Full disclosure. MHProNews have not specifically fact checked the first article below about “Doing the Math” on Christmas. That said, over the years, several similar reports have been published that we have seen, which suggests that the information is common and presumably reliable. A quick check of Bing AI said: “The article you shared from WND discusses the prophecy of the arrival of Jesus Christ as predicted in the Bible. According to the article, the angel Gabriel gave Daniel a prophecy in 538 BC that pinpointed when the Messiah would arrive.1” Several sources were cited. So, that too seemed to indicate the sense previously shared that it is reasonably reliable. The first article will be followed by some other Christmas and somewhat related topics.
Part I – From the WND News Center to MHProNews is the Following
THE INCARNATION
Let’s do the math: The angel Gabriel’s spot-on prophecy
Exclusive: Richard Blakley looks into messenger’s encounters with both Daniel and Mary
By Richard Blakley
Published December 21, 2023 at 7:33pm
A wonderful film and website entitled “The Star of Bethlehem” consists of studies and amazing findings by lawyer Frederick A. Larson. One of the things discussed is his research concerning the timing of the Messiah’s first coming to the Earth.
The first two chapters of Matthew and Luke record Jesus’ incarnation. The gospel of Luke recounts the visitation of the angel Gabriel explaining to the Virgin Mary that she’s been chosen to bear God incarnate, fulfilling a 700-year-old prophecy from Isaiah 7:14.
In total Jesus fulfilled 333 Old Testament prophecies containing 456 facts all written 500 to 1,000 years before His birth. Mathematicians tried to calculate the probability of one man fulfilling 333 prophecies, containing 456 facts, but the math became impossible. So, they decided to calculate the probability of Jesus fulfilling just eight Old Testament prophecies, showing it is 1 chance in 100,000 trillion. This is analogous to covering the entire state of Texas in over two feet of silver half dollars with an X on the back of one coin. Then a blindfolded man is allowed to walk around the state and bend down once to pick up a coin. If he picks up the coin with the X, he has beat the odds of 1 in 100,000 trillion.
Remember, this is the probability of Jesus fulfilling just eight Old Testament prophecies. Jesus fulfilled 333 Old Testament prophecies, meaning, these prophecies were exclusively referencing one person – and His name is the LORD Jesus Christ. Jesus is who the Bible says He is. Jesus is God manifest in the flesh, He’s the Savior of the world, and He’s the one and only way to heaven. So, Christianity exclusively holds the answer to the question, “Who is the Savior of the world?”
Returning to the angel Gabriel visiting Mary in Luke’s gospel, this is not the first appearance of the angel Gabriel in Bible. Gabriel is the same angel who appeared to the prophet Daniel in 536-530 B.C. The angel told Daniel the year the Messiah would be crucified, recorded in Daniel 9:25-26 in the King James Bible. Scriptures teach us the Messiah will be “cut off” “seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks” after “the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem.” Scholars agree the days of these weeks are years. Adding this up means the Messiah would be crucified 483 years from the time of the commandment to rebuild Jerusalem, but there is a problem. Jews counted 360-day calendar years. Today calendar years are counted using 365.24 days. To correct for this, we take 483 years and multiply by 360 days per year, which yields 173,880 days. Converting to current years, we take 173,880 days and divide by 365.24 days per year, obtaining 476 years in today’s calendar system.
Now that we know the number of years, from where do we count? The prophet Nehemiah records king Artaxerxes’ decree “to restore and rebuild Jerusalem” as being the 20th year of Artaxerxes. In our calendar, that is 444 B.C. Counting forward 476 years, remembering that there is no year numbered zero, means the angel Gabriel told Daniel that the Messiah would be cut off … in A.D. 33.
Nisan 14 is always the day Passover begins, at twilight. All four gospels (Matthew 27:62, Mark 15:42, Luke 23:54, John 19:14) state that Jesus was crucified on Preparation Day, a Friday, the day before the Sabbath. Therefore, in the year of Jesus’ crucifixion, Passover had to be Thursday night and Jesus’ crucifixion had to occur on a Friday, which is a common consensus of the Church Fathers throughout church history. So, the crucifixion occurred on a Friday, Preparation Day for the Sabbath, after the Thursday night Passover was celebrated on Nisan 14. In the time frame of ~A.D. 30, we have two choices of when this could have occurred, and they are: April 7, A.D. 30, and April 3, A.D. 33.
