The season finale of "A.D. The Bible Continues" ended leaving several plots unresolved with added fiction, writes Peter Chattaway for Christianity Today.
The final episode deals with much of Acts 10, where the centurion Cornelius feels bad for killing a Christian woman. An angel then appears to him and tells him “God has looked kindly on your sorrow and repentance.”
The episode also deals with Peter, who has a vision of animals and a voice tells him to “not call anything impure that God has cleansed.”
“Well, after that, the series has exhausted its biblical material, and the rest of the season finale revolves around the tension between the Jews and Romans as Pilate's men try to put a statue of Caligula in the temple,” Chattaway writes.
In the show, the statue arrives and Caiaphas and the priests face Cornelius, but Peter steps between the two sides and kneels down. Cornelius does not kill them because he is a Christian.
“This is a powerful depiction of what faith-filled people can do, and I especially like the way the series resolves the tension it set up a few episodes ago, between those Christians who want to take up arms against the Romans and those who prefer a sort of pious apathy.”
Chattaway writes that producers leave the episode with many “threads dangling.”
“It's clear the producers were hoping this series would be renewed for a second season,” he said.
“If the network decides to go ahead with a second season, let's hope they can strike a better balance between those two things.”
Publication date: June 25, 2015
