The Two Millenia Miracle

What do you believe about Christmas? At this time of year, billions of people on the planet are celebrating the birth of a baby that happened over two millenia ago in a small town in what we know today as the Middle East. Have you ever stopped to ask a simple question, one that would appear to be logical? That question would be, why?

Let's take a trip back in time. We'll make it a reality trip, one that journeys into the real world of those days and a few more over the ensuing centuries. Starting in first century Bethlehem in Judea, we find it dry and hot. No one exchanged Christmas cards. There were no trees being decorated. No one wore a crucifix around their neck.

Depending on whatever you choose to believe, on one mostly quiet night a teenage girl gave birth in a room, or a cave, or a barn, or a stable. Her child was a son, and she and her older carpenter fiancee would eventually take this child home with them to Nazareth and raise him through boyhood and adolescence into early manhood.

As a man, he would eventually become a preacher and a teacher, extolling men to love one another. Many of his teachings would run counter to the religious and political powers of the day, and he and his followers would eventually be seen as dangerous. He was taken into custody and ultimately killed by crucifixion, typical of political prisoners of Rome in those days.

There is little to suggest on the surface that there is anything special about this story. Baby born in a small town in the middle of nowhere to a teenage single mother grows up to become a somewhat popular preacher and is crucified as thousands of others were who also dared to stand up against the powers-that-be of the day.

In the aftermath of his death, his dozen or so closest followers are afraid for their own lives. They deny knowing him and go into hiding. Over the next few decades they will argue among and splinter apart from one another over how he actually would want them to remember him and continue to spread the word.

A few centuries after his death, with all of those original followers long dead and gone, the mother of a Roman ruler suddenly begins to believe, manages to convert her son, and the once obscure belief system becomes mainstream. What has become known as 'Christianity' grows and spreads.

Over the next 1,600 years the 'Church' of these followers in the teachings of Jesus Christ will explode around the world and across history in numbers of believers, material wealth, and influence. It is estimated that today there are well over 200 million Christians in America, over 76% of the entire population of the United States.

Around the world today there are over 2 billion Christians. One out of ever three people on the planet believe in the deity of that small baby born to that unwed teenage mother in that small town over two thousand years ago. How do you account for that, other than divinely inspired and shepherded miracle?

No matter what the actual day and date may have been, tonight we celebrate the birth of that small boy child. Few could possibly have realized it at the time, but the child born that night in those humble circumstances would be an undeniable light unto the world.

So back to the original question that I asked. What do you believe about Christmas? If you celebrate it, but don't believe in Jesus Christ, then why do you celebrate it? Because everyone else does? That's pretty lame of you. If you don't celebrate it, then how do you account for the miracle of these past two millenia? How do you account for more than 2 billion adherents today? Mass hysteria?

The purpose here was to challenge you to think about not only Christmas, but the particular origination of the holiday, the 'reason for the season', the actual birth of Jesus Christ. Think about how that small child grew into a man about whom it can be legitimately claimed has changed and influenced the world more than any other that ever walked the face of the earth.

The two millenia miracle continues to grow and spread today. Despite constant and increasing attacks on the celebration of Christmas here in America, it cannot be erased from the public consciousness. The reason that Christianity has grown and spread and continues to do so against the forces of secularism, radical Islam, and other sworn enemies is a simple one: it is Truth. Merry Christmas.

Islamism Series: Goodbye, America

"Imagine a world without the U.S. or Israel, it can happen." That is a publicly pronounced statement by Iranian President and radical islamic idealog Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that I read to my Racial Islam students every week. But is anyone taking him seriously? How could the United States, the acknowledged "most powerful nation in the history of the planet earth" cease to exist? Could a relatively small nation like Iran make something like this happen? I mean, the United States defeated the British against all odds, survived a devastating Civil War, and led the world in overcoming both the Fascism of Hitler's Nazi Germany and the Socialism of the Soviet Union, a pair of legitimate world military powers. Well, it might be pretty difficult for Iran, at least acting on it's own, to make America completely disappear as a nation. However, to think that we are invulnerable from a devastating attack from them would be to act with naivete, and that is something that we must not allow to happen. Because not only can Iran cause widespread devastation and seriously cripple, if not destroy, the United States as a superpower, but they are actively engaged in efforts to make that happen. Throughout history, even single mighty empire that has ever come along has fallen. Does Egypt still exist? Sure. Does Rome still exist? Of course. Is Britain still a strong peopled nation? Most definitely. But the fact of the matter is that not one of these is the major force in the world today, and at one time in history each one was the dominant power in the world. For the United States to fail to learn this lesson of history is for the United States to doom itself to repeat the process, and to one day either cease to exist or find itself a secondary nation. America faces many dangers in this process, including losing it's own unique national identity from within by continually sacrificing our traditions, laws, and language on the mantle of multi-culturalism. But the specific threat the Iranians can and are planning is nuclear. Ahmadinejad is doing everything in his power to obtain nuclear power. Of course it's for peaceful energy purposes if you ask him. This is the same guy that has said publicly that "Israel must be wiped off the map", "it will one day vanish", and "it is a tree that will be eliminated by one storm." What exactly do you think he is talking about here, and when he speaks of a world without the U.S.? The plan that Iran hopes to enact involves what is known as an 'EMP' attack on the United States. Iran would continue to develop their nuclear program to the point where they can construct a couple of nuclear bombs. They are already testing missile technology that would allow them to reach the continental United States from a sea-going vessel. Their plan would be to fire one of those missiles with an attached nuke at our country. Not at a city like New York, trying to blowup infrastructure. No, all that would do is make us angry and lead to their self-destruction. While some of these crazed islamists will give up their lives for the cause, the entire leadership is not suicidal. What they will do instead is launch this nuke so that it explodes in the atmosphere above our country, instantly creating what is known as an 'EMP' effect. In a report released earlier this year by a commission appointed by Congress after the 9/11 attacks to study just such a scenario, the following results were released: "If even a crude nuclear weapon were detonated anywhere between 40 kilometers to 400 kilometers above the earth, in a split-second it would generate an electro-magnetic pulse [EMP] that would cripple military and civilian communications, power, transportation, water, food, and other infrastructure." It wouldn't cause many immediate deaths or damage many buildings, but it would cause electric, gas, lighting, and water systems to fail. Committee spokesperson Dr. William Graham says that the result would be that the United States “would quickly revert to an early 19th century type of country, except that we would have 10 times as many people with ten times fewer resources. Most of the things we depend upon would be gone, and we would literally be depending on our own assets and those we could reach by walking to them.” Basically with the launch of one strategically placed weapon, the Iranians would eliminate the United States as a superpower. They would then turn their remaining arsenal on Israel, eliminating this much smaller nation from existence. Iran could do this openly as a nation, or they could farm the dirty work out to a terrorist organization and try to claim that they had no knowledge of the plot. Make no mistake about the intentions of the current Iranian regime, or the intentions of radical islamists the world over. They want the world under Islamic rule and law, and they will do whatever it takes to overcome those standing in the way of making it happen. The U.S. government and military, and all of us as citizens, need to be aware of and understand exactly what we are up against if we are going to preserve our great nation and it's strength in world affairs. If we refuse to meet this challenge, it will be goodbye America. At least to the America that we all know and love.