the way the movie downplayed Jesus’ ministry/spirituality. BOR may have wanted to stick with the historical angle (that he cherry-picked) but he is sure ticking off some of the FOX “news” Christian base who are wondering why he couldn’t have shown both the history AND spirituality.
“Killing Jesus” review: "Light pagan worldview with strong revisionist history of the New Testament Gospels about Jesus Christ, leaving out the miracles of Jesus and focusing on his crucifixion and the empty tomb and his message of love and forgiveness, but leaving out any reference to reports of his resurrection appearances and minimizing the teaching that Jesus claimed to be the Son of the living God, unlike the book on which the movie is based.
[…]
KILLING JESUS is the two-hour movie version of Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s bestselling book. The book may be criticized for some weak historical documentation and its noncommittal approach to the resurrection, but this unfaithful movie version is even weaker, giving its viewers a Jesus who’s not divine, who performs no miracles and who’s full of doubt, especially at the beginning. Also, unlike the book, the KILLING JESUS movie seriously plays down Jesus Christ’s teaching that He was the Son of God."
https://www.movieguide.org/reviews/killing-jesus.html
We can’t wait for the reviews after the air date.
Here at Fox we know that Jesus was a MANLY man!
