UPDATED 4/13/2014 I’m really gratified to see the General Conference officially suspend the Record Keeper 🙂 Since i uploaded this video 2 months ago showing problems in the RK, and asking them to either cancel or fix it, it has gotten over 3,200 views. Interestingly, almost 700 of those views have been in the last 24 hours! Anyway, it is great to see that at least some of our leaders are more interested in staying true to God’s words than they are to cater to the popular excitement. May someone make a video that not only is interesting, but that stays true to the inspired words God gave Ellen White to write.
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The Record Keeper is a movie sponsored by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists to try and tell the story of the Great Controversy by Ellen White in a moving picture format.
I made a video to show the church’s position, the official trailer, and the first episode along with my recommendation to fix it to faithfully follow the inspired words in the Great Controversy book.
Jesus was the master story-teller, and the Holy Spirit says thru Ellen White that we are to use good illustrations etc. to fix the words in the mind. We also have instruction to be careful of drama. So there is a tension in any project of this nature.
Personally, i really like the steampunk style (steampunk means future-type things with a Victorian-era setting), so find this movie visually appealing. However, there are several places where it is not faithful to the book, and, in fact, teaches contrary to the book.
So my recommendation is for this movie to be redone, fixing the scenes to conform to the truth as found in the book. It would be worse to teach a false gospel, than to teach no gospel at all.
This is an article from the Record (the South Pacific Division church magazine). The title is “Why the Record Keeper was Cancelled”.
Quote: “Late last year a negative campaign against it got underway. A video entitled The Record Keeper is Broken began to circulate on YouTube. The people who created it are not identified and the organisation identified as its source (www.earlysda.com) includes no contact information. It appears to use only the 1858 edition of the White book, not the final version that she was satisfied with and approved for ongoing publication.”
http://record.net.au/items/why-the-record-keeper-was-cancelled
Wow! That’s amazing Shireen. I sure didn’t know that it was a “negative campaign”, and I didn’t do it last year, and I’m not “people”, and anyone who wishes to check out all my uploads to youtube can easily find out my identity and there is contact info on my web site and I don’t believe Ellen White approved the 1911 edition of the Great Controversy, but other than that, it looks like they got everything right 😉
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Actually, I just went to the link you provided, and it gave a 404 not-found error. I looked up several issues of the Reoord from Australia, and could only find this little blurb about the Record Keeper’s suspension:
Shelved
World leaders of the Adventist Church have announced that the release of the much-anticipated video series, “The Record Keeper”, has been suspended. The science fiction aesthetic of the series was a radically new direction for Church media, but it was the number of theological errors in the series that torpedoed the project.
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If you have any more info, I’d love to see it. Thanks for brightening my day.
(^-^)
I cannot find it either. I have written to the Record to ask why.
I have a reply already. Try these links:
First: http://www.atoday.org/article/2449/news/april/the-record-keeper-why-the-film-project-was-canceled
Second: http://www.atoday.org/article/2462/news/april/what-happened-to-the-record-keeper-more-of-the-story-surfaces
Third:
http://news.adventist.org/all-news/news/go/2014-04-11/decision-to-suspend-the-record-keeper-comes-with-strong-endorsement-for-creative-outreach/
Sorry, I didn’t explain. The staff member from the Record confirmed that the article was only up briefly at record.net.au.
That first link is the one with the info. It is from Adventist Today (a libsral magazine), April 20, 2014:
Late last year a negative campaign against it got underway. A video entitled The Record Keeper is Broken began to circulate on YouTube. The people who created it are not identified and the organization identified as its source (www.earlysda.com) includes no contact information. It appears to use only the 1858 edition of the White book, not the final version that she was satisfied with and approved for ongoing publication.
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The anonymous critics complain in the video that the film uses the word “displacement” instead of “war” in referring to the conflict among the angels in heaven. The video also expresses dislike for scenes in which the angels discuss possible compromise and reunification after the fall because White wrote that Satan wept and pled to be taken back but the sin was already so great that it could not be blotted out. The critics also expressed dislike for an actress because of her appearances in other films that do not meet Adventist standards.
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It is unclear whether this anonymous critique got to denominational leaders or not, but in December Wilson asked for a review of the project. It is evidently at about this time that another evaluation by staff members at the BRI was begun, presumably at the request of one or more GC officers.
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My gut guess is that McKees paid the 500,000 seed money for the film, lots of GC officials were involved, none of them were upset at the theological problems, McKee raised some questions which got Ted Wilson involved, and he quietly shut it down.
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I’m partially happy, but would really like to see something similar, but without theological problems, get out to the people so many people would get interested in the truth as it is in Jesus Christ.
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This incident/news has certainly put a fire in me to make more videos, but also a realization that the videos are not just me ranting out in the backwoods, but really do have an impact sometimes, so carry a responsiblity.
Yes, the first link is the article I read last month.
Thank you very much for the heads-up, Shireen. BTW, it is great to hear from you. May God bless and be with you as you prepare for the soon-coming Time of Trouble. 🙂