Firm Foundation

The secularizers commonly defend the de-Christianization of Christmas by noting that America is a much more diverse nation than we used to be, that we shouldn’t offend others, that saying “Merry Christmas” might be bad for business, and that public Christmas observances might even violate the First Amendment.

Then they deliver the crowning blow:  “Besides, as everyone knows, Jesus wasn’t born in December.”

Now, that phrase “everyone knows” raises red flags with me, because it begs the question.   It’s kind of like saying “all scholars agree,” meaning that anyone who does not agree is by definition not a scholar.

So at the risk of flying in the face of collective modern wisdom, I will say that I do not “know” that Jesus wasn’t born in December.  In fact, I think there’s a good probability that He was born in December.  Let me explain why.

First, a quick qualifier.  My Christian faith does not depend upon a December 25 date for Jesus’ birth.  If someone could prove positively that Jesus wasn’t born on December 25, that would not affect my faith in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.  But sometimes it’s comforting and even fun to learn that the ancients may have been right and the modern know-it-alls may be wrong.

The Biblical Evidence

What does the Bible say about the date of Jesus’ birth?   Luke 2:6 tells us that “the days were accomplished that she should be delivered,” so we assume Jesus was a full-term baby, born nine months after His conception.

So when was Jesus conceived?  Luke 1:26 says the angel Gabriel announced the conception of Jesus to Mary in the sixth month of her cousin Elizabeth’s pregnancy with John the Baptist.  So Jesus was conceived about six months after John the Baptist was conceived.

So when was John the Baptist conceived?  That’s more difficult, but the Scriptures do suggest some answers.  John’s father was Zacharias, a Levite priest “of the course of Abia [Abijah]” (Luke 1:5).   According to I Chronicles 24:7-19, King David had divided the priests into 24 orders or courses, and these orders took turns serving in the Temple.  During their service they lived in the Temple and were thus separated from their wives and children.   Each order served for a period of eight days twice a year.   The priests of the course of Abia served during the 10th and 24th weeks of the Jewish year. 

The angel of the Lord spoke to Zacharias “while he executed the priest’s office before God in the order of his course” (Luke 1:8), that is, while he was performing his service in the Temple.   After his course was finished he left the Temple and returned to his wife Elizabeth, and John was conceived (Luke 123-24).    If this was after the second course, that is, the 24th week of the year, John would have been conceived around September or October and born around June or July.  Jesus’ conception six months later would have occured around March or April and His birth around December or January.

I am far from certain that this is correct.  The Jewish calendar consisted of 12 months of 30 days each, for a total of 360 days.  Whether these months and courses would have been the same in the time of King David as in the time of Jesus Christ is unceartain.   Some have tried to calculate the dates of these various courses of priesthood and reached different conclusions.  Also, some have tried to date the courses of the Temple service backward from the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, when according to Jewish tradition the priestly course of Jehoiarib was serving.  

So as I look at the time of Zacharias’s service in the Temple, I am unable to state conclusively that this proves Jesus was born in December, but I can say it is well within the realm of possibility.

I might add here that there was a Jewish tradition that the creation of the world began on March 25th (using our calendar, of course).  Some early Christians, among them Sextus Julius Africanus (220 A.D.),  argued that because Jesus came into the world to renew the world, He must have been conceived on the same date the world was originally created, March 25th, which would point to a birth date around December 25th.   This, however is conjecture.

The Extrabiblical Evidence

St. John Chrysostom (347-407 A.D.), a contemporary of St. Augustine whose status in  eastern Orthodoxy is comparable to that of Augustine in western Roman Catholicism, argued strongly for a December 25 birthdate because of the course of Zacharias’s priestly service.  But he also based his conclusion on the findings of Pope Julius.  Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem (348-386 A.D.) had asked Pope Julius to ascertain the date of Christ’s birth “from the census documents brought by Titus to Rome” after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.  Julius then determined the date of Christ’s birth to be December 25. 

Julius, Cyril, and Chrysostom were not alone in their reliance upon the census documents.  Justin Martyr (100-165 A.D.), in a detailed statement of the Christian faith addressed to Emperor Marcus Aurelius. stated that Jesus was born in Bethlehem “as you can ascertain also from the registers of the taxing.” (Apology, I, 34).  Likewise, Tertullian (160-250 A.D.) wrote of “the census of Augustus — that most faithful witness of the Lord’s nativity, kept in the archives of Rome” Contra Marcion, Book 4, 7) .  

