By Scott Phillips

November 8, 2006

As some of you may have heard, this blockbuster movie features about four minutes of the UPCI’s Mississippi camp meeting.   They came under the guise of filming a documentary on Pentecost.  The man played a good straight guy. The bottom line is honest good people got duped and the results are playing in every city and grossed over $24 million this past weekend on 800 screens. Borat, who in reality is a Hasidic Jew named Sacha Baron Cohen, makes fun of women, Jews, and the unsuspecting.

Everyone has incredible hindsight, and if we could we could all do better if we could undo and redo what we regret.   My thoughts on this do not deal with the obvious misgivings we have because of this event and the mockery made of Pentecost in this movie.  Countless people have allowed cameras in services for years.  Who would know that it would be something like this? Anyone who seems to act like they know all and see all and never make a mistake, are either lying or self deceived.  They are just fortunate enough not to have it plastered on the Big Screen - yet.  

 

I saw a clip from the movie dealing with the camp meeting from the movie on YouTUBE.  It was pretty standard fare for a camp meeting and would be familiar for anyone associated with Pentecost.   It could have been so much worse! With that in mind, the world may have laughed at what most of us would not be ashamed to bring our friends and family to attend.   Bottom line, people were exposed to what
happens at camp meeting – with, of course, this guy making light and fun of it.

It requires no talent or intelligence to be a critic.  Anyone can do that.

Yet what is the upside?  The world and the carnally minded have always made light and fun of the worship and experience of the sincere worshippers of God. Remember Michael, the wife of David, shaming David in his worship as the Ark of the Covenant came into Jerusalem”  David’s response, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Remember Pentecost (Acts 1-2)?   In the crowd were scoffers and skeptics accusing them
of being drunk and mad.  Peter answered this charge by saying, “These are not drunken, as ye suppose” (Acts 2:15).  In this atmosphere of scoffing and skeptics, 3,000 were added to the church.  What happened?  The phenomenon spread and more and more experienced this that some called drunken pandemonium.   We are talking New Testament formation sprang in an environment of persecution and criticism.

So, the upside is the enemy may have meant it for evil, but God? God always gets the last laugh.

 

ninetyandnine.com

© 2006, Scott Phillips

---------

Scott Phillips with his wife and three boys live in Clinton, Mississippi.  The Pastor of NewBirth Church, Host of Bible Answers Radio Show on the Supertalk Radio Network statewide in Mississippi and the writer of the In Him, By Him, Through Him devotional emails and books.  When he is not ministering, broadcasting, or blogging he is twiddling his thumbs wondering what to do next.