CHRISTIAN MEDIA CLASS II
Spiritual Warfare in American
Media
Hillbillies To Superheroes
Godly Influences in American
Media
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to class two of our Christian Media Class series,
Spiritual Warfare in American Media! Our first class was on the history of
American media From Printing Press To Television. Our second class is
Hillbillies to Super Heroes, and our third and final class will be Babylon To
Hollywood. Tonight’s class will be entitled Hillbillies to Super Heroes, godly
influences in American Media. This class will be divided into three parts:
Hillbillies & Cowboys, City Folks & Country Folks, and American Super
Heroes.
People have been looking for heroes ever since the beginning
of time. The reason for this can be
found in the Bible and the first reference can be found in…
Genesis 3:13-15
And the Lord God said
unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The
serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And
the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art
cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly
shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the
woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou
shalt bruise his heel.
Don’t you know that, just after God created the universe,
mankind would find a way to mess things up!
We know that our God is a holy God.
However, even in judgment, He will always try to show mercy, where
possible. In this case, He holds out
hope for the future even as He passes judgment on mankind. In these verses we
see the first mention of the greatest hero of all time!
In Genesis 3, we see the first reference
to the seed of the woman, who will one day crush the head of Satan. This is a direct reference to the day when
Jesus Christ would destroy the power of the devil! Always keep in mind that Jesus Christ is the
real hero of this book! Anyone who would
be mentioned afterwards can only be heroic and worthy of honor as he mirrors
Jesus’ ultimate defeat of Satan. Throughout history there have been many important
and powerful people, but there is only one worthy of the title Paul mentions
in…
I Timothy 6:14-16
That thou keep this
commandment without spot, unrebukeable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus
Christ: Which in his times he shall
shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the
light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to
whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen.
Over the many centuries since the beginning of time, there
have been many kings and lords. However,
there is only one who is worthy of being King of kings and Lord of lords. Throughout history we have seen other men who
have become kings and lords, two types of heroes.
A lord is someone who has become the master over
something. Take, for instance, someone
we mentioned last time, who believed what God said about the true nature of the
earth and risked his life to prove it.
In the process of doing this, he discovered the
"I am a most unworthy
sinner, but I have cried out to the Lord for grace and mercy, and they have
covered me completely. I have found the
sweetest consolation since I made it my whole purpose to enjoy His marvelous
presence. For the execution of the
journey to the
A king is someone who rules over a nation
of people. There have also been many
mighty kings throughout history. One was
King James of
"The propagating of Christian religion to such people
as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and
worship of God, and may in time bring the infidels and savages, living in these
parts, to human civility and to a settled and quiet government."
So we see how certain men can become lords and kings. There is a third class of people who can be
classified as heroes also. This third
class is mentioned in…
Joshua 1:13-15
Remember the word which
Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, saying, The Lord your God hath
given you rest, and hath given you this land.
Your wives, your little ones, and your cattle, shall remain in the land
which Moses gave you on this side Jordan; but ye shall pass before your brethren
armed, all the mighty men of valour, and help them; Until the Lord have given your brethren rest,
as he hath given you, and they also have possessed the land which the Lord your
God giveth them: then ye shall return unto the land of your possession, and
enjoy it, which Moses the Lord's servant gave you on this side Jordan toward
the sunrising.
Here we see our third class of heroes, mighty men of valor.
This name is very specific. All men who
become kings and lords do not classify as heroes. In fact, down through the ages, many evil men
have been kings and lords. So also, many
evil men have been mighty men throughout history. Goliath was a mighty man, but he was not a
mighty man of valor!
HILLBILLIES AND COWBOYS
Thus we see that those who become heroes need not
necessarily be a lord or a king over anything.
In fact, many of the heroes throughout the history of
While hillbillies have been the object of ridicule from many
quarters, the truth is that our nation would not have survived as long as it
has if not for the hillbillies. As
United States Congressman William Jennings Bryan once put it…
“Burn down your cities and leave our farms and your cities
will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will
grow in the streets of every city in the country.”-William Jennings
One of the earliest of our hillbilly heroes was born to
Quaker parents in
“The religion I have is to love and fear God, believe in
Jesus Christ, do all the good to my neighbor, and myself that I can, do as
little harm as I can help, and trust on God's mercy for the rest.”