Unfortunately, we do not have access to these census records today.   They may have been lost, destroyed during barbarian invasions, or possibly buried somewhere in the Vatican archives – a not inconceivable possibility; documents buried in the Vatican archives are frequently brought to light by modern researchers.  Perhaps it would be wise to assume that these Church Fathers had access to information that we do not possess, and that they knew what they were talking about.

But some will say, Jesus couldn’t have been born in December because shepherds did not keep their sheep in the fields past late autumn.   This is frequently asserted as though it is established fact, but it is not.  Alfred Edershiem, in his classic work The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, cites ancient Jewish sources to the effect that there were flocks of sheep that “remain in the open alike in the hottest days and in the rainy season — i.e. all the year round” (Book 2, p. 186).   There was also a special class of Levitical shepherds who kept sacrificial lambs in the field all year round because they were used for sacrifice every month of the year.    Winters can be cold in Palestine, but they vary greatly, and some Decembers are rather mild.  And scientists disagree as to whether there have been substantial warming or cooling periods in the history of Palestine.  A recent study of stalagmites and stalactites in caves near Jerusalem strongly suggests that the average annual rainfall dropped nearly 50% from about 3.0 feet in 100 A.D. to about 1.6 feet in 700 A.D.   Average winter temperatures may have varied as well.   My common sense tells me that if Mary could have given birth to a baby in an unheated stable in Bethlehem, hardy shepherds could have watched their flocks in the fields.

I conclude with Edersheim, “There is no adequate reason for questioning the historical accuracy of this date (December 25th).  The objections generally made rest on grounds, which seem to me historically untenable.”

Again, my faith does not rest on the December 25th date.   If anyone who reads this post has some insights or information on the subject of Jesus’ birth, I’d welcome it whether it proves me right or wrong.    But there are good Biblical and historical reasons to believe Jesus was born on or about December 25, and the world has almost universally accepted that date from at least the early 400s almost to the present.   Evidence and arguments concerning the date of Jesus’ birth give us no reason whatsoever to take Christ out of Christmas.

With her eyes filled with tears the little girl wouldn’t see,

why Santa couldn’t come this year.

But Daddy had died and she was just 5 years old,

so life wasn’t really very clear….

So begins Judge Moore’s Christmas poem this year, He wouldn’t be coming.  Follow the link to the read the rest of this moving story of a mother and little girl who didn’t think “Santa” would be coming this sad year.

The poem is a reminder that in our hopelessness God sent us peace and goodwill for all men through a precious gift: His Son, Jesus Christ.  May you sense God’s love for you through this Good News that must still be proclaimed to all nations.

Merry Christmas to you and yours and a very Happy New Year!

Yesterday I asked whether we should go back to “Christmas Past.”   I noted that Christmas in the “old days” was nowhere nearly as spectacular or as lucrative as it is today.   Gifts then were far less plentiful, and far less expensive — but far more appreciated.  And  as children in those days, we had something that today seems missing:  a sense of wonder, of beauty, of miracle… .

How did we lose that sense of wonder?  Austin Cline, writing an entry for About.com  Agnosticism / Atheism titled “We Wish You a Godless Xmas: What’s Secular, Godless About Christmas Holidays?” says atheists can celebrate Christmas because the holiday has become so secularized that “if you want to celebrate Christmas, you can do so without religion.”

After talking about secular trees, presents, songs, Santa, food, family, and commerce, Cline makes a most poignant observation:   “Perhaps the most important thing to note about all the ways in which Christmas has become highly secularized is the simple fact that Christians have made no effort to eschew any of it.  A few small Christian groups have  certainly tried, but the most successful are the ones who eschew Christmas entirely as being inherently unChristian.   The rest of the Christian community participates eagerly in every secular aspect of the Christmas holidays and their religious leaders make no real effort to discourage them.”

Why did we allow Christmas to become secularized?  I was going to ask, “Why did we let them steal Christmas?”  But for the most part, the secularists did not steal Christmas — we gave it to them!  But again, why?

Cline correctly notes that those of us who are Protestant unwittingly contributed to the process by eliminating the Masses and holy days that Roman Catholics celebrated as part of the Advent season.   Some, like the Puritans, tried to ban Christmas as a pagan holiday.   But most Protestants celebrated Christmas just as joyously as their Catholic brethren.

The main reason, I think, is that we were so thoroughly convinced that we lived in a Christian culture, and that Christmas was the highest Christian holy day, that we let our guard down and allowed Christmas to become secularized without realizing it.

