Birth of Jesus Christ
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By: Dr M. Horam * |
For to us a child is born,(Isaiah 9:6-7) Let us turn to pagan testimony: Tacitus, speaking for the ancient Roman, says: ‘People were generally persuaded in the faith of the ancient prophecies, that the east was to prevail, and that from Judea was to come the master and Ruler of the World’. China had the same expectation: The Annals of the Celestial Empire contain the statement: ‘In the 24th year of Tchao-wang of the dynasty of the Tcheon, on the 8th day of the 4th moonlight appeared in the South West which illuminated the King's palace. The monarch, struck by its splendour, interrogated the sages. They showed books in which this prodigy signify the appearance of the great Saint of the West where religion was to be introduced into their country’. The Greeks expected Him, for Aechylus in his Prometheus six centuries before His coming, wrote, ‘Look not for any end, moreover, to the curse until God Appears, to accept upon His Head the pangs of his thy own sins vicarious’. Not only these wise men were expecting the birth of a great King, a wise man and a Saviour, but Plato and Socrates also spoke of the LOGOS and the universal wise men ‘Yet to Come’. Confucius spoke of coming: ‘the Saint’. There are other several predictions of Jesus’s birth. Another distinguishing fact about His birth is that once He appeared, He struck history with such impact that He split it in two, dividing it into two periods: one before His coming (BC) the other after it. (AD). In the New Testament, St. John said, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the was God (John 1:1-5). And the word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1: 4-15). Jesus birth was pre-announced: Mary, nearing her time of delivery, came to Bethlehem with Joseph, and there Jesus was born. The circumstances of His birth, in a stable because there was no room for them in the inn (Luke 2:7) were rude and humble. Yet even there were portents of the future. Angels were reported to have appeared to shepherds in the Judean hills, announcing the birth of a child who was to be ‘Christ the Lord’ (Luke 2:11) and there were reports (Mathew 2:1-12) that wise men or astrologers had been led by special star from ‘the east’ to the place where the child had been born. According to the Gopsel of Mathew, which tells the story of the wise men, their visit aroused the jealousy of Herod, the King of Jewish Palestine, who threatened the life of the child, compelling Joseph and Mary to escape to Egypt until the danger was past. As indicated earlier, in accordance with the edict, Mary and Joseph set out from the village of Nazareth for the city of Bethlehem to register themselves. Joseph was full of expectancy as he entered the city of his family, and was quite convinced that he would have no difficulty in finding lodgings for Mary, particularly on account of her conditions. Joseph went from house to house only to find each one crowded. He searched in vain for a place where he, to whom heaven and earth, might be born. But sadly, ‘There was no room in the inn’ but there was room in the stable. The inn is the gathering place of public opinion, the focal point of the world's moods, the rendezvous of the worldly, the rallying place of the popular and the successful. But the stable is a place, for the outcastes, the ignored, the forgotten. The world might have expected the Son of God to be born-if He was to be born at all - in an inn. A stable would be the last place in the world where one could have looked for Him. Divinity is always where one least expects to find it. At Bethlehem the Divine Son went into an eclipse, so that only the humble of spirit might recognized Him. Only two classes of people found the babe: the Shepherds and the Wise men: the simple and the learned: those who knew that they knew nothing, and those who knew that they did not know everything. Only the humble can find God. * Dr M. Horam wrote this article on the eve of Christmans 2007 for The Sangai Express. This article was webcasted on December 29th, 2007 |
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