A 1994 classic, science fiction gives insights into academic failings, false prophets, and bad planning.

Are you just watching episode 158, Stargate?

Welcome to the podcast that shares critical thinking for the entertained Christian.

I'm Eve Franklin.

And I'm Tim Martin.

And we went even further back in time than we did in January.

Yeah.

2025 is turning out to be a very bad year for theatrical releases.

There's just been absolutely nothing in the theater that you or I really wanted to discuss.

Not saying that there isn't anything in the theater, just nothing we want to go and see and waste our time on.

So hopefully March will pop something up that we can review from the theaters.

But for this episode, we are going all the way back to early 1990s to talk about one of my absolute favorite movies of all time.

It's not on the short list, but it's definitely on the long list.

And I absolutely adore the music.

So this is actually one of the original soundtracks that made me fall in love and start collecting soundtracks.

Because this score for this movie just.

It just does something for me.

It's beautiful in every way, and it introduced somebody new.

This was actually David Arnold's first theatrical score.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah.

He went on to score several movies.

I don't think he does movies as much as he used to, but Independence Day was his third theatrical score.

He's done quite a few Bond movies.

Yes, that's what I was gonna say was he's done several James Bond movies.

I think he did some music videos prior to Stargate, but Stargate was his first theatrical score, and he just rammed onto the scene with just this absolutely beautiful music suite.

And it's very memorable.

It stands out when you hear it, you know, you're hearing the Stargate theme.

Yeah.

And he kind of did a little bit like John Williams would do where every character had a theme, and so he would weave the themes together based on which characters were on the screen, which made it really cool as well.

Yeah.

So I'll play a little bit of Stargate theme and we'll get on with our discussion.

All right, so that definitely got us in the mood.

And one of the reasons why I love this movie so much, I could put up with a lot, but the music just.

It makes it for me.

Let's see.

I've already said how much I love the music, so I'll get off of that because I could rave for a while.

I never got involved with the spin offs from this movie.

This movie Was to me a standalone story.

It didn't need spin offs.

It kind of set up for a spin off at the end of the movie, but it wasn't something where I felt like it needed a sequel or it needed anything afterwards.

And I think the original spinoff, SG1 came out on the Sci Fi Channel on cable.

I'm pretty sure that's where it started.

Yeah.

And I didn't.

No, no, no.

It started on Showtime.

Ah, well, it was still a close.

Because I remember that because it was the reason we had gotten Showtime at the time.

And then it moved to the Syfy Channel when Showtime dropped it after I think three seasons.

Okay.

Yeah.

I did not have cable until.

Trying to think when I even had cable.

It would have been when I moved away from home, which would have been probably the early 2000s.

So I don't think I had cable when SG1 was on cable.

And so it was not even available for me to watch.

And then when I finally did get the Sci Fi Channel and managed to watch an episode or two, I was really turned off by the fact that they had the same characters from the movie played by different people.

And that bugged me, really bugged me a lot.

So I think if they had just had all new characters, it wouldn't have bugged me as much.

But it's like seeing somebody different playing O'Neil.

Yeah.

And Daniel really bothered me.

So anyway, I never got into the spin offs.

So this episode is going to be entirely about the movie.

I might let Tim talk a little bit about the tv.

No, that's all right.

I will only mention it in the same vein that you have.

Okay.

So yeah, I did see, I think the first season of Atlantis.

I think it just wasn't interesting enough to hold me.

I think it was interesting when it started, but then it kind of fizzled, I think, and I just kind of lost interest and moved on to other things.

But yeah, that's as much as I know of the spin offs from Stargate the movie.

Now when we talk about this movie, we kind of have to put ourselves back into the early 1990s because we have nowadays such blockbuster sci Fi with mind blowing effects that CGI is just so seamless now that we don't even notice it for the most part.

This movie was made before CGI was seamless.

And so where they use cgi, it's not seamless.

And then where they didn't use cgi, it's movie magic.

That kind of blows your mind that they made this before cgi.

So this movie, if you watch, like, if you get a hold of the DVD and you have a DVD player to play the DVD on, and you can watch the special vignettes that they have on the DVD about the making of.

One of the things you'll notice them talking a lot about is how they made massive crowds of people, because when they go into the other world and where the Stargate takes them to, there's this whole, like, massive city full of thousands and thousands of slaves that serve Ra.

And they filmed all of that with just a few hundred extras, and they multiplied them, and it's pretty seamlessly done.

And it's pretty amazing to think about how they did it, because they didn't have our modern CGI when they made that movie.

So there's things that really wowed me.

I did see this movie in the theater when it came out, and I remember seeing it and being wowed by it and just being blown away by the music and by the.

You know, just how big it felt when they were out in the desert and all of that kind of thing.

And so this movie has gone down as being one of my favorites.

And I have watched it so many times that I have parts of it memorized.

So it's a blessing for me to be able to go back and talk about it, because I had ideas about this movie back when I was in college, and I saw it, and I think that it impacted me in ways that still goes on today.

And it may not have been the best science fiction movie ever, and it may have a ton of plot holes and there definitely some mistakes in it, but this will always go down as a movie that I can always put in and watch.

And I've lost count of how many times I've seen it.

It's one I can watch again because there's a certain level of me that just suspends my disbelief and then just enjoys.

Because, you know, I love the characters and I love the story.

So, anyway, I'll shut up now and let you talk.

I'm surprised that you didn't mention one of the things that I thought might have drawn you to this movie, or at least his style.

Stargate is the first movie that Dean Devlin produced.

Dean Devlin, who did the Librarians and Leverage and.

Oh, really?

All of those?

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I didn't.

I didn't make that connection.

I definitely feel his influence on it.

Yeah.

Kind of like bringing ancient fantasy into science fiction.

Yeah.

And Emmerich, Devlin and Arnold.

