Film Comment: Sinners (2025)

 

Sinners is a movie which is intended to be about racism, cultural oppression, colonialism, black culture, anti-religion, and anti-Christianity. As usual, I can make Christian observations about the film which are probably unintended by the director.

“Son, you keep dancin’ with the Devil, one day, he’s gonna follow you home,” from a pastor father to Sammie, nicknamed Preacherboy, who is aching to become famous for his outstanding blues guitar and singing talent. Sammie hooks up with two morally fluid brothers who are opening a juke joint. This sets up a conflict when two white men and a woman show up that night wanting to join in the fun. The problem is that they are vampires.

One man about to be killed/turned into a vampire begins to loudly quote the Lord’s Prayer. All the vampires join in and help complete the quotation. This seems to be intended to show that Christianity has no power against evil.

A Christian response: the frightened man’s words were just that, words, and they did have no power. There is a difference between knowing and believing. The power is not in the words. They are not a Magick spell. God is not our genie in a bottle. The words have power only as they are used by the Holy Spirit.

Satan can quote scripture. He quoted Psalms 91:11-12 while tempting Jesus to misuse his authority (Matthew 4:1-11, Luke 4:1-13). Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44).

The Lord's Prayer in Klingon

Klingon (actually Tlhingan) is a fictional language created by the linguist Marc Okrand for the Klingon race of aliens featured in the numerous Star Trek movies and television series. The Klingons are an interplanetary race of fierce warriors who control the vast expanses of outer space claimed by the Klingon Empire.

Klingon has been built up into a full totally functional language with a written form, literature, plays, operas, translations of The Bible and the works of William Shakespeare, and even dictionaries. There are now estimated to be 50,000 to 100,000 people who are fluent in the language. Below is The Lord's Prayer in spoken Klingon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbRTFfdeIj8  

The Lord's Prayer in Numerous Languages

This page has translations of the Lord's Prayer in numerous languages. Those who speak or read English should look at the prayer as written in the Old English of the year 1000. There is also an audio file of the prayer spoken in Old English.

http://www.prayer.su/other/all-languages.html

Magic Squares in Christian Occultism, Part 3

The Sator Square is a Christian use of the Magic Square. The words, Sator Arepo tenet opera rotas, are a palindrome which can be read top-to-bottom, bottom-to-top, left-to-right, or right-to-left. The Latin inscription means something like "Farmer Arepo makes work wheels." "The farmer Arepo uses a plough to do his work." By itself, the sentence is virtually meaningless and harmless. It would not arouse the suspicions of any one holding malicious attitudes towards Christians.


                                     S A T O R
                                     A R E P O
                                     T E N E T
                                     O P E R A
                                     R O T A S


Placed on the cornerstone block during construction, this is obviously intended as a blessing or protection for the building and the persons inside. Like the Fish symbol, this could also be a sign that only Christians would recognize. Since it is an attempt to influence reality by the use of powerful words, this can also be seen as the use of and belief in magic.

Hidden within this square are the Latin words "Pater Noster" ("Our Father") enclosed by the A and O from the Greek words Alpha and Omega , the "beginning" and the "end" of the Greek alphabet. The "Our Father" references Matthew 6:5-13 and Luke 11:1-4. The "beginning" and the "end" reference Revelation 1:8, 21:6, 22:13, and Isaiah 44:6

                                            P

                                            A

                                            T

                                  A        E       O

                                            R

                           P A T E R N O S T E R

                                            O

                                  O       S       A

                                            T

                                            E

                                            R            

Sator Squares have been found in numerous places worldwide:
1. On a building in the ruins of Pompeii.
2. At the Duro-Europas site in Syria.
3. In excavations under the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.
4. On the wall of the Duomo of Sienna, Italy.
5. In a 2nd Century excavation site in Manchester, England.
6. A stone at a chapel in Andertton, Lancashire, England.
7. In a wall located in Oppede, France.

Other Discussions of the Sator Squares:
http://finding-palindromes.blogspot.com/2012/06/sator-square.html
http://mysteriouswritings.com/the-sator-square/
......................................
"Πάτερ ἡμῶν", "father of us":
Πάτερ ἡμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς·
ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου·
ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου·
γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου,·
ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς·
τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον·
καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν,
ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀφήκαμεν τοῖς ὀφειλέταις ἡμῶν·
καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν,
ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ.

The Lord's Prayer in Spanish

The Lord's Prayer in Korean

The Lord's Prayer in Hebrew

The Lord's Prayer in Greek

Here is The Lord's Prayer, read in modern Greek pronunciation with a literal English translation below the Greek text.  The Koine (Common) Greek pronunciation would, of course, not be exactly the same as modern Greek.

Dr. James Blanton at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky (USA) demonstrated that the Koine was pronounced more similarly to modern Greek than to the Erasmian pronunciation which many academics use.  Dr. Blanton based this demonstration on misspellings in hand-copied Greek texts from the first few Christian centuries.

Since the texts were copied by men transcribing what was being read aloud from a master text, misspellings of words showed how many of the vowels had similar sounds and could be mistaken for one another by inexperienced scribes.  Since the pronunciation of some words was known for certain, the pronunciations of other words could be deduced.

The Lord's Prayer in Arabic

أبانا

أَبَانَا الذِي فِي السَّمَاوَاتِ، لِيُقَدَّسَ اسْمُكَ. لِيَأْتِ مَلَكُوتُكَ، لِتَكُنْ مَشِيئَتُكَ فِي الأَرْضِ كَمَا السَّمَاءِ. ارْزُقْنَا خُبْزَنَا كَفَافَ يَوْمِنَا، وَ اعْفُ عَنْ خَطَايَانَا، فَإِنَّنَا نَعْفُو عَمَّنْ يُخْطِئُونَ بِحَقِّنَا. لاَ تُعَرِّضْنَا لِلغِوَايَةِ، بَلْ نَجِّنَا مِنَ الشِّرِيرِ. فَ

The Lord's Prayer in 28 Different Languages

This site, http://www.voiceshome.com/ , presents the Lord's Prayer spoken in twenty-eight different languages, from Hawaiian to Kurdish.

The Lord's Prayer in Mandarin

Chinese/Mandarin Version of Lord’s Prayer.

我們在天上的父，
願人都尊祢的名為聖，
願祢的國降臨，
願祢的旨意行在地上，
如同行在天上。
我們日用的飲食，
今日賜給我們，
免我們的債，
如同我們免了人的債，
不叫我們遇見試探，
救我們脫離兇惡，
因為國度、權柄、榮耀，全是祢的，
直到永遠。阿們！

Mount or Plain?

Some see a major discrepancy in the fact that the Lord’s Prayer appears in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1–7:29) but not in the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:17-7:1). What’s the problem? These are probably two different events. Jesus didn’t have to (and probably didn’t) say exactly the same time every time He spoke.

"And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:" Matthew 5:1

"And he came down with them, and stood in the plain, and the company of his disciples, and a great multitude of people out of all Judaea and Jerusalem, and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases; " Luke 6:17