A century later, a young
Hillbilly is a term generally used for those farmers living
east of the
There was a myriad of cowboy heroes in the
early days of American history. They
would even become a major part of the early days of
“Oh Lord, I reckon I'm not much just by
myself; I fail to do a lot of things I ought to do, but Lord when trails are
steep and pass is high, help me ride it straight the whole way through, and in
the falling dusk I get the final call - I do not care how many flowers they
send - above all else the happiest trail will be for you to say to me,
"Lets Ride My Friend." Amen.”
Roy and Dale were just the first in a long line of western
stars of the electronic media age. In
1949, they would be joined by Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels, better known
as THE LONE RANGER and his Indian sidekick Tonto.
The 1950’s, when I was born, a multitude of cowboy heroes
literally exploded into the small screen universe. The first of these would be Duncan Renaldo
and Leo Carrillo, more widely known as THE CISCO KID and Pancho. These two actors
would be the first of a long line of Hispanic cowboy stars.
In 1954, the ladies got into the act as Gail Davis got her
own cowgirl show entitled, THE ADVENTURES OF ANNIE OAKLEY. Annie Oakley was a young fast gun and
sharpshooter that actually did live in the Old West.
Most of these programs would last only a few years but some
can still be seen today. One that began
in 1959 featured a family made up of four fairly unknown actors with the first
names of Lorne, Pernell, Dan & Michael. We all know them better as Ben,
Adam, Hoss & Little Joe, and the program was BONANZA.
As the 1950’s ended, cowboy stars gave way to hillbilly
heroes, who came into their own in the 1960’s.
One of the most popular of these shows featured the acting talents of Andy,
Another of these many hillbilly shows premiered in
1964. This program starred Buddy, Irene,
Donna & Max, whom we all know lovingly as Jed, Elly Mae, Grannie &
Jethro, the Clampett Clan. The program was called THE BEVERLY
HILLBILLIES and it was unique in the fact that this story was inspired by an
incident that occurred when the program’s creator visited a log cabin in the
hills of
CITY FOLKS AND COUNTRY FOLKS
Looking back at the 1950’s we need to remember also that all
television heroes were not country bumpkins and cattle jockeys. There were a lot of city folks and country
folks in the roster of heroes during this decade of American history. To better understand how city folks came to
be, we need to take a look at what Abraham’s nephew
Genesis 13:9-11
Is not the whole land
before thee? separate thyself, I pray
thee, from me: if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or
if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left. And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all
the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the Lord
destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of
Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar. Then
Abraham and
In 1952, two city folks, Jack and Harry, took the nation by
storm. We knew them better as Joe Friday
and Bill Gannon, and the program was called DRAGNET. “Just the facts, Mam!” became a national
slogan for all the hardworking police detectives across the nation. Producer, director and star Jack Webb also created
Adam-12 and Emergency. These three shows
would be the forerunners of such popular programs as Law & Order, CSI and
ER; just to mention a few of the shows today following in his footsteps.
In 1953, we also began to see the entrance into the
television universe of many country folks.
Folks from foreign countries, that is!
The first is a major series that starred the two British actors
Ronald Howard and Howard Marion-Crawford. We recognize them more readily as DETECTIVE
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND DOCTOR WATSON. THE
ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES was the first of a long line of programs starring
heroes that were not American, but rather foreign country folks.
Following the success of Sherlock Holmes, another British
hero would enter the world of American media.
We speak, of course, of Richard Greene and Archie Duncan. These actors are better known to us as ROBIN
HOOD AND LITTLE JOHN and the show was THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD.
Meanwhile, to the north, two Canadians named Richard Simmons
and Kim of the North, became very popular.
Their stage names were SERGEANT PRESTON AND YUKON KING, and the program
was called SERGEANT PRESTON OF THE YUKON.
Moving to the western seaboard, one of the most popular of
the foreign country folks hit the airways in 1957, and this hero is also my own
personal favorite. The star’s name was Guy
Williams and the character was the Spanish born crime fighter ZORRO, which by
the way, is Spanish for Fox. Zorro was
probably the best done of all the country folk programs of that time, courtesy
of Walt Disney. The first year of this
program, it swept all awards for its excellence. However, after two successful seasons, the
program had to be dropped because the production costs had gotten too high to
maintain that level of excellence.
Needless to say, with programming like this on the only
three networks during the 1950s, you can see why our generation has such a love
for righteousness and hate for evil. We
love these heroes, not because they were good with a gun or a sword or their
fists, but because they were good by biblical standards.
However, in 1963 our government removed the Bible as a
textbook in our public schools, thus removing the standard that all our
nation’s children shared in common.
Before this decade is over the godly heroes of the 1950’s are replaced
with a moral wasteland of ungodliness.
