****POSSIBLE SPOILER****

Were you standing in line at 12:01a.m. on May 19 to see the first showing of Star Wars III ? Not me. I had an opportunity from a computer systems vendor to see if free at 10am, so I got some sleep.

I am not an avid Star Wars fan but I can’t stand to not have all answers. Our pastor has a sermon outline with blanks to fill in during each service. I hate it when he skips a blank. I have to fill in all the blanks or I feel like I missed something. So, since I had seen all other Star Wars episodes I had to see this one to find out how and why Aniken became Darth Vadar (sorry if I ruined the ending for you, haha).

I was intrigued by some lines I heard in the movie. In talking about becoming a Darth, the counselor tells a story about one who could give life to the dead. However he, himself dies. “He could give life to save others others but he could not save himself”. Sound familiar? Check out Mark 15:31 where Christ is mocked while on the cross. (Remember, though, Christ defeated death, death did not defeat him).

Another comment was the order to begin mass destruction of the Republic. The order number is “66″. There are 66 books in the Bible and in the 66th book, the book of Revelation we see the final battle where the anti-Christ, in the name of peace, begins an all out battle to destroy all who oppose Him.

Having been promised that his wife would be spared death if he pledged himself to the dark side, he is told it was his own fault when he did as commanded and she was not spared. Isn’t that like Satan? It is your fault things didn’t work as I promised they would, not mine.

My husband and I agreed we disliked one line when in the battle to convince Anika to turn back to good, he is told “the Dark Side believes in absolutes” which made us both shudder because so often, people use that to say why they won’t believe in Christ, He says “I AM THE WAY” the only way to be with God in Heaven for eternity. But when we discussed this I also realized that all the comments which I could attribute to scripture were spoken by the Dark Side.

The Dark Side loses the battle in the saga and Satan loses in Revelation.

I am not a theologian and certainly cannot look deep into a movie and see all the underlying themes, analogies, etc., but these items did jump out at me.

On another note: an exciting new movie is coming out this Christmas; the C.S. Lewis movie The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I have not read the books (shame on me) but I have listened to the radio drama of all the Narnia books including this one through Focus On The Family.