Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh.
When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son.
1 Timothy 3:16; Galatians 4:4.
An article in “The Economist” published during December 2001 contained the irreverent, distastefully worded question why God did not warn us that He was sending His only Son to earth. Whether the question simply reveals an appalling ignorance of Holy Scripture or whether its intention was to present the writer’s cynical attitude to Christ’s first advent, God alone can tell.
Since the Word of God contains five explicit prophecies concerning the birth and earliest childhood years of the Lord Jesus (all written some 700 years before His birth took place), we would ask the reader to consult the following scriptures: Isaiah 7:14 (verified by Matthew 1:18-20 & 25); Isaiah 9:6; Isaiah 49:1; Micah 5:2 and Hosea 11:1 (verified by Matthew 2:2-8:13-15 & 19-21). Then again, shortly before our Lord was born, God made it clear to Joseph that Mary was to bear the Saviour of the world (Matthew 1:20-21), while the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary states specifically that the Child she was expecting was the holy Son of God (cf. Luke 1:35).
Dear reader, do not allow the commercialization and the merry-making of Christmas to swamp your mind, so that you forget its true meaning. Without the coming to earth of Jesus Christ to be our Saviour, Christmas would never exist. And without the Saviour you are destined to face God’s judgment; of this, too, God has given us sufficient warning in His holy Word. Receive Him into your heart; you will never regret it, and you will never have to face Him as your Judge.
Image: By Jean Cousin the Younger, also called Jehan Cousin Le Jeune (lived c. 1522–1595). – Blunt, Anthony. Art and Architecture in France: 1500–1700. New Haven (CT): Yale University Press, [1957] 1999 edition. ISBN 0300077483. Page 99., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2874303