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Dec. 24, 2021 - Rudy Giuliani
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Christ is Christmas | Rudy Giuliani | December 24th 2021 | Ep 199
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Hello, this is Rudy Giuliani, and I'm back with Rudy's Common Sense.
The episode today, as it should be, which I am doing on Christmas Eve, is about Christmas, and about what it is, what it should be, and to some extent what it's become, and how we can bring it back.
Christmas Day is almost upon us, and for any of us who were brought up in the Ruskin tradition, I'd say, and fortunate enough to have parents, whether poor or middle-class or whatever, who were able to provide a Christmas, no matter how small or large, It was, for the children, enormously exciting.
It was the most exciting day and the most exciting night, Christmas Eve, of the year.
And, of course, the reason for it, the reason it exists, is the celebration, the remembrance, of the birth of Jesus Christ as the Son of God and as God become man to save us from our sins and show us a way to salvation.
The most important thing that ever happened in the history of the world.
That's of course to those of us who believe.
But that, regardless of whether you believe or not, that's the genesis of it.
So when all these people are running around and celebrating and Seeing carols and having parties and getting drunk and office parties and who knows what else they're doing.
There's only one reason it's happening.
It's like Tiny Tim says in a Christmas carol about Ebeneezer Scrooge when everybody is making comments about him, you know, nasty comments about him.
Tiny Tim says, well, he's the founder of the F.E.E.S.
Well, the founder of this feast is the infant baby who was born in Bethlehem about 2,000 years ago.
Not necessarily on December 25th, we'll talk about that.
But he was born in meager, lowly circumstances, but adored by the shepherds and magi, lived a short life, And I don't think anyone would dispute with you it was the most significant life ever lived in the history of the world.
I don't know if I have to prove that.
I mean, the religion that is the most universal, covers every continent,
is the Christian religion, the religion of Jesus Christ.
It's affected our civilization, Western civilization, profoundly.
It's affected others very significantly.
And there's no other one single human being that has had as much impact on world history.
Tonight, this is Christmas Eve as I said, when Hundreds of millions of Christians celebrate Christmas Eve.
They'll read the same gospel on every single continent in every language imaginable.
They'll read about Mary and Joseph having to go to Joseph's town to register for the first census and having to leave Nazareth in, what you would call now, mid-north, north of Israel, to the south of Israel.
Bethlehem, which is now in the Palestinian zone.
A short trip by car now, a long trip by donkey there.
They all read the same thing.
And it's from that, it's from the emanation of that, that all of this has come about and this magic night that takes place.
Now the magic night takes place because of things you might regard as somewhat frivolous.
You know, I look back when I was 10 and 12 and 8 and 14 and to not being able to sleep the night before and wondering what was under the tree and what I believed in Santa Claus.
Was I a good boy or not?
And like the, uh, like the young man in, in the Christmas story, which is why it's so popular.
Was I going to get the red rider BB gun?
No, I, you know, I was in Brooklyn and then in Long Island and BB guns weren't too popular there, but, um, Having watched that movie now, I wish I had gotten it.
But whether the child is wishing for the toy rifle, or a bicycle, or a basketball, or a football, or a basketball court, or a beautiful new coat, lovely doll, it's special.
And it stays with you.
And when you start to forget it, it comes back if you are fortunate enough to be a parent, doesn't it?
Then you relive your childhood through creating that same wonder for them.
I remember my children, both before and after I was mayor, because a good many of my Christmas Eve in the early growth of my children was spent in Gracie Mansion.
I remember their excitement and the time they believed in Santa Claus and as they came out of it.
One particular situation comes back, which I am going to mention.
It's not a happy memory, but Christmas is not all happy memories.
The happy memories are magnified at Christmastime, and the sad ones are, too.
The people we lose and the tragedies that occur.
I remember a few days before Christmas, my uncle, who was at that time a fairly young firefighter, was thrown off the truck and broke his back and was questioned whether he'd walk again, whether he'd lived, eventually he went back and he became a captain of
the fire department with a 27-year career.
It was a very, very dark, very
somber Christmas.
Then I remember my first year as mayor.
