Phil Gons

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Watch The Gospel of John Movie for Free

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The Gospel of John (2003) is my all-time favorite Bible movie. It’s a 3-hour dramatic presentation of the text of John’s Gospel almost verbatim1 from the Good News Bible (also known as the Good New Translation and Today’s English Version). It’s unusually high quality for Christian cinematic productions, and you can’t get much more faithful than the words of Scripture. It also helps that John’s Gospel is my favorite portrayal of the life of Jesus.

We used to watch it over the Good Friday / Resurrection Sunday weekend back when DVDs where still a thing. I just learned this week that it’s available for free as The Life of Jesus on YouTube. It’s also available with Amazon Prime both as The Gospel of John and as The Life of Jesus.

The Gospel of John as The Life of Jesus on YouTube

We watched portions of it earlier this week, and we’re planning to watch the whole thing this afternoon as a family and make it part of our annual Holy Week celebration again.

I highly recommend it to you. When you watch it, keep a Bible close by. I can guarantee you’re going to ask on multiple occasions, “Is that in the Bible?” There’s something about seeing Scripture acted out that makes details stand out you might otherwise gloss over and miss.

He is risen!

  1. They occasionally substitute a word for a synonym and drop the “and ______ said” before someone speaks. I don’t think they add anything that’s not in the text of John’s Gospel. [↩]

The Ten Commandments (2006)

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Shanna and I got another call from the local movie store inviting us to come in for a free rental. We took them up on it and got The Ten Commandments. It was just shy of three hours long, which, in this case, was not a good thing! It stood in stark contrast to the commitment to following the biblical story that The Gospel of John evidenced. I’m not opposed to filling in some of the details to make the story flow. Nor am I totally opposed to omitting some of the story to make it a reasonable length. However, I am opposed to making up all sorts of ridiculous things and adding them in addition to or in place of the biblical account! I did benefit from the few portions that were an accurate recounting of the Exodus record. Seeing the events visualized brings them to life. I’ll read Exodus in a new way next time. This benefit notwithstanding, The Ten Commandments (2006) was incredibly poor. Don’t waste your three hours.