The Matrix Is Preaching.
It Just Doesn’t Know the Text.

Every man I know will sit through a three-hour movie and won’t sit through twenty minutes of Scripture. So let’s start with the movie.

The Matrix came out in 1999. If you’re a man over thirty, you’ve seen it. You probably remember the red pill, the long coats, and the bullets hanging in the air.

What most men miss is that the whole thing is built out of Bible parts.

I didn’t see it in a theater. I caught it later on cable. And it didn’t hit me all at once. I had to let that movie sit and process in my mind for a while.

When it did, here’s how I came to see it. The real world outside the Matrix was like the reality of heaven. It’s there whether you see it or not. And the blue pill was just the natural. Stay asleep. Stay comfortable. Live by what your eyes tell you.

I always liked Keanu Reeves. I saw him in Constantine too, and that movie felt like it had a Christian glitch in it. I think it shaped how I understood The Matrix.

Look at the names

The hero’s name is Thomas Anderson. Thomas is the disciple who doubted. Anderson comes out to “son of man,” near enough. His other name is Neo, which is the Greek word for new. Move the letters around and you get “One.”

The woman who stands by him is named Trinity. The last free city is called Zion. The man who sells them all out wants one thing, a good steak, and he gets it at a table with the enemy.

And the ship is named the Nebuchadnezzar. That’s the king of Babylon in the book of Daniel. He’s the one who had a dream he couldn’t shake.

And in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams, wherewith his spirit was troubled, and his sleep brake from him.

Daniel 2:1 (KJV)

A troubled king who can’t sleep because of a dream. That’s the name they put on the ship that wakes people up. Nobody picks that by accident.

A world pulled over your eyes

Here’s the heart of the movie. Everybody is asleep. They think they’re living their lives. They are really lying in the dark while something feeds on them.

Paul said it two thousand years before Hollywood did.

In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

2 Corinthians 4:4 (KJV)

Blinded minds. A god of this world doing the blinding. That’s the Matrix, written down in a letter to a church in Corinth.

And the enemy in the movie isn’t really the men in suits. The suits are just what you can see. The real enemy is behind them. Paul again:

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Ephesians 6:12 (KJV)

The man who wanted to go back

The traitor in the movie is named Cypher. He’s been free for years, and he hates it. The food is bad. The work is hard. So he cuts a deal to be plugged back in. He knows the steak isn’t real. He wants it anyway.

Israel did the same thing in the wilderness. God had just walked them out of slavery, and they started missing the menu.

We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick.

Numbers 11:5 (KJV)

They remembered the fish. They forgot the whips.

I don’t have to look far to find Cypher. Every man has an Egypt he’d go back to on a bad day. The enemy doesn’t need to drag you. He just needs to set the table.

They remembered the fish. They forgot the whips.

Where the movie gets it wrong

Now here’s where you have to be careful, because this is the part that matters most.

In The Matrix, Neo is saved by finding out what he already is. He has to believe in himself. Once he knows the truth about himself, he wins.

That is not the Gospel. That’s the oldest counterfeit there is. It says the answer is inside you, and you just need the right knowledge to unlock it.

The Bible says the opposite.

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Ephesians 2:8–9 (KJV)

Not of yourselves. You don’t wake yourself up. A dead man can’t. Somebody has to come in from outside and get you.

And the truth that sets a man free isn’t a pill. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). The truth has a name.

So why watch it?

Because Paul did the same thing in Athens. He stood up in front of men who didn’t know the Scriptures, and he quoted their own poets back to them.

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

Acts 17:28 (KJV)

He started where they already were. Then he took them to Jesus.

That’s all I’m doing with the movies. I wrote it this way in Bible and the Movies: these films are not Scripture, but they echo it. They are not truth, but they point toward it.

They’re not stealing the story. They can’t help telling it.

So watch it again. Watch it with your son. Then open the Book it’s borrowing from.

Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.

Ephesians 5:14 (KJV)

For the Fire Pit

1. Cypher knew the steak wasn’t real and wanted it anyway. What’s your Egypt, the thing you’d go back to on a bad day?
2. Neo wins by believing in himself. Ephesians 2:8–9 says salvation is “not of yourselves.” Why does that difference matter?
3. Paul quoted pagan poets to reach men in Athens. What movie could you use to start a real conversation with your son or a friend?

The Matrix is one of the films in Bible and the Movies, Book Three of the Unseen Battle Series. Get it on Amazon.

John Malham is the author of the Unseen Battle Series, Christian books for working men, born from over twenty years of fire pit Bible studies in the New Jersey Pinelands. See the books.