The term “carol” comes from the French word for circle, and in medieval times Christians would form a circle while a leader in the center led the Christmas song.  Then, in the Baroque period, we see the great works of Christian Christmas music like Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio” and Handel’s “Messiah,” followed by many of the well-loved carols of Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, and others.    The music was holy, and distinctively Christian.  Consider the deep and well-expressed theology of Charles Wesley’s words and the majesty and exaltation of Mendelsohn’s music in “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” — and don’t limit yourself to the first verse, as we commonly do today.  Some of the soundest and boldest  theology is found in the later verses, which means, in some older carols, all 15 or 20 verses.

“Jingle Bells” made its debut in 1857.   The tune is catchy though not particularly reverent, but the words have nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas, except that in some parts of the country you might take a sleighride during the Christmas season.   Still, the words aren’t immoral or irreverent, and singing it might make the Christmas celebration a bit more fun.

In the 1930s came “Winter Wonderland,” a semi-romantic song that has nothing to do with Christ or Christmas except that it might snow on Christmas somewhere, and about the same time we began to hear “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”    Now we have two miraculous figures of Christmas:  the Christ child who, after He grows up, will die on the Cross to save us from our sins; and Santa, the jolly old man who knows everything about every kid in the world and who somehow will slide down every chimney in the world in one night to leave presents for those who are good.   And we tell our children two stories of Christmas, the Santa story that we expect them to set aside as they grow older, and the story of Jesus which we hope they will retain for life.

Then, during World War II,  “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” and “Ill Be Home for Christmas” reminded us of sons, brothers and husbands in the trenches and foxholes overseas.   Then followed some humorous songs like “All I Want for Christmas Is (Are?) My Two Front Teeth” and “I Aint Gettin’ Nuthin” for Christmas,” degenerating to vapid no-brainers like “Holly Jolly Christmas” and “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree,” and down to nauseating rubbish* like “Santa Baby,” and the secular songs are now not merely harmless additions to our Christmas repertoire; they compete with the carols to be the true music of Christmas.  (*I apologize for calling “Santa Baby” nauseating rubbish.  It is the only printable term I can think of that even comes close to expressing my contempt for this piece of trash.)

Next, the courts tell us that in public schools and perhaps other public settings, sacred Christmas carols can be used only if they are balanced by secular music (Florey v. Sioux Falls School District, 619 F. 2d 1311 [8th Cir. 1980]).  And some school officials and so-called civil liberties groups want to go further and ban all sacred carols in public, because they don’t want to offend anyone.

The result is that Christianity is relegated to the status of a barely-tolerated subculture, even at Christmas.   Just as an experiment, next time you’re shopping in the mall and and hearing the music of the department stores, keep a talley of sacred and secular songs and see which predominates.    You will be amazed at how far we’ve drifted from our Christian foundations, even at Christmas.

It’s time to take back Christmas!  This Christmas, say “Merry Christmas!” to all you meet, and when store clerks wish you Merry Christmas, tell them how much you appreciate it.   (And as an aside, I’m not at all offended when my Jewish friends wish me Happy Hanuka, and I’ll say the same to them.)   At gatherings where Christmas songs are sung, suggest “O Come, All Ye Faithful” or “Silent Night.”   Even more important, read the Christmas story to your children, and sing the old carols together as a family.

Have a wonderful Christmas!  But remember — it’s His birthday, not yours.

Why would anyone want to go back to “Christmas past”?
Christmas trees looked kind of scrawny sometimes; branches were missing, needles turned brown and started falling off well before Christmas, although we could slow that process by putting the trunk in water. (For those of you who are mystified by this, the trees were REAL.)
Decorations were not nearly as ornate as they are today, and they broke easily. Often we made the decorations ourselves: paper chains, stringed chains of popcorn — plain, but kind of fun. If we put lights on the tree, we had to be careful that they didn’t touch the tree, because they were hot (If that sounds barbaric, remember that not too many decades earlier people decorated their Christmas trees with lighted candles!)
Christmas presents were nothing like today. If we were good (that was before we realized that calling kids “bad” hurt their self-esteem), we’d probably get a present, maybe two or three, and they’d be simple toys, or maybe socks or mittens. And we’d save the money we’d earned from shoveling snow to buy a few nice presents for family members, maybe 25 cents or so.
But in our minds, Christmas carried something that is largely missing today: a sense of wonder, beauty, miracle…

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. Matthew 2:1-2

For 2,000 years, the wise men of the east have intrigued us. Who were they? From whence did they come? Whom were they seeking? And why?

