At a time when revival seems to be pouring out across America, a new film sheds light on how the Gospels were codified.
“Oracles of God: The Story of the New Testament,” from CBN Films, releasing in theaters Nov. 2, 3, and 5 through Fathom Entertainment, has been in the works for the past five years.
Director Erin Zimmerman told CBN News plans for the film started in 2017, while she was living in Israel. But after they started preparing to film in 2019, the COVID pandemic hit and everything was shut down. What followed were ebbs and flows of production.
“We came back in 2023, spent the summer in Israel doing pre-production,” Zimmerman said. “We were supposed to start filming in October 2023.”
Again, production was delayed after Hamas’ horrific terror attack on Israel.
“That was one where I really said, ‘OK, God, what are you doing? Because you had me here all summer. You had us get all the way up to filming. And then, why?'” Zimmerman said. “And the answer I got back then was … ‘I want you to be here. I want you to be here with your people while this is going on.'”
The filmmaker was able to be present in Israel with the cast and crew during such a difficult time. While the timing and delays didn’t initially make sense, Zimmerman said she soon came to see the power of God’s timing. Now, “Oracles of God” is coming at a time when culture is ripe for revival.
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“Last year, The Wall Street Journal said this is a golden age of Bible publishing,” Zimmerman said. “Who would ever have thought that? You know, Bible sales last year were up. … This is before Charlie Kirk and all the things that are going on now to sort of stir this up.”
She continued, “Last year, Bible sales were up 22% over the previous year. This year, already, they’ve … sold a million more Bibles than they had at this point last year.”
Zimmerman, in reflecting back on the plan, now realizes God knew what he was doing the entire time as her project faced numerous delays.
“His timing is better than ours,” she said.
Zimmerman said audiences who go to theaters to see “Oracles of God: The Story of the New Testament” will encounter the biblical narrative after Christ’s death and resurrection. And the film will answer a plethora of questions about the New Testament’s formation.
“How did those stories get written down?” he said. “How did we get those? I mean, how did we go from apostles … all through Jesus’ ministry. Jesus was saying to them, ‘Oh, I’m telling you, but you still don’t understand. You still don’t understand what’s going on. Right up to the cross … they still didn’t understand. So how did we go from that to all these men saying, ‘But this is my life’s mission. Now I have to write this down and write it down well.'”
Zimmerman said the film explores how Scripture moved from word-of-mouth to a codified New Testament.
“Suddenly, what happened was the apostles were dying off and persecution was starting to come in,” the filmmaker said. “King Herod was driving the Jews and the Christians out of Judea [and they said], ‘Uh-oh, we’ve got to write this stuff down, because we don’t have the firsthand accounts anymore.'”
Thus, “Oracles of God: The Story of the New Testament” tackles the journey from oral stories to a written canon.
“We have an amazing gift when it comes to knowing about this era,” Zimmerman said. “We have an amazing gift called the church fathers. These Christian leaders who were one generation or even two removed from the apostles. Some of them were even the direct students of the apostle John.”
She said the ability to dive into the reasoning behind the New Testament’s formation was faith-building. As a Christian, Zimmerman said she was “at ground zero with this topic” when she first started working on the project; it was out of her typical topical wheelhouse.
“Some projects … they’re your idea and you want to do them,” she said. “This was not one of those. This one — God told me. I mean, I didn’t get a tablet from Mount Sinai, but you know when God tells you to do something.”
Ultimately, Zimmerman believes “Oracles of God: The Story of the New Testament” will build believers’ faith by helping them see the reliability of Scripture and the stories told within.
“I want people to have a real love and confidence in this text,” she said. “A lot of people don’t believe the Bible because they had personal problems, or bad brushes with Christianity, or something.”
Zimmerman continued, “But there are a lot of people out there who don’t just because they say, ‘Hey, you know what? I think the text is corrupted. Well, I think it has — it wasn’t done by those people. It wasn’t written at this time.'”
But the film, she said, paints a different, more accurate picture of why the New Testament is truly trustworthy. To see the true history behind Scripture, head to theaters Nov. 2, 3, or 5 to see “Oracles of God: The Story of the New Testament.”
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