Obviously, I can tell you the date, December 24, for $19.99.
I went to Midnight Mass at St.
Patrick's Cathedral with my wife, Donna.
And I do believe we brought Andrew.
I just quite can't remember.
He was right on the cusp of the age at which you would bring him.
And we left Caroline with my mom.
Um, and was the family that used to come to a, um, Christmas Eve gathering that I would have when I was the mayor.
And some would come to St.
Patrick's and some would stay at the house.
And the mass was over.
It was beautiful.
And the Cardinal had a small gathering afterwards.
And we stayed very shortly, short time because of Andrew.
He blessed Andrew.
It's always a, uh, it was always a religious experience to be with Charles O'Connor.
And for me, a very, very uplifting one.
I came home and I had to put together two toys.
I remember one was a dollhouse and the other was something for Andrew.
I had a dollhouse together, which is kind of strange because I never had a dollhouse.
Whatever I put together for Andrew, I did have.
And I kept my suit on.
I never bothered to change because you know how you get about those things.
And then you put one A into B and B into C and C into D and D into F and G and all of a sudden it falls apart.
And then you put it again and it falls apart.
And now you're thinking, my God, you're making too much noise and wake up the He was at the age where, you know, he's beginning to look at me funny when we did the Santa Claus thing.
Caroline was in it for all it's worth.
And all of a sudden, I got a call from downstairs where the police station was, the police and guard station.
And they said, Mr. Mayor, a police officer was shot in Manhattan.
They're rushing him to NYU Hospital.
And we know you want to be notified of these things right away.
I said, well, should I, let's get started.
Well, we haven't heard from the police commissioner yet.
It was Bill Bratton.
We haven't heard from the police commissioner and he always, you know, we always have this protocol that, you know, he's going to go over with you first.
So you're not surprised.
So we don't walk into a difficult situation.
I had been known to show up in difficult situations.
So I said, okay, I went back to putting, but I was so disturbed.
I really was.
We had had firefighters right before Christmas time always seemed to be a time when we had serious injuries to our firefighters.
Very often had deaths to our firefighters, largely because of the Christmas trees, but just for a whole host of reasons, but police officers, not as much.
And I was working, but I couldn't pay attention, and I was getting worse and worse at putting this thing together.
And I was all dressed, and once I finished this, I was of course going to get undressed and go to bed and get ready to get up real early, because as soon as the sun came out, Caroline, you know, would shoot into the Christmas tree, and you wanted to be there to see it, take pictures of it.
So I decided I would not get undressed and I would go downstairs and I'd go put myself near NYU Hospital so that I could go in.
I did.
Police officers were there 24 hours a day.
We got in the car.
I never used the sirens in and around Gracie Mansion unless it was a really, really important, significant emergency because I had a fundraiser once when I was running for mayor because the people who lived there were offended that David Dinkins used to do that.
And they raised money to make me mayor and promised that I'd only use it if I had to.
Things like that stay with me.
So I didn't need this.
I didn't need it because I wasn't sure if I should be there or not.
But, you know, we moved out pretty fast and there was nobody on the road and the whole The whole distance is about three miles.
We were there, and we were two blocks away, and Bill called me and said, Mayor, I don't think you should show up for this.
I said, why, Bill?
He said, well, we're not sure yet, but I think it was a suicide.
This young man was very, very depressed.
His girlfriend left him.
He's been calling her all day, and they've been having a fight all day.
And he's been going in and out of Smith's bar, even though he shouldn't, while he was on duty, right near 42nd Street.
Gone now.
And apparently he got very, very drunk and got off duty and walked over to Smith's bar, went into the back where he had been drinking all day, and all of a sudden they hear a shot and looks like he blew his brains.
Whoa.
I said, Bill, I think I should...
He said, but you don't want to get through.
I said, but I could, but let me come in backwards, you know, back, back.
So I did.
I came to the back door.
I spent time with him.
Some of his family showed up and tried to do the best that I could to talk to people about the complexity of life and the fact that his life, it was an important life because who knows how many people he saved.
Whatever happened, happened to the complexity of the human mind and God, God will fix it.
