This is the power of love revealed

Imagine, for six straight evenings precisely at the same time, a voice is heard transmitted on the radio  identifying itself as God. This voice has a slightly different message each time, but is mostly focused on love, understanding and peace. “The Voice” is translated into every language, and causes alarm, tension, confusion, and when a proposed miracle mentions 40 Days and 40 Nights of rain and then the skies open, panic occurs as well.

This was the premise for a movie from 1950, a scene from which I remembered from my childhood, and now thanks to YouTube, a film I am now quite familiar with.

“This is God. I will be with you for the next few days,” is the line that stayed with me from the long forgotten “The Next Voice You Hear.” If I saw any more of the film back then, I don’t recall it; I certainly could not remember James Whitmore (as Joe Smith, American) and Nancy Davis (Reagan) as the leads.

But that line is frozen in my memory. “The Next Voice You Hear” is a strange and offbeat film that I think would be inconceivable to produce today. Hollywood would never touch such a topic, too fundamentalist, too Christian, too something. It would be mocked by the culture and humanistic Illuminati.

As you might expect, it is filled with much religious allegory. The leads are Joseph and Mary. A barfly comes across as very Satan-like, leading Joe Smith into temptation. God speaks but we don’t hear his voice, just the words recited and interpreted, as in the Bible. The story unfolds in seven days, and on the seventh day, God rests.

This is all entirely fascinating to me, and maybe just a bit unsettling. The main character is mostly uneducated and works in an aircraft plant (just like my dad) with a faithful wife (my mom, in my memory)about to give birth a child (me) about 10 years younger than his son (my brother). There was a large, freestanding radio and a beat-up car, a tiny kitchen and a worn Davenport, all part of the vivid black and white world where social and not just spiritual life centered around the church.

OK, maybe I have drawn far too many parallels, but there is more here than just an air of familiarity.

And this movie is certainly not without its faults, The acting is a bit wooden, things seems a bit low budget, and maybe more than a tad oversimplified. And when the movie first came out, The New York Times described it as an emotional movie rather than an intellectual one. True.

But faith itself is emotional rather than intellectual.

For me, my interest in “The Next Voice You Hear” is more than the familial/time period similarities. It makes me think what would happen if this really occurred (OK, an extreme fantasy and most likely a waste of time to ruminate over such things), but what if it did? Do you think people would rush to  “love thy neighbor?” Would it lessen the wars, mistrust, and people behaving badly? Would people start to treat each other more kindly?  Would anything at all change?

Even to ask such things relies more on emotion than intellect.

Just a few things to ponder, if you feel like pondering such things.