Could their quest have had anything to do, even in part, with the principles of law and government that western civilization has held so dear?

I believe it did. It should not surprise us that these kings or magi would be concerned about law and government. Christ is our personal Savior, but He is lord of the nations as well (Isaiah 9:6-7; Revelation 12:5, 19:15). Matthew emphasizes Christ’s role as lord of the nations by presenting the account of the magi who came to worship Him. Luke emphasizes Christ’s role as personal Savior by presenting the account of the shepherds, common men who came to worship Him. Both are necessary for a complete understanding of His earthly mission.

They sought what man has sought from the beginning: the Savior who would release man from the curse of Adam’s Fall and restore him to his original paradise.

Genesis 3 records that God expelled our original parents from Eden and cursed the ground for their sake after they sinned against Him. But God also promised them a Savior, the “Seed of the Woman” (3:15) who will bruise the head of the serpent. Throughout the generations the faithful have looked for the coming of God’s promised Messiah.

The Rise of the Messianic State

But others have looked to false saviors, and counterfeit messiahs have arisen in every age. God had promised in His Word that the Savior would come first as a suffering servant (Isaiah 53:1-12) and only later as a victorious king (Revelation 19:11-21). But many, even among God’s own people, looked only for the latter. The Christ on the Cross was rejected or ignored, as man looked to the civil government realm for salvation and the restoration of the Golden Age.

Not that civil government is ungodly. Quite the opposite. God ordained civil government (Romans 13:1-6; I Peter 2:13-17) to restrain the exercise of sin, enforce order, protect human rights, and foster social organization. Those who are called to civic office have a high godly responsibility to perform.

The problem arises when men look to civil government to perform the functions God has delegated to the Church, or when men look to the Church to perform the functions God has delegated to civil government — when civil rulers seek to become saviors, and when false messiahs become kings.

Most emphatically, this does not mean government must be divorced from God, or that law must be divorced from Biblical morality. Government functions best when it is based upon the solid foundation of the Ten Commandments. Luther and Calvin both spoke of the Decalogue as the embodiment of natural law, and Dean Wigmore of Northwestern University School of Law called the Ten Commandments “the greatest short moral code ever formulated.”

But government’s role is limited to enforcing legal principles of right and wrong and defending the liberty and safety of the people. God never intended that civil government should change basic human nature, eradicate all sinful impulses, and usher in the Golden Age. Government must be godly, but government must not try to become God.

But almost from the beginning, people looked to civil rulers to usher in the Golden Age. As Ethelbert Stauffer says in his classic work Christ and the Caesars (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1952, 1955),

One of the earliest longings of mankind is the longing for God to appear on earth. Egyptians and Persians, Greeks and Romans, relate mysterious myths of gods who once walked the earth in human form. In annual festivals they celebrated the cult renewal of that mythical theophany — the epiphany of Apollo, the advent of the sun-god, the birth of the heavenly child of the Age, who was to lead in a new era of salvation. With ecstatic cries and hymns they called on the god to appear: “Come and do not delay!” For where the deity moves as a man among men, the dream of the ages is fulfilled, the pain of the world is scattered, and there is heaven on earth.

Such longings represent a corruption of God’s promise to send the Messiah, and the tendency to look to the State for that which only God can deliver. And when people expect the State to do that which only God can do, they begin to worship the State as God.

Deification of Emperors

This was common in the pagan world. State worship and emperor worship were the rule rather than the exception. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, tell us that Nimrod took a leading role in the building of the Tower of Babel to avenge himself on God for having destroyed the world by the Flood, and that Nimrod changed the government into a tyranny. Alexander Hislop, in his classic work The Two Babylons (Neptune, NJ: Loiseaux, 1916, 1959), says the Sumerians made Nimrod their king, and after his death they deified him and worshiped him as chief of their pantheon of gods.

Worshiping a ruler as though he were a god seems strange to many westerners. Through centuries of Bible teaching we have come to understand God as all-powerful and all-knowing, infinitely above all that man is or could ever be. In the western view no man could ever become God.

But the pagan view is different. Gods are superior to men in knowledge and power, but they are not all-knowing or all-powerful; nor are they perfectly just or righteous. The gods have character flaws much like ours, and they find themselves in the same intrigues and betrayals as men, only on a more colossal scale. The difference between gods and men is one of degree. According to Greek mythology, somewhere between gods and men were heroes. Hercules was not a god but a hero, a man who achieved immortality by his courage and valor.

