FROM SCRIPTURE TO STREAM: Netflix Version of ‘Passion’ Movie Has Redaction
It is Good Friday—one of two days in the liturgical year when time seems to hold its breath, Holy Saturday being the other. The Christian world pauses—if only momentarily—to remember a death that was powerful enough to split history in half. We are meant to keep watch at the foot of the Cross, to stare into the agony that redeems us, to contemplate the Lamb who was slain.
But in the world of streaming content and curated narratives, even Good Friday isn’t safe from redaction.
Netflix has a new version of The Passion of the Christ. But before the first whip cracks, before a nail pierces flesh, and before the camera even settles on Christ’s face, perhaps the most important line of the whole story is already gone.
Not with a bang, but with a blackout.
In Mel Gibson’s original Passion, the film opens with a verse from Isaias 53—“He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; by His wounds we are healed.” It is the same suffering servant theme also from another passage from Isaias we have been spotlighting all week.
This isn’t just a random omission. This line is absolutely central to understanding the bridge from Old Testament to New, and that Jesus was actually the Christ foretold and not some random do-gooder who was mistakenly tortured and crucified.
LEJEUNE THIS HOLY WEEK
Here is the other passage we’ve been conversing with all week, condensed:
The Lord God hath opened my ear, and I do not resist: I have not gone back. I have given my body to the strikers, and my cheeks to them that plucked them: I have not turned away my face from them that rebuked me, and spit upon me…. Behold the Lord God is my helper: who is he that shall condemn me? Lo, they shall all be destroyed as a garment, the moth shall eat them up.
This is the voice they’re afraid of. This is the portrait bridging the Old and New Testaments they’ve been working for decades to eradicate from the modern mind–a most pernicious example of the memory-holing tactic of communists. One of the key Old Testament passages the suddenly left-alone apostles used to interpret the crucifixion, a 700-year old text that anticipates Christ’s purpose, the prophecy that turns Good Friday from a tragedy into the fulfillment of divine justice–
Gone. Blacked out. Not even a whisper remains. Just an odd pause.
Is this a Netflix issue? Is this a distribution issue?
It should be noted that Netflix representatives say the company does not edit any of the films it shares. A customer service representative told LifeSiteNews that Netflix uploads films provided with a specific license, and if a scene is omitted, it is due to the parameters of the particular license and not due to Netflix’s own discretion.
This was the reason given by Back to the Future script writer Bob Gale for the trimming of a scene from his film, as shown by Netflix. He explained in 2020 to The Hollywood Reporter, “The blame is on Universal who somehow furnished Netflix an edited version of the movie. I learned about it some 10 days ago from an eagle-eyed fan, and had the studio rectify the error. The version now running is the uncensored, unedited, original version.”
That anecdote provided for integrity purposes, isn’t it funny that the errors or the anomalies always cut in the same direction?
One thing is for sure: This certainly seems to be the pattern gotten increasingly more obvious over the last twenty years. Netflix isn’t just a platform. It’s a pulpit. Ask more astute observers who sat through the Mary movie—what they saw wasn’t revelation. It was regime-approved religion. One that produces–quite conveniently for them–a useful red herring.
The sermon they’re preaching is carefully curated by the same censors who told you to trust the science, believe the war footage, ignore the Epstein list–that was all conspiracy theory anyway. They’re not anti-religious; they’re very religious—just loyal to a different god.
Here is the context around the passage in question from Isaias. Incidentally–or not so incidentally–it was the second Lesson on Wednesday in the Traditional Latin Mass when this story broke:
In those days, Isaias said, Lord, who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? And he shall grow up as a tender plant before him, and as a root out of a thirsty ground: there is no beauty in him, nor comeliness: and we have seen him, and there was no sightliness, that we should be desirous of him: Despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with infirmity: and his look was as it were hidden and despised, whereupon we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows: and we have thought him as it were a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray, every one hath turned aside into his own way: and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was offered because it was his own will, and he opened not his mouth: he shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer, and he shall not open his mouth. He was taken away from distress, and from judgment: who shall declare his generation? because he is cut off out of the land of the living: for the wickedness of my people have I struck him. And he shall give the ungodly for his burial, and the rich for his death: because he hath done no iniquity, neither was there deceit in his mouth. And the Lord was pleased to bruise him in infirmity: if he shall lay down his life for sin, he shall see a long-lived seed, and the will of the Lord shall be prosperous in his hand.
Because his soul hath laboured, he shall see and be filled: by his knowledge shall this my just servant justify many, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I distribute to him very many, and he shall divide the spoils of the strong, because he hath delivered his soul unto death, and was reputed with the wicked: and he hath borne the sins of many, and hath prayed for the transgressors.
