(296) “Should We Celebrate Christmas?”

0:00 a passage from an old Orthodox Jewish prayer book for the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles. This is found in the Talmud under Hallel No. 5, and it's interpreted as follows, Glory to God in the heavens, and on the earth peace and goodwill towards the earth. What does that sound like? That sounds awfully familiar. God promises in Joel 2 .28 to pour out of His Spirit on all humanity. Welcome to Global Outpouring, where we contend for that promise outpouring, we equip for that outpouring, so that we may engage in that very outpouring. I'm Philip Buss. And I'm Sharon Buss. Welcome to the podcast today. We're going to have a great time today because we're going to talk about something a bit seasonal.

0:54 if this will be good for every year at this time. The question is, should we celebrate Christmas? There's a whole lot of people that are saying, no, that's a pagan holiday. And there's other people that are just celebrating Santa Claus and reindeer and snowman and all those kind of things. But we've done a deep dive into the history and into what's in the word of God and even into the stars. Thanks so much for joining us today. We want to encourage you if you haven't already done so to go to our website, globaloutpouring .net. Make sure that you're on our mailing lists, our email lists, so that we can stay in touch with you and keep you informed of things that are going on in this ministry. You can go to our website and look around. There's so much good material there for you. There's a wonderful bookstore. There's even an app that you can get for the global outpouring on your app store.

1:55 And we want to invite you to come to our convention 2026 in St. Louis at the Hilton Hotel by the airport in St. Louis, Missouri. And we're going to have a glorious time there. Make sure that you're there. It's going to be life -changing for you. And also we want to encourage you to tune in on Friday nights or anytime you want to on our YouTube channel. We have a special thing that we do every single Friday night. We call it Friday Night Live Worship. And we just want to encourage you that this is an opportunity to get to know us better and worship with us and just have a glorious time. So it's coming up on Christmas. And we've just finished Hanukkah.

2:41 And it's a very special time of year. And some folks are kind of jaded about Christmas. And some folks are all excited about Christmas. And some folks are about all the commercialism. And, you know, that's not really what it's about. But, you know, are we supposed to celebrate Christmas? Is it right to celebrate it? Is it wrong to celebrate it? So we really want to go into this deeply and just talk about, well, Is it right to celebrate holidays? Yeah. So in the book of Exodus, chapter 13, 3, we're going to look at this. And Moses said unto the people, Remember this day for which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage. For by strength of hand, the Lord brought you out from this place. There shall no leavened bread be eaten. And so this was Passover. Right.

3:36 So God is commanding his people to remember the day. Yeah. And that was an amazing thing. You know, I had the judgment on Egypt. Oh, yeah. Right. The firstborn, even in Pharaoh's house, died. Right. All the firstborn and they released them to go. And of course, you know, they didn't celebrate this right away. They were 40 years in the wilderness. Yeah. But the word of the Lord given to Moses was that this day will be celebrated when you're in the promised land. Right. So you're supposed to celebrate Passover. We know that. Yeah. Okay. So we also, celebrate the Sabbath day. God says to remember it, to keep it holy. So that's an every week remembrance. So holidays, holy days, holidays are about remembering something. And they're really very important because if you remember, you know, what the Lord spoke about, one of the reasons Israel went into captivity the first time, that they didn't keep the Sabbath. Oh yeah, yeah. And they didn't keep the Sabbath of the land, you know, every seventh year. God gives orders to have remembrance days, have celebrations. So celebrating is a thing.

4:48 And, you know, we as Christians, we celebrate Holy Communion, right? Jesus said in Luke 22, 19, he said he took the bread and he gave thanks and he broke it and gave unto them saying, this is my body, which is given for you. Do this. In remembrance of me. In other words, remember me when you do this. So it's about remembering something. So celebrating holidays come because something happened and we're going to remember it. And we're going to, you know, bring it up again and talk about it again. So Exodus 23, 14 says three times in the year, you shall keep a feast unto me. So what are the three feasts?

5:28 Well, you've got Passover. Then you have Pentecost, which is Shavuot, which celebrates the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, which also enacts Chapter 2. But when the Holy Spirit fell down, that's the day they celebrate the law. Right, the giving of the law. That's when the Holy Spirit just came down and showed off. Yeah, in fire. Just like he did on Mount Sinai. Mount Sinai was a fire feast. Yeah. And then, of course, your last feast, and that was Sukkot, Feast of Tabernacles. You know, that was celebrating God abiding with the Israelites when they were sojourning in the wilderness. Yeah. You know, and they were living in tents. Yeah, made of goat skins and all kinds of things like that. Or maybe even sticks when they first started out. And everything was movable, be it the Tabernacle of Moses. It was all laid out. And they had to be ready as soon as the cloud moved. They had to pack up and leave quick. So it was all portable. Right.