In the pagan view, then, the idea that the king could be a god, or descended from the gods, or ascended to godlike status, is not that far-fetched. And of course, pagan kings employed all the trappings and ceremonies to encourage that belief.

Israel vs. Pagan State-Worship

God’s Word and God’s people stood in marked contrast to this pagan view. Israel began as a confederate republic of twelve tribes governed by elders and judges, with no king in Israel but God Himself. The day would come when Israel would demand a king so they could be like the nations around them, but even then, Israel’s king was to be a limited monarch. God spoke prophetically through Moses in Deuteronomy 17:14-20:

When thou art come unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me;
Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the Lord thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother.
But he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses: forasmuch as the Lord hath said unto you, Ye shall henceforth return no more that way.
Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away: neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.
And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites:
And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them:
That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel.

Unlike the Egyptian pharaoh who proclaimed himself to be a god and who was worshiped and obeyed as a god, Israel’s king was to be one of the people. He must be a Jew, not a foreigner; being of one blood with them, his countrymen were less likely to regard him as a god. He was not to accumulate great wealth or power, and he was to write out a copy of the law of God, read from it daily, and follow it throughout his reign. The great object was that he be under the law of God, and that “his heart be not lifted up above his brethren.” The king ruled by the law of God and according to the law of God, but he himself was not God but rather one of the people.

Daniel vs. State-Worship

This was the message of the prophet Daniel to the great Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar — that God “removeth kings, and setteth up kings.”(Daniel 2:21) Nebuchadnezzar erected a great golden image and commanded all to fall down and worship it (Chapter 3); the image represented the Babylonian state, and Nebuchadnezzar as the head of state. Daniel’s three friends were willing to show all the respect due a great Babylonian king, but they were willing to face death by fire rather than worship this image or that which it represented (3:17-18). As Daniel proclaimed in 4:32 and as King Nebuchadnezzar finally came to understand at the end of Daniel Chapter 4, “the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.”

The Apostle Paul declared that the civil ruler is “ordained of God” and is the “minister of God to thee for good.” (Romans 13:1-6) Yet Paul wrote these words from the Corinthian jail, indicating that governmental authority is not absolute. Peter also wrote of the duty to obey civil rulers (I Peter 2:13-17), but when commanded to stop preaching the Gospel he and the other apostles declared, “We ought to obey God rather than men.”

Jesus: Render Unto Caesar

In the time of Jesus’ earthly ministry the Jews faced testy relations with the Roman authorities. In Luke 20:19-25 we read that the chief priests and scribes asked Jesus whether it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. Jesus noted the image and superscription of Caesar on the coin and said, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s.” Lord Acton wrote concerning this passage,

…when Christ said “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s, He gave to the state a legitimacy it had never before enjoyed, and set bounds to it that had never yet been acknowledged. And He not only delivered the precept but he also forged the instrument to execute it. To limit the power of the State ceased to be the hope of patient, ineffectual philosophers and became the perpetual charge of a universal Church.

At the time of Christ, Rome was in transition from republic to empire. The SPQR (Senatus Populus Que Romana) that had governed Rome for half a millennium was becoming a rubber stamp for the emperors who increasingly claimed for themselves the attributes of divinity. Octavian subdued the empire, and the Senate gave him the title Augustus Caesar (Divine King). He issued coins superinscribed Caesar Divi Filius, “Caesar Son of God.” Throughout the Empire temples were built and sacrifices and prayers offered to the goddess Roma and the god Augustus, and the poet Virgil proclaimed of Augustus, “This is the man, the one who has been promised again and again,” the world savior who was usher in the age of gold. As Stauffer observes, at this time the ancient world trembled with excitement that deliverance was at hand.

The Magi Seek the True King

And yet—the wise men of the east came not to worship Augustus, but to seek Him who is born King of the Jews.

Who were these wise men? Matthew calls them magoi or Magi (2:1). They probably came from the eastern countries of Persia or Babylon. The priestly caste in those countries known as the Magi had existed for centuries and may have borne some similarity to the Celtic Druids. The Bible does not call them kings, but Tertullian writing around 200 AD says they were well-nigh kings. They were highly influential advisors to the Persian and Babylonian kings, as Daniel attests (Daniel 1:19-21; 2:2, 24; 4:7-9; 5:7), and probably played a prominent role in selecting a new king. In so doing, they looked to the will of the heavens, and they believed the will of the heavens was revealed through the stars. And as they looked to the heavens they saw the Star that led them to Bethlehem.