Emily Mangiaracina of LifeSiteNews notes something most viewers would miss but every honest theologian should confront: this same section of Isaias is also omitted from Jewish religious readings. It’s skipped in synagogue cycles just like it’s skipped in this streamed film. The part from the Old Testament that so clearly points to Christ is quietly ignored, hidden, left out of the conversation. And now Netflix, the streaming mouthpiece of the cultural elite, not to mention the go-to history source for millions of people worldwide, follows the same omission. From Mangiaracina:
Christians note that words of Isaiah 53 regarding the “Suffering Servant” is the Old Testament passage that perhaps most clearly points to Jesus Christ as the long-awaited Messiah of the Jews. According to One for Israel, a Christian evangelism initiative, a first-century Jewish translation of this Scripture by Yonatan ben Uzziel (Targum Jonathan) opened this passage with the words “The Anointed Servant,” thereby connecting the chapter to the Messiah, the Anointed One.
Rabbi Yitzhak Abravanel (1437 – 1508), a Portuguese Jewish statesman, is also said to have admitted that “ben Uzziel’s interpretation that it was about the coming Messiah was also the opinion of the Sages (of blessed memory) as can be seen in much of their commentary.”
However, among Jews today, Isaiah 53 is not read in synagogues as part of the list of prophets’ readings (haftaras). One for Israel attests that when Jews read Isaiah 52, “we stop in the middle of the chapter and the week after we jump straight to Isaiah 54.”
While some Jews say this is because it has no parallels in the Torah, according to Hananel Mack, it is because, “Generally speaking, Jews excluded from the haftarot those verses on which Christians based the principles of their religious faith … ”
We’ve gotten used to thinking of “the media” as just the news—Rachel Maddow and The New York Times, CNN and Politico. But the real Mockingbird media isn’t just the press corps. It’s also the screenwriters, the showrunners, the studios, the distributors, etc. It’s the entertainment wing of the same regime. And while the talking heads shape our understanding of Capitol Hill, the streaming platforms shape our understanding of both culture and Calvary.
Same agenda. Different wing. You can see their nefarious featherprints on everything from the Capitol to the Coke commercial to the Cross.
Watch the 2020 film Out of Shadows—then ask why the JFK files stayed classified for so long, and when they finally were declassified, why no one was invited to care even though the implied truth should have blown up the entire way millions of people still view the world.
It is an ancient enemy, stealth and slithery in his violence, not a 21st century one or even an American one, one that–incidentally enough–Lieutenant General Steven Kwast (Rt,) a former Top Gun pilot, was speaking about just this week on Badlands Story Hour. It is also something on which I have been beating the alarum, most directly perhaps in this February article.
The same root force behind the spiritual smog over Washington are behind the blackout on Netflix. The same elite who stage-manage regime narratives, who call peaceful protests insurrections and insurrections [mostly!] peaceful protests are also commissioning theology by omission—scrubbing the blood from the scroll, the Lamb from the liturgy, the meaning from the movie.
Isaias wasn’t left out by accident.
The silence echoes. If you remove Isaias 53 from the crucifixion, what are you left with? A brutal execution. A sad story. A political prisoner on the wrong end of a corrupt court. Without the prophecy, the Cross is no longer redemptive—it’s just Jewish and Roman.
But it wasn’t just Jewish and Roman.
It was divine justice. It was divine mercy. It was love from the suffering Savior.
And the devil knows that better than any of us. That’s why he doesn’t need to write his own gospel–nor can he. He just needs to delete parts of ours.
On this Good Friday, may we stop pretending we can drink from poisoned wells and still thirst for righteousness.
May we turn away from the glowing screens and toward the burning Word. May we steep ourselves not in the gospel according to Netflix, but in the Gospel according to God.
They can black out the prophecy. They can edit the films. They can trim and mistranslate Scripture.
But they cannot redact the Lamb. They cannot unpierce his side. They cannot stop what has already been fulfilled.
The Truth talks, even when silenced. He speaks, even when cut from the script–perhaps especially when.
And the wounds still speak too—louder than the censors ever could.
For by his stripes, we are still healed.
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May everyone named directly or referenced indirectly ask forgiveness and do penance for their sins against America and God. I fight this information war in the spirit of justice and love for the innocent, but I have been reminded of the need for mercy and prayers for our enemies. I am a sinner in need of redemption as well after all, for my sins are many. In the words of Jesus Christ himself, Lord forgive us all, for we know not what we do.