The next movie they did was the original Independence Day, which was it was sort of like Stargate was the training ground for Independence Day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Another favorite.

I think that the mid to late 90s had some really good science fiction movies.

Yeah, Yeah, I think so too.

So Stargate qualifies as a classic in our house too.

It's one of those movies where if it's on, well, you know, we'll sit down and watch it because we enjoy it.

It's probably in my top 2025, you know, favorite movies.

But the reason is more other than its content.

It's because it is the foundation of the franchise, the Stargate franchise.

And we, my kids grew up with Stargate as sort of like their gateway into science fiction.

And we watched all the series and we loved them.

It's especially the humor.

The Original 1, Stargate SG1, there's a blooper reel, and I think it's probably on YouTube by now.

But on the blooper reel, O'Neil and Amanda tapping's character, a super smart scientist, are stuck in an ice cave trying to get out, and she turns to him and says, can't you just MacGyver your way out of here?

Of course, the joke being that Richard Dean Anderson, the actor who took over the role of Jack O'Neill, played MacGyver just before the role.

Just before this.

I was a huge, huge MacGyver fan.

I loved that show.

Yeah.

And whereas the Stargate movie is a little more serious, the television series was more, not quite tongue in cheek, but it allowed for a lot more humor, which I enjoyed.

Yeah.

Honestly, you know, people argue a lot about Star Trek or Star Wars.

I enjoy Star Trek.

I enjoy Star Wars.

I enjoy Stargate.

I enjoy Babylon 5, the new version, not the old version.

I enjoyed Farscape.

I enjoyed, you know, all of them.

You're just a sci fi buff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I do like how the movie does make you think about certain things.

I very much appreciated the O'Neill family storyline of the death of Jack's son and how it introduced a healing arc for him through the movie.

Right.

Yeah.

It's up there for me as well.

But when I was rewatching it for this episode, I was really struck by how dated the CGI was.

Yeah.

And I noticed stuff that, you know, I hadn't noticed before.

For instance, every time the alien shoot at somebody or shoot somebody with the zach guns, I think is what they called them in the series that, you know, the staffs that have the end that pop out, you only see the end pop out and fire.

You never see the shooter.

And the target in the same frame.

So that made me think, I wonder if they were doing reshoots here.

Yeah, either that or they just couldn't do it in one scene without with their current cgi.

Yeah.

But it's really interesting how it is both a stepping stone for bigger movies like Independence Day, which is in my.

Top 10, which we have also already reviewed.

So if you want to go back and catch our review of Independence Day, we went back in time.

Was that last year or the year before, and talked about Independence Day.

We did a two parter on Independence Day in 2020.

That was one of our 2020 episodes.

Yeah, five years ago.

Yeah.

But the thing that really bugged me was the one that stood out to me was them racking their guns all the time.

So it was like every time they were in a scene where they were being stalked, it was like the soldiers were constantly racking their guns without firing.

And I'm like, they're leaving all of their ammunition on the ground because you lose a bullet every time you rack a gun.

Yeah, I hadn't noticed that they're doing it constantly.

You know, being a vet, one of the things I noticed, I didn't notice them doing that.

I noticed their muzzle discipline was horrible.

Yeah, that too.

They were constantly pointing it at other people.

And every time I just cringe.

There's a scene where Skaara goes to pick up the gun, and it's before Jack has started his healing process.

And he says, no.

When he hits his hand away, picks up the gun and then points it.

At him and says, dangerous.

This is dangerous.

Yeah, you think?

But yeah, I see what you're saying there.

But they were constantly racking their guns through every scene where Ra's soldiers were coming after him.

And they would never fire.

They would just.

It was like.

I think that somewhere along the way, the sound people for the movie thought, I need to show the fact that they're ready with their guns.

So I'll put the racking sound in there.

Yep, exactly.

We're ready.

We may be less, you know, 12 rounds of ammo or however many people we have, but.

Yeah.

And then they run out of ammo in that final battle.

And I'm like, well, you left most of it on the ground.

Not only that, he says, we're out of ammo back here.

And then there are at least two other scenes of them continuing to fire at the spacecraft.

Anyway.

Yeah, we're not really dissing the movie.

We love.

We love it.

We really do.

But it, you know, it's Almost.

It really has gotten to the point where it's Mystery Science Theater 3000 Ready, where you can.

You can sit and make fun of it and still love it.

But it's changed a lot.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, we could probably ask AI now to make a video of a movie about this, and it would come out with something better than what they made, but that's.

Of course, the hands would all be messed up, but anyway.

And don't have them eating spaghetti whatever you do.

Yeah.

But regardless, you know, this is a product of its time, and when it came out, it was a blockbuster.

And.

And it's worth discussing because, you know, unfortunately, and this is probably one of the reasons why you and I are having such a hard time finding theatrical releases to talk about, is that there's so many movies now that are just remakes of other movies and.

Or rehashes of the same old ideas.

And Stargate was something new.

When it hit the theaters, it was a different, completely different way of looking at science fiction, mixing the old with the new.

And Egyptian stuff, you know, it was like archaeology and, you know, things that were not necessarily cool and making them into science fiction fodder.

And it was kind of like Firefly was in its time.

It's like taking the Old west and putting it into space.

You know, this was like taking ancient Egypt and putting it into space.

So it was a new concept.

It was something fun and original, and they're just.

It's so hard to find that nowadays.

So we have to go back to the early 90s to talk about it.

I do sort of wonder, you know, because there's always been a conspiracy theory that the pyramids were built by aliens.

I do sort of wonder, you know, if there's any tie between the development of this story and that, you know, they sat down at a writer's table and said, what if it was built by aliens?

Yeah.

Well, before we go into our first theme discussion, I do want to remember to thank our patrons and thank you so much to the six gentlemen who give $5 or more a month to our podcast.

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And we really appreciate that support.

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So we thank you so much for your financial support.

