The notion of the Zombie Apocalypse has been around (more or less) for over half a century. Movies came out called “Night of the Living Dead” and “Dawn of the Dead.” There was the growing genre of supernatural films and television series such as a “Teenage Werewolf in London,” “Shaun of the Dead,” “Z Nation” and “The Walking Dead” to name just a few. Then there was “Twilight.” Not all of these and others deal with raising the dead, however. But, these movies and television series cater to the notion of evil and they unknowingly can create supernatural appetites in their loyal watching audiences. It’s possible to present evil from a Godly perspective of course, with a more accurate “spin,” but the existing movies such as those above depend more on superstition than Scripture for their plots. Before you get overhwelmed and overrun by the undead, here is how to escape the zombie apocalypse.
Many people are intrigued by evil (particularly those who have not been personally victimized by it) and they find the devil to be a curious, sometimes pretty cool creature. The presence of evil in our world is one reason many people don’t believe in a benevolent God. They would prefer a God who banishes evil or rescues us from our predicaments. The rest of the undecided see Satan as either a fictional being or a rather nice, if extreme guy, who’s gotten a bad rap–someone who might not pass muster with your parents if you were to bring him home.
The devil is a liar
But in fact, the devil is a liar, and a deceiver among other things. From the earliest accounts in Eden, he has tried his best to come between God and the people God loves. First it was with Eve and Adam as the serpent led them to transgress against God’s house rules. At that point, sin entered the world and creation came under a curse. It was not as if God thought: “Hmmm. How can I make these people miserable for the rest of their lives?” Quite possibly, there were likely logical consequences that followed. If a pregnant woman for example has an addiction to cocaine, God does not specifically punish her baby. The infant’s addiction is a consequence of the mother’s sin.
The back story
Back to the story. So, God promised His people Yīsrāʾēl (Israel) from the very beginning that a Messiah would come. A Messiah who would “crush [Satan’s] head.” More detail followed in the ninth chapter of Isaiah where the prophet wrote in verses 2, 6 & 7:
“The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. . .
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
“Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever.
This Messiah was known to the Jews as Yeshua or Y’shua (Jesus to the gentiles.) Jesus made no distinction concerning who he loved. One minute it was a Samaritan women with uterine cancer, the next minute a Roman Centurian with a sick servant and very few friends in a land where people hated everything Italian. Through Jesus Christ, salvation was available for all as they were at that moment–saint or sinner, man or woman, young or old, Jew or Gentile, free or slave, European, African, Asian, whatever. Humanity could become one family again if they believed in Yeshua and He who sent Him.
Credit: Everett Collection (Shutterstock.)
The devil couldn’t let this be. So, eventually Satan raised up his own messiah named Adolph Hitler. His followers called him “a great light!” This “messiah” cared for the Aryan gentiles only (Jews were verboten and verflucht in Nazis Germany, and other races were not even human as far as Hitler was concerned.) Satan’s destiny for Hitler was for the Führer to utterly obliterate God’s first love Yīsrāʾēl from the face of the earth. History reminds us that he almost succeeded.
The faith of Abraham, concerned with the one True God over the millennia found itself in competition and conflict with false religions. The very land that the Old Testament says God gave Yīsrāʾēl, was contested by other tribes and nations. A lot has happened since the shepherd boy David, who would one day be King, laid on his back and watched his lambs kick up their heels. Even as Holocaust deniers try to reinvent the historical record, other groups are destroying ancient Jewish artifacts in Jerusalem to extinguish any trace of prior Jewish presence in that city.
So, what are zombies?
The word “zombie” has an uncertain and somewhat complicated origin. According to the Online Entymological Dictionary:
The oldest attested sense in English is ‘spirits of dead wicked men […] that torment the living.’ The sense of ‘reanimated corpse’ is by 1929 (Seabrook). The word usually is said to be of West African origin (compare Kikongo zumbi ‘fetish’ and djumbi ‘ghost’). A sense of ‘slow-witted person’ is recorded from 1936.
“It also is attested from 1819 as a title for a chief, in an Afro-Brazilian context. This is said to be directly from the Angolan (Kimbundu) nzambi, ‘deity.’ The meaning ‘witch’ is attested by 1910, that of ‘deity’ is by 1921. Grand Zombi as the name of a deity in Voodoo practices is in English by 1904. Zombi was also used as a name for pets in 19th Century.”