6:26 But the thing that they're celebrating on this one, they're celebrating for seven days plus one day. And that is a celebration of how God protected them through all this thing. They're 40 years in the wilderness and he's providing them food and water. Shade from the heat because the cloud by day and the fire by night. And out in the wilderness, it can get cold at night. So the fire is keeping them warm. And the bottom line is God is tabernacling with them. Yeah, that's the most important thing. They're celebrating the fact that we had God with us. It's kind of like Emmanuel. There's a hint for us. There's a hint. Okay, so I'm just going to go back for a second here just to mention a couple of scriptures that are talking about Passover. Exodus 12, 14 says, this day shall be for you a memorial. You shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. You shall keep it a feast by an ordinance forever. In other words, this is something you just keep doing every year. You do this remembrance thing. And then Exodus 13 .10 says, You shall therefore keep the statute at its appointed time from year to year. So my point here is there's an appointed time that you celebrate something that happened at that time. Okay. So, you know, God set up holidays

7:57 for remembering. So after the Hebrew scriptures are fulfilled and you get into this period of time after the Babylonian captivity and they come back, you know, you get a few minor prophets that are talking about this and that and things that are going to happen. Zechariah is stepping up to say what's going to happen and rebuilding the temple and that sort of thing. And then 1 and 2 Chronicles are written. And then you hear nothing except for there are some intertestamental books. They're apocryphal books. They're not necessarily, like some people call them scripture. Other people say, no, I don't think so. They're good for history. And during that period of time, oh, wait a minute. There is one book. I forgot.

8:45 There's one book that doesn't necessarily. have an order from God to celebrate, but God did something amazing for the children of Israel under King Ahasuerus and his wife Esther. So, you know, that story we celebrate as Purim. Right. Yeah. So that's one more thing that, you know, it's not one of those things you got to go up to Jerusalem for. Yeah. It's a celebrated word. Yeah. Where you're at, which is nice. And then there was one more thing that happened in that intertestamental period. And that is what we've just celebrated last week, Hanukkah. Hanukkah, yeah. And that's the story of when the Greeks had taken over.

9:37 And I guess it was about the fourth Antiochus that came to the throne. He was really wicked. When the Greeks came, you know, they were colonizers. And they were bringing Greek culture. They thought they had the best thing in the whole wide world. And they wanted everybody to celebrate and do things their way, including worshiping their gods. And they managed to get a lot of the Jewish people speaking Greek. And that was the reason why there had to be a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, which is called the Septuagint. Septuagint, yeah. That's why there is such a thing as a Septuagint, because a lot of the Jews had forgotten how to speak Hebrew because they were learning Greek. Which usually happens after a couple of generations. Yeah. So Antiochus Epiphanes was so wicked that he was making it illegal to circumcise, making it illegal to say the name of God, making it illegal to practice Shabbat and the holidays and all of that sort of thing.

10:47 A statue of Zeus in the temple and sacrificed a pig. Absolutely disgusting. And so that's when the Maccabees rose up and said, no, enough of this. And God gave them strength and strategy to overthrow the Greeks. This is a simplistic version. This is the super simple version. There's a whole lot of history if you want to delve into it. And I've been delving a bit. There's a lot of history. But they managed to overthrow the Greeks. Which is really amazing. Which is absolutely amazing. And a lot of it had to do with the fact that they knew the terrain and they knew how to strategize within their own terrain and how to make short, sharp victories, you know, like in the night and things like that. And so when they overthrew them, they had to cleanse the temple. And that is called the Feast of the Dedication.

