The Walking Dead: A Halloween Chapel Reflection with Andrew Hamlet

Andrew Hamlet loves movies, specifically, zombie apocalypse movies.

“I can’t help myself. When I watch them, God just taps me on the shoulder to point things out,” he told members of the Kuyper community gathered in the Vos Chapel on October 31 for a twice-weekly service, appropriately themed for the day.

A graduate of Cornerstone University with a communication arts major, he went on to complete film school at Compass Arts Film Academy. He now serves as pastor of FedCov Church and believes movies can reveal a lot to the viewer about humanity.

“I think it’s interesting to watch how people behave when everything goes wrong. I think we all wonder what we could become if there was no longer authority to keep us in check,” he said.

Hamlet also suspects there is a reason why these types of films are able to portray moral dilemmas in such a uniquely entertaining way. Appealing to the text of Ephesians 1 and 2, he emphasized that this is because zombies are an appropriate, albeit exaggerated, representation of the fallen state of humanity.

“You see, whether you and I realize it or not, we’re born spiritually dead,” he said. Just as a zombie is a slave to its basest instincts, we are slaves to the desires of the flesh in our fallen state, he added.

But there is good news, Hamlet told the audience.

“Jesus came down in the flesh of humanity to offer us a way out. He wasn’t a slave to His desires, He was a slave to righteousness,” he said.

A relationship with Christ offers us an escape from our rotten spiritual state and decaying relationships with God, the Earth, and each other, he said excitedly. When we put on the costume of a new creation in Christ, we become slaves to righteousness, not to sin and death. 

Hamlet told his listeners that there is no more appropriate message for Halloween than that of a people born spiritually dead, a God who redeems them in a gory display before rising from the dead and a Holy Spirit that indwells in us when we acknowledge Him as our Lord and Savior.

“I think that’s the best type of possession you could ever have – being totally consumed with what God has planned for you,” he said, smiling.