Editor’s Note: This article originally published at TogetherLA.net- a website developed for the Together LA movement to get churches working together to Encourage and Equip the ordinary believer to be light in the city, and to Confront injustice.  Content on the site is created and curated by the One Ten Pictures team.  Learn more about our partnership with Together LA here.

The Planet of the Apes saga-in-sequeldom continues to suit Russell Moore well. During the weekend release of the War for the Planet of the Apes he tweeted that the movie is “a simian re-telling of the Exodus story.”

The tweet by the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (the public-policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention) expands on a lesson he gave several years ago to his students that three of the movies, including the 1968 original “are about the intersection of eschatology with contemporary fears.”

Eschatology is the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind.

“In the 1968 version, the era is worried about nuclear holocaust, as the U.S. and the Soviet Union are engaged in a high-stakes Cold War,” Moore wrote in his piece, The Planet of the Apes and Christian Eschatology. “By the remake in 2001, society’s fears focus on the more imperceptible threats of domestic and international terrorism, and of the loss of society from within. The 2011 film focuses on the fear of a future in which our technological prowess and our good intentions turn on us.

“All three present a dystopian future in which our worst apprehensions are realized. That’s an eschatology, and a dark one.”

Read the full article on TogetherLA.net here.