11:43 Okay. Which is, in Hebrew? Hanukkah. Hanukkah. So what's the miracle of Hanukkah? So they use the oil in the lamp, a pure oil, you know, from the menorah. And it talks about, you know, in the scripture where it's olive oil beaten for the light, which means it was pure oil because it had to be for this. And they only had enough for one day. And when you look at the menorah, the big menorah, the model of it, you can see it takes a bit of oil. And there's each one of those cups that holds the oil. Yeah. Maybe half a pint or something. I don't know how much it would be. Because it burns. It burned 24 hours, you know. And so that's a lot of oil. But they only had enough for one day. Yeah. Because it'd take a process to make the new oil. Yeah. Especially the time of year and, you know, things. It's just the whole thing. It just took a while. But it lasted for eight days. Yes, the one day of oil lasted for eight days. One day of oil lasted eight days. I even remember as a little boy in Chicago on the south side, you know, going down a couple streets that had Jewish families living on them. Oh, yeah. And we would see the hamakia in the window there with all the little, I loved the little orange light bulbs you could screw, you know, like to have on our Christmas tree, you know. But I didn't really know. I didn't know much anything about Jewish culture because my mom and dad didn't know either. Yeah. If you don't have someone to teach it to you, you don't know it. You just don't know. So I love the fact

13:15 that it's called the Festival of Lights because of the lighting of the menorah. And there's something significant about it. So you see from these things that it's appropriate. to remember something that happened and celebrate it. Because that was an overthrow, getting the country back. So why shouldn't we celebrate the birth of our Savior? Come on. Is there any good reason why we shouldn't? There's no good reason we shouldn't. We should rejoice. We should be celebrating Him every single day of our lives. That should not even have to be said. We should be celebrating Jesus every day. We should be praising him. We should be worshiping him. But should we have a celebration of his birth? And if so, when? So it's clear that, like from the Hebrew scriptures, it's very clear there's prophecy after prophecy after prophecy is coming. Isaiah. Isaiah, particularly. And it's even, of course, it's mentioned in the Gospels and in Matthew and in Luke. Both of them tell that story from two different angles, two different bits of information. And you have Simeon and Anna in the temple. Yeah. You know how the Lord spoke to them. Right. Wow. So they're not the only ones either. I'm sure they're not. And when John said at the end of his gospel, if everything that he did was ever written, the volumes would fill up the earth, right? Isn't that what it

14:47 says? So even the apostle Paul mentions the fact in Galatians 4 .4, it says, but when the fullness of time had come, so there was a certain date. When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law. seed of the woman that was prophesied back in Genesis 3. The seed of the woman is going to crush the head of the serpent, right? So then it's important for us to celebrate it, I believe. That's my two cents worth. I think it's important. But I think it's important and here's why, okay?

15:28 Yeah, you got to hear why. Don't tune out now. So as was mentioned earlier, this idea of December 25th. So some people think that this was a pagan tradition that came in under Constantine, and he was a sun worshiper, and so he was going to be celebrating the feast of the undying or unconquered sun. I think it's Sol Invictus or something like that. And the idea is that it's the day after the solstice when you begin to see that it's starting to be a shorter night and a longer day. So the sun has conquered. You know, if you're a sun worshiper, you're celebrating the fact that the sun has come back from dying. And a lot of people celebrate the winter solstice.

16:19 Right. So there's that camp that thinks that. And then there are some scholars, or maybe they're not scholars, maybe they're just deep thinkers. Maybe they live in Wisconsin. someplace in the north, you know, where they see lots of snow. And they think that, well, it can't be December 25th because, you know, the shepherds wouldn't be in the fields. It's much too cold. Except they don't know what it's like in Israel. Right. In Jerusalem. They've never been there. If you didn't have internet back then, you couldn't see what's the forecast today. Right. How do you know what it's like over there? So when are the lambs being born? So these people think that it should be that Jesus was born in the springtime because that's lambing season. Well, it's lambing season in Wisconsin, probably, during the spring.

17:13 Yeah. But... It's a little bit warmer climate. And even if it's still cold, you know, I'm a mother, right? When the babies do, it's going to come in its time. Yeah, that's right. And so in actuality, the lambing season in Israel, in the Middle East, is from November to March. So it is entirely possible that there would be shepherds in the fields. Even in December. Okay. So, eh. And all of these wonderful Christmas songs. And listen, I love Christmas music. Yeah, you're dreaming of a white Christmas. It's actually winter music. Well, some of it is. A lot of it.

