Jack and Rexella Van Impe were at the top of their game in the 1990s, producing a veritable Mount Moriah of videos that announcer Chuck Ohman would pitch to the multitudes during their weekly newscasts. The prices were prohibitive at the time, so I only saw some of them later on, picked up on eBay or borrowed from a church library (where I found REVELATION REVEALED, Jack's magnum opus).
THE MARK OF THE BEAST is a lesser effort, but one still worth watching. It dates to 1997, so expect some of the information to be as outdated as Ray Boltz's mullet. It does hold interest, however, in reminding us of how we got to where we are today. While old scares like UPC codes with their hidden 666 bars appear almost quaint in hindsight, the discussions of electronic chip and especially biochip technology were amazingly prescient and are still timely. The commentators warning of a future where our every transaction and move would be tracked has indeed come about with smart phones, GPS, chip cards, drones, and cameras blanketing every city post-9/11.
This film has added heft due to its consulting academics, government officials, and technology industry insiders. The only Christian apologist interviewed was the late Grant Jeffrey. The video was produced in Canada, so it slants heavily to the Great White North in the experts consulted, but what they had to say affected all of us regardless of national boundaries.
IMDb has this film listed as a documentary, which it is, but there is considerable time dedicated to a dramatization about a father and a son, and later the father and a fellow prisoner. I really enjoyed these segments and wished there were more. The film opens with a video of Ray Boltz singing "I Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb" intercut with scenes of a father explaining to his young son about the gospel and the persecutions Christians suffered. We learn that those persecutions are happening right then and there, as the father is in a futuristic holding cell and is taken away by guards after a tearful goodbye to his little boy. Adding to the verisimilitude and power of the scene is that it's played by real-life father and son Shane and Anthony Harwell.
The father is then tossed into a dimly lit, cinderblock cell with an old Christian man whose been languishing there 30 years. They encourage one another with Scripture and the young father brings the old man up to speed on developments he's missed out on in three decades. "Beam me up, Scotty!" the old man cries in disbelief at what he learns. And if we can consider that iconic pop cultural catchphrase a prayer, it is one heard and answered (though not by Mr. Scott).
There are also two short flashback scenes, one showing the martyrdom of Joan of Arc and another of a family in what appears to be Nazi Germany. I wondered if they were clips from other features since they're quite elaborate in costuming and only a minute or so of each is shown (and none of the actors in these scenes is credited).
One controversial point for prophecy scholars is the fate of a person who unwittingly took the mark of the beast. The movie takes a forgiving position that I know would spark discussions in my circles of eschatologists.
The fictional narrative is intercut with interviews with the experts. It is a little cheesy how the transition is made, with interviews appearing on the screen of an old 1990s-era computer, and a hand reaching up to click an f-key to change the scene. But that's a quibble and one easily overlooked. A little harder to overlook is the false ending that comes at the 42 minute mark. The narrative and interviews end, and the video gives all indication of ending, but there follows thirty minutes of Jack and Rexella Van Impe discussing the subject of technologies and the end times. It was informative and inspiring, sprinkled liberally with Bible quotations by Jack, but it did break the momentum and slowed the pace to a crawl. I suspect the video was originally only 42 minutes, and that this 30-minute section was tacked on afterwards.
I watched THE MARK OF THE BEAST on YouTube. With its information being almost 20 years old, it will likely be the only place to catch it since a DVD rerelease is unlikely. Seek it out, if only to enjoy the well-done fictional narrative and the Ray Boltz video. Sifting wheat from chaff in the technological discussion will still reap a rich harvest as so much of the information is still relevant two decades later as we live in the world this film predicts.
THE MARK OF THE BEAST is a lesser effort, but one still worth watching. It dates to 1997, so expect some of the information to be as outdated as Ray Boltz's mullet. It does hold interest, however, in reminding us of how we got to where we are today. While old scares like UPC codes with their hidden 666 bars appear almost quaint in hindsight, the discussions of electronic chip and especially biochip technology were amazingly prescient and are still timely. The commentators warning of a future where our every transaction and move would be tracked has indeed come about with smart phones, GPS, chip cards, drones, and cameras blanketing every city post-9/11.
This film has added heft due to its consulting academics, government officials, and technology industry insiders. The only Christian apologist interviewed was the late Grant Jeffrey. The video was produced in Canada, so it slants heavily to the Great White North in the experts consulted, but what they had to say affected all of us regardless of national boundaries.
IMDb has this film listed as a documentary, which it is, but there is considerable time dedicated to a dramatization about a father and a son, and later the father and a fellow prisoner. I really enjoyed these segments and wished there were more. The film opens with a video of Ray Boltz singing "I Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb" intercut with scenes of a father explaining to his young son about the gospel and the persecutions Christians suffered. We learn that those persecutions are happening right then and there, as the father is in a futuristic holding cell and is taken away by guards after a tearful goodbye to his little boy. Adding to the verisimilitude and power of the scene is that it's played by real-life father and son Shane and Anthony Harwell.
The father is then tossed into a dimly lit, cinderblock cell with an old Christian man whose been languishing there 30 years. They encourage one another with Scripture and the young father brings the old man up to speed on developments he's missed out on in three decades. "Beam me up, Scotty!" the old man cries in disbelief at what he learns. And if we can consider that iconic pop cultural catchphrase a prayer, it is one heard and answered (though not by Mr. Scott).
There are also two short flashback scenes, one showing the martyrdom of Joan of Arc and another of a family in what appears to be Nazi Germany. I wondered if they were clips from other features since they're quite elaborate in costuming and only a minute or so of each is shown (and none of the actors in these scenes is credited).
One controversial point for prophecy scholars is the fate of a person who unwittingly took the mark of the beast. The movie takes a forgiving position that I know would spark discussions in my circles of eschatologists.
The fictional narrative is intercut with interviews with the experts. It is a little cheesy how the transition is made, with interviews appearing on the screen of an old 1990s-era computer, and a hand reaching up to click an f-key to change the scene. But that's a quibble and one easily overlooked. A little harder to overlook is the false ending that comes at the 42 minute mark. The narrative and interviews end, and the video gives all indication of ending, but there follows thirty minutes of Jack and Rexella Van Impe discussing the subject of technologies and the end times. It was informative and inspiring, sprinkled liberally with Bible quotations by Jack, but it did break the momentum and slowed the pace to a crawl. I suspect the video was originally only 42 minutes, and that this 30-minute section was tacked on afterwards.
I watched THE MARK OF THE BEAST on YouTube. With its information being almost 20 years old, it will likely be the only place to catch it since a DVD rerelease is unlikely. Seek it out, if only to enjoy the well-done fictional narrative and the Ray Boltz video. Sifting wheat from chaff in the technological discussion will still reap a rich harvest as so much of the information is still relevant two decades later as we live in the world this film predicts.