So, which one is correct? Matthew 27:45, Mark 15:33 and Luke 23:44 record a three-hour eclipse of the sun during Jesus’ crucifixion. What kind of eclipse was this, a lunar eclipse or a solar eclipse? A solar eclipse is when the moon passes between the earth and sun, partially or fully blocking the sun’s disk. A lunar eclipse is when the moon passes through the earth’s shadow, fully or partially darkening the lunar disk. A total lunar eclipse is often called a blood moon, because the moon will appear red, as the sun’s light comes around the edges of the earth causing a red hue to the light, like a sunset, but now the light is traveling on to the lunar surface making it red.
The Apostle Peter describes the eclipse that occurred during the crucifixion. Explaining to a crowd of people what they had seen, Peter (Acts 2:16-21) quotes the prophet Joel (835 B.C.) and says, “the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood.” Peter was stating that the eclipse that occurred during Jesus’ crucifixion was a lunar eclipse with a blood moon.
Was there a blood moon visible from Jerusalem during Pilate’s reign? The answer is “yes.” There was only one. It occurred April 3, A.D. 33, which today we refer to as the Day of the Cross.
This angel Gabriel, who came to Daniel, and gave this amazing information concerning the Messiah, which has been confirmed by all four Gospels, history and science, is the same Gabriel that came to Mary around 500 years later, to tell her she was selected to bear the Messiah on the Earth.
This Christmas season, read Matthew chapters 1 and 2 and Luke chapters 1 and 2 with the realization this really happened. God incarnate came to the earth to be the Savior of mankind and wise men sought and worshiped Him. What do you think we should do today?
“Those that seek Me early shall find Me” (Proverbs 8:17). ##
Part II From the WND News Center to MHProNews is the following
THE INCARNATION
The groundbreaking values of the Jesus child
Exclusive: Hanne Nabintu Herland notes how unique Christian philosophy built Western civilization
Published December 20, 2023 at 7:30pm
We now celebrate Christmas and the magic of the baby boy born in Bethlehem who grew to become the world’s most significant person. As over 2 billion Christians across the globe seek the grace of this celestial king, the man with greater spiritual powers than anyone else on earth, we also reflect on the powerful ethical standards and values he brought with him. As history has been twisted to fit the now totally dominant, religion-hating Marxist, atheist narrative, it is well worth remembering that the values of Christianity once produced a strong Western civilization – the very ideals we are now leaving behind – with our corresponding cultural decline.
The work of Yale and Harvard professor/historian Robert R. Palmer and Joel Colton in “A History of the Modern World” is one of the most highly praised history texts ever that has been adopted in more than a thousand schools. It has been praised as “an elegantly written historical narrative, filled with analysis and balanced historical insights as well as its traditional attention to the processes of historical change, conflict, and political transformations.” Palmer asserts that Christian philosophy was completely revolutionary. It represented an altogether new definition of the value of human life, which led to the developing of human rights, tolerance and respect for differences. All these ideals originate from Christian philosophy, as initially instructed by Jesus the Jew when he lived his life in Israel over 2,000 years ago.
Christianity’s influence on Western values is simply overwhelming, writes Palmer. It was Christianity that introduced the principle of equality, which unleashed the principle that each man has a unique value: “It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the coming of Christianity. It brought with it, for one thing, an altogether new sense of human life. For the Greeks had shown man his mind; but the Christians showed him his soul. They taught that in the sight of God, all souls were equal, that every human life was sacrosanct and inviolate. Where the Greeks had identified the beautiful and the good, had thought ugliness to be bad, had shrunk from disease and imperfection and from everything misshapen, horrible, and repulsive, the Christian sought out the diseased, the crippled, the mutilated, to give them help. Love, for the ancient Greek, was never quite distinguished from Venus. For the Christians held that God was love, it took on deep overtones of sacrifice and compassion.”
Even suffering was viewed as a divine path to humility, since God himself had suffered death on the cross of Golgotha outside Jerusalem. In humility, Jesus gave his life so that others might live – the utmost expression of sacrificial love. Palmer points out that the early Christians worked hard to help the poor as none before them. They protested against the massacre of prisoners of war, were strong voices against slavery and strongly opposed the Roman tradition of gladiator matches, where men killed each other for the amusement of the crowd. The early Christians taught humility and virtues such as selflessness, honesty, chastity, perseverance and justice for the fatherless and the poor, and that all men were brothers.
The famous French philosophers Bernard-Henri Levy and Michel Houellebecq explain in “Ennemis Publics” that traditional Western civilization would never have developed the high view of human life and rights if it were not for the Judeo-Christian bold idea of a blessed creation made in the likeness of God and, therefore, sanctified.
In “A Time of Transition,” the German philosopher who often is viewed as the most important post-war intellectual in Europe, Jürgen Habermas, writes that the concept of individual morality of conscience, human rights, ideals of freedom and solidarity – all these ideals are the legacy of the Judeo-Christian ethics of love. To quote him, “Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.”