18:03 But even some of the songs that we sing. See amid the winter snow. Da -da -da -da. Okay. And once in a while you find snow in those Christmas carols. You know, Israel gets snow. Not real often, but it doesn't last. Yeah. And maybe seven to 10 years, you'll get an accumulated amount. Yeah, you get a decent one that accumulates. And the whole country will come out to see it. Yeah. That's what's amazing about Israel. And it's dangerous. Yeah, because they don't know how to drive in it. Right. So looking into some of the deep digging I have done here, there was an article online, and I'll put a... I'll put several links in the show notes to some of the stuff that I've been looking at. But there's an article about how December 25th became Christmas that's out there under biblicalarchaeology .org.

18:57 And I'll just quote a little bit, a few sentences. It says, the earliest mentioned of December 25th as Jesus' birthday. comes from a mid -4th century Roman almanac that lists the death dates of various Christian bishops and martyrs. The first date listed, December 25th, is marked Natus Christus in Bethlehem Judei. I presume that's Latin. Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea. So that's mid -4th century. So about 400, they use CE, which is... Common era. Common era. You know, we grew up saying A .D. It's Anno Domini. It's a Latin term. A .D. stands for Anno Domini, the year of our Lord. Year of our Lord. Yeah. So A .D.

19:48 and C .E. mean the same thing. Basically, it's talking about the common era. So in about 400 C .E., Augustine of Hippo mentions a local dissident Christian group, the Donatists. who apparently kept Christmas festivals on December 25th, but refused to celebrate the Epiphany on January 6th, regarding it as an innovation. So they were already celebrating January 6th. And in their minds, I think, instead of calling it Epiphany back then, they were thinking of that as the birth of Jesus. And you'll find, I believe, that Orthodox Christmas is actually January, on that date. So that's where there's a discrepancy between East and West in the church as to when to celebrate.

20:38 Some say December 25th and some say January 6th. And then going on, it says the first mention of a date for Christmas around 200, the year 200. And the earliest celebrations that we know about, 250 to 300, come in a period when Christians were not borrowing heavily from pagan traditions of such an obvious character. So they didn't get it from the sun worshipers. It wasn't their idea to mix that together. They just thought it was really cool that it ended up on the same day. So the December 25th. feast seems to have existed before 312, which was the year of Constantine's conversion. So all the folks that are saying, oh, it's just a pagan tradition that came in with Constantine. Well, no, apparently not. Apparently not. And then it was only in the 600s that the church leaders began suggesting. to turn pagan temples into churches and taking the pagan holidays and turning them into feast days for the saints.

21:48 So it was later that that idea of mixing the pagan dates in order to get the pagans to come to church. See, that was their heart. It's not that they were trying to dilute the Christian traditions. They were trying to gather in the pagans because they're used to celebrating those things. Let's turn it into a Christian thing. And there's some merit to that. I'm not going to argue that one way or the other. I think their hearts were in the right place. So maybe December 25th could be a thing. It's obviously not a pagan thing, like we've been instructed. You know, a lot of the things that come into our experience that we learn, we learn from people who are speculating.

22:38 And the more you tell it, the more it becomes truth to you. You know, it's kind of like the laws so -called, like Jesus called them the traditions of men. They're added. The more you keep a tradition, the more it becomes law to you. Right. So a lot of the things that we've been taught are speculation rather than based in fact. Okay. So as I was preparing for this. And just meditating on how to bring this. And I felt like this was the heart of God to talk about. Should we celebrate Christmas? So I was reminded of a video that we saw years ago. We had the DVD. We probably still have the DVD. And we still have a DVD player. Just don't look at it very much. No, we haven't. I think we pulled it out a couple of years ago, a few years ago. Anyway, it's probably a decade or so ago that Rick Larson came out with this video called Star of Bethlehem. interested, and I really believe he was moved by the Holy Spirit, to question what was the star of Bethlehem? And can we find out what it was? Can we determine something about the actual birth of Jesus? So I went looking for it on YouTube because I didn't want to go looking for it in the DVDs. I thought, maybe it's out there on YouTube. Let me have a look.

24:09 Well, before I got there to find it, I found something. So Scott Christie posted this on his YouTube channel. And he takes, I don't know if it's the same software because I didn't go find the DVD or find it on YouTube. I don't know. But he's using software called Stellarium to follow the star as the wise men did 2 ,000 years ago. And we'll post a link to that in our show notes. He takes this and shows it on the screen. And what Rick Larson was talking about in his video was that he saw that the planet Jupiter, which is called the king planet. Yeah, it's massive.