We go from Roy Rogers to Clint Eastwood, from Andy Griffith to Archie
Bunker and from Sergeant Friday to Dirty Harry.
This moral wasteland has polluted the minds of the American
youth for over 40 years and still continues to do so today. While we may not be able to stop this flood
of wickedness entirely, there is now a way we can stem the tide somewhat, and
at the same time, brighten the corner where we are!
I lamented for many years for all the young people who never
had a chance to learn the moral lessons of the Bible as taught by Roy Rogers,
the Lone Ranger, Zorro and the many other heroes that I grew up with when we
were still a Christian America. Then along
came cable television, videotapes and DVDs and suddenly all these old shows
have been resurrected for us. The
question is will we use this opportunity to teach today’s children about the
godly heroes of the past?
In 2001, a most unusual movement began that showed me I was
not alone in wanting to use television to teach biblical truths to the
young. Another who shared this vision
was Pastor Joey Fann. He wrote a book
entitled THE WAY BACK TO MAYBERRY in which he developed Bible studies based on
episodes of THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW. This
book became an instant hit as churches across
In 2002, Television producer Steven Skelton began developing
video-driven Bible studies on several different classic television
programs. He has a growing line of kits
that can be viewed at www.EntertainmentMinistry.com
including the MAYBERRY BIBLE STUDIES, BEVERLY HILLBILLIES BIBLE STUDIES and the
BONANZA BIBLE STUDIES, just to name a few.
AMERICAN SUPER HEROES
If Christian America was able to
develop so many heroes out of everyday hillbillies, cowboys and city folks, it
truly surpassed itself when it began to develop Superheroes. Today there are superheroes for every possible
stretch of the imagination. These
fanciful heroes are able to do things far beyond the powers of mortal man. However, when you speak of superheroes, there
is only one who can stop a speeding bullet, is faster than a locomotive and can
leap tall buildings in a single bound. We
are speaking, of course, of the one, the only Superman!
One of the most interesting things about Superman is his
history. The term Superman is not
originally an American concept. It was
an idea first developed by Nazi Germany nearly a century ago. To understand this concept, we need to
understand what happened in
I Timothy 6:20-21
O Timothy, keep that
which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and
oppositions of science falsely so called:
Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with
thee. Amen.
To better understand what Paul is talking about when he
mentions a “science falsely so called”, we need to travel back in time to 1850
and meet an Englishman by the name of Charles Darwin. He is the
man who, although not a scientist himself, developed the so-called “scientific”
theory of evolution. He became convinced
that all man had not been created by God but had instead evolved from
monkeys. He wrote a book entitled THE
ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION, OR THE PRESERVATION OF
FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. This book came out at a time when much of
Europe had turned from God and his study took the continent by storm. He himself said about this theory that…
"I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite
beyond the bounds of true science."
Once you turn away from the God of creation, the problem is
not that you don’t believe in anything anymore.
Rather, you will begin to believe in anything, regardless of how ridiculous
it may seem to the rest of us. For
instance, Francis Galton, a disciple of
Friedrich Nietzche was another disciple of
"God is dead! I teach you the superman. Man is something
that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?”
In 1932, another young German fell into
this pit of deception also and the world would never be the same again. Adolph Hitler was a disciple of Darwin,
Galton and Nietzche who wrote “MEIN KAMPF” or “MY STRUGGLE” taking his title
from that of
“Christianity is an invention of sick brains. The war will be over one day. I shall then
consider that my life's final task will be to solve the religious problem.”
Hitler also took the next logical step in this line of evolutionary
thought. He made it his life’s goal to
create a race of German Supermen. In his
own words, he decided to take evolution and apply it to world politics.
Along the way to his Nazi utopia, he came to the conclusion
that he could speed up the process even more by systematically eliminating the
inferior races of the world. His first
target was the Jews. Thus the Nazi
Holocaust was born in 1933. By the time
that the Nazi Holocaust was over, he had engineered the killing of over 6
million Jews.
Rumors of the Holocaust soon reached
By 1951,
The story line of this first episode runs as follows and
this particular episode could be called a study of salvation. In outer space, a father sends his son to
Earth to save the child’s life, He is later saved from the burning spaceship
and raised by a kindly couple. As a young man, Clark
Do you begin to see some parallels to the gospel story. In heaven, God sent His son to earth to save all
of us. While
Superman adventures in the world of electronic media did not
end here either. In 1978, SUPERMAN THE
MOVIE, opened to rave reviews all over
++++++++++++
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, both Jewish, invented Superman
in the late 1930's as a typically Jewish mythical hero. Jews were being
oppressed by Adolph Hitler at that time and Superman or Super-Jew was their
answer to Hitler. The "S" on Superman's shirt also stands for the
last names of his creators. Superman comes from the planet Krypton -which
sounds like "Tikkum olam" a Hebrew concept of restoring the world's
wrongs.
