Steve Webb: It's day 20 of the 2022 encore of the 2009 season
of the Lifespring Why Christmas show hosted by James Cooper,
creator of whychristmas.com. And me the OG Godcaster Steve Webb
of Lifespringmedia.com. We're in the homestretch now Christmas is
just five days away when we'll have the drawing to see which
lucky winner will win an autographed copy of Bryan
Duncan's A NehoSoul Christmas CD. If you'd like to enter the
drawing, all you have to do is go to Lifespringmedia.com slash
day nine to see how. That's Lifespringmedia.com slash d-a-y,
numeral nine no spaces. And if you're enjoying these shows,
James and I were wondering if you'd be willing to put
something in our Christmas stockings, you could do that
right here. Lifespringmedia.com slash support.
James Cooper: Hello, and welcome to day number 20 of the 2009
Lifespring by Christmas Show. Today you've got me James, and
we're going to be finding out a bit more about one of the parts
of the Christmas story, namely the wise men, their journey,
some political intrigue, and not even a stable insight. Their
story is told in the Bible in Matthew chapter two, verses one
to 12, and says, After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea,
during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to
Jerusalem and asked, where is the one who's been born king of
the Jews. We saw his star in the east and have come to worship
him. When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed, and all
Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the peoples
chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the
Christ was to be born. In Bethlehem in Judea, they
replied, for this is what the prophet has written. But you
Bethlehem in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the
rulers of Judah, four out of you will come a ruler, who will be
the shepherd of my people, Israel. Then Herod called the
Magi secretly, and found out from them the exact time the
star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, Go
and make a careful search for the child, as soon as you find
him, reported me to the iTune may go and worship him. After
they'd heard the king, they went on their way. And star that they
had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over
the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they
were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with
his mother, Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him. When
they opened their treasures, and presented him with gifts of
gold, and an incense and of myrrh. And having been warned in
a dream not to go back to Herod, they're returned to their
country by another route. I guess most people picture the
wise men along with the shepherds, Mary Joseph, and of
course, baby Jesus, all in the stable scene. But in fact, the
wise men and shepherds probably never met, the wise men traveled
to find Jesus when he was actually aged one or two. And by
this time, it seems that Mary Joseph and Jesus had settled
into Bethlehem and lived in a normal house. But who were these
wise men? And why did they traveled such a great distance
to see a baby? Well, the Weizmann probably came from an
area which is now made up of Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and
the Yemen, which back then was known as Persia, Arabia and
Sheba. And they were indeed very wise men, that also sometimes
called the Magi. The word Magi comes from the Greek word mag
modules, which is also where we get the English word magic from
majestic self comes from an old Persian word, Maga pootie. And
this was the title given to priests in the sector of ancient
Persian religions, such as Zoroastrianism. Today, we'd call
them astrologers, or even scientists. But back then
astrology and astronomy were part of the same overall studies
and went hand in hand with each other. The Magi would have
followed the patterns of the stars religiously, they're
probably also very rich and held in high esteem in their own
society. Although they're called the Three Kings or the three
wise men, the Bible doesn't actually say anything about how
many of them there were. The number three probably came from
the three presidents. But they came to present to Jesus.
studying the stars, the wise men had seen a very new and unusual
star in the sky, and knew that it told of us birth of a special
King, even now, no one's really sure what it was. Many people
have tried to come up with explanations to what the star
was. And these include supernovas, that's when stars
explode, comets and conjunctions of planets. If you'd like to
know more about this, then head on over to whychristmas.com. And
in the custom section, there's a page on the Star of Bethlehem,
which lists some of the common explanations and how they work.
So the wise men headed to the royal palace in Jerusalem to
honor the new king and bring him gifts, but they didn't quite
find what they were looking for. When King Herod asked the wise
men to find Jesus and tell them where he was, it was for his own
reasons. He didn't want to go and worship him. He really
wanted to kill him, as Herod thought that Jesus sounded like
the new king that could come and take his power away. And the
gifts that the wise men gave to Jesus also might seem strange
things to give a baby, but Christians believe they have the
following meanings. Gold is associated with kings and
Christians believe that Jesus is the King of kings. Frankincense
is sometimes used in worship in churches and showed that people
would worship Jesus. And Myrrh is a perfume that's put on dead
bodies to make them smell nice and showed that Jesus would
suffer and die. Frankincense and Myrrh are both resins from trees
and have antiseptic and healing properties and are still being
investigated by medical researchers today. When the wise
men were about to go Herod and tell him where Jesus was, they
were warned by God in a dream not to so they traveled home by
a different room. If you'd like to find out more about the
Wiseman and Harrods dastardly plot to come and kill the baby
Jesus, then go to the story section of whychristmas.com.
Come back tomorrow to hear a show where me and Steve will try
and get our tonsils round Happy Christmas or Merry Christmas in
lots of different languages. Well, thank you for listening to
day number 20 of the Lifespring by Christmas Show. I'm James and
I'll speak to you tomorrow.