SPOILERS TO COME
The third item was the gloves, and they are an important weapon. It is only by laying hands on the “demons” that their true nature is revealed to Dad, and this isn’t supposed to be done until just before the person is destroyed. The gloves enable him to take the people prisoner without touching them.
There are some assumptions here that I think need to be questioned, and a few things I’d like to comment on.
- Dad and Adam are doing the work of God.
All first person narrators are unreliable to some degree for one of two reasons. Either they deliberately lie to the audience to make themselves look better or justify their actions, or they believe they are being truthful but are still relating events through their own faulty or biased perception of them. Dad and Adam certainly seem to be sincere in their belief that they are doing God’s work. Pehaps the entity sending them their visions and lists is lying to them.
What evidence do we have that the “angel” represents God? It tells them so. What evidence do we (and Dad and Adam) have that the visions they recieve are true representations of these people’s deeds? Only that the angel tells them so.
- Fenton was the Hand of God killer. Fenton was insane.
We have only Adam’s word on this. The evidence in Fenton’s house could be evidence he had gathered regarding Adam’s killings, or planted by Adam at the time Adam killed him. Perhaps Fenton was the only sane one in the group.
- Dad and Adam’s victims are demons.
Dad and Adam make a point of saying that they don’t kill people, they destroy demons. This is an important distinction. It means that the word “demon” isn’t meant to be a synonym for “evil person”.
The visions they get when they lay hands upon their victims are supposed to reveal these people’s true form, thus proving that they are demons in need of being destroyed. What do we see in the visions? People doing evil things, or, if you accept the validity of the visions, evil people. Despite what they say, Dad and Adam are killing people. Because the “angel” is so careful to make a distinction between people and demons, it’s either lying to them when it tells them that they are destroying demons, not killing people, or the visions that show people and not demons is a lie. And once the entity does even one thing that is untrue, everything it does and says should be called into question.
- Adam and Dad kill only demons.
They kill people on their lists, ie people they believe to be demons, but they also kill people who are potential threats to them. The sheriff, Fenton, and the FBI guy were all threats to expose their actions.
- Fenton was born a demon.
Dad tells the boys at first that “we” have been chosen to act as the hands of God. He seems to want to include Fenton most of all. It isn’t until Fenton turns against him that Dad is notified that Fenton is a demon. If the angel is an agent of God, wouldn’t God know all along that Fenton was a demon? Why wouldn’t Fenton have been on the original list? Why wait until he turns against Dad to notify Dad that he’s a demon? The angel seems to be making it up as he goes along.
- The visions Dad and Adam see are true.
Dad gets his list of demons to destroy and abducts them with the intent of destroying them. Then he lays hands on them and it is revealed that these are people who’ve done evil things. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. He doesn’t get his evidence first, he gets it only after the point of no return, and he misses that the “demons’” true form is human, in contradiction of what the angel has told him.
The one moment that seems to confirm the visions accuracy is at the end–the FBI guy murdering his mother says “How did you know?” right after the vision. This is ambiguous at best–How did you know what? This doesn’t confirm the vision as true, just that the FBI guy saw or sensed something from Adam.
Suppose a supernatural vision came to you in the form of an angel tonight. It tells you that you are going to be doing God’s work. How could you know if it was telling you the truth? There is at least one angel that is adept at telling lies, and I believe that the Bible warns about following false prophets claiming to be agents of God. How could you know for sure?