Revelation: The End of Days (2014)

Like many other movies and miniseries about this topic, this work is horrifically bad. It was poorly written, acted, and produced. It is almost laughable how awful this thing is. This is worse than some of the bad science fiction movies that I watch for kicks. It sticks to a convoluted interpretation of the Christian apocalypse that opportunists like Kirk Cameron, Jerry B. Jenkins, and Tim LaHaye have used to line their pockets for years, but the overused plot not even the worst aspect of this thing.The shaky camera style is reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project, which fits well with the other poorly executed parts of the miniseries. If you are prone to vertigo, migraines, seizures, or motion sickness, especially if these have been triggered in the past by past movies or television shows, you might want to avoid this for health reasons. If not, just avoid it for quality reasons. It's not entertaining enough to justify wasting so much time on it.

I fast forwarded through this series because it was just plain awful. First of all, the 7 year tribulation period will begin when the Antichrist signs a peace treaty with Israel. When Jesus spoke of the destruction of the temple he was speaking of when the Romans destroy the temple in 70 AD. The 7 headed-beast represents the worldwide political system-the one world government. The seven seals (Revelation (6:1-17, 8:1-5), seven trumpets (Revelation 8:6-13; 11:15-19), and seven bowls/vials (Revelation 16:1-21) are three succeeding series of end-times judgments from God. And not just children will disappear but all true believers will be raptured, or caught up in the air, before the tribulation period.

This series is very entertaining in the same way that other History offerings like "Ancient Aliens" or "America Unearthed" are... very very loosely based on fact and historical records, a lot of wild hypothesizing making up the plot line, very science fictiony, and overly dramatic. If you give it allowances for being from History Channel, and for being over the top, it's kind of fun.It's filmed in a jerky cinema verite' style, narrated by a reporter who comes around from being a secular humanist to believing biblical prophecy, who is recording his own version of events as they unfold.I give this show high marks for rendering the style of media reporting within the "crapsack world" of the show fairly realistically. There are some dumb glitches, like the ominous end-timey logo on the side of a corporate headquarters captured in the background of a live TV news shot obviously looking like it was "Photoshopped" in.They did make events seem pretty real. The apocalypse and the seven years of tribulation will be covered in HDTV over CNN and HNN style cable news networks. Extra realism credit for use of minor scatological curse words, and spoken references to Blair Witch Project and Beavis and Butthead. :)Now, the negatives. The final battle between good and evil will look like a mashup of vintage news videos from the 1990s of police with shields and clubs fighting street rioters, with aerial shots of Katrina like mobs at the Superdome. Reallyz?The handling of the coming of Christ was just plain ridiculous... it was treated in the movie like a technical weather event, rather than the profound cosmic and reality-bending transformation of the world that has been described in Revelation. There was a lack of supernatural feeling to every single one of the events, regardless of their inexplicable origin. Dead Christian leader comes back to life? Sure, have him appear on a TV feed matter o' fact. And under no circumstances show any transcendental beings. Someone else described it as PC and it's as sterile of religious feel as you can get. Not a documentary, and not suitable for Sunday school. Best enjoyed for what it is, a future mocumentary with heavy SF and apocalyptic elements that takes itself very seriously.This film is on the same level as "A History Channel Thanksgiving" which showed the clear link between the first Thanksgiving in 1621 and alien visitation.

I don't know who thought it would be a good idea to do a story on Revelation without ever reading the Bible but that's what we've got here. Someone picked up a Bible and ripped a few verses screaming and bleeding out of context and tried to weave a humanistic interpretation of how Revelations should be told. The "anti-Christ" supposedly kills himself or is shot by his own forces and "Jesus" supposedly returns in some unseen way and doesn't even show Himself, let alone stay and set up His millennial kingdom. In the end we're left to believe that "man" starts to make things better, slowly, for himself. It's the same pure humanistic, anti-God drivel that I've come to expect from these channels. Four wasted hours of my life that I'll never get back... what a joke, and truly sad for a World that deserves to know the truth of Jesus' return at the end of days!