No scientific theory can adequately explain that Star. Men have called it a meteor, a comet, a heliactical rising, a supernova. But none of these theories can explain a Star that appeared in the east, led the Magi to the west slowly enough that they could follow, then suddenly reversed course in Jerusalem and led to the southeast to Bethlehem. The Star must have been a special creation of God, perhaps a theophanic appearance of God Himself in the Person of the Holy Spirit to lead these Magi to Jesus Christ.

But why would these Magi care that One had been born King of the Jews? Possibly they understood the Hebrew concept of law and government, for the Persians recognized that the king is subject to the law and powerless to change the law (Daniel 6:8, 12, 15). More likely, they remembered Daniel the Prophet, who had once led the Magi himself.

Daniel: Master of the Magi

Daniel had been taken captive to Babylon around 605 B.C. He was recognized to be ten times wiser than the Magi and astrologers (Daniel 1:20) and rose to prominence in Babylon and later in Persia. He was a trusted advisor to the Babylonian and Persian kings, and in Daniel 2:24 he used his influence to save the Magi from execution. In Daniel 4:9 he is called “master of the magicians (magi),” so very likely the learned Magi of Christ’s time would recall Daniel and his writings.

In Daniel 9 we read the most precise of all Old Testament prophecies concerning the coming of Jesus Christ:

Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon the holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.
Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.
And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.
And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

The “weeks” (Hebrew hephtah) of Daniel 9 are commonly interpreted as seven-year periods. Sixty-nine seven-year periods equal 483 years. King Artaxerxes of Persia gave the decree to restore and build Jerusalem in 445 BC. 483 years later would be 38 A.D., but the Hebrew year was twelve 30-day months or 360 days. Factoring in the difference would bring us to 31 A.D., the likely date of Christ’s crucifixion.

We do not know how much of this the Magi understood. But they remembered the words of their old master, Daniel, and knew that the salvation of the world would come not through the legions of Caesar but through the One Who would be born King of the Jews. And without condoning astrology, God used the means most familiar to them to lead them to His Son.

But the world continued to look for a conquering prince, not a suffering savior. Augustus reigned well for the most part, and his reign brought in the pax romana or Roman peace. But the pax romana only restrained sin and evil; it did not conquer them. And after the death of Augustus his plan for government crumbled.
But the ancient dream of the god-man who would bring heaven down to earth remained.

With the rise of the Roman Empire, the classical longing for a savior was given a political form. The coming savior was the Emperor, and as the people’s hopes were dashed with the tragic collapse of each Emperor, they thirstily looked with equal hope to the next.

The Messianic State Turns Demonic

When Nero ascended the throne in 54 A.D. at the age of seventeen, the philosopher Seneca said of him,

…as the red of morning drives away dark night, as neither haze nor mist endure before the sun’s rays, as everything becomes bright when my chariot appears, so it is when Nero ascends the throne. His golden locks, his fair countenance, shine like the sun as it breaks through the clouds. Strife, injustice and envy collapse before him. He restores to the world the Golden Age.

A lover of Greek culture, Nero proclaimed himself to be “Zeus the Liberator” and embarked upon a reign of madness, tyranny, and bloodbaths. He covered Christians with tar and set them up as living torches in the imperial parks, murdered his mother and wife, and kicked to death his lover who was expecting his child. After fourteen years the army revolted, and as Nero committed suicide his dying words were, “What an artist dies in me!”

Succeeding emperors claimed to be the best of gods but acted as the worst of men. And still, men looked to Rome for salvation, seeking the City of God through the City of the Earth. As Stauffer so graphically wrote,

The triumph of the civitas dei was to be reached by the self-exaggeration and self-destruction of the civitas terrena. The self-exaggeration and self-destruction of the classical advent philosophy was completed in the third century A.D. This is the century of which the schoolboy knows nothing because no young mind can bear the knowledge of what happened then. It was the century of the assassination of the emperors, of the sarcophagi of the dance of death, of the systematic persecutions of Christians, the century of twisted titles. Magnus, Maxiums, Maximinus, Magnentius, Maxentisu, Maximianus, Maximilianus, are the names given to themselves by those who wanted to be accounted important. In this century the political eschatology on which men had been nourished for thousands of years ran amok through the Roman world. About the year 260 Gallienus struck a coin with the inscription, “The genius of the Roman people has entered the capital of the empire.” This patron spirit was incarnate in himself, the emperor Gallienus. In the same decade the imperial genius was murdered. In the year 275 Aurelian was celebrated as “god and lord from birth.” In the same year the divine lord was murdered. The following year the emperor Probus ascended the blood-girt throne and struck a series of coins with the famous inscription Adventus Augusti and the portrait of the emperor riding up with his hand raised in greeting and blessing, led by the goddess Victoria. In the year 282 Probus was murdered. In 287 a coin of the emperor Carausius appeared, and on it we see Britannia greeting the emperor, as he arrived from the Continent, with the advent greeting Expectate Veni, Come, Thou Longed-for One. In the Advent hymn the words are “Thou Longing of all the world.” Carausius was murdered…

State Worship Today?

