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I just got back from watching September Dawn. Before 2001, a reference to a historical tragedy in American history with the date of September 11 would have caused one to recall the Mountain Meadows Massacre instead of the World Trade Center. September Dawn is, therefore, the movie about America’s first 9/11.

The historical foundations can be summarized as follows. A wagon train of emigrants from Arkansas and Missouri was enroute to California through the Utah Territory in 1857. In September, they reached Mountain Meadows. On September 7, the train was attacked by people appearing to be Paiute Indians. On September 11, Mormons (led by John D. Lee) under a flag of truce convinced the emigrants to leave their weapons and belongings behind so they could be escorted to a nearby town under the protection of the Mormons. After the group had travelled a short distance, the Mormons killed all but 17 children who were deemed too young to talk about what had happened. It is estimated that about 120 men, women, and children were killed during that five-day battle, most of them on September 11. Only one person was ever tried, convicted, and executed for his role in the massacre: John D. Lee. He was executed at the spot of the massacre over twenty years after it had occured (justice was delayed due, in part, to the outbreak of the Civil War).

As with all movies that are fictionalized accounts of historical events, September Dawn suffers from a few plot gimmicks. For one thing, the writers had to introduce a Romeo & Juliet aspect to the film–an emigrant girl (Emily) and Mormon boy (Jonathan) who fall in love with each other. This part of the plot was, in my opinion, not very well done. It tended for the overly sappy and felt like a deliberate attempt to try to put a human face on the tragedy by making you care about two particular characters.

But of course the reality of the Mountain Meadows Massacre does not need a fictionalized couple to bring home the impact of what occured. The actual scene of the massacre was shot very elegantly with a well-done musical score underneath it. With the attention to the historical accuracy of the events of the massacre, it is a shame the movie had to revert to Hollywood-isms with Emily and Jonathan. The movie was better off without the cliché.

The movie also suffers because there is a huge amount of historical context that has to be compressed into a two hour long movie. While Brigham Young’s sermons were excellent for providing the appropriate Mormon theological context (and it should be noted that virtually all of Young’s comments were taken from source material–the movie even opens with the exact text of the deposition of Young for Lee’s first trial), one is still left wondering why it was that Mormons only massacred this specific wagon train. There were no other events of this nature during time, so why did it happen in this instance? That question may not ever be fully resolved, and an attempt is not even made in the movie.

Despite these shortcomings, overall the movie is well done. The movie does an excellent job of portraying the differences in the theology of Mormons and Christians–and this is something that is generally not done these days. The normative rule is to make movies that show Mormons as being basically identical with Christians; this movie shows Mormons speaking openly of their cultic views. As a result, this movie will almost certainly offend Mormons, although I discovered that the lines that were most offensive were the lines that were direct quotes of Brigham Young, so how far this charge can go is left to be seen.

Additionally, the movie actually makes a strong case for sola Scriptura, although I’m sure that was not its intent. The Mormons are led by direct revelation that only their prophets and apostles can know. There is one particular example in the film, beginning with a scene of the emigrants in the wagon train who have been attacked for four days reciting Psalm 23. The next scene, the Mormons are given their orders from the stake president to kill all the emigrants. Lee, after reading the letter, responds that he cannot carry out what is asked of him. The messenger responds by gathering the Mormons to pray, and after a moment of silence he says, “God has given me evidence. We are to carry out the attack exactly to the letter.” Of course, this evidence is not provided–it was a revelation that only the messenger knew of.

While this is a fictionalized account (we don’t know what really happened or how high up into the LDS church the orders for the massacre rose), the theology of Mormonism was accurately portrayed. The difference between those who can hold equally to the communal revelation of Scripture (the reading of Psalm 23) and those who have to rely on the testimony of an apostle of the LDS church (without any miraculous signs to verify it, or anything of that nature) cannot be more explicilty demonstrated.

Finally, the historical reality of plural marriages in the Mormon Church, and the nature of women as second-class citizens under Mormonism, was also equally portrayed. While it is true that women in general were not regarded very high at the time, under Mormonism (where Young, for instance, had over twenty wives) they fared much worse.

