I thank God for sending His Son, Jesus, to Earth so I could choose to know HIM. That’s why we celebrate Christmas – THIS IS FOR EVERYONE – the opportunity to live life here on Earth knowing Jesus with the hope and plan of Eternity. The story of Santa is fun at Christmas and is for kids and the young at heart – I absolutely enjoy it; first as a kid, and now as an adult getting to create moments for kids in our family and with friends is so great. Sharing that joy brings us opportunities to serve and know each other more closely – more importantly knowing Jesus more closely.
My faith and belief in Jesus is real through sensing the Holy Spirit. Reading God’s Word and prayer are the connecting points to that reality.
FAILING & NOT FORSAKING
I make mistakes every day, which is why Jesus was sent to Earth. Walking with Him together we live in hope, peace and joy. If I truly love Jesus, The Gospel Message, His Church and People, I’ll not forsake HIM. I stumble and fall, but do not FORGET He forgives every time I ask. I do not deny Jesus in my life.
“those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day” JOSEPHUS I ANTIQUITIES I Book 18 I Chapter 3
In book 18 of the Antiquities, in Chapter 3 Josephus wrote:
“3. Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, 9 those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; 10 as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.”
Flavius Josephus describes Jesus of Nazareth WARD SANFORD
The first and most extensive reference to Jesus in the Antiquities, found in Book 18, states that Jesus was the Messiah and a wise teacher who was crucified by Pontius Pilate. It is commonly called the Testimonium Flavianum.
Thus it seems the Testamonium Flavianum relates to us the widely held knowledge of what people knew of this new Christian sect in the first century—that
(1) Jesus lived and was crucified during the then recent reign of Pontius Pilate in Judea,
(2) he was thought to have been a wise man who performed marvelous deeds, and
(3) he was believed by his followers to be more than a man, in fact to be the messiah foretold of by the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, supported by
(4) the belief he had been resurrected on the third day following his crucifixion.
Such a written testimonial by a first century contemporary, Flavius Josephus, is strong evidence that the New Testament gospels are relating to us the accounts of a real person, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who was the founder of what we know today as Christianity.