The movie Armageddon focuses on a burly oil-mining veteran by the name of Harry Stamper, played by actor Bruce Willis. Stamper has been called upon to take part in a last-ditch mission to save the human race from a massive asteroid on an unstoppable collision course with planet Earth. Landing a space shuttle on the surface of the deadly rock, Harry and his compatriots drill a hole deep into the asteroid's core and drop into it a nuclear bomb that might just split the asteroid in two and makes its halves miss the Earth.

At the climactic moment when the charge has been set and the shuttle is about to lift off the asteroid, something goes terribly wrong, and it becomes clear that someone will have to stay behind and manually detonate the bomb. Without hesitation Harry Stamper chooses that job. In the final minutes, Harry speaks by videophone to the command center in Houston and says his last words to his daughter, Grace, played by actress Liv Tyler. With tears streaming down her cheeks, the daughter burbles to her dad: "Everything good I have inside of me I have from you. I love you so much. I am so proud of you. And I'm so scared." "There won't be anything to be scared of soon," Harry assures her. "I'll look in on you … I love you, Grace."

Moments later, Harry kneels on the surface of the asteroid as it violently shakes with volcanic eruptions. Struggling to maintain hold of the detonator, he watches the shuttle safely escape. Then Harry stares … the beautiful blue planet rotating quietly in space. A gentle smile creases his rugged face as he whispers, "We win, Gracie," and then presses the detonator.

Suddenly the screen fills with a racing stream of images as seen through the love of this father's eyes. We see back in time to a sunny day when Harry is pushing his laughing little girl on a backyard swing set. We're treated to a blur of images reflecting the glorious and grainy moments of miraculous human life. We see a moment out in the future when Gracie will be dressed as a radiant bride on her wedding day. And then the asteroid erupts in a blinding explosion, fractures in two, and careens clear of our planet, as the saved of the Earth explode in wild cheers.

The Bible teaches that God saw the consequences of sin and evil hurtling at human life like an unstoppable force. Unlike the main character in the Hollywood movie, God himself would not have been destroyed if he did nothing. Unlike the Hollywood tale, this destruction was actually the just deserts of a planet that had forsaken its Creator. But at a level infinitely larger than the love of Harry Stamper for his daughter, God the Father and God the Son looked with compassion at the children of this Earth and chose to intervene in a way that required a cataclysmic self-sacrifice.

For another version of this same illustration and for information on where to find this clip see, Armageddon: Jesus Chose the Cross for Love.