While many Christians might be turned off by the elements of this movie, it probably isn’t too far off the mark of what a Godless, post-apocalyptic future would be like. In that sense, “The Book of Eli” merely portrays what a world without God would be like, but it doesn’t endorse it. The movie brought to mind a few verses of Scripture. One was Exodus 20:13, another was Matthew 5:38-39. Some will ask “What about ‘Thou shall not kill?” It should be pointed out that Eli never initiated violence, he only used violence to protect himself or others being attacked. Others will claim that Eli is just another hypocritical Christian, because he didn’t “turn the other cheek,” but instead used violence to respond to violence.

The other scripture that came to mind was Matthew 11:12. Eli was clearly using violence against men who were assaulting the Word of God. Near the end of the movie, Eli expresses regret that he didn’t follow the Bible’s message more closely while trying to fulfill his mission, but I believe that has more to do with the people he failed to help than those he killed out of self-defense.

I was a little disappointed in the end of the movie, where the Bible is placed between the Tanach and the Koran. It definitely sends a mixed-message about the importance of the Bible, essentially saying that while the Bible is an important historical book, in the end, it is just another book.

I liked the movie over all, and feel it is a good one to see on the big screen, since it helps to deepen the sense of desolation the world has fallen into. I also believe it would send a strong message to Hollywood that there is a market for movies that have Christian themes, which are in short supply these days.

If you think you’re still interested in seeing this movie, stop reading right here, SPOILERS AHEAD!

I’m not going to give a play-by play synapsis of the movie, but I’d like to discuss some of the subtle secular & overt religious tones set in the movie. John Koestler (an agnostic-at-best astronomy professor at MIT played by Nicolas Cage), and his son Caleb are cooking out & start gazing when his son asks how many planets there are in the universe which would be capable of having life evolve. John is a little slow to answer so Caleb gives him the answer, to which John replies "but so far it’s just us". This seems to upset Caleb and he heads off to the house to watch the Discovery Chanel. John asks him if he isn’t staying for a hot dog, but Caleb replies that he can’t, because he’s turned vegetarian, which is apparently a recent conversion.

We soon learn that John is a widower, and his remark upset his son, who believes that some day he would be together with his mother in Heaven. John tells Caleb "I don’t believe in Heaven, but you can if you want to. It’s just something we can’t know."

Later on, we get to see John giving a lecture to his Astronomy class. He gets into a discussion of determinism versus randomness with his students. When he finishes presenting both sides, ending by saying that randomness means life is withouth purpose, and his students ask him which he believes in. He answers them "I think sh** happens." Probably not the profound answer they were looking for. We come to find out John lost his faith after his wife died in a fire, and we also learn from his sister Grace that John’s father is a pastor, and he hasn’t spoken with his father in a long time.

Something is about to happen though that will make John rethink his agnostic stance. Caleb attends a school that buried a time capsule 50 years prior, containing pictures drawn by children of what they think the future looks like. Every kid will get one. John arrives at the unearthing of the time capsule just in time to hear his son’s school choir singing "This Little Light of Mine". Caleb gets his and it’s nothing but a sheet filled with numbers on both sides.

John accidentally figures out that the numbers point to dates and death tolls of catastrophes over the past 50 years. He first notices it because he sets his whisky glass down on the sheet and the numbers 91120012974 are circled by the glass, which is 9/11/2001, with 2,974 deaths. He shows it to a colleague who dismisses the notion as pure coincidence, because there are several sets of numbers that don’t seem to be related at all to the catastrophes. John is very upset because there are only 3 dates left on the sheet, including one on the very next day that would kill 82 people.

The next day, John is on his way to pick up his son but is delayed on the way due to an accident on the highway. He goes to find an alternate route on his GPS but can find none. As he asks an officer what’s going on, a plane flys low overhead, crashing into the ground nearby. He tries to help the victims, seeing some of them escape the plane only to be killed in explosive fireballs. He’s forced to return to his car by the emergency workers who were already on the scene. This is when John discovers that the other sets of numbers are global coordinates. He also starts to be convinced that he was meant to receive the drawing with the numbers on it, and that his son is connected to the numbers in some way as well.

That’s the initial set up of the movie. As you can see, there’s a lot going on in just this little bit. The movie is loaded with Biblical imagery. We see Caleb watching a video of his mother singing a hymn to him as she tucks him in bed. John’s father is a preacher. John goes to see the house of a the girl who wrote the numbers on the paper, and finds an image of Ezekiel before God. There are mysterious men (who Caleb refers to as whisperers) who have been following them, and could be angles because they don’t speak. And John figures out with the help of Diana, the daughter of the girl who wrote down the numbers that the last number was for the end of the world.

All of these things might lead one to believe that Knowing is leading the viewers toward a revelation of faith, but then goes ahead and casts doubt into that notion with it’s ending. We come to find out that the mystery men following John and Caleb are either angels or aliens (they transform at one point in the movie and appear to have whispy wing-like appendages), though that is left somewhat ambiguous. Likewise, the mystery men who have been following Caleb and Diana’s daughter Abby were here on Earth to rescue them and bring them to a "New Earth." How do they do this? In very celestial looking vessels, which may or may not be space ships. The end of the world scene where the earth is burned to a crips by a random solar flare a is strictly non-Biblical, completely ignoring anything out of the Book of Revelation.

I’d say that while "Knowing" seems to be a very strong spiritual movie, in the end it gives a nod to secularism. Knowing implies that many things in the Bible were the result of human interaction with aliens, but it is still vague enough that it allows people to get what they want out of it. People who want to see a spiritual message will probably come away thinking that’s what the movie was about.