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Mulder and Scully and Jenkins and LaHaye
It has been hard to miss NBC's promotions for Revelations, its six-part end-times miniseries that debuts tonight. But almost all of the positive buzz seems to be coming from the network. TV critics and dispensationalists seem agreed that the show is rather … predictable.

"Revelations reminds me of those dreadful end-times films I used to see in church, only with better production values," says The Kansas City Star's Aaron Barnhart. "Every few minutes a passage from Scripture, though not identified as such, appears ominously on the screen. Not all of these come from Revelation; for instance, the verse 'a little child shall lead them' is from Isaiah, another book often quoted by end-timers."

As such, "non-Christians may have trouble taking its signs and shadows and omens seriously, while some Christians may be put off to see their beliefs mashed into some occult-conspiracy stew," says USA Today's Robert Bianco.

"It's a stark mash of lightning storms and glaring Satanists and overly dramatic music that shouts too loudly for its own good. As it leaps from Ominous Religious Event to Ominous Religious Event, the first hourlong chapter of this six-part series could easily have been called 'Hellsapoppin!'" complains The Boston Globe's Matthew Gilbert.

The "events, tone, and spiritual underpinnings [are] drawn directly from the apocalyptic predictions of the New Testament's Book of Revelation," explains the San Jose Mercury News's Charlie McCollum. But Weblog just checked, and there's nothing in there about babies surviving Aegean Sea shipwrecks, crucifixes on Mexican mountains, Satan-worshiping killers who don't bleed, and girls who get zapped by lightning for taking the Lord's name in vain. (Uh, didn't that last one happen to a bishop in Caddyshack? recalls Entertainment Weekly's Gillian Flynn. "Thankfully, the girl here does not yell, 'Rat farts!'")

Strict adherence to John's vision clearly isn't a priority. In fact, while the Revelations website has a link that says "Book of Revelation," the link simply brings up a box that says (appropriately, given the context) "Coming soon!"

Biblical illiteracy pervades the show from its very title, complains Left Behind co-author Jerry Jenkins. "I realize this is a niggling matter, but even the title jangles in the ears of evangelicals, the base audience to which the producers claim they're trying to cater. From Sunday school we're taught that the title of the last book of the Bible is 'Revelation,' singular. Those who add the S are akin to those who pronounce it in 'Des Moines' or 'Illinois.'"

From there, Jenkins says, it's "a mishmash of myth, silliness, and misrepresentations of Scripture. Acknowledging that not everyone agrees with my particular take on end times prophecies, at least my interpretations are based on some commonly accepted study. Revelations seems to draw from everywhere and nowhere."

Indeed, if Jenkins and Tim LaHaye "had taken such liberties with biblical doctrine, they would have been denounced by the faithful, not devoured by tens of millions of faithful readers," says Richard Land. Still, he's glad that the show "takes the reality of supernatural evil and Satanic power very seriously and portrays its sinister malevolence quite effectively. … The first episode at least is entertaining and at times compelling television, even if it's not biblically accurate."

It's about time that television "abandoned the antiseptic, feel-good, something-for-everyone flavoring that for so long has characterized its religious programming," sighs USA Today's Gerald L. Zelizer. But "in swinging from New Age to hard edge, television still hasn't got religion right."

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April (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49