25:00 Yeah, it's the biggest of the planets. That because it's a planet. All the planets are kind of known as roving stars because they're not stars, they're planets. And so they're in orbit around the sun, just like the earth is in orbit around the sun. And so they're moving in different ways and they don't seem to make any sense compared to the rest of the stars. But in this particular place in time, he's able to look at it in the software. He's able to see any given date. from any place on the planet. It's very significant that you can look back through time and see where all of the stars are or were or will be. You know, you can push it forward or you can look in the past. Where is it if you were in Timbuktu? Yeah, that's amazing. You can see anything. So he could look at what the stars looked like in the sky.

26:00 around the time when Jesus was born. And, you know, there's this thing about, it was decided that Herod died in 4 BC. So Jesus must have been born before that because Herod was alive, right? Yeah. So the thing about that is... 4 BC. Yeah, 4 BC, like that's a head scratcher, right? Yeah. So I went digging for that one too. And discovered that... They came up with this idea of he died in 4 BC because the history that was written was that there was a, was it a solar eclipse or a lunar eclipse? There was an eclipse. There was an eclipse. Okay, there was an eclipse. I forget whether it was solar or lunar. But there was an eclipse in 4 BC before Passover, which was what, that was the words. I don't know if it was Josephus. I didn't get those. dates down or that information down. But there was an eclipse, but actually it was only a partial eclipse. But there was a full eclipse in the year 1 BC or like zero. So it would have been after Jesus was born. So that puts it a little bit closer to what the stars were showing. Okay. So we can throw out that 4 BC thing as another tradition

27:30 that somebody came up with. Because when that information was put together, they didn't have all of this software that you could see what was going on and see where and when all the eclipses were. And you didn't have access to the internet and AI and all the things that you can use now to help you find out the details. Okay. So this software looks at Jupiter showing up in the constellation of Leo. Okay. Remember, these are the wise men, magi. They probably weren't really kings. Yeah.

28:12 But they were probably really wealthy. Yeah. And they're probably, how many were there? Well, tradition says there's three. Right. Why does it say there's three? Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Exactly. They had three gifts. It doesn't say that there were three men. Well, what if they had three people bringing frankincense? Yeah, exactly. I mean, it was probably an entire entourage. Entourage, because they came from a long distance, and so they would probably have to have their own people that are like soldiers. Right. Because, you know, you're going to run into stuff along the way. And the miracle of the two, they're going through Roman territory.

28:53 I don't know if anybody's ever thought of that. The Romans hadn't gotten there yet. Oh, they hadn't? Not in that part. The Romans weren't in the east. It was Parthians. And that's part of the reason why they put Herod in, why the Romans put Herod in, because he was like a buffer between them and the Parthians. Okay. We're getting some real history here, too. I've been learning a little. Yeah. So these wise men were probably astronomers or astrologers. There's some speculation maybe they had been trained by Daniel even in Babylon. We don't know where they were. We just know that they were in the east. They came from the east. So they were looking at the stars.

29:40 And what Rick Larson found and what Scott Christie found, I'm assuming it was Scott Christie that made the video, It's at least on his YouTube channel. What they saw was that Jupiter had come into Leo, the constellation of the lion, right? So it came in conjunction. In other words, they lined up together to make a brighter star because there's two stars. Makes a brighter star. So they're lining up with Regulus, which is the heart star of Leo. It's the star that's at the heart. of the lion. And interestingly, I thought this was fascinating. It's a blue -white star, Regulus. And what is Israel? Blue and white.

30:31 Yeah, everything's blue and white. Everything's blue and white, yeah. Colors of the flag. Right. So you've got Jupiter, the king star, and Regulus is also a king star. So Jupiter's the king planet in conjunction with the king star in Leo. So, Where is he that is born king of the Jews? Why would the lion represent the Jews? Lion of the tribe of Judah. Exactly. So this software traces this activity of what's going on in Leo with Jupiter and Regulus. And at the same time, if you look further down beyond the horizon, actually south, that it's kind of like what Revelation 12 says. There appeared a great wonder in heaven or a sign in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and upon her head a crown of 12 stars. Okay, so right under Leo at the time of this, the sun is in the constellation Virgo. Interesting that that would be the Virgin.

