I was interested in this film (I hesitate to call it a documentary, although it's full of information that presents as completely factual, it's just done in such an inventive way) because I'd recently read one of Christianity scholar John Shelby Spong's books investigating where the content that comprises the modern Bible really came from.

So I was particularly primed for something else to deflate even more of the pompous, self-important and hypocritical claims and tenets of the modern Church, and writer/director Zeke Piestrup made the very canny decision to release the film for free on YouTube where it has a lot more attention than it would have with some small, no-name distributor.

It's an animated film of a group of kids sitting around in a Sunday School class, singing and worshipping God when there's a flash of lightning and a handsome, bearded man appears at a podium.

At first you think it's Jesus himself, but he explains he's actually Satan – not the one from centuries of theology-inspired pop culture about pitchforks and bargaining for men's souls – but the original meaning from Hebrew meaning 'accuser' or 'adversary', merely a figure who refused to blindly follow the precepts of the Gospels, one who's been unfairly branded as mankind's enemy by the teachings of the church in the millennia since.

The smiling, ever-patient Satan challenges the kids about everything they believe by explaining how critical aspects of early Church writing and belief have been purposefully and carefully excised from the Bible, and how the seminary and training leadership class knows all about them but demands subsequent generations of priests and pastors unlearn or ignore them in case they give the Church a bad name.

As he does so, the film cuts to a handful of Bible scholars who argue the case with research from theology, archaeology, linguistics and more, disputing or disproving long-held beliefs that stem from Bible stories around stuff like the Exodus, the Jews' status as the chosen people, etc.

And between Satan introducing a new area of discussion and the talking heads helping him make his point, a spluttering, protesting Jesus appears every now and then (in the midst of playing golf, no less) to try to talk sense into the kids and refute what's gradually becoming harder to argue with, getting increasingly desperate to hold onto his flock rather than have them learn some hard truths.

If you've ever been interested in or read about early Christian-era scholarship or even if you're an amateur student of human nature and the messy, incomplete historical record it's created over the ages, the spirit of the film won't be a surprise, but it's gratifying to learn about the almost-incontrovertible evidence that further supports it.

But whereas the content the filmmaker's trying to get across might have been just as interesting in a book or even a comprehensive essay, this is the most effective framing device to deliver it you've seen in a documentary that isn't about a terribly visual topic in a long time. Good fun and urgently informative in equal measure.