I have known Paul since my comic book days. Being a lifelong Twilight Zone fan, his was one of the first accounts I followed on Twitter. I also bookmarked his Rod Serling-centric blog which I believe is the very best on the internet, hands down.
Because we have been friends over the past couple years, Paul has seen me transition from full-time comic book creator to full-time “Electronic Evangelist.” I’ll never forget how thrilled I was the day I discovered that Paul was also a Christian!
And so, without further adieu, I present a brilliant guest post from my friend, fellow Rod Serling enthusiast, and brother in Christ, Paul.
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Christian content on The Twilight Zone? The sci-fi fantasy show about time travel and homicidal dolls and aliens with hostile intent? The idea may seem absurd at first. Yet the deeper one looks at the seminal series launched in 1959 by the legendary Rod Serling, the more one finds the Christian message popping up, both directly and indirectly.
For starters, consider how often the Devil appears as a character. In “Printer’s Devil”, for example, Burgess Meredith plays a man who helps a small-town publisher on the brink of ruin and suicide achieve great financial success by ferreting out scandal stories that help the publisher smash the competition. He then unfurls a contract stating that only by agreeing to relinquish his soul can the publisher cement this success.
In the most famous “Devil” episode (“The Howling Man”), a man on a hiking trip Image may be NSFW.
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stumbles onto an abbey during a terrible storm. His surprise at finding that the monks keep a man who howls loudly in a locked cell is topped only when the head monk tells him that it’s Satan himself. Swayed by the prisoner’s desperate pleas of innocence, he unlocks the cell, only to discover that the man is indeed the Devil.
The fate of one’s soul also arises in certain episodes. In “Judgment Night”, a man with partial amnesia awakens on a British passenger vessel in 1942, and is seized by an inexplicable certainty that the ship will be torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat. His forecast proves correct … whereupon we learn that HE is the Nazi U-boat captain, and the entire scenario is revealed, quite explicitly, as his personal hell to relive endlessly for all eternity. We even hear a fellow Nazi warn that their war crimes could merit damnation “in the eyes of God.”
In “Deaths-Head Revisited,” we meet a living former member of the Third Reich who makes a gloating return to the concentration camp where he tortured and killed his victims. He is greeted by a man who was a prisoner there, only to discover that the man is one of many ghosts who haunt the place … and they’re ready to put the unrepentant Nazi on “trial”. He is sentenced to insanity, then told: “This is only the beginning. Your final judgment will come from God.”
We see Christian content in other episodes as well. In “Execution,” a preacher tells a sneering convict who insists he wants no Bible verses read at his hanging that he shouldn’t neglect his “immortal soul.” In “I Am The Night–Color Me Black”, another preacher tells a condemned murderer not to return the hatred of the mob yelling for his death. And when the man mutters how people like to “get with the majority,” the preacher remarks, “The minority must’ve died on the cross 2,000 years ago.”
But the most direct reference to Christ (albeit not by name) comes in an underrated Image may be NSFW.
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episode called “The Gift.” The townspeople of a small Mexican village are frightened by the arrival of a mysterious visitor who, despite his human appearance, they feel certain is an alien from outer space (who gives the name Williams). The only one not afraid of him is a little boy known as Pedro, who chats comfortably with him:
Pedro: “Where you’re from, is there a God?”
Williams: “The same God, Pedro.”
Pedro: “I wonder.”
Williams: “What?”
Pedro: “If God were to come to earth, would they find him so strange that they would be afraid, and would they shoot him?”
Williams: “Did not His son come once, Pedro?”
Pedro: “And they nailed Him to a cross.”
Williams: “And then spent 2,000 years learning to believe in Him. All things take time, Pedro.”
For the Christian fan of The Twilight Zone, such references can’t help but elicit a smile. Most television shows act as if religious faith doesn’t exist. Still others mock it. How refreshing to see the writers of The Twilight Zone take a bolder, truer path.
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Paul is a writer and an editor who works in the public relations department of a large non-profit organization located in the Washington, D.C. area. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland and have studied at Georgetown University. I write on a range of topics: history, public policy, film, books, music … and the work of Rod Serling.
Paul’s work has appeared in a variety of newspapers, magazines and websites, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
