Read More @HJ Previews: Trailer, Overview David Bruce, Webmaster What's Legend, and What's True? Maurice Broaddus

"Only time can teach us what is truth and what is legend," begins the movie 10,000 B.C. The storyteller's voice continues as heavenly eyes look down on the ancient world below. Sweeping over the cold and beautiful landscape, we descend into a small village and the voice speaks of the people living in its tents. They are hunters, and life has become difficult. But legend tells of the arrival of a blue-eyed girl to signal the coming of a hunter who will save their people. And so, when the blue-eyed girl arrives, the story begins.

As many have already said, the tale that follows is somewhat of a lesser version of last year's Apocalypto. Sure, 10,000 B.C. does have woolly mammoths and a saber-toothed tiger. But to be honest, the CGI isn't all that impressive. Even with the great beasts, the movie still lacks the same feeling of urgency and intensity held by many of its older brothers. And if gritty realism is what you are looking for, the mostly-English dialogue, borderline caricature characters, and stereotypical story elements that fill 10,000 B.C. will not quite satisfy that need.

But as our storyteller says at the beginning of the movie, there is truth and there is legend, and although 10,000 B.C. never quite feels real enough to be taken as truth, as a sort of mythic fable, it actually works fairly well.

From the beginning of its story, 10,000 B.C. is driven by the idea of prophecy. The lives of almost all the characters rest on their belief in the coming of certain events and the promise of what those events will mean to their lives.

Filled with a smattering of Christian imagery scattered all over, the movie makes a case for several characters as sort of Christ figures. From the beginning, the movie's hero, D'Leh (Steven Strait), is recognized in relation to the man who is his father. As he continues to fulfill several prophecies predicting the arrival of a savior figure, he is recognized as the hunter who will free his people from those who enslave them. Throw in a bright star, scars on a character's hands seen as the mark of "the one," and a resurrection, and you pretty much have all the major elements of the Christ story.

But although the story that unfolds in 10,000 B.C. is one with a savior figure at its center, in the end, the movie does not paint D'Leh or his heroic counterparts as any more of a god than the veiled old man worshiped by D'Leh's people's captors. D'Leh and those who join him certainly become the saviors of their people. And throughout their journey, there is a clear sense that there are spiritual forces at work. But just as the prophecy that began the story is one that reaches beyond the life of one man, so is the fulfillment of the prophecy and the sense that its path is guided by a hand greater than all who take part in it.

As the movie's tagline says, 10,000 B.C. is the story of a hero. But the interesting thing about the movie is that instead of setting its hero on a pedestal for us to look up to, it almost tells us that its hero could just as well be any of us, and its story of change and freedom one that is just as possible today as it was in 10,000 B.C.

As I see it, our lives have been preceded by great prophecies whose fulfillment have changed the entire reality of the world in which we live. I happen to believe that Jesus Christ's birth, death, and resurrection is a fulfillment of prophecy that is not just legend, but a very real and life-changing truth. And as a part of that truth, I also believe that the promise that began in that prophecy lives on today.

For the Christ story to be true, it must also be true that God loved us more than we can conceive, still loves us more than we can imagine, and desires to give us the freedom, the power, and the greatness to all be heroes in each and every one of our own lives.

As Paul says in Romans 8, "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose&ellips; Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us."

By giving us life and dying so that we might live in freedom, God created a reality where all of us were born into this world to fulfill the prophecy of his own greatness brought to life within us and the world in which we live. Sometimes we will clearly see the path for which our lives were created. Other times we won't have a clue what our purpose is today, much less for the rest of our lives. Very often, even when our purpose seems clearly laid out before us, with a great hand above it all, the ways that we arrive at what has been prophesied will not always be what we expect. But whether the promises God has for our lives are fulfilled through our own intentional actions, the unintentional influence of others, moments of victory, times of suffering, and/or instances where the only option available leads us to exactly where we need to be, the only question we must answer is: when it is time to step up and be whatever kind of hero God has called us to be, will we do it?