New ‘The Chosen’ Episode Features The Apostle John Having a ‘Wet Dream’?
While ‘The Chosen’ continues to break records at the box office, bringing in nearly $13M dollars at the theaters where episodes 1 and 2 of season 5 have been released, many viewers have commented on the decision by director Dallas Jenkins to include a plot point where the Apostle John becomes ritually unclean after ‘spilling his seed.’
In the scene in the second episode, John and his father are on a mission to deliver anointing oils to the High Priest’s house, where Malchus, the servant, greets them. In order to deliver the oil to the right location, they need to ensure that they’ve ritually washed themselves and that they haven’t done anything that would render them impure.
When Zebadiah lists several potential sources of ritual contamination, including “nocturnal emissions,” John’s father, Zebedee, enters, but John realizes that he can’t and claims he came in contact with “leprosy.”
Malchus, similarly, is disqualified because of “leprosy,” and the two remain outside, commiserating on their exclusion while noting that the “old men” are “punishing us young men for having bodies.”
While many have interpreted this to mean the men had “wet dreams,” some viewers interpreted it as they became ritually impure as a result of masturbating.
Dallas Jenkins commented on the controversy about the scene on Facebook, describing the moment as “funny” and “awkward” and saying that it fits their goal of being “authentic, intimate, playful and disruptive. “
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Imagine a Buddhist show making Sariputra have a wet dream. Buddhist scripture actually directly deals with mobks masturbating and having wet dreams. Yet nobody would dare do this. This also suggests to me that a Buddhist wrote this episode to attack Christianity.
I heard about this yesterday so I was sure this was an April Fools joke.
In addition to contrasting purity to holiness, which makes no sense at all, because both are essentially the same, Jenkins fails to understand one very important fact about the requirement for ceremonial cleanliness, and the reason that God made it a part of the law, which was to point directly to the purity, holiness, and perfection of Jesus Christ.
Jesus did not do away with “purity”, He fulfilled it. He did not do away with the law. He fulfilled it.
Jenkins’ response above is approaching full blown antinomian perversion of the grace of God into a license to sin. Jesus and the Apostles repeatedly compel us to live pure and holy lives, all throughout the entire New Testament. This notion that somehow Jesus did away with it, and did away with the law, is a false gospel.
The same principle is applied to believers as it relates to communion. If you are “impure”, you are not to take it. (1 Cor. 11, etc.)
The call to cleanliness, holiness, and purity has not gone anywhere. Jesus did not do away with it. Rather He perfectly fulfilled it.
Had Jenkins, in his explanation, focused on the ceremonial aspect alone, then he might’ve been ok. But instead, his response is worse in that he tries to apply that same concept to any and all purity and holiness. We are not required to ceremonially wash our hands, because Jesus has already perfectly fulfilled all the ceremonial law, any attempt of our own would fall short and only take away from His perfect work. But we absolutely are called to live pure and holy lives, in terms of what God says is pure and holy.
Indeed, in Matt. 5:20, as Jesus has just said that He did not come to abolish the law, and that the law would not pass, He states that our righteousness should EXCEED that required by the law. (and the remainder of the sermon on the mount, must be understood in that context)
“Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.” – Heb. 10:28
Well said, brother!
I have held from the beginning that The Chosen was “pure” hogwash that promotes false teaching and leads people astray.