So it's interesting that you brought up, you know, the academic thoughts on Egypt and whether the pyramids were built by aliens and all that kind of stuff.

That's kind of more of a pop culture kind of take on it.

But one of the things that I thought was very interesting, and it struck me even back in the 90s when I watched this movie, was the way that academia is portrayed in their reaction to Daniel's out of the box views of the building of the pyramids and hieroglyphics.

And I find that interesting because I think a lot of people, especially in Western culture, kind of have this white coat mentality that scientists are always, you know, believable.

And nowadays I think some of that has been shaken with, you know, Covid and some of the.

The things that have come out about vaccines and stuff.

But I don't want to get into that debate.

But what I found interesting about this was that they showed how the academics of Daniel's period in this movie were mocking him for not having all of the answers.

Like he had proof for his ideas, but because he didn't have all the answers, they simply wouldn't even hear him out.

And unfortunately, that is an accurate portrayal of academics, because I know of many things that don't fit with mainstream academia that doesn't get aired or even get published or can't even get its foothold, because the academics have a very closed view of what is acceptable.

So they don't think outside the box.

And they're very religiously fervent about supporting what they think is true and not hearing any evidence to the contrary.

And in this movie, we saw how Daniel had this insight into how Egyptian hieroglyphics postdated the building of the pyramids.

And so when he's trying to do this presentation on it, you know, they demanded that he give them proof.

And then before he could give them the proof, they ask him another question about who built the pyramids.

And he says, well, that's not relevant.

I don't know.

And that's not relevant to what I'm trying to tell you.

And then they all get upset and leave and they just walk out.

And so that is actually, you know, to see that portrayed in a movie when that is very accurate to somebody who has a thinking outside the box presentation on something that the mainstream it doesn't even want to hear.

They can't even air it.

They can't even break into the academic circles with those discoveries because nobody wants to hear anything that would be against the approved group think on those issues.

And so I just thought that was really interesting that this movie shows that in the context of the movie, it turns out Daniel was actually right.

Yeah, he was the only one who actually was accurately translating the hieroglyphics.

And he was right that the pyramids were not built by the people that they said that they had built it by.

The other thing that I thought was very interesting was that they didn't accept his answer of I don't know, which in any academic research is actually a very valid answer.

If you don't know the answer, you're not supposed to make one up or make assumptions or fill your gaps of an understanding with makeup stuff, you know, make believe or whatever, it's entirely acceptable to say I don't know.

And that's actually the beginning of inquiry.

You know, it's like, I don't know the answer to this, so therefore I must search to see if I can find it.

And it's interesting because if you've listened to any of our theology throwdowns or listen to any of Andrew Rapp reports, rap report, he mentions the fact that he will answer any question that you have about the Bible as long as you understand that I don't know is a perfectly acceptable answer, which is entirely the truth.

I mean, it is an answer.

I don't know is an answer.

So that was one of the things I thought was also interesting about that.

I got the impression that the reason they asked then who built the pyramids was because Daniel had established at some point in his previous career that he thought aliens built them.

No, he didn't.

They don't establish that in the movie.

Yeah, I always pictured that as why they asked that question.

And his answer of I don't know was more him not being brave enough to stand up to his earlier suppositions.

Well, that wasn't in the movie.

I.

It maybe that came from watching the show.

Maybe.

Yeah, it's possible.

Yeah.

I also want to point out that there is a point where when you have 90% of the scientific community who are supporting and supporting a position with empirical research that is, you know, constantly replicatable.

And then you have an outsider coming in to say, no, this isn't what it is at all.

If it is in opposition, if his solution cannot possibly lead to the results that everybody has duplicated through experimentation, then his solution can't be right.

So we need to be careful to think critically about science, just like we think critically about our entertainment.

90% of the people can be wrong, let's put it that way.

The thing is, but you and I.

Aren'T judges of that, though.

Neither of us are physicists or climatologists or virologist or anything like that.

So how are we going to judge which night if the 90% is wrong or the 10% is wrong?

Well, that's not what I'm talking about.

I am talking about academia being so set in their ways that they're not willing to look at evidence that's outside of their box.

The issue here isn't necessarily that we as laymen can tell a scientist they're wrong.

It's that we have to understand as human beings that human beings are fallible.

And even 90% of scientists can be wrong because they do not have all knowledge.

And a lot of scientists do science with assumptions.

And if their underlying assumptions are wrong, then 90% of them can agree on wrong assumptions.

Then how are you going to know, though?

Well, the thing is, is that we put way, way, way, way, way too much trust in fallible human beings.

And we have the white coat mentality where there are some sciences that are provable, like engineering, we know engineering works.

There's a lot of sciences that are not as testable as they would have you believe.

And so there's a difference between science we can see and handle and touch and do things with, like computer technology and engineering.

And then there's sciences that deal with the past that make assumptions that they base things on.

And so anything that has to do with the past, there's assumptions that are underlying the things.

And that's kind of what this is.

It's like what they know about ancient Egypt is based on assumptions.

And the false assumptions can make all of their science wrong because it's based on assumptions that are wrong.

Right.

They're linking current observations to assumptions they've made about the past.

Exactly.

So if you put it in the classification of historical science versus observational science, yes, there is science that we can trust is true because it's observable.

We can play with it, we can work with it, we can see it repeated over and over again.

And we know it's true physics and some forms of biology and that kind of stuff, but even things like forensic science, there's a lot of assumptions made in even forensic science because it's dealing with things that you can't go back and watch, so you can't go back and see it done.

So you're making assumptions about what happened in the past.

And so I actually know a forensic scientist who will admit to this.

So there's a difference between science you can see and science that's in the past that you're making assumptions about based on things you see in the present.

So things you see in the present can give you ideas about things that have happened in the past, but they can't make it definitive about things that happened in the past.

So especially in the instance of this movie, all of the science that we're talking about, at least in Daniel's fields, is historical science.