Even today, Haiti, which has been traditionally steeped in Voodoo, is said to actually have a law against creating Zombies.
If you track the word usage since the term “Zombie” first became popular, its popularity has grown steadily over the past half-century and given the existing menu of movies to watch on a weekend (including those in post-production), most readers will likely hear this once obscure term for many, many years to come.
Hardcore Zombie fans are called “Zombophiles.” They will tell you that the Zombies one desire, once roused from their graves, is to eat people, espectially the brains of their victims, though that was never George A. Romero’s idea (Romero popularized the genre with his 1968 film “Night of the Living Dead.”)
What is the Zombie Apocalypse?
The next event on the prophetic calendar or timeline is what the New Testament calls “the Blessed Hope,” which Christians commonly refer to as the Rapture.
Illustration credit: Brazhyk (Shutterstock.)
I won’t go into specific details concerning when to anticipate this event vis-à-vis the Great Tribulation, but know that Satan is well along in counterfeiting the Rapture as well. His version of the unrepentent, unforgiven dead rising from their graves is the basis for what we know as the Zombie Apocalypse. In this fictionalized events, swarms of Zombies climb out of their graves to attack people and unlease sheer terror and anarchy.
So again, there is a choice for you. Which Messiah do you believe in? Which resurrection do you want to be part of? Do you want to join God’s forever family in heaven or spend the rest of eternity in the “Village of the Damned?”
The notion of deceased people being reanimated after death comes from different sources. There is a Romanian word “Nosferatu” used in the Bram Stoker books to describe this phenomenon. In some other instances, primitive religions such as Voodoo that included witch doctors or shaman accomplish the same Zombotic effect through spells, curses or drugs. Sometimes, some sort of virus appears in the genre to cause people being raised from their graves. And then there is the familiar themes of hate, revenge, love and jealousy and so on that is responsible. The restless dead as they were often referred to as.
According to Wikipedia, there are more or less common themes (tropes) in these movies:
Initial contacts with zombies are extremely traumatic, causing shock, panic, disbelief and possibly denial, hampering survivors’ ability to deal with hostile encounters.
The response of authorities to the threat is slower than its rate of growth, giving the zombie plague time to expand beyond containment. This results in the collapse of society. Zombies take full control while small groups of the living must fight for their survival.
The plot usually follows a single group of survivors caught up in the sudden rush of the crisis. The narrative generally focuses on the characters’ attempts to survive on their own, particularly the way the characters react to the catastrophe and how this affects the safety of the group.
The Zombie was very popular in the last part of the last century and still is to some large degree. Respectable institutions such as CBS News, the Department of Defense and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention picked up on it. No, doubt, these references are tongue-in-cheek efforts to attract interest in programs1 and programming, but they can easily be part of the problem.
It’s possible to read perhaps too deeply between the lines of the scripts. People who enjoyed movies about Martian invasions of Earth (“Invaders From Mars,” “War of the Worlds,” and so on) supposedly were those most fearful of a war with the Soviet Union (i.e., “The Reds.”) Personally, I was not convinced then and I dodn’t see Zombie Apocalyptic movies representing social upheval or problems with race relations now.
October 8th is World Zombie Day
Zombies will likely continue to proliferate. NPR has an interesting summary that can be found here.
Your choice
The term “knockoff” is used today to designate a cheap imitation of something else that came before. You can believe in Jesus the Messiah who offers us life or the Führer who brought death to Europe and beyond. You can be caught up into heaven in the Rapture or wind up dragging yourself up and down Elm Street late in the night looking for someone who should be in bed. And you have a choice between serving God or serving the devil. Don’t settle for a cheap imitation when you can have the real thing, at no cost.
Footnotes
1From the Department of Defense CDRUSSTRATCOM CONPLAN 8888-11 “COUNTER-ZOMBIE DOMINANCE” 30 APR 2011 (Declassified): “Because the plan was so ridiculous, our students not only enjoyed the lessons; they actually were able to explore the basic concepts of plan and order development (fact, assumptions, specified and implied tasks, references etc) very effectively.”