And the story goes on, through the collapse of Rome, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, mercantilism, colonialism, imperialism, the modern age, the postmodern and so on down through the years. In an age in which many pride themselves as being too sophisticated to believe the state is divine, the German philosopher Hegel proclaims that the State is god walking on earth, though he used the term “god” in the sense of the World-spirit. An age which rejects the transcendent God of the Bible places man, and the State as the greatest of man’s institutions, on the throne in the place of God. We give to the State all authority, we expect the State to make all important decisions, we look to the State for all material blessings, and we trust the state to make our laws and define our values. Truly, for many modern Americans the State has become our god.

And amid all this intrigue and carnage, Christ was born in a Bethlehem stable. He grew as a humble child in Nazareth, He lived and taught and served among men. He died on a Roman cross, and His enemies thought they had conquered Him. But there He paid the atoning price for the sins of the world, washing away forever the sins the emperors could only imperfectly restrain. And there He established His Kingdom, a Kingdom that is not of this world but that will endure forever.

Wise Men Still Seek Him

The Magi were wise men indeed. We don’t know how much they understood, but we know they made wise choices. They passed by the Caesars and the Herods of their day, and came to worship the newborn King. They were influential men in their day, and they respected and served the kings of their respective lands. But their souls’ allegiance was to the King of Kings, to Him who wears the mitre of eternity. They respected the godly state and that ruler who governs according to Biblical principles. But they feared the messianic State that seeks to make itself god. They knew that government service is an honorable vocation, but they also knew that earthly government will never usher in the Golden Age. Only God through His true Son can do that.

And on Christmas God did become man. God became incarnate, taking upon Himself human flesh so that He could redeem mankind through His Death on the Cross, His Resurrection, His Ascension, and His Second Coming. Wise men sought Him then, and wise men seek Him now.

Venite, Adoremus Dominum!
“O Come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!”

The Adventures of Joe the Christian Lawyer

Joe the Christian lawyer woke with a start. 

“Oh no!” he exclaimed.  “I slept through the alarm.  The Christian Legal Society breakfast is in half an hour, and it takes 45 minutes to get there.  Either I’ll have to speed, which is a violation of Romans 13, or I’ll be late, which is inconsiderate.  O my goodness!  What an ethical dilemma!”

***

Unfortunately, after this great start the story goes downhill from there….

Has this world been turned upside down?  A Josephson Institute survey of 29,760 high school students reveals that

• 30% admit to having stolen from a store during the past year
• 64% admit to having cheated on a test during the past year and
• 83% admit that they “sometimes lie to a parent about something significant” 

And yet, 93% say they are satisfied with their own personal ethics and character, and 77% said that “when it comes to doing what is right, I am better than most people I know.”  How could this be, and what can we do about it? 

Chief Justice Roy Moore addresses this problem in his latest Worldnetdaily column, New Ethical Lows in High Schools.

In his misconstrued letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1802, then-President Thomas Jefferson noted that the First Amendment built a “wall of separation between Church & State” because “religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, [and] that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship.”  But Jefferson, again as President, also felt free in that same letter to ”reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man.” 

Jefferson never expected his written phrase to spawn the constitutional mutation that has become modern Establishment Clause jurisprudence, and he certainly did not intend it to mean that America’s governing officials cannot acknowledge God, the “creator of man” who, as he put it, endowed all men “with certain unalienable rights.” 

Jefferson would hardly recognize today’s huge “wall” that secular judges and ACLU lawyers have constructed to bar God from government. 

He might even pray about it.

As I write, I am looking at a painting titled Freedom’s Gate by Robert McGinnis.  It depicts old Piymouth Plantation as it appeared in 1627, seven years after the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock.  It is a bleak scene: dusk, small huts with thatched roofs, snow on the ground, ice on the masts of the ship in the harbor, only a small fire to give limited warmth and light.

The survival of old Plymouth Plantation is the story of God’s providential aid.  The help given by Samoset and Squanto, the benevolence of Chief Massasoit, and the thrift and industry instilled by the Colony’s work ethic, are recorded in Governor Bradford’s History of Plimoth Plantation. But the survival of Bradford’s manuscript is itself a miracle.

