Kindly read and Study carefully and prayerfully with your Bible. This is a teaching for an open hearted sons and daughters of God that are not drove to & fro by wind of false doctrines.
Can we even know when Jesus was born?
December 25th is universally celebrated as Jesus Christ’s birthday. Around the world Christians celebrate the season and the day by giving gifts, being with family and friends. Even for those who aren’t Christian it’s a season of joyous celebration.
So, When was Jesus Christ born? Let's find out...
Every year, we hear Christmas carols all about the baby Jesus in the manger and the winter wonderland associated with His birth. If we look at our calendar, chances are, right there on December 25th, it says Christmas Day. The birth of Jesus Christ is said to be the reason behind the season. But of course every year people worry about the fact that Christ is not in the season. But was Christ actually born on Christmas Day - on December 25th? It’s not as clear and simple as our calendars would suggest.
If we look into it, we find that December 25th wasn’t always considered Jesus’ birth date.
Although it is difficult to determine the first time anyone celebrated December 25th as Christmas Day, historians are in general agreement that it was sometime during the fourth century. Now this is an amazingly late date. Think about it! What this means is that Christmas - which most consider Jesus’ birthday - wasn’t observed by the Roman church until about 300 years after Christ’s death. Christmas cannot be traced back to either the teachings or the practices of the earliest Christians. That sounds almost impossible, doesn’t it? But it’s true.
So why did the Roman church adopt Christmas Day as the time to celebrate Jesus’ birth? The reason His birthday is celebrated now, at that time, is because religious leaders of the day wanted to give a pagan festival a name change and to make it easier for pagans to convert over to Christianity.
Listen to this quote from the Encyclopedia Americana which makes it very clear:
“In the fifth century, the Western Church ordered it [speaking of Christ’s birth] to be observed forever on the day of the old Roman feast of the birth of Sol [who is the sun god], as no certain knowledge of the day of Christ’s birth existed” (1944 edition, “Christmas”).
The reason for this confusion is not surprising. The Bible doesn’t actually tell us the exact date of Jesus Christ’s birth. There is no specific date given. What’s more, there aren’t any mentions of any celebrations being held honoring Christ’s birth date by the early church.
And by the early church we mean the church that we read about in the book of Acts. These people followed Jesus Christ’s example and teaching to the letter. And none of that included celebrating the day of His birth. There is no command to celebrate Christ’s birthday found in all of Scripture, certainly not in Christ’s teachings, nor in the letters of the apostles who founded the church.
As Christians, you and I should desire to follow Christ’s example and His teaching and that of His church. And nowhere do we find in Scripture that Jesus instructed us to celebrate His birthday - its just not there. And the apostles to whom the faith delivered, was given and who translated that and transferred it to the church, they followed Christ’s example in everything they did.
Again, there is no record of the early church celebrating Christmas or for that matter, the birth of Jesus Christ in any way shape or form.
Even so, it is possible that we can generally know the time or the season of the birth of Christ. Because there are distinct clues that give us an idea about the time of year that He was born.
So, what about December 25th?
Is it possible the Roman church accidentally adopted the correct date for Jesus’ birth? Well, a careful Bible study shows that the middle of winter was absolutely not the time Christ was born.
There are two big reasons why Christmas or December 25th can’t be the time of Christ’s birth.
(1). We know from the Gospel accounts that the shepherds were in the fields watching their flocks at the time of the birth of Jesus.
Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus found in chapter 2 of the Gospel of Luke tells us a great deal of the details of many of the facts surrounding that birth. Here is what it says:
“And she brought forth her firstborn Son” - speaking of Christ’s mother, Mary - “and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them at the inn. Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night” ( Luke 2:7-8 ).
Listen to what Adam Clarke’s Commentary mentions about the significance of what we just read here in Luke’s account. It says:
“… Shepherds were not in the fields during December. According to [a book entitled]
Celebrations: The Complete Book of American Holidays , Luke’s account ‘suggests that Jesus may have been born in summer or early fall. Since December is cold and rainy in Judea, it is likely the shepherds would have sought shelter for their flocks at night’ (p. 309).”
