On January 1, Netflix debuted Messiah, a political thriller about a mysterious Middle Eastern man who claims to be the second coming of Jesus Christ. About a week after the series’ premiere, the International House of Prayer’s Mike Bickle weighed in on Netflix’s new show in a YouTube video. In the video, Bickle says that he believes it is possible that the devil could be behind Netflix’s show, but ultimately he believes the series will open doors for the kingdom and do more good than evil.
“This is an opportunity for the kingdom,” Bickle says. “Even though the enemy might be involved—I don’t really know what his agenda is in this—he might mean it for evil, but I think the Lord is going to use this as a kingdom opportunity. There’s gonna be a lot of advancement of understanding and heart connect with the Lord on this subject [of end times].”
Bickle says he believes the show will be a major success and inspire similar series about the end times or the person of Jesus. He says many of these shows will have “a lot of non-biblical stuff [and] a lot of deception in them,” but that God will use these shows to pique people’s curiosity about the end times. This will be an opportunity, Bickle believes, for believers to grow in their own knowledge of the end times and for believers to start conversations with non-believers about faith.
“There’s going to be a tremendous escalation of the social conversation across the earth: ‘What is this Messiah thing about?'” Bickle says. “What this whole thing is going to expose is a tremendous lack of biblical literacy on the subject of the end time narrative. … [Believers] are going to find out how much of the biblical narrative they’re not even aware of, and that’s a good thing! Because they’re going to go find it out. Pastors are going to be weighing in who never talked on this subject [before]. All of a sudden now they’re going to be—just by the demand—pulled into the conversation. There’s going to be lots of Sunday morning messages on it.”
Messiah features Mark Burnett and Roma Downey as executive producers, who previously produced the miniseries The Bible and A.D. The Bible Continues and the films Son of God, Woodlawn, and the 2016 Ben-Hur remake. But the show also features strong profanity and at least one sex scene.
Watch Bickle’s full remarks on the series Messiah here.
