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Following this introduction, beginning on the second page, is a reprint of the
December 1995 Aletheia article, “What Child Is This?” At this time of year we
cannot emphasize enough the timeless truths of the Scripture. We do not limit
our preaching of the birth of Christ and the death, burial, and resurrection of
Christ to the holiday seasons. But these times do afford us space to speak as
loudly and clearly as possible about these essential doctrines.
In
1992 I made my first trip to Russia with my father-in-law, Peter Slobodian, and
my brother-in-law, Sam Slobodian. In those days, Russia was still like the old
Soviet Union. Soldiers still guarded the streets, airports, and other important
places but with little or no authority to do anything other than watch. The
economy was in shambles and the stores were empty as people lined up to wait for
food and other necessities. Prices for Westerners were great because the
monetary system of the USSR was totally out of touch with the real world. Three
of us rode on a train for twelve hours in a sleeper car for about a dollar and a
half. We took pastors out to lunch (when there was any place open to eat) for
almost pennies.
For
seventy years the cold, atheistic system of Communism had gripped that large
land (reaching across eleven time zones) and left it in ruins. We stayed with
Christian families who had ministered underground for years and had suffered in
many ways for their faith. Almost every husband or father had been in a prison
at one time or another, usually for just passing out Christian literature or for
participating in an unlawful assembly. The usual meal consisted of cheese and
crackers and perhaps some salami and hot tea. One pastor kept live minnows in
his bath tub (which he kindly removed before we took showers) because he always
went fishing on Mondays for the only meat they would eat that week.
Most
striking of all, however, was the change that was taking place over that land in
the winter month of December. We left Chicago in mid-December amid legal
battles over nativity scenes on public property, lawsuits over children
mentioning God or Jesus in school Christmas assemblies, and general antipathy
toward any mention of God or Christ in public advertising. Yet here we were in
the former Soviet Union passing out tracts on the streets and preaching the
gospel in the state school assemblies. There was little restriction at all for
public assembly. You could not have enough literature for all the people who
would flock around you on a street corner when they saw that you had Christian
literature. Nor could you carry enough Bibles into the country to be given
away. I heard a missionary just last month who said there is still more
religious freedom in Russia and Ukraine today than in the United States of
America.
There
is no guarantee that our own country will continue its religious heritage.
There is no divine promise that Christians will live in Christian nations or
with freedom of expression in the age of grace. There is a guarantee, however,
that the gospel of Christ will be met with opposition because it is truth and
this world will always react against the light of the gospel that exposes its
sin and calls it to conversion. God has no grandchildren. The faith of one
generation does not automatically pass to the next. In a matter of years, the
faith of a family or a community or a country may be totally gone. Culture can
live on the spiritual capital of the last generation for a while but it will
soon be gone. The truths of Christ must be preached and believed in each
generation.
What Child is this, who, laid
to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems
sweet, while shepherds watch are keeping?
Why lies He in such mean estate
where ox and ass are feeding?
Good Christian, fear--for
sinners here the silent Word is pleading.
So bring Him incense, gold and
myrrh--come, rich and poor, to own Him;
The King of kings salvation
brings--let loving hearts enthrone Him.
English
melody, fifteenth century
It
has always been one of the striking testimonies of Christianity that Jesus
Christ came quietly into this world and left the same way. Though He ascended
to heaven while five hundred watched, when His mortal put back on immortality,
He simply sat up inside a tomb, quietly put his clothes aside and walked out
without audience. At His birth, although angels sang to shepherds on far away
hills, when the Babe cried and first breathed earth’s air only cattle turned
their headsin witness. The gospel account simply fits with the reality that we
know of this world.
With
the gospel writers, we are not to take the miraculous conception of Jesus by the
Holy Spirit in any other way but matter of fact. They don’t ask us to. We don’t
have to give an explanation of the miracle, we only have to believe it or reject
it. Is it any less reasonable than the alternatives we are offered?
For
example, the Romans believed that Zeus impregnated Semele without contact and
that she conceived Dionysus, lord of the earth. The Babylonians believed that
Tammuz (see Ezek. 8:14) was conceived in the priestess Semiramis by a sunbeam.
In an ancient Sumerian/Accadian story inscribed on a wall, Tukulti II (890-884
B.C.) told how the gods created him in the womb of his mother. It was even
claimed that the goddess of procreation superintended the conception of King
Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.). At the conception of Buddha, his mother supposedly
saw a great white elephant enter her belly. Hinduism has claimed that the divine
Vishnu, after reincarnations as a fish, tortoise, boar, and lion, descended into
the womb of Devaki and was born as her son Krishna. There is even a legend that
Alexander the Great was virgin born by the power of Zeus through a snake that
impregnated his mother, Olympias.1
The
biblical account is above all such make-believe. Nothing about Christ’s
incarnation violates what we know of this world. It only asks us to accept that
the Creator of the world can enter and leave it when He wants and as calmly as
He wants. It doesn’t insult us with tortoises or sunbeams in the womb. It is not
God who is unreasonable in the Christmas story, it is man with his selfish
nature and bent toward unbelief. "The incredulous are the most credulous. They
believe in Vespasian's miracles only to disbelieve in those of Moses."2
We
might say that God has asked us to accept a balance of reality in the world into
which the incarnation fits perfectly well. God has placed us in a middle world
between the microscope and the telescope. We can ascend into the starry heavens
until we are overwhelmed by the size and awesomeness of space itself. Or we can
descend into the microcosms of the cells and atoms only to find smaller worlds
revolving in their own atmospheres. Man was placed between those two extremes at
the center of God’s creative process so that we might be in a place to receive
God’s revelation with a reasonable faith that fits with reality. The greatest
revelation was when God also became a man, coming into the center of His
creation, to reveal Who and What is the reason for our existence.
We
learn in the Scriptures that God is both transcendent and immanent. God is
transcendent in that He is totally separate, apart from and above His creation.
But He is not as transcendent as the existentialist and agnostic would have us
think. He is willing to reveal Himself and has done so in many ways, coming into
the center of His world with voice, letter and in person. God is immanent in
that He is close to and everywhere present in His creation. But He is not as
immanent as the pantheists and new-age thinkers would have us believe. He does
not consist of the material universe and cannot be found in its parts. Rather,
as before, He must come into the world in order for us to know Him. ‘‘God is a
person and he made us as persons in his likeness. Because we are persons and he
is a personal God, we have the capacity to worship him and to know him and to
love him.’’3
And
this brings us back to the Christmas story. It is the record of a mighty God
overshadowing a virgin Mary, sending angels to sing in concert to shepherds and
throwing a star in the sky for wise men to see. But that same God came quietly
into our world among the mud of a stable floor and the smells and sounds of
common herds. He came as an infant who needed to be nursed and protected from
his enemies. He was the perfect revelation of a transcendent, immanent God.
There was enough light to lighten the willing and enough mystery to keep them in
awe. But there was also enough mystery to hinder the unwilling and yet enough
light to rid them of excuse. It was the perfect form for man to receive.
‘What means this glory round our
feet,’
The Magi mused, ‘more bright
than morn!’
And voices chanted clear and
sweet,
‘Today the Prince of Peace is
born.’4
Notes:
1.
John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, Vol 1 (Chicago: Moody
Press, 1985), 12.
2.
Blaise Pascal, Pensees (London: Penguin Classics, 1966), 100.
3.
Robert Wenz, Room For God? (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994), 162.
4.
James Russell Lowell’s Christmas Carol .
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