Now, what do we have here? We have a recording. A historical fact about shepherds and the flocks in the cold, wet winter. They just weren’t there in the fields. The conditions were not appropriate for that to be taking place.
Now let’s look at what another source says. The Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary says this passage argues “against the birth [of Christ] occurring on December 25th since the weather would not have permitted shepherds watching over their flocks in the fields at night.”
So the first reason we know He wasn’t born in December was that there were shepherds in the fields tending their flocks, something that wouldn’t have been happening in the cold Judean winter.
(2). The second reason we know Jesus wasn’t born in December is that His parents traveled to Bethlehem to register in a Roman census (Luke 2:1-4 ). Such censuses were not taken in winter, when the temperatures often dropped below freezing and the roads were in poor condition thus inhibiting travel. Taking a census under such conditions would have been self-defeating, since it would have been too difficult for Judean residents to travel and to be counted. Travel back then wasn’t as easy as it is today. We live in an age of heated vehicles and snow plowed roads.
We have to understand what it was like in the culture and the setting of that time in the first century.
Now based on these two facts alone, we see that it’s impossible that the biblical account of Jesus’ birth happened in the winter, let alone on the specific date of December 25th. More than being a simple incorrect guess, the December 25th date was really an attempt to synthesize pagan worship into Christian worship.
We’ve proven that He wasn’t born on Christmas day or December 25th.
So when was Jesus born?
(1). We find the important clues about the real time of Jesus’ birth in what the Bible tells us about His cousin, John the Baptist.
Maybe you’ve read the Gospel of Luke and thought it was strange that the book and the story begins not with the story of the conception of Jesus, but with the story of the conception of John the Baptist. There’s a very good reason for this. Luke was sure to tell us in very specific detail when John the Baptist was conceived and born.
In Luke 1, it tells us that John’s mother, Elizabeth was six months pregnant when Jesus was conceived.
“In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary…” ( Luke 1:24-27 ).
Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, were cousins. That means that from this verse, we know that John was six months older than Jesus. So we can discover the approximate time of year Jesus was born if we know when John was born.
Now let’s look at what the Bible tells us about the time of John’s birth.
John’s father, Zacharias, was a priest serving in the Temple at Jerusalem. The Bible tells us that he and his wife were both righteous people who put their hearts into serving God. Zacharias, we’re told, was a priest ( Luke 1:5 ).
At this time, the Temple priests in Jerusalem were divided into several different “divisions” or what were called “courses” - or groups of priests that would take turns performing Temple service during the year. It’s like a yearly schedule for those serving at the Temple. There were so many priests at the time that they had to be set up on a schedule to have their time to serve in the Temple.
Now, here’s what’s important. Historians calculate that the course of Abia mentioned by Luke, during which Zacharias served, happened from June 13-19 in that year
(The Companion Bible , 1974, Appendix 179, p. 200).
The announcement therefore to Zacharias in the Temple as to the conception of John the Baptist took place between June 13-19 as our calendar has it today in that year.
During his Temple service, the angel Gabriel appeared to Zacharias and announced to him that he and his wife Elizabeth would have a child (Luke 1:8-13 ). After he completed his service and traveled home, Elizabeth conceived the cousin of Jesus; the child that would one day become John the Baptist ( Luke 1:23-24 ). It seems that John’s conception took place near the end of June which was after the division of Abia and Zecharias completed his Temple service, adding nine months brings us to the end of March the next year as the most likely time for John’s birth.
Adding another six months - the difference between the ages of John and Jesus ( Luke 1:35-36 ) - brings us to the end of September or early October as the likely time of Jesus’ birth.
Now, when we look back and we look at this timeframe, we learn some interesting facts.
Zacharias, remember, was serving during the course of Abia which was in the middle part of June of that year when he heard the announcement of his son’s birth. He went home, his wife conceived John the Baptist toward the end of June that year. Nine months later, John the Baptist was born in the spring, probably during the month of March as we know it today.