Joanne, the wife of the late Jerry Siegel, says she had
often heard about the Jewish connection to Superman. Jerry Siegel is listed in
the book Jewish 100 as one of the 100 most influential Jews of all time. He is
listed along with Moses, Henry Kissinger and Steven Spielberg.
The Jerusalem Post quotes Daniel Schifrin of the US National
Federation for Jewish Culture as saying, "The older I got the more I saw
there was something profoundly Jewish about Superman, that he was one of
us." He further states, "Like Clark
The 1978 movie was an 80 million dollar blockbuster - a phenomenon in its day.
It was written by Mario Puzo (The God Father) and David Newman (Shena) and, of
course, based on the comic book series by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Jor-El is Superman’s father. (played by Marlon
Brando, the God Father himself)
The movie Superman essentially retells the life of Jesus Christ-the ultimate
Super Jew. Richard Donner, the director of Superman, had just completed
filming The Omen (1976) which was a film about the Antichrist.
When Superman was released in Communist China in 1985 the Worker's Daily called
Superman "a brave hero of incomparable strength who clearly distinguishes
what to love and hate and culls strength from weakness." Sounds very
Christ-like to me.
It is interesting to note that the Hebrew word for God is EL
and both Superman and his father have EL in their names. In the comic books
"Kal-El" is Kryptonian for "Star Child" -which ties into
the Child of the Christmas Star.
++++++++++++
Superman would return to the small screen in 1993 in a new
series entitled LOIS AND CLARK, THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN starring Dean
Cane. This series was followed by
another show in 2001, SMALLVILLE, with Tom Welling in the title role. There is not a young person out there who
does not know whom Superman is. This can
be a natural bridge to sharing the gospel and other biblical concepts with young
people all around us. For instance…
Mark 15:33-35
And when the sixth hour
was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud
voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
And some of them that stood by, when they heard it, said, Behold, he
calleth Elias.
The word “Eli” in this verse means “my God”. As we have already seen, the Hebrew word for
God is “El”. The Kryptonian name for
Superman’s father is “Jor-El”. If you
check the Hebrew dictionary of any Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the
Bible, you will see that the nearest word to this is “Joel”, which means
“Jehovah is God”. Superman’s Kryptonian
name is “Ka-El”. In the Strong’s, your
nearest word to this is “Kadmel”, which means “The presence of God”. Superman’s arch enemy is Lex Luthor and the
nearest name to this one in the Bible is Lucifer. Armed with all this knowledge, anyone can use
this media hero to teach the concept of Christ to anyone they meet!
In fact, many years ago I heard a
sermon called the Sanctified Superman.
This preacher explained that we Christians are all like
When we come out, we are Sanctified Supermen. We have a big S on our chests. That S stands for Saved. That S stands for Sanctified and we have this
S on our chest because we are filled with the Holy Spirit. In fact, when we are in God’s will, nothing
can harm us but that big, ugly green S called the kryptonite of Sin!
There’s another aspect to this we need to consider
also. While today we may not be a
“strange visitor from another planet with powers and abilities far beyond
mortal men”, one day we will be. One day
soon, we will shed this mortal shell and become immortal ourselves. Jesus Himself said that one day all of his
followers would be like the angels.
On that day, we will not have this evil kryptonite of Sin to
deal with anymore. On that day, we will
no longer have to deal with this weak fleshly body we now abide in. On that day, sickness and death will be but a
fleeting memory. On that day, when we
finally leave our native planet and enter our new heavenly home, we will be the
ones who are “stronger than a locomotive, faster than a speeding bullet, and
able to leap tall buildings in a single bound”!
Yes, Superman is indeed a Christ like super hero and we
should all be more like that ourselves.
In fact, just last year, the Entertainment Ministry developed the
SUPERMAN BIBLE STUDIES, just to use this media hero as a tool to draw people
closer to God. Keep in mind that Superman is not Jesus Christ. In fact, the Apostle Matthew warned us about
this very thing in…
Matthew
24:25-27
Behold, I have told you
before. Wherefore if they shall say unto
you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret
chambers; believe it not. For as the
lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also
the coming of the Son of man be.
One day soon, we will be able to lift our heads and say, “Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird!
It’s a plane! It’s Jesus Christ!”