The Signature in the Swarm — Hollywood

Out of His Mouth

The film puts the flies inside a savior and calls it healing.

The Green Mile — 1999, from the Stephen King novel. Widely preached as a beautiful picture of Messiah.

The Fly on Screen

Every time John Coffey heals a person the same thing happens. He takes hold of them, the sickness comes into him, and then he bends double, his throat swells, and a cloud of black insects pours out of his mouth. They swirl around his knees, turn white, and disappear.

The film is not being subtle. The insects are the sickness. While they are inside a man he is dying. When they leave he is well.

Once, Coffey does not let them out. He takes a tumor out of a woman's head and holds the swarm inside his own body. He carries it back to the prison for days. Then he takes hold of a guard's face, puts his mouth on the man's mouth, and breathes the swarm into him.

The guard's eyes go blank. He walks down the corridor, draws his pistol, and empties it into a sleeping prisoner. He never comes back to himself. Coffey's own health returns.

What the Fly Is Doing

The swarm has one job in this picture, and it is a doctrinal job. It makes sin and sickness into a substance.

Not a broken command. Not a charge on a record. A thing — visible, countable, held in the chest, and pourable into another man.

Once that is on the screen the audience stops asking who is guilty and starts asking who is carrying it. That is an entire doctrine delivered by a special effect, with no dialogue and no argument, and nobody in the theater is ever asked to weigh it.

Then watch where the flies go. When Coffey releases them they turn white and evaporate. Nothing is judged. Nothing is paid. Nobody stands before anybody. The guilt simply goes up in light.

And when he keeps them, he picks the man who gets them. There is no court in that corridor, no witness, no charge read aloud, no standard anyone is measured by. A man with flies in his chest chooses a target and empties them into him, and the film calls it justice.

The Name Behind It

Ahaziah, king of Israel, was badly hurt and sent men to ask Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, whether he would live. Baal-zebub means lord of the fly. Elijah met the messengers on the road with a question and a sentence — is there not a God in Israel, and the king will not come down off that bed (2 Kings 1:2-4). He did not build the fly-god a temple. He asked him one question. That was enough. The same name is the title of the prince of devils in the gospels (Matthew 12:24).

Scripture attaches the fly to a devil, and attaches asking that devil for healing to a death sentence. This film attaches the fly to a healer and asks the audience to see Messiah in him — initials and all.

What Scripture Says

Sin was never a substance. It is the transgression of the law (1 John 3:4). A charge cannot be pulled out of a mouth. It has to be answered in a court.

On the Day of Atonement the sin was carried away into a land not inhabited, and only after blood was shed (Leviticus 16:21-22; Hebrews 9:22). Carried away — never transferred into another man.

Drawing sickness out by mouth and forcing it into an enemy is named outright and forbidden, and it cost a nation its land (Deuteronomy 18:10-12).

Yahuah ended the plague of flies over Egypt. He removed it entirely and there remained not one (Exodus 8:31). He did not carry it in His chest for three days and hand it to somebody He disliked.

Coffey also breathes long life into a guard, who lives to a hundred and eight and begs to die. The breath of life belongs to Yahuah alone (Genesis 2:7), and the counterfeit of it produces a curse the film never explains.

Yahuah is the only Savior (Isaiah 43:11; Hosea 13:4). He paid the price, and the price was His own Son. Nothing was relocated. It was carried away, and it was finished.

The Line

They put the flies inside the savior. The Book puts them on the devil you are not supposed to ask.

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