So, as we celebrate the genius of Jesus Christ at Christmas, we should be filled with gratitude for this great gift that has enlightened our darkened world with the possibility of love and kindness. His groundbreaking values shaped the West. Let us cling on to our Christian values.
Read Hanne’s The Herland Report. ##
MHProNews Note: MHProNews has featured Herland’s thoughts previously, including in reports on business, political and social issues like those linked here and here.
Part III – Christmas Eve from the Moon
Part IV – From the WND News Center to MHProNews is the Following
(No) Christmas in Bethlehem
Churches ‘will be empty this year’
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Israel365News.]
By Rabbi Leo Dee
Israel365News (Used by permission)
A message from a rabbi
While Jesus’s homeland is under attack by Islamic terrorists, the number of Palestinian Christians in the land of Israel continues to decline.
Churches in Bethlehem will be empty this year. The violent attack by Hamas in Gaza, and their barrage of missiles, have caused most airlines to cancel flights since the October 7 massacre. Palestinian Christians have announced that there will be muted Christmas celebrations in the Church of the Nativity this December.
With the war raging between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, tourism for the last quarter of 2023 has taken a huge hit, as it did during the COVID pandemic. In the winter months, this particularly hurts the Christian communities in Bethlehem, Nazareth, Haifa, and other Arab Israeli towns. In a regular year, over 50% of tourists visiting Israel are Christians coming to view their holy sites and boost the local economy.
The suffering of the Christian population of Bethlehem due to Arab aggression is not new. The Palestinian Authority has always shown contempt for Christian holy sites, violently evicting monks and nuns from the Holy Trinity Monastery in Hebron in 1997, and using Christian churches, schools, and homes as military bases during the Intifada. In April 2002, PA forces took over the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and held 40 Christian clergy and nuns as hostages for 39 days.
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs reports that the Palestinian Authority has been Islamizing Bethlehem since they assumed control in 1995. The city’s municipal boundaries were changed to incorporate 30,000 Muslims from three neighboring refugee camps, severely tipping the demography.
The city also added a few thousand Bedouins of the Ta’amra tribe, located east of Bethlehem, and encouraged Muslim immigration from Hebron to Bethlehem. As a result, the area’s 23,000 Christians were reduced from a 60% majority in 1990 to a 20% minority by 2001, when
Yasser Arafat appointed a Muslim from Hebron, Muhammed Rashad A-Jabari, as governor of Bethlehem.
Similarly, since Hamas took over in Gaza, the Christian population has declined from 5,000 Christians in 2006 to 1,100 Christians today. Palestinian Christians have generally chosen to emigrate to Argentina, Chile, Australia, Canada, and the USA.
Writing in Maariv in 2001, journalist Hanan Shlein explained why Palestinian Christians do not speak out about their situation. “Out of fear for their safety, Christian spokesmen aren’t happy to be identified by name when they complain about the Muslims’ treatment of them… off the record they talk of harassment and terror tactics, mainly from the gangs of thugs who looted and plundered Christians and their property, under the protection of Palestinian security personnel.”
Palestinian Muslim harassment of Palestinian Christians is just a microcosm of a wider phenomenon. An estimated 15% of the world’s Christian population lives in fear and suffers discrimination. In fact, according to the Christian organization Open Doors, Christians are the most persecuted people on the planet, with over 360 million suffering persecution, mostly in Islamic countries. Open Doors reports that during 2022 alone, 5,621 Christians were murdered in these countries; 2,100 churches were attacked and 4,542 Christians were detained.
While the worldwide media condemns Israel daily for protecting its own borders, following the worst terror attack against a Western nation in recent history, most people in the world are unaware of the plight of Christians in Arab lands.
As the bells are muted in Bethlehem this year, Christians around the world should protest the persecution of their brothers and sisters in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. While Jesus’s homeland is under attack by Islamic terrorists, and the number of Palestinian Christians in the land of Israel continues to decline, this is just a microcosm of a global trend of Muslim-Christian hatred. This year should be the year for Western Christians to demand that their co-religionists in Islamic countries must also have the right to celebrate a Merry Christmas.
The writer is a Jewish educator living in Efrat, near Bethlehem. His book Transforming the World: The Jewish Impact on Modernity has been republished in English and Hebrew in memory of his wife Lucy and daughters Maia and Rina, who were murdered by terrorists in April 2023.
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Israel365News.] ###
Part V – The Classic Peantus Linus Scene on the True Meaning of Christmas
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By L.A. “Tony” Kovach – for MHProNews.com.
Tony earned a journalism scholarship and earned numerous awards in history and in manufactured housing.
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