So how do I rate this movie? Well, for historical accuracy, it gets an A- (it was well-researched but took some dramatic liberties). The script as a whole is a solid B. The acting likewise earns a B. The directing was very well done, especially the way the massacre scene was demonstrated, so I give the direct an A.

On the whole, I’d give the movie an A-.

I have discussed various things from time to time with people who deny Sola Scriptura. Those who most commonly explicitly do this in America today are Mormons and Roman Catholics, although they are by no means the only people who do this. For that matter, there are many people who practically deny Sola Scriptura even while paying lip service to the doctrine.

This morning, I read an interesting passage in First Kings. It is interesting because of the way that it relates to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, not because it explicity teaches this doctrine but because it relates to us the consequences of not believing in Sola Scriptura. See, when someone rejects Sola Scriptura, they must assert some alternate standard of authority in place of Scripture. Thus, if you do not accept the Scripture as the final authority, you must assert another authority like the First Presidency, the Papacy, or Pastor Bob’s interpretation. Some people assume that shifting the authority to a different source also shifts the responsibility to that source. In other words, if you believe something in error then when you die and get to heaven you can simply say, “It is not my fault that I believed this in error. I trusted the word of the Presidency, the Papacy, or the Pastor. Therefore, I bear no responsibility for believing error and the fault lies with my assumed authoritative standard instead of with me.”

The problem with this view is easily demonstrated by 1 Kings 13. To give an overview of the passage, “a man of God” (as the passage describes him) from Judah went to Jeroboam (the first king of Israel after the civil war that divided Israel and Judah) and prophecied against him because Jeroboam was sacrificing to idols. After he did this, Jeroboam was afraid and asked the man of God to come to his house and refresh himself, but the man of God said, “If you give me half your house, I will not go in with you. And I will not eat bread or drink water in this place, for so was it commanded me by the word of the LORD saying, ‘You shall neither eat bread nor drink water nor return by the way that you came’” (1 Kings 13:7-9).

The man of God then departed. As he left, an old prophet who lived in Bethel heard about this man of God and tracked him down. When he found the man, he said, “Come home with me and eat bread” (vs. 15). The man of God declined and stated the commandment of God for his reason. The old prophet then responded: “I also am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the LORD saying, ‘Bring him back with you into your house that he may eat bread and drink water’” (vs. 18). This, however, was a lie. The old prophet had received no such message from God.

The man of God, however, listened to the old prophet. And when he had eaten with the old prophet, the old prophet cried out to the man of God from Judah and he said, “Thus says the LORD, ‘Because you have disobeyed the word of the LORD and have not kept the command that the LORD your God commanded you, but have come back and have eaten bread and drunk water in the place of which he said to you, “Eat no bread and drink no water” your body shall not come to the tomb of your fathers’” (vs. 21-22). After this, the man of God departed and when he was on the road to return to Judah, he was slain by a lion. The old prophet then picked up the body of the man of God and buried him in his own grave, instructing his sons to bury him by the man of God when he died too.

At first glance, this story doesn’t seem very fair. The old prophet lied to the man of God, and it is the man of God who ends up being punished for believing the lie. And that’s precisely the reason why this passage applies to the idea of Sola Scriptura and extra-biblical authority. The Bible is clear in stating that what it teaches is truth. Each of us is responsible to understand and obey those commands in Scripture. Even if someone happens to be a prophet from God–a man who actually receives revelation from God!–that does not make him authoritative over the commands of God.

In short, what this passage shows is that each of us are responsible to believe correct doctrine, and each of us will be held accountable for not believing the truth. This is irregardless of what any other man says, even if he claims to be speaking for God, and even if at some times he does speak from God, as the old prophet did. We are each responsible to know what God has actually commanded, and being deceived by a lie is no excuse for our disobedience. As such, any extra-Biblical authority that you submit to is irrelevant in determining your status before God. You either obey Him or you disobey Him, and no extra-biblical authority will be able to save you if you have disobeyed God’s commands.