His Star in the East - Stranger than a UFO

Some make the mistake of calling the star that appeared following the birth of Jesus a UFO.  If you dig into the ancient texts, the reality is much stranger and more wonderful.

There came wise men from the east to Jerusalem saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him - Matthew 2:1-2 

The wisemen in this story are not the three quaint figures as seen in a plastic nativity scene, but were in fact a much larger group of “Magi” who were a particular priestly sect in the Medo-Persian Empire. Six hundred years earlier a Jewish man named Daniel introduced this group of Magi to the prediction of a Messiah - the Son of God who would come. Daniel was referred to as Rab-mag, the Chief of the Magi (Daniel 6).  Daniel was an expert in the Mazzeroth, the story of God’s creation written in the constellations. The Babylonian corruption of the Mazzeroth become the Zodiac and astrology of today- which is very different than the Mazzeroth. The Mazzeroth laid out the story of Jesus - From the virgin who bore him (the constellation Virgo) to his ultimate future kingship as the Lion of the tribe of Judah (the Constellation Leo).

I propose that for 600 years the teachings begun with Daniel were passed down through the ranks of this group of Magi, so that when the “star” appeared to them, they knew exactly what was going on; the Messiah had been born. This was no astronomical star; it moved and appeared over the small humble house where the toddler Jesus was living. Yet it was not some kind of spacecraft as we understand it. The sign had been expected for over 600 years. When Jesus came to the earth for the first time it was not a surprise to the Magi; his star was identified and long expected, not at all what we now call UFOs.

Hundreds of years before the star of Christ appeared over these verse were written in the Bible:

Numbers 24 

17 I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth.

Isaiah 60 

1 Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee. 2 For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the LORD shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. 3 And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. 

——————
Sources:
Who Were the Magi? by Chuck Missler -  Khouse.org

Uncovering The Mazzeroth - Berean Bible Study

What would you do if your Child was killed? Would you believe there is a God?

It’s a horrible thought. What if your child, or the person you love most in the world, was killed?  Many would point to that and say “there is no God.”  

Well, evangelist Greg Laurie lost his son just recently on July 24 in a horrible traffic accident here in DryWind’s home of Southern California.  There are a lot of fake, money grubbing false teachers that call themselves evangelists. Make no mistake, Greg Laurie is not one of them. Read more

The Cross and Hyperspace

One of the more persistent myths is the “non-physical” nature of spirituality. The average person thinks of spiritual things, if they believe in them at all, as “ghostly” or vaporous and somehow unscientific. Yet modern physics is rapidly moving to understand that there are many dimensions beyond the ones we perceive. (Refer to this article)

The Bible has made it clear that there are states of being beyond our physical reality, and these realities are tangible- indeed more tangible that our own existence that is subject to the decay and ephemerality of time. (Refer to http://khouse.org/articles/1998/62/)

All of this is important when we approach the resurrection of Yeshua (Jesus), the son of God; he bodily rose again with a new type of body that was physically here in our dimension as human and yet could also transcend the all the space-time barriers of our physical world.

Read more

John 3:16

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life

Hatred of the Fundamentals

One effect of Islamic religious terrorism is to strengthen the Secular Humanistic bias against various forms of religious orthodoxy. One can see it in the use of the word “Fundamentalism” in the mainstream to refer to backward, violent religous people who really do not belong in the modern world. An overt extension of this meaning is that “Fundamentalism” is the root cause of the many of the world’s current ills.

In reality, the term Fundamentalism really refers particularly to Christians who closely study their text, the Bible, and adhere to its tenets:

fun·da·men·tal·ism
1 a often capitalized : a movement in 20th century Protestantism emphasizing the literally interpreted Bible as fundamental to Christian life and teaching b : the beliefs of this movement c : adherence to such beliefs

Merriam-Webster Online Version, 2006

Secular Humanism in particular has been fixed on the demonization of Biblical Christianity by using Islamic violence to butress their hatred of Christians who dare to adhere to their beliefs:

Together, the two installments make vivid the fact that our Christian fundamentalists have the same hate list as their Muslim fundamentalists.

From 1988 to 1993, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences sponsored an interdisciplinary study known as The Fundamentalism Project, the largest such study ever done. More than 100 scholars from all over the world took part, reporting on every imaginable kind of fundamentalism. And what they discovered was that the agenda of all fundamentalist movements in the world is virtually identical, regardless of religion or culture.

— The Fundmentalist Agenda, Davidson Loehr, January 2004

To be fair, there are violent extremists who use Christianity to rationalize their criminal acts. There should be no tolerance for the bombers of abortion clinics. However, this is hardly a common movement. The real point of this propaganda of equating Christian orthodoxy with Islamic violence is to capitalize on the current world situation to further marginalize and descriminate against a particular religious group. The net effect of this movement is an increasingly hostile climate against the Judeo-Christian ethics that were once central to this nation. As Islamic violence increases, much of it as in Sudan, Indonesia, and other nations directed against Jews and Christians, it ironically feeds the continued view that Fundmentalism is the problem, and must be wiped out. Like the scape-goats of 1930’s Germany, this ideology will lead only to widespread persecution and perhaps overt violence.

——-
More related links:

A Warning About ‘Christian Fascists’

Religious Harassment?

I am a bit disturbed by the expansion of Harassment to include, apparently, the discussion of religion at work. Consider this typical example from training materials at a large U.S. corporation.

Harassment can also be based on religion. Religious harassment is wrong even when the harasser has no ill intent. For example, a person who tries to convert coworkers to a particular religion may be guilty of religious harassment.

Religious harassment can occur between members of different religious faiths, between members of different branches of one religion, between members of the same religion, and between the religious and the nonreligious.

–From training materials produced by LRN.com

While I don’t think anyone should force another religion on anyone, the broad language here is dangerous, since the definition of harassment is largely in the mind of the recipient. A simple declaration of one’s faith at work could be twisted by some as harassment.

I see this type of low-level persecution in the U.S. of Judeo-Christian faith as only growing, unfortunately.