A Christmas Message from Angels We Have Heard on High and So Much More
“Just then, an angel of the Lord stood before the shepherds, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid! For behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people: Today in the city of David a Savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord! And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.’” (The Gospel of Luke Chapter 2)
This Christmas season, I am hoping that you will contemplate the love that God has for you in that he sent his only begotten son to Earth to redeem mankind. That is, God is holy, and we are not. For God and mankind’s relationship to be restored, mankind must be cleansed from sin. Sin being anything and everything that makes us unfit to go to heaven and be with God for the rest of eternity. But we can’t cleanse ourselves any more than we can save ourselves or live for eternity without the intervention of God in our lives. The birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus was and is God’s intervention in our lives. Jesus came to save us from our sins by dying for our sins. Please receive the original Christmas gift, the gift of eternal life that begins the moment you ask Jesus into your heart and life to make you a new person.
Christmas is a great time to reflect on the fact that our culture has become nearly entirely secularized as humanism (having a human-centered world view), narcissism (being self-centered), hedonism (living for the pleasure of self), nihilism (the rejection of moral and religious principles), and materialism (the value of material possessions over spiritual values), have wrought devastation by way of an orgy of self which has waged war against the spirit and soul of America.
Consider how these “isms” have distorted our historical biblical world view via the following hot topics:
Abortion, which challenges God as being the author of life: We were predestined to live for God before conception. What God said of Jeremiah is true for all of us: “Before God formed any of us in the womb He knew us, before we were born, He set us apart (for Himself)” (Jeremiah 1:7).
Gender Ideology vs the fact that God, our Creator, put either an X or Y chromosome in every single cell of our bodies. No gender confusion there. “From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female” (Mark 10:6).
Climate Change: Fossil fuels do not represent an existential threat to mankind; sin and hell do. “But the present heavens and earth by His word are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.” (2 Peter 3:7)
The best summary of the age we are living in: “But realize this, that in the last days, difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Timothy Chapter 3:1-4).
Thankfully, what America has forgotten – to love God with all one’s heart, mind, soul, and strength – can be remembered again on this Christmas Day.
Merry Christmas!
I leave you with one short stanza from Angels We Have Heard on High:
Come to Bethlehem and see
Him, whose birth the angels sing
Come, adore on bended knee
Christ the Lord the newborn King
Gloria, in excelsis Deo!
Gloria, in excelsis Deo!
Thank you Andy for this great piece. We get worked up about secondary issues, ignoring the root causes. We humans have free will, and sadly that results in most of us to pretending there is no God, thereby putting us in His place. He has had a plan to deal with this dilemma since time began. The key ingredient is sending His son as a baby, who would be the sacrificial lamb to pay the price for our sins 33 years later. Hope for America and the world can only come by individuals recognizing these facts, and choosing to seek the forgiveness for our sins, through the only means of achieving peace with God and each other. Merry Christmas, Current readers. Spread the Good News!
Thank you for this. It is accurate, true and the lifeline to a lost world.