It's things that happened in the past that people are making assumptions about.

The way to address that is to identify the assumptions and work through them as best you can.

And, you know, eventually the answer may just be, I don't know, but I think, yeah, and then you go with it, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So I don't want to, like, beat this horse to death, but I did want to bring out a series of movies that came out.

I think it was about 10 years ago, maybe.

I've kind of lost track of when they came out.

But Egyptian timelines actually have a lot to do with biblical historicity.

And if you get involved in Egyptian archaeology, one of the things you'll see that's heavily debated is whether or not the Israelites actually did live in Egypt and there really was an exodus and a conquering of Canaan.

And this kind of archaeological questioning has been going on for decades now about whether any of that really happened and whether the Bible is true.

And as Christians, we believe the Bible is true.

And so when science conflicts with a biblical worldview, as Christians, we should always say the Bible is true, and we've got to figure out why the science is disagreeing.

And so Timothy Mahoney, did he do.

A video on biblical discoveries in 2024 recently?

Possibly.

Well, his series of movies is called Patterns of Evidence, and most of them have been released in the theater.

And then they go usually to prime for a little while, and then they go on his website.

So you can watch all of them on his website, which is patternsofevidence.com But Timothy Mahoney, he actually went on a journey of discussing with modern Archaeologists and other Christians who are involved in archaeology about why modern archaeologists don't believe that the Exodus actually occurred.

And he came out with this really amazing theatrical documentary called Patterns of Exodus.

And it's talking about how the fact that a lot of the assumptions that are made based on the biblical narrative of the Exodus and how they try to sandwich that into the Egyptian timeline just doesn't work.

He says it's not that it didn't happen, it's that they're trying to put it in the wrong place in the Egyptian timeline.

It's a really fascinating documentary and I highly recommend it.

Then he's followed it up with, I think there's been three other movies.

There's one on Moses and two on the Crossing of the Red Sea that are also spectacular.

So I highly recommend looking up his feature documentaries and having a see.

I mean, it's worth watching because these are discussions that are worth having.

If modern archaeologists who don't believe the Bible say that the Bible can't be proven through archaeology, then it's useful to look at some of the other archaeological data that is not accepted by, you know, the 90% who say they're right and how their conflicts can be shown to be proven through archaeology, that there is science that supports it.

And so I highly recommend checking that out.

And then just as a cap on that, I wanted to read a couple passages from the Bible.

Colossians 2, 6, 8 says, so then, just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in him, being rooted and built up in him and established in the faith just as you were taught and overflowing with gratitude.

Be careful that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit based on human tradition, based on the elements of the world rather than Christ.

And then in first Timothy 6, 2021, it says, Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding irreverent and empty speech and contradictions from what is falsely called knowledge by professing it.

Some people have departed from the faith.

And those are two warnings from the New Testament about following man's ideas and letting them distract you from biblical truth.

And I just want to remind everybody that there is biblical truth that we can hold to.

It is strong.

And when man's word says that God's word is not true, then man is lying or man doesn't have enough knowledge because God's word is true.

Just with that reminder, moving on to our next topic, One of the things that I thought was very interesting actually in this movie now, I mean, I was kind of in the movie, in the last theme.

But this one is more in the movie.

This one's central to the plot.

Yes, this one is very central to the plot.

So one of the things we see going on in this movie is Ra is the sun God of Egypt.

Right.

And in the context of this movie, Ra is actually an alien who came down to the early Egyptian peoples and made them worship him.

And then he took some of the people from Earth and took them to this other planet to mine this mineral that he needs for his technology and basically turns humanity into slaves.

And in order to maintain discipline, he has to continue to maintain his worship as being their God.

And that was very interesting because we see that Daniel is carrying, or the lady that actually her father discovered the Stargate, gave him this pendant that has the Ra symbol on it, the eye that is classically known as the symbol for the sun God, Ra.

The eye of Ra.

Yeah, the eye of Ra.

So he has this pendant around his neck, and when Kesefoot, the leader of these slaves that are on this other planet, sees that, they make the assumption that he is a messenger from Ra.

And so they wine and dine him and even marry him often and treat him with a great deal of respect because he is a representative of Ra.

And it made me think about how a lot of times, as Christians, we possibly put too much emphasis on the symbology of our faith.

So if somebody wears a cross or says they are Christian or whatever, instead of judging them by the fruit of their faith, we judge them by their symbols, and that can get us into a lot of trouble.

And so, in the context of this movie, obviously, Daniel is not representing Ra.

He just happens to have a symbol of Ra, and he doesn't even try to represent or tell the people that he's a representative of Ra.

But we do have a lot of false prophets in Christianity today.

And so who use very.

And it's really interesting because I think this came up in one of our previous discussions where we were talking about baby believers who.

They're well known, they're celebrities, and then they become Christians, and everybody treats every word they say as if it's God's honest truth, because they're popular and people know who they are.

Kanye west comes to mind.

Yeah.

On the other hand, we have these celebrity pastors who build up their followers through, like, social media and tv.

And people follow them because they're popular and they look good, and, you know, they.

They've got this massive following.

And so more people follow them, and it's like they have the, the symbol of faith and Christianity and so people like flock to them.

And it's a concerning trend in the Western church that we're so willing to just follow anybody who says they're a Christian.

So I found a lot of scripture for this and I actually cut myself off because I could have kept going.

So I apologize for the length of this, but to me it's important because this is something that you won't even hear most churches deal with from the pulpit.

And it's so important in our church today that we have discernment about the people who are before us and who say they're Christians and wear the cross and talk about Christian things.

One of the men that is really popular right now, Jordan Peterson, that I strongly encourage people to be wary of, because if you actually ask him, he's not even saved.

He's not even close to even admitting that he's saved.

But yet people hold him up as a Christian philosopher.

I've never heard of him.

You're probably not in the right circles then, because he's very massively popular.

So 2 Peter 2:1:3 says, There were indeed false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you.

They will bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, and will bring swift destruction on themselves.

Many will follow their depraved ways and the way of truth will be maligned because of them.

They will exploit you in their greed with made up stories.

Their condemnation, pronounced long ago, is not idle and their destruction does not sleep.

That's 2 Peter 2, 1 3.

And then, dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God.

Because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

This is how you know the spirit of God.

Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.

But every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.

This is the spirit of the Antichrist which you have heard is coming even now.

It is already in the world.

You are from God, little children, and you have conquered them.

Because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

They are from the world, therefore what they say is from the world.

And the world listens to them.

We are from God.

Anyone who knows God listens to us.

Anyone who is not from God does not listen to us.

This is how we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of deception.

And finally.

But I will continue to do what I am doing in order to deny an opportunity to Those who want to be regarded as our equals in what they boast about.

For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.

And no wonder, for Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

So it is no great surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.

Their end will be according to their works.

2nd Corinthians 11, 12, 15.

So that's one of the things that we have to be careful of as believers in a world full of false prophets who God said they would be here, there would be false teachers amongst, among us.

And that was just what was going to be in the era of, you know, before he returns, was that there would be many false teachers.

And so it requires so much discernment in our culture today to be able to walk in true faith and in the word of God.

So there is a podcast that we have on the Christian podcast community called Thoroughly Equipped, and it's by Melissa Lex.

And what she does in that podcast is she just targets all of the women's ministry curriculum and conferences that are out there and compares them to scripture, like what is false teaching and what is true teaching.

And if you're involved in women's ministry, there is a ton of really, really, really bad false teachers in women's ministry.

I believe it.

And so I highly recommend that, especially if you're in your church and you're involved in picking out curriculum to use in your church's women's groups or in your small groups or whatever, that you check out Thoroughly Equipped on the Christian podcast community, because I would imagine she's probably already reviewed it and she can give you a good position on those.

So just something to check out.

It's funny that you talk about being wary of new Christians and listening to what they say because of how that ties even more into the film when it comes to false prophets.

If somebody stands up and says, I speak for God, you should immediately be suspicious and, you know, test it with scripture.

Right?

There are denominations out there that believe that God speaks through believers, either in tongues or not in tongues.

And I can't say one way or the other if they're correct.

I don't think they are.

But I'm not going to force.

Since I can't point to the Bible and say this is where it says it doesn't happen, then I'm not going to say it doesn't happen.

But that said, there's a scene in there in Stargate where Daniel walks up to one of the bad guys of Ra that they had just taken down and pushes the button that removes the helmet.

And Daniel says.

Because by this point, he has learned to.

To speak their dialect, he says, take a look at your gods.

And it turns out to be the face of just a normal person.

Right.

And throughout the rest of the narrative of the movie, you find out that Ra lost Earth because there was a rebellion that was brought on by people learning to read.

And so he banned reading for this distant planet.

I don't think they ever named the planet.

I think they named the galaxy it was in.

But anyway, so when Daniel does this, it's the catalyst for rebellion.

The rebellion at the end of the movie.

And that's what.

Just like you were saying, that's what we need to remember here, is that when somebody like a Joel Osteen or.

I can't remember any of the other people.

There's been several.

Yeah, yeah.

I've heard some of them speak in person when they say, this is what God is telling me.

Yeah.

That you need to be suspicious.

If it doesn't match up to what is in the special revelation of God's word, then it is not God that is speaking.

Right.

Yeah.

That's why they said in First John, to test the spirits to see if they're from God, because their confession will fall short of what is actually in scripture.

And if they add anything or subtract anything or tell you, well, this part isn't true, then you know they are not true believers and they're false teachers.

And you should treat them exactly as the villagers in Stargate treat Ra at the end of the movie.

Yeah.

You're not really a God.

So we're going to overthrow them.

Yeah.

It's interesting because, you know that you could follow these false teachers, and because they are not true teachers, then that causes you also to backslide.

And I wanted to point out that because we've had, like, in the last.

I would say last decade, we've had a lot of prominent Christians backslide.

You know, like what they call deconstruct their faith publicly.

And there was a really famous YouTube channel, Rhett and Link, where they deconstructed.

They started out as youth leaders, and about four years ago, I think they announced on their YouTube channel that they have deconstructed their faith and they don't believe anymore.

Yeah.

I was just so sad for them.

Yeah.

And it's happened more than more, you know, And I think a lot of that is because there's money in being a public Christian.

You know, it's like, you write the books and you get the YouTube following and all this, and they're following their own ambition rather than Christ.

And eventually that leads to a fracturing of faith because they're putting their faith in the wrong thing.

And I don't believe people can lose their salvation if they fall away from the faith.

It's because they were never truly saved to begin with.

And it bears reminding that there's definite scriptural evidence that once saved, always saved.

And when you're in the body, then, then you're following Christ.

And.

Well, let me put it this way.

I found a really cool blog on this that that kind of goes through scripture about backsliders and why leaders are losing their faith.

And I'm gonna put that in the show notes because I think it's worth reading.

It's just a scriptural reminder of where you should be putting your faith.

And if you're not putting your faith in the right things, if you're putting your faith in people instead of in.

God, then no wonder you're losing your faith.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

It all depends on what you're really putting your faith in.

And I think a lot of these public Christians are not actually putting their faith in Christ, and that's why they backslide.

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All right, so one of the biggest things that's going on in this movie is a kind of an exploration of depression.

And.

And it's interesting because Colonel O'Neill is presented as being suicidal.

It's the, I guess, the easiest way to put it.

From the moment he shows up on the screen, you're wondering why they possibly would have activated the soldier to lead this thing.

Because he's sitting on a bed in his bedroom holding a gun.

And you don't know exactly whether he's holding the gun.

I'm sorry, he's sitting on his son's bed in his son's bedroom.

You don't know whether he's necessarily holding the gun because he's thinking about shooting himself with it, or whether he's holding the gun because it was the thing that killed his son.

I don't know which way.

But anyway, he's holding a gun and it's quite obviously that he is emotionally unwell and yet they reactivate him and put him into duty.

And it's something that is a theme that is woven through the entire movie, that he is a very unstable person and it really is hard for you to understand why they would have ever put him in control of this.

Even if you wanted somebody who was willing to give his life to make sure that the Stargate is never used again.

I think you could do a healthy soldier.

You don't have to have a suicidal soldier to do that.

And because a suicidal soldier is not clear minded to make good decisions.

Oh, I'll get to my thoughts on that in a minute.

Yeah.

And that is contrasted with Daniel, who is at the beginning of the movie, presented as somebody who has literally lost pretty much everything.

He's a foster child, so he doesn't have any parents, so he's familyless.

He appears to have no friends, no supporters.

You know, his research has just been thrown out by the entire academic community.

He's been evicted from his home.

Everything he owns, he's carrying around in two bags.

And he's basically out on the street with no money.

And they pick him up and pull him into this project, but yet you never see him be seriously depressed about any of that, which I think is.

He approaches the world with so much hope and so much.

I don't know what the word is.

It's like childlike wonder.

Yeah, curiosity.

Like everything is just like.

He doesn't let it get him down because everything is an adventure and he's willing to just keep trying.

And so we've got these two characters contrasted with each other.

Like, what do you have to live for when everything that you've put your time and your interest into has been thrown out by academia?

They don't have any time for you.

They don't care about what you have to say.

You have no money, you have no home, you're basically out on the street.

What do you have to live for?

His curiosity.

He has something to live for.

And then we have that contrasted with Colonel O'Neill who lost his child in a tragic accident and it's awful.

But he has a wife, he has a home, he has duty, he has a country to.

You know, he has so many things going for him and he's completely blind to them.

I don't know, it just seemed like a very interesting contrast to me.

Yeah, the whole idea that Jack Oneills son killed himself by getting a hold of his gun.

You had mentioned that.

That, that part at least was written by somebody who really didn't like guns and wanted to be an anti gun activist or something like that.

I think they just chose it as a very common way for a child to die and the parent to feel 100% responsible for it.

And, you know, we think back to 1994 and we didn't have the easy access to sensational news that we do now.

And we weren't as polarized a society either.

1994 was, you know, just into the Clinton years and we were just starting to see, you know, the polarization that would become more and more common over the next decade and a half.

But they needed something that people could relate to and they needed something to explain the depths of his perception.

Because back then, being clinically depressed or suffering from depression was something that everybody hid.

Everybody who suffered from depression hit it.

There weren't even drug regimens to help address it back then.

There were some.

Yeah, but I mean, they were padded room and funny jacket regimens.

So I don't think it was a political statement as much as it was a convenient storytelling device.

And I think if this movie were to be rebooted today, I think they could come up with Something better.

Well, you know, I think that I saw some chatter that they were thinking about remaking this movie.

Really?

That would be interesting.

Just another instance of there's nothing new under the sun and they can't come up with any new ideas.

I bet they go woke on it too.

Anyway, I'm sure, yeah.

As somebody who suffers from depression and I mean it has been bad enough for me, and I'm sure I've mentioned this before, that even though I love to shoot, I will not have a gun in the house because I am not responsible enough in when the depression is at its gets full blown worst.

Which is not, you know, it's not often, but it happens.

I don't want an easy out in the house.

Right.

So I have some idea of what's.

What that state is like and I'm just gonna read what I wrote here because it's a good thing this is all fiction.

Because any commander like this, General west, who knowingly puts a suicidal man in charge of troops going into a potentially hostile situation should be charged and convicted with murder or attempted murder.

And I want to point out that this is fiction, but this happens in real life.

In Afghanistan and Iraq there are dozens of stories of squad leaders and non commissioned officers and officers who through their own mental problems got their entire teams and themselves killed.

But in the movie we see a number of choices that O'Neill makes that are in my mind clearly influenced by his internalized knowledge that, that he's not going home.

But in the process of making those choices, he leads half his team to be killed.

There's one scene where they throw O'Neill down into a pit that's filled with water.

And Kowalski, who actually is a recurring character in the first couple of seasons of Stargate, gets him up out of the water and says, Colonel, Colonel, you're okay.

And right behind O'Neill in frame, there is a man floating face down in the air Force fatigues.

And they never mention all the people who had died.

Yeah.

And have two left I think at the end.

Yeah.

Of the team.

Is it just two?

Just Kowalski and.

Yep.

Anyway, so depression and ptsd, very, very real things.

And we've talked about it before, so I'm not going to harp on it, but the government still does not take care of its soldiers mental health.

And in 1994, this was very shortly after tailgate started to bring to light how out of touch the military in general was with the incredible stupidity that the, the boys club had established.

So I wanted to bring that out as sort of A mini note, because in real life, Colonel O'Neill should never have been reactivated.

He shouldn't even have been in his home.

He should have been in therapy.

Yeah.

I have a friend of mine whose husband was involved in the recovery of the D.C.

collision that happened just a couple weeks ago.

And that entire.

The divers and the firefighters and everybody who is involved in that are being forced to get therapy to deal with the trauma because it was incredibly traumatizing.

And I think about that from a standpoint of a lot of men, they have been taught that it's not manly to cry.

It's not manly to feel sad or upset about those kind of things.

I think that we can address it in a healthy way without making them feel like they're not manly by admitting that they're hurt and that they need help.

And there definitely is a need for that.

In the instance of those who are saved and know the Lord, it's a good reminder that we have a God who does care.

And we live in a sin cursed world.

We're surrounded by the most horrible and awful things.

You know, kids that are being trafficked for sex, work and all kinds of disgusting sin.

People who try to change their sex because they feel wrong inside.

And, you know, the devastation of war and starvation in countries because of.

They just don't have enough food or they have political systems where the food just isn't distributed properly.

And we have, you know, things that happen, like unexplicable plane crashes.

All of those horrible things happen.

But we have a God who cares.

And so in Philippians 4, 6, 7, it says, don't worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God.

And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

And in Psalms 34, 17, 18, it says, the righteous cry out and the Lord hears and he rescues them from all their troubles.

The Lord is near, the brokenhearted, and he saves those crushed in spirit.

So we have a God who cares.

I'm sure Tim, with your problems with depression will testify to the fact that God does care and he is a help.

If you don't have that rock to lean on.

When the world around you is a morass of hurt and pain and loss, then you are adrift and lost.

And you need that rock.

And that is the ultimate salvation is that rock to cling through through the Lord.

Yeah.

And you know, depression is Satan using the biology of the fallen world to tell us that God doesn't care.

Right.

And yeah, the thing is, it is biology and we are not sufficient in and of ourselves to overcome it.

Yeah.

And there are going to be times when God doesn't intend for us to overcome it.

He may hold back.

And you know, that episode of depression, it does serve a purpose when he helps us.

It serves a purpose when.

When he holds back and says, this is for you to learn something, it serves a purpose.

So.

And that's the hardest part to learn, is sometimes you just have to write it out, like being in a boat, you know.

Yeah.

And we learn from those things.

I mean, God teaches us, you know, through that kind of stuff as well.

Some of it's just learning, some of it's proving our faith.

There's lots of reasons why God makes us go through those valleys.

And if we can't bring something out of it, nothing else we can remember that God loves us.

And the scripture is there for you.

There's lots and lots of passages.

I only picked two, but there's tons of passages in the Bible about this and especially in Psalms.

I mean, you could pretty much just pull up your Bible and open it to Psalms and find encouragement there when you're.

Because I think, to be honest, I think David King.

David must have suffered from depression because of.

I know I would have if I were him.

Yeah.

I mean, the things that he went through just to become king of Israel, I think that would have been enough trauma for any one person.

And then he kept.

He kept messing up, and every time he messed up, he would.

I mean, the scene where Samuel comes forward and leads David into self accusation.

Yeah.

When I'm reading that, I feel a little twinge for David because I'm like, oh, snap.

Yeah.

All right.

So I asked for the last theme this time.

And I mean, we both contribute to all the themes, obviously, but this is something that bugged me more as I was watching Stargate for.

Are you just watching?

Than in the other times that I watched it.

And it really is a difference between critically thinking about not just, you know, what it might be foisting upon us, but critically thinking about the plot.

And yeah, Stargate has plot holes and it's a product of its time.

I'm okay with that.

I really enjoy the movie and I'll watch it again.

But there are many really, really dumb decisions that happen in this movie.

The one that stood out to me, the one that got me thinking about planning, is after Daniel solves the Stargate and after they've sent the probe.

But before they send the team, General west is talking to O'Neill and the scientists and they say, well that's it, because we can't send you through because once you get through you're not going to know how to get back.

And Daniel says, oh, I can do it.

And then there's a jump forward in the story.

Like five minutes later they're on the other side and O'Neill turns to Daniel and says, okay, you go get the Stargate ready to send the team back and I'll take care of things here.

And Daniel's like, well I mean, I need to find some stuff first.

And I'm just like, what were you thinking?

And clearly it almost demonstrates that he didn't really believe his own thing about the pyramids because he was like assuming there would be writing around where he could decipher the gate.

He said, oh, I can do it.

And nobody asked him how.

It's just General west buys in, but O'Neill walks away.

Well, I think he's full of crap, but they still don't question him.

And then they find themselves stranded.

And that actually got me thinking about, you know, one of the things that non believers love to jump on is contradictions in the Bible.

And one of the contradictions that I've encountered a couple of times is are you supposed to plan or are you not supposed to plan?

Because in the Bible James tells us, and come now, you who say, today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit, yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring, what your life will be for.

You are like a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes in James 4, 13, 14.

And I'm just so stunned that you went to James without me.

I'll leave Ecclesiastes for you.

But Proverbs tells us the plans of the diligence certainly leads to profit, but anyone who is reckless certainly becomes poor.

Proverbs 21:5.

So what is it?

Are we supposed to plan or are we not supposed to plan and just trust God to do everything?

And the answer is of course yes.

James isn't warning us against planning, he's warning us against arrogance.

We should be planning.

Even in our plans we have to remember that God is the architect of our futures.

We should always avoid the misconception that we can be completely self reliant, particularly when we think that we have planned for quote, all eventualities.

And I've mentioned before that I'm an engineer, unified communications engineer, in my case in computers.

And we always say yeah, yeah, we'll write the instructions.

We'll make it idiot proof.

There is no such thing as idiot proof.

Nope, it is just impossible.

But I mean, James, he drives at home that, you know, when people are pointing out contradictions in the Bible, they always like to cherry pick their verses.

And they'll leave off James 4, chapter 15, which is the very next verse where he says, instead, you should say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.

So James finishes up his statement saying, plan and then follow God's will.

So God is encouraging us to plan diligently.

In the military and probably a lot of other places and businesses, they have a saying that if you are failing to plan, you are planning to fail.

And you know, that is a truism because if you're not ready, then you failed already.

And in Luke, Christ even tells us that In Luke chapter 14, Christ is talking about the cost of following him.

And he uses two examples of planning in there.

First he says, for which of you wanting to build a tower doesn't first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it?

That's Luke 14:28.

And then in 31 he says, or what King going to war against another king will not first sit down and decide if he's able with 10,000 troops, to oppose the ones who come against him with 20,000.

And here Christ is telling us the importance of counting the cost and understanding what resources we need or we don't need for a goal.

You know, just as when we're building, we've got to evaluate if we've got enough money or if we have enough troops and the position to win a war.

A person who wants to follow Christ has to deliberately consider the cost of following him because it's a serious cost.

Jesus is teaching that becoming his disciple, it's not half hearted.

It's not something that you can just say, well, you know, yeah, yeah, I, I asked God into my life.

It demands an intentional decision, just like laying the foundation for a tower.

When they built the Tower of Pisa, you know, at least part of this is they, they didn't understand the soil conditions and everything like that.

When they built the Tower of Pisa, they did not have as strong a foundation as they needed.

And what happened 400 years later, the tower is leaning so badly that they have to correct it.

They actually, I think the tower was leaning almost from the get go.

Yeah, because I, by the end.

Yeah, well, by the time they finished, they were having to adapt how they were doing the Upper stories, because it was already leaning.

The top four layers of the tower are actually built at an offset to try and adjust for the lean.

When we were stationed in Germany, my wife, daughter and I spent a week at a campground in just 5km outside of Pisa.

And we got to see the tower and learn about it and everything.

And this was actually.

This was in 95 or 96, just before they started the huge stabilization project, which is a fascinating feat of engineering, if you ever want to.

To check out a YouTube video about it.

Practical engineering, I think.

Did a great one.

But I have gotten off track.

It was a fun bunny trail.

Yeah.

Christ starts the entire cost of following Jesus by turning to the crowd that was traveling with him and saying, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

And that's what Christ is driving home with these.

You have to count the cost to succeed at being a disciple of God.

And that's why we know that God wants us to plan.

He wants us to count the cost.

And I'll tell you what, in Stargate, and, you know, it's.

I'm just using this as an example, but in Stargate, they did not count the cost of sending a suicidal leader.

Yeah.

Through the gate with an arrogant, childlike archeologist who thinks he can get them home.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, he does.

In the end.

He does.

He does.

And it's all to serve the story.

And it really.

Actually, the way it all goes down, I like it.

I like the fact in particular, and I probably should mention this in the initial impressions, I like the fact that he couldn't speak the language until his unbeknownst wife.

Yeah.

Showed him where all the writing was hidden.

You know, I think you made the comment in our.

In some of our prep work that you wondered how.

Or maybe it was in your notes that I read over, that you wondered how she could read.

And I don't think she could read.

I think what it was was that he was reading what he thought it said out loud, and she heard him say stuff that she thought she understood that sounded close.

And so she was asking him, is this what you're saying?

And he was able to figure out what the vows were.

And that's true of most of the ancient languages.

They didn't write vows.

I mean, even in Hebrew, they didn't write the vows.

Exactly.

It's interesting just Complete bunny trail.

Speaking of that, I had heard somebody talk, you know, how they always show Yahweh written as just the consonants.

Yeah.

Yhwh.

Right, right.

Yhwh.

And that we don't know what the actual vowels were.

And I heard somebody was saying that if you just say it without the vowels, it's.

It's the breath, the sound of breathing.

It's breath.

Yeah, it's the sound of breathing.

And I thought that that was so cool.

Yeah, I love that one, too.

I don't.

It's accurate, but I love it.

Yeah, I don't know either, but I think it's a.

It's a cool way of putting it, that it's just.

Just the sound of an inhale and an exhale, so.

Yeah.

Because anyway, in Genesis a couple times, the breath of God is used because he, the breath of the spirit, goes across the chaotic waters or something like that.

I should know that one better.

And they breathe into Adam.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, you know, just to bring a cap to your theme, the last lines in the movie are, as Colonel O'Neill is leaving, he turns to Daniel, who decides to stay with his wife, and he says, are you going to be okay?

And Daniel's like, I'm going to be all right.

How about you?

And Colonel Neal says, yeah.

And then he smiles.

I think so.

And.

And I think that that's a beautiful cap to this whole idea of what we talked about, depression and the planning and all that stuff, is that there was healing for both characters.

Daniel found a home because he didn't have one, and Colonel O'Neil was okay at the end.

And I think that that's one of the reasons why we love this movie so much, because it has a good ending.

It's like everybody did have that.

That arc of where they went through things and they came to on the other side and they were okay.

Yeah.

As satisfying conclusions.

It is a satisfying.

Not, unfortunately, all the people who got killed, which is one of the themes that you can come talk with us about on our discord, because we had several ideas for.

Yeah.

Eve, did you notice that Daniel and Jack killed a dozen kids?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Is that okay?

Yeah, yeah.

And.

And that, you know, we were just talking about the loss of over half of.

Of Colonel O'Neill's team, that they only made it back through the gate with two men.

I don't remember how many men there.

Were to start with, but a lot more than two.

Yeah, I think in total, I think there were eight people.

I remember the lineup at the beginning where they're moving down the line of people and then Daniel sneaker sneezes.

Yeah.

Oh, and you know the other thing?

Daniel didn't even know he got married to Shuri.

So it was an arranged marriage and she accepted it.

And then by the end of the movie, he accepted it.

Aren't arranged marriages evil?

I don't think so.

Are they destined to fail?

I don't think so.

See, this is the kind of stuff that we could be discussing.

Yes.

What about gun safety?

I mean, the whole thing about.

Yeah, the whole thing about, you know, Colonel Neil's son accidentally shooting himself.

There's a whole topic about gun safety and gun control there.

So, yeah, we have all of these things that we could have talked about in this episode that we didn't have time for.

So if you could come join us in Discord, maybe we could fire up a few of these discussions.

We'd love to have you there.

Really, really love to have you there.

So please, please come check out Discord and get involved.

All right.

I think that pretty much does it.

We don't know what we're doing for March yet.

We will figure something out.

Yeah, no kidding.

Thank you so much for listening.

I'm Eve Franklin.

I'm Tim Martin.

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