Bradford wrote the history over a period of time into the 1750s.  After he died, he left the manuscript, which was unpublished and of which there were no copies. in the care of his son.  A fire ravaged the son’s house, and Bradford’s manuscript was the only thing saved out of the rubble.  He left the manuscript to Bradford’s grandson, and the manuscript was the only thing saved out of a flood that destroyed the grandson’s house.

Bradford’s manuscript was then placed in the care of the Rev. Thomas Prince of Boston’s Old North Church, and he stored it in the church tower. But during the War for Independence the British seized the church and used it as a livery stable, and after the war the manuscript was nowhere to be found.  Except for a few quotations from the manuscript that had appeared in other writings, the work was presumed lost.

Then, in the mid-1800s, a history of the Church of England was published in England.  It contained quotations from Bradford’s history — and the quotations were different from those found in American books.  This raised the hope: maybe Bradford’s history still survives!

In 1897 Senator George Hoar of Massachusetts vowed to find Bradford’s history and bring it back to Massachusetts.  He traveled to England and, after considerable searching, determined that the manuscript was in the library of an Anglican bishop.  For three days Senator Hoar tried unsuccessfully to see the bishop. That night the keeper of the inn at which the Senator was staying noticed his gloomy disposition and asked if there was anything he could do to brighten the Senator’s spirits. S en. Hoar answered curtly, “Get me an appointment with the Bishop.”  The innkeeper smiled and said, “The Bishop is married to my niece.” The appointment was arranged, and the manuscript was returned to Massachusetts and published for the first time in 1912.

I believe God preserved Bradford’s history for us, so that we could know of the pilgrims’ struggle for survival and the faith that preserved them.  These words of Bradford’s History are emblazoned on the western face of the Forefathers Monument in Plymouth, as though Bradford is still speaking to the entire American nation:

“Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone to many, yes in some sort to our whole nation; let the glorious Name of Jehovah have all the praise.”

As we consider the crises facing Christian patriots today, may we recall the words of Bradford and the example of the Pilgrims. May we recall that the Pilgrim hope was not handwringing desperation but complete confidence in God and His sovereign providence.

Of those 102 souls who sailed to Plymouth in 1620, half died that first winter. The remainder struggled on and survived, but they never became numerically popular, militarily strong, politically influential, or economically prosperous. By all of the world’s standards, those Pilgrims were failures.

Except for this: They kept their covenant with God.

May future generations say the same of us.

This Thanksgiving season liberals and pro-abortionists in America have much to be thankful for.  They have elected the most liberal, most pro-abortion President to date with all the “change” in traditional values that he promises to foist on the nation.

On one very important issue, however, traditional values continue to win out: marriage.  In 30 states now, voters have approved marriage amendments by an average vote of 67%.  Even the liberal state of California rejected any “change” in the definition of marriage this past election, and even after same-sex “marriage” was imposed by the state supreme court for six months.  The passage of Proposition 8 gives hope to values voters everywhere that the battle continues and is very much winnable.

But whereas we speak of “battle” in terms of fighting for elections, policy, laws, and judicial decisions, homosexuals in California responded to Proposition 8 with physical violence and street riots.

Judge Moore discusses this homosexual tantrum in his column this week, Homosexuals not so ‘gay’ in California, noting the disturbing trend of radical homosexuals to not only misuse the courts for their agenda, but to take to the streets in violent attacks when they do not get their way. 

On Nov. 14, an angry mob of homosexuals attacked a small group of Christians who were praying and singing Christian songs on a sidewalk in the Castro district of San Francisco. The attackers cursed, pushed, assaulted and threw hot coffee on some of the Christians until police in riot gear arrived to escort the Christians (not the violent attackers) out of the area. Shouting “We’re going to kill you!” and “Stay out of my neighborhood!” they even issued a threat to other Christians and Mormons. Those who claimed that Proposition 8 was about “hate” are now showing what hate really looks like.

Homosexuals bent on imposing their values on the rest of America show the same disregard for democracy that they show for morality.  But our response must continue to be prayer and Christian love while maintaining the moral values that made this country great.

The Pilgrims did not come to America to establish a land free from moral values, but to found a ”city on a hill” built upon Biblical principles, freedom to do right, and liberty under law.  While immorality in various forms continues to seek the blessings of American law and policy, we can be thankful that, at least on the definition of marriage, change was not something that even California believes in.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!