31:50 Okay. So we're talking about the Virgin Mary, right? Yeah. And the moon is under her feet. So you can see that in this program, in this software program. And upon her head, you could possibly say that Leo would be representing the 12 tribes. Okay. Possibly. Yeah. Okay. Maybe. It talks about the... third part of the stars, cast them to the earth. The dragon stood before the woman, which was ready to be delivered for to devour her child as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a man child who was to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. And her child was caught up unto God and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness. So, you know, there's, I believe that there are more than one ways to interpret the scripture and the prophetic things can often be prophetic of more than one thing. And scriptures, like the scripture that says, out of Egypt have I called my son. Okay, so we know that that's also talking about Egypt and how the children of Israel came out of Egypt at Passover. We celebrated that. We just talked about celebrating that. And it also is referring to when Herod died and Jesus came. back out of

33:24 Egypt. They had fled to Egypt. I'm getting ahead of myself. But anyway, so you have this picture of the dragon ready to eat up the baby. And if there ever was a dragon in a man's suit, it was Herod. The worst of the worst. Yeah, he was absolutely wicked. But to get the favor of the Jews, he was building the temple, the second temple. Right. And really doing an amazing job on it. Yeah, and he built a building for the cave of Machpelah where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and possibly the 12, well, 11 of the sons were buried there.

34:06 Because we know that Joseph was buried up in Shechem. In fact, we were just there a few years ago. And that building is still standing 2 ,000 years later. Yeah, amazing. After Herod had it built. I mean, that's a stunning thing. You can look at it and know that it's Herodian. Yeah. There's the graves of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Right. They're all buried there. Yeah, and their wives. And their wives. Yeah. And it's like a neutral place for Jew and Muslim. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. Very interesting. So it's there to this day. Yeah. So, I mean, this is a historical figure, but he was so wicked. He wasn't even of the descent of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

34:52 So how Jewish was he? Well, his grandfather had converted to Judaism under the Maccabees. Okay. That was not the very first group of Maccabees, but a few generations on. I think it was John Hyrcanus was the one that... got real zealous, I'll say, about making people choose if you're going to serve God as a Jew or if you're going to die. And so there was a lot of forced conversion of the Edomians. And the Edomians were descendants of Edom. You hear Edomian, Edom, which is descendants of Esau. This is a people group that has an ancient hatred for the Jews because there's a jealousy there. You know, Jacob and Esau, there was a fight there. Isaac and Ishmael. Well, this is Jacob and Esau we're talking about right now.

35:48 So there's the Isaac and Ishmael issue and there's the Jacob and Esau issue. And then there's the sons of Keturah. There's a lot of issues. We won't go into that right now because we're trying to stay focused on Christmas. So anyway. Herod's father was involved in the court in Rome, and he pulled his son in to get favor. And one thing led to another, and he was appointed to be king of the Jews. And when he was appointed that and unanimously ratified by the Senate, the Roman Senate, they went out and celebrated by offering a sacrifice to Jupiter. Wow. King of the Jews.

36:29 King of the Jews. What's wrong with this picture? And he was so jealous that he even had one of his wives killed and her sons that she had with him. I won't take time to go into that. But he dealt with things by eliminating his enemies, killing them. So there was a lot of blood on his hands. Sounds like a lot of that going on today. Absolutely. So he, I think, I'd never seen it before, but he looks like he was in that particular picture. Herod was the dragon that was waiting to gobble up the baby because he was the one that had all the babies killed, right? Yeah, up to two years. Right. So the reason why he's asking the wise men about... When did you first see this? So that he could eliminate his enemies. Yeah. And if you're wondering why up to two years, you know, well, it says in Luke, when you read the story, it says the young child.

37:31 It doesn't say baby. Right. It says the young child because Jesus was already born, but he was still in Bethlehem. Right. And if you read that and they brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the young child. So he wasn't a baby. He was older. And so that's why Herod figured the timing up. That's why we'll say up to two years. So we'll add a little extra just to make sure we got him. We're going to get this king that was born because I'm the king. And I was appointed. And it's all about me. That's exactly what Herod was all about. So let's look at Luke chapter 1 to get a... biblical handle on when was Jesus born. Because there's some clues in the scripture. So in Luke chapter 1, we see that the angel Gabriel meets up with Zacharias in the temple while he's offering the incense. And, you know, he berates him for his unbelief and makes him be quiet until the baby is born. Because he's, you know, he and his wife. had not been able to have a child. And, you know, there's something about this barren wife thing, barren woman, that the baby that comes from the barren woman is a special baby. I think we mentioned that before. And so this is a very special child, John the Baptist, right? So it says, I don't

