Merry Christmas (and an interesting article excerpt by Bayless Conley)

The holidays can be a depressing time of year for many people, even, surprisingly, for Christian people. Although Christmas for the Christian is a time of great rejoicing because of commemorating the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, many individuals can get to the end of this year and feel like they have run a marathon and that they have had a "kick me" sign on their back all year long. Those feelings are nothing to be ashamed of and are not uncommon. I think an interesting excerpt by Christian devotional writer Bayless Conley can be useful to the Christian in dealing with the trials of our everyday world. He begins by talking about Jesus, and the article is presented now:

In Matthew 3, we find Jesus at an absolutely critical time of transition in His life. We have not heard from Him since He was 12 years old. There has been about 30 quiet, unnoticed years where He presumably was working in His father's carpentry shop.

That is when we read in Matthew 3:16-4:1,

When He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him. And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

Jesus is about to enter public ministry. The sick will be healed; the poor will have the gospel preached to them; miracles will be worked; the Father will be revealed. So from this point, the battle is on. And we are given a bird's-eye view of the conflict that occurs between Christ and the devil, which we will look at in more detail in the next several devotionals.

But I want to submit something to you today. If it seems that all hell has broken loose in your life, maybe, just maybe, it's because you are on the verge of a breakthrough in your life. Maybe it's a time of very important transition where God wants to lift you into a place where there is going to be greater influence and greater impact through your life.

You see, at about this time last year I was coming to a very difficult crossroads in my life, and yes, I did feel like I had that "kick me" sign on my back. Without going into too much detail my previous chosen career was not working out and I was having a large degree of personal trouble as well. However, I found out in a strong way that God is faithful and He had other, more fulfilling plans for me. If you are a regular on this blog or just a visitor just passing through on the information superhighway, I pray that God will richly bless you this holiday...Merry Christmas to all!

Archaeological Evidence for the Bible Part 2 (New Testament)

Existence of Jesus:

*In Jewish historian Josephus' work the Antiquities, written about the same time as the Gospels, the following is mentioned:

About this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was the achiever of extraordinary deeds and was a teacher of those who accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When he was indicted by the principal men among us and Pilate condemned him to be crucified, those who had come to love him originally did not cease to do so; for he appeared to them on the third day restored to life, as the prophets of the Deity had foretold these and countless other marvelous things about him, and the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day." (Josephus—The Essential Works, P. L. Maier ed./trans.).

*Tacitus, a Roman historian, wrote the following: born 52 A.D., wrote a history of the reign of Nero in 110 A.D. "...Christus, from whom they got their name, had been executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate when Tiberias was emperor; and the pernicious superstition was checked for a short time only to break out afresh, not only in Judea, the home of the plague, but in Rome itself, .. " (Annals 15:44)

*Suetonius: AD. 120. In his Life of Claudius: "As the Jews were making disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome."

*Pliny the Younger: Governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor, wrote the emperor in A.D. 112 about the sect of Christians, who were in "the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day, before it was light, when they sang an anthem to Christ as God."

Although a lot of these references were written about the same time as the Gospels what is truly fascinating is that these references are OUTSIDE of the Biblical account yet match them.

Archaeological Evidence for the Bible Part 1 (Old Testament)

Surprisingly, there is a lot of historical evidence for the places named in the Bible, especially in the book of Genesis. Here are some of the recent finds:

* Ebla tablets were discovered in the early 1970s which verified the existence of the "cities on the plain"---Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Bela—also called Zoar.

* Ebla also made mention of the city of Canaan, which many liberal scholars had said earlier was not in use at that and was used incorrectly in the Bible.

* A papyrus was found in Egypt in the nineteenth century which describes in detail many of the plagues and the Exodus itself. This papyrus, which currently resides in a Dutch museum, is known as the Ipuwer Papyrus, which was written by an Egyptian who was an eye-witness to these events.

* The Hittites were once thought to be a biblical legend, until their capital and records were discovered in Turkey

* In 1993, archaeologists uncovered a 9th century B.C. inscription at Tel Dan. The words carved into a chunk of basalt refer to the "House of David" and the "King of Israel." And the Bible's version of Israelite history after the reign of David's son, Solomon, is believed to be based on historical fact because it is corroborated by independent account of Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions.

* Another king who was in doubt was Belshazzar, king of Babylon, named in Daniel 5. The last king of Babylon was Nabonidus according to recorded history. Tablet was found showing that Belshazzar was Nabonidus' son.

* The ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah have been discovered southeast of the Dead Sea. Evidence at the site seems consistent with the biblical account: "Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens." The destruction debris was about 3 feet thick and buildings were burned from fires that started on the rooftops. Geologist Frederick Clapp theorizes that that pressure from an earthquake could have spewed out sulfur-laden bitumen (similar to asphalt) known to be in the area through the fault line upon which the cities rest. The dense smoke reported by Abraham is consistent with a fire from such material, which could have ignited by a spark or ground fire.

Reference: http://www.faithfacts.org/search-for-truth/maps/archaeological-and-external-evidence