If you haven’t already, you’re soon to be bombarded with flashy trailers for HBO’s new TV show, His Dark Materials.
Full of cutting-edge graphics and high-quality dramatic acting, below the surface of this new series lies a sinister agenda.
Based on books described by the author himself as the “Atheist Chronicles of Narnia,” this new show seeks to undermine you and your family’s faith in God.
Here’s everything you need to know about HBO’s new hot series — and how to protect your family’s faith from this latest attack.
You might recall the first big screen adaptation of Philip Pullman books, based on and named for the first book, The Golden Compass.
In that film adaptation, the anti-Christian and anti-God rhetoric was intentionally dampened for mainstream audiences. But don’t count on that happening this time.
The new series is bearing the given name of the trilogy and clearly intends to be a more “faithful” adaptation.
So what exactly makes this series so awful?
I won’t lie, the first book is well written and engaging.
In this universe, a “Golden Compass” is a reference to an alethiometer — or truth meter. When a person holding the device poses a question, the needle swings from word to word to give a truthful answer.
However, each word on the compass has scores of different potential meanings. An expert in the alethiometer must spend a lifetime of study just learning enough familiarity to occasionally produce an accurate answer.
As a result, truth, or enlightenment, through academic study and accomplishment, or “works” becomes an important theme to keep in mind.
The story starts with our young heroine picking up an alethiometer and instantaneously knowing the truth of any answer. No study or hard work required. This super power suddenly makes her a very important person in a struggle developing in the shadows of her world.
Again, her world is an interesting one.
This story is full of armored polar bears, a race of witches, and shape-shifting animal spirit companions designed to entice the imagination of unsuspecting children.
The Medieval Catholic Church seems to have never lost its preeminent position of authority in the world’s affairs. And yes, the Church is presented even in this first novel as the villain.
And at least in the first book, the villains are truly villainous. They torture and murder children in order to achieve a scientific goal they insist is absolutely essential.
Scenes near the end of The Golden Compass broke my heart and set me aflame with anger against the antagonist pair — a middle-aged man and woman.
It’s in the second and third books, after the reader is already hooked, that Pullman’s agenda really starts to come out.
The great enemy many characters are talking about is actually God.
However, in this universe “God” is an aged, decrepit, bloated tyrant. He created nothing, but as the first creature to come into existence, he lied to every being that came later and claimed he did. His Kingdom of Heaven is based on lies and greed.
As it progresses Pullman loses all pretext of a plot. Instead, he merely throws the two children protagonists from one place to another as they slowly start to ally with the enemies of “God.”
Why God needs to be defeated is never really explained, Pullman just throws it out there as fact.
God must be defeated at all costs, including the murder of children.
The two primary villains are eventually declared to be heroes for no other reason than they facilitated the defeat of God. It doesn’t matter that their hands are drenched in innocent blood.
All that matters is the final result: Killing God.
And “tearing down the Kingdom of Heaven to replace it with the Republic of Heaven.”
Which they do achieve.
But this is far from the only anti-Christian scene in these books. Near the end, the protagonists end up in hell only to discover that eternal punishment is just a cruel trick God is playing on dead souls to increase his power.
By far the most telling passage comes near the very end.
Here, our young heroine Lyra has suddenly lost the ability to comprehend her alethiometer instinctively. In the following passage Lyra is discussing losing this power with a friendly angel that happens upon them (an angel in the army that destroyed God).
“You read it by grace,” said Xaphania [angel] looking at her, “and you can regain it by work.”
[Lyra, main character] “How long will it take?”
“A lifetime.”
“That long…”
[Angel] “But your reading will be even better then, after a lifetime of thought and effort, because it will come from conscious understanding. Grace attained like that is deeper and fuller than grace that comes freely, and furthermore, once you’ve gained it, it will never leave you.”
In case you missed that, in the books soon to become a TV show, grace through works is superior to grace freely given.
This knowledge will be her salvation if she can only work hard enough to attain it.
This “morality” lesson comes out of nowhere and is not connected to any plot point. It’s simply an anti-Christian lesson Pullman wanted to add.
This is why Christians in America need to be mentally prepared for the HBO series coming soon.
Sadly, many who saw the watered-down movie version of The Golden Compass years ago, and allowed their children to see it as well, might be suckered into this TV show not knowing the true agenda behind it.
This story is nothing but an attack on Christianity and the Bible from beginning to end.
Don’t let the flashy graphics and cinematography sucker you in.