39:06 want to go too much into that story, but it says that In the days, I'm in Luke chapter 1 and verse 5, there was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, okay, so he was the king of the Jews, a certain priest named Zacharias of the course of Abiah, and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. So let's look at the course of Abiah. What does that mean? Is this a clue? It's a mystery. So in 1 Chronicles 24 .10, we see that David has set things in order for the priests. By this time, there's lots of priests. There's lots of people that are descended from Aaron. So now they don't have to be there 24 -7, 365, or 360 as the Hebrew calendar would have. They can take turns. So it's giving the divisions. In chapter 24 of 1 Chronicles. And you come to verse 10 and it says, well, let me just give it verse 5. Thus they were divided by lot, one sort with another, for the governors of the sanctuary and governors of the house of God were of the sons of Eleazar and the sons of Ithamar. And then it goes on. I'm going to skip some. You get to verse 10. The seventh to Hakos, the eighth to Abijah or Abiah. Abiyahu probably. So when you've got it Greekized, it's

40:38 of Abaya. So if you start counting at the beginning of the year, and everybody is doing their course, the course of Abaya was probably the third week of the Hebrew month Sivan. So around, according to this stellar thing, it looks like in 3 BC, The month of Sivan began May 15th. So the course of Abaya would have been the third week of Sivan, so around June 1st to the 7th. Or if you're looking at the month of Sivan, it would be the 18th through the 25th of Sivan, assuming that they start on Shabbat. Okay? So then he goes home because he's been stricken dumb to make sure that he will...

41:30 follow through to do his part so that they can have a baby, right? I'm trying to be delicate here. So he's got to do his part in order to make this prophecy come true. So he goes home and he does his part with his wife. And so then fast forward six months. And the angel Gabriel comes to Mary and says that, you know, you're going to have a baby and it's going to be the son of the highest. And maybe I should read a little. You shall conceive in your womb and bring forth a son and call his name Yeshua. He shall be great. and shall be called the Son of the Highest. And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom there shall be no end. No end, yeah.

42:35 And so she says, how is this? How can that be? I haven't ever known a man. The Holy Spirit shall overshadow you. Exactly. And then he says, behold, your cousin Elizabeth, she has also conceived a son in her old age. And this is the sixth month with her who was called Maron. For with God, nothing shall be impossible. Okay. So if Elizabeth got pregnant the first part of June, six months later is the month of December. Okay. And what's going on in December? Do we have any kind of a feast in December? Yeah, the Festival of Lights. Yes. So wouldn't it be appropriate that the light of the world would be conceived during the Festival of Lights? Exactly. Because it's the start of it when you start the light of the candles, and here's the start in the womb of the Messiah to be. Exactly. She conceived in December. When is she going to give birth? September. Okay.

43:44 What feast do we have in September? Feast of Tabernacles. Okay. Now let's look at the stars. So what we find in the stars is, so in 3 BC, Kislev 25, which is the beginning of Hanukkah, falls on December 2nd. We don't know exactly, you know, did the Holy Spirit come over her as soon as Gabriel left. We don't know the timing on that. We don't know. But we know approximately. So if she conceived on the beginning of Hanukkah, the light of the world, then if you go by the conception date, if the conception date was actually the 2nd of December, He would have been born September 7th, which is Erev Yom Kippur. Wow.

44:41 The atonement day. The atonement day. He came to be our atonement. The most holy day of the year in the Hebrew calendar. Yeah. But according to this stellar thing, in 3 BC, I was looking at 3 BC, the month of Sivan actually begins May 15th on our calendar. And so the course of Abiah being the third week, so June 1st through 7th. So around the 8th, you know, somewhere in that vicinity is when John the Baptist is conceived. And then Gabriel comes. So according to the stellar software, this sign happened on the 12th of September.