Um, I don't remember exactly what I said.
And I went back to, uh, Bracey, imagine a different person, you know, um, you go, you go in two seconds from the most beautiful, beautiful things in life.
The birth of the baby Jesus, which we celebrated having communion, you know, wonderful children, you know, you're going to make them happy.
Uh, Always feeling guilty.
You didn't spend enough time with him as a mayor.
Now, devoting the night to putting together their toys.
Incompetent though I was.
And then all of a sudden, the worst part of human life comes up.
Something very hard for many of us to understand.
The young man takes his life.
He says, I wish I had a chance to talk to him.
I wish I had a chance to tell him.
There'll be many, many more girls.
You're 26 years old.
Gee, if I could just have that opportunity.
I want to re-emphasize the fact that there's a reason for that.
Often it's just getting perspective.
But that's Christmas and it stays in your mind unlike anything else.
And I want to reemphasize the fact that there's a reason for that.
And the reason for that is not because of the gifts or the Christmas trees or the wonderful parties
or the beautiful movies and shows and great music or the general spirit of love and caring.
Oh, no, no, no.
It's here because there are More people that believe in this particular religion than any other religion in the history of the world.
And what they believe is that on that day, God intervened in the world and made his Son part of his triune personality.
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
The Jewish people, the chosen people of God.
My goodness, the human beings are so important that God talks to them.
God communicates with Moses and the prophets.
He even seems to have some arguments with them.
If not arguments, discussions, differences.
Forgives them at times when they are disloyal.
Brings them back.
And then, the ultimate.
Man is made in the image of God.
I think I remember my catechism.
Man is made in the image and likeness of God.
That makes man, woman, humanity very important.
It makes human life sacred.
Of course, it's underlined in the thou shalt not kill, the Ten Commandments that God gives directly to Moses.
You couldn't make that point stronger than by God becoming man.
That's the core of it.
You're celebrating like this because that happened, and because more people believe that than believe any other religion.
Now, you may not believe it, but if none of them did, and he never lived, or nobody paid attention to him, you wouldn't be celebrating.
That's the point.
So I noticed an article in the New Epic Times about that great, great piece of Christmas carol.
And it talks about the significance of the Christmas carol and why it may be significant today.
But there's a quote in it I'd like you to think about, because it may help us figure out what we have to do.
Written by Sean Fitzpatrick, And the name of it is, Do You Know A Christmas Carol?
And it goes on to describe the bigger philosophy or the bigger reason and the things that Christmas Carol accomplished in reviving Christmas, along with Along with Washington Irving in America and Clement Moore, which was the night before Christmas, in this part of the 19th century, Christmas became much more prominent.
But he writes, does Fitzpatrick, about then.
Christmas is a lost and long forgotten mystery.
In need of a great awakening, Which is the thundering and laughing message of Charles Dickens' Carol.
I would say we could apply this today that Christmas is a lost and long forgotten mystery in need of a great awakening.
Isn't that what you do?
Shouldn't we awaken it?
Shouldn't we awaken Christmas?
Shouldn't we?
The rest of the nation.
And even if not everyone is going to believe, because that's never going to be the case, let's make sure we put Jesus in the middle of the Christmas story.
Because he is the Christmas story.
And let's make certain that we all remind ourselves of that, first of all, as believers.
And that we remind others who are partaking of the collateral effects of that.
Why?
All who participate should know why this day and season is so exceptional.
You know, the biblical basis for Jesus' birthday being Christmas has been put in doubt.
Because, and this comes largely from the Puritans who banned Christmas for a period of time in England and in the United States because they said it had no biblical basis.
Well, they're being very short-sighted.
And I think somehow, excuse me, with an aside, I think there's a bit of prejudice involved in that because of the name that it acquired.
Christmas.
Focus on what Christmas means.
It means Christmas mass.
wasn't applied and focusing on the holiday of Christmas didn't happen originally.
When the early Christians began practicing their new religion, which many of them saw as just another version of Judaism, they did a Last Supper again, a reenactment of the Last Supper, which turned into the sacrificial part of the mass.
They sat down at the table and they broke