Six months later, Jesus Christ was born. Therefore, Christ is six months younger than his cousin and was born most likely in the fall sometime in the timeframe of September or early October of that year.
(2) Even the dates proves this as a lie from the pit of hell. Jesus Christ died in April 33AD, and record has it hat He lived for 33 and 1/2 years.
Now, let's do a quick calculation... 33 and 1/2 years means 33years and 6 months. 30 years will lead us back to month of April on the dot, but adding 6 more months to April leads us to...... What?...... Late September or early October of course. So where did they got their own date of December 25 from...
If they say Easter (Another false Doctrine and christianised Pagan festival), which they call the celebration of Christ's death and resurrection April, but the question is where the hell did December now became the month of Jesus Christ Birth? I'm not surprised, Babylon means Confusion.... They are confused and confusing many innocent souls but God is never an author of confusion.
What of A Red Santa and a Green Christmas Tree?
Among many today the central figure of Christmas is not Jesus but the man in the red suit. “Santa Claus, probably the most widely accepted of all the symbols of Christmas, arrived in Britain sometime during the 1880s from America, where he had long reigned as the gift-bringing St. Nicholas of the German and Dutch settlers.
“By the 1890s the English Father Christmas, originally a minor character in a mummer’s play, had been absorbed into the personality of his American counterpart [Santa Claus], and become the jovial figure that he is today … Santa Claus was accompanied and associated with ghosts and demons … Children are solemnly warned that only if they are very good will they receive their presents” (Cavendish, p. 483).
Why would Christian parents lie to their children in telling them Santa delivers gifts from the North Pole on Christmas Eve? How can Christians correlate the wise men’s meaningful gifts for the future King of Kings to Santa’s gifts for their children?
And what of the tradition of the Christmas tree?
“Equally old was the practice of the Druids, the caste of priests among the Celts of ancient France, Britain and Ireland, to decorate their temples with mistletoe, the fruit of the oak-tree which they considered sacred. Among the German tribes the oak-tree was sacred to Odin, their god of war, and they sacrificed to it until St Boniface, in the eighth century, persuaded them to exchange it for the Christmas tree, a young fir-tree adorned in honour of the Christ child … It was the German immigrants who took the custom to America” (L.W. Cowie and John Selwyn Gummer, The Christian Calendar, 1974, p. 22).
Would Christ participate in Christmas today?
Would Jesus Christ take part in a festival that, while stated to be in His honor, actually diametrically opposes Him by celebrating the worship of false gods? If He did, He would be violating the laws of God He Himself had proclaimed—thus sinning (see, for example, Deuteronomy 12:29-32 ). If He sinned, we have no Savior and no salvation.
God is the Author of life-saving truths—not of immaculately coiffed falsehoods. “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” ( John 8:32 ). Lies are of Satan: “The devil … does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it” (John 8:44 ).
Christmas blinds well-meaning people to its false narrative. We can’t put Christ back in Christmas, as many seek to do, because He was never there in the first place. Misguided people put Him there. What does that mean for us?
Jesus asked the religious leaders of His day: “Why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?” (Matthew 15:3). And He further said: “These people draw near to me with their mouth, and honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. And in vain they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” ( Matthew 15:8-9).
Satan wants to destroy many. He presents himself as an angel of light ( 2 Corinthians 11:14-15 ) but lives in and creates spiritual darkness (Ephesians 6 :12 ).
He promotes lies instead of truth, glittering lights instead of the true light of God, and mesmerizing music and false platitudes instead of the truth of salvation. He hopes to deceive humanity through holidays that honor a lie, not God.
Conclusion
Certainly Christmas is an intoxicating elixir, but you can break free from its debilitating addiction. You now have a choice to follow God’s instruction or to follow a holiday that originated in worship of ancient false gods. May God lead you to obey His holy will and honor Him always!
You may log on to http://understandingeverywordofgod.blogspot.com.ng/2016/12/the-truth-about-christmas-part-1.html?m=1 for the Part 1 of this series for a better and thorough understanding. God bless you!
DOMINALTI for CHRIST
On Behalf of End Time Hub!!!