45:30 which was in that year, looking at the Hebrew calendar, that was the beginning of Sukkot, the first day of Sukkot. Now, in Sukkot, there's a thing about, if you look at Numbers 29, there were a whole lot of sacrifices made during Sukkot. Every day there were bullocks and rams. and lambs and a goat every day during Sukkot. And it also says, and I'm not sure whether this is law or tradition, but it says that the shepherds would stay in the fields with the flocks. The flocks couldn't be kept in their corrals because they want to make sure that nobody gets bruised. You can't have a bruise on a lamb that's going to be sacrificed. So they had to keep them out in the fields. I looked at the numbers and every day for the first seven days, there are two rams and 14 lambs without blemish of the first year for seven days. On the eighth day, there's one ram and seven lambs. And I'm not counting the bullocks because they're not going to be in the fields with the lambs. Also, there was to be one kid goat for each of the eight days of the atonement. So that's a total of 15 rams, 105 lambs and eight kids. So that's 128 animals to keep from getting blemished. Wow. Not to mention

47:02 the rest of the flock of ewes that produced the lambs. And also, it was traditional that those lambs for that feast came from Bethlehem. Okay. So there you have it. Okay. So if Jesus was actually born on September 12th. He was born on the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles that year because the Feast of Tabernacles falls on the 12th. It starts on the 12th that year. And so he would have been circumcised on the eighth day, which is the great day of the feast. Wow. So he would have been circumcised and called Yeshua on the eighth day, the great day of the feast. He didn't go to the temple until 30 days later. for the sacrifice of Mary's purification. Sorry, that's a little different. So it's only like eight miles from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. So that's like a half a day's journey with some sheep. You know, you get them to walk there. You just do it for that day and they're there. So here's another little interesting piece. I found this in...

48:14 I had it written as a note in my Bible. Somebody quoted it and I wrote it in. So then I went out to find it today. And David Yaniv wrote a book called The Birth of Messiah. And he says, now the most interesting liturgy of the Hosanna liturgy, a passage from an old Orthodox Jewish prayer book for the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles. This is found in the Talmud under Hallel number five, and it's interpreted as follows. Glory to God in the heavens, and on the earth peace and goodwill towards the earth. What does that sound like? That sounds awfully familiar. Peace on earth, goodwill towards men. Exactly, exactly. And so there's a whole lot of strength to the idea that Jesus was born during Sukkot. And these people that were looking at the stars, They're thinking that that's when he was conceived. And so then he would have been born in June. But there's nothing on the calendar, nothing on the Hebrew calendar that has any significance at that time. So I think it makes way more sense that he was actually born during Sukkot on that date. And that perhaps that June date was when the Magi decided, you know, maybe we need to go and celebrate this. And so at some point, they started their journey. And guess when Jupiter...

49:47 Now, let me just explain this real quickly, that because of the orbit of the Earth and the orbit of Jupiter, it appears that Jupiter first goes one direction and then the other. And at some point, it looks like it stops and it goes the other direction. So the day that it stopped over Bethlehem, so you can see on this program, you can see from the position of the sky over Bethlehem. The day that it stopped over Bethlehem was December 25th. That's quite amazing. So yes, it's okay to celebrate on the 25th of December if you want to. But I remember when we went to the Philippines years ago, we were told that in the Philippines, you celebrate the birthday of Jesus in all the months that end in ber. So September, October, November, December, you're going to celebrate for four months. And I wonder if that's what we'll do in the millennium when Jesus comes, that we'll have a four -month celebration of his birth, you know? I just think it's wonderful.

51:00 And just as a comment, I remember that the Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth, she was born in April. And so... The weather's not very good in England in April to have parties outside and parades and things like that. So they had a certain date in June to celebrate the Queen's birthday because the weather's more likely to be good. So you don't have to celebrate your birthday. In fact, in our family, we tend to celebrate birthdays on the weekends closest. to the birthday. You don't always get to celebrate right on the birthday. And I remember that there was a thing some years ago. I don't remember who the seer was, somebody who sees in the Spirit, and Jesus appeared to her dressed in a beautiful royal red robe with some kind of gold trimmings and so on. And he was saying, I'm just happy that they're celebrating my birthday. Something along those lines. I'm sure I haven't got it exactly right. But it was very significant to me, and it stuck in my heart, that it's okay for us to celebrate his birthday whenever it works out to celebrate his birthday. Just celebrate it.

52:17 Because that's when people are at least a little bit open to, okay, what's the real story behind Christmas? Well, this is it. And it's in the stuff. The stars are showing the truth of the word of God. It's there. And it's to be celebrated. And we want to celebrate it. So we just want to invite you. Come and worship. Come and worship. Worship Christ, the newborn King. Amen. Amen.

53:23 Check out our website at globaloutpouring .org to find out more information, read our blogs, connect with us, and donate. You can also browse our web store for life -changing anointed books. Until next time, this is Sharon Buss. And I'm Philip Buss. God bless you with His overwhelming, loving presence.