Mayor Scott Walker of Reeves, Louisiana calls CenturyTel’s decision to remove the 666 telephone prefix a “divine intervention.” Christians in Reeves were unhappy when the telephone company instituted the 666 prefix to their telephone numbers in the early 1960s. They had always considered this prefix to be a stigma on their small town.

Residents were happy to learn that they can change their number to the 749 prefix for the next three months. The mayor expects that 80% of the 450 homeowners will make the switch.

Source: BBC News

According to myth, a Benedictine monk promised to write the book overnight to atone for his sins. When the task proved impossible, he asked the devil for help. This book, called the Codex Gigas (also known as the Devil’s Bible) is a medieval manuscript said to have been written 800 years ago. After an absence of 359 years, it has been returned to Prague, where it is believed to have originated.

Experts say that it took the monk 10 to 12 years to write that book, which contained 640 pages. 624 pages remain in fairly good condition.

Source: USA Today

Father Lankester Merrin thinks that he has glimpsed the face of Evil. In the years following World War II, Merrin is relentlessly haunted by memories of the unspeakable brutality perpetrated against the innocent people of his parish during the War. In the wake of all the horror he has seen, both his faith in his fellow man and his faith in the Almighty have deserted him, and he can no longer honestly call himself a man of God. Merrin has traveled far from his native Holland in a desperate attempt to try to forget and escape all the evil that he had witnessed there. While currently in Cairo, Egypt, he is approached by a collector of rare antiquities and asked to participate in a British archeological excavation in the remote Turkana region of Kenya. They have unearthed something extraordinary and unusual…a Christian Byzantine church dating from the 5th century, long before Christianity arrived in East Africa, and in inexplicably perfect condition–like it had been buried immediately after it was completed. The collector wants Merrin, an Oxford-educated archeologist, to find an ancient relic hidden within the church before the British do. Interested, Merrin agrees to take the job. But beneath the church, something much older and malevolent sleeps, waiting to be awoken. When the archeologists start excavating, strange things begin occuring, and the local Turkana tribesmen who were hired to work refuse to enter the site. Things only get worse and worse, ultimately resulting in madness and death. Merrin watches helplessly as the atrocities of war are repeated against another innocent village–atrocities he had hoped and prayed never to see again. The blood of innocents flows freely on the East African plain, but the horror has only just begun. In the place where Evil was born, Merrin will finally see its true face.

Exorcist, The Beginning is an exceptional movie. It begins with a powerful scene of a battered 4th century priest walking through, and then finally viewing the massacre of a Christian army. Jump forward to 1949, the plot slows down for Merrin’s backstory and Sarah’s frustration with treating the mysterious illnesses that plague the village. These elements wove themselves into a great plot as history repeated itself in a gory and brutal fashion.

As the battle between the tribesmen and the British began, the ultimate battle between good and evil began in the bowels of the old church. While Sarah’s head didn’t spin around, her demon counterpart was just as terrifying and obscene as the 1973 classic. The cinematography was very good, as was the acting. Highly recommended.

I love it when critics pan a movie because, based on my experiences, they are usually wrong. So I will take my kids to see this movie on Friday with the hopes that the excitement will have died down by then. I watched the trailer in the movie theater last weekend and this morning. The special effects look cool, and Nicholas Cage seems to fit the ghost rider character pretty well.

Motorcycle stuntman, Johnny Blaze, makes a pact with a dark force, selling his soul to save his girlfriend. When the bargain goes sour and the girl isn’t saved, Blaze is transformed, gaining raging superpowers. Based on the Marvel comic series.

Yahoo! movie raters gave this film a B rating, while another reviewer stated that this film isn’t overly violent for young viewers (5 to 10). Where the violence scale is concerned, Ghost Rider doesn’t look any worse than Batman Returns.