Steve Webb  0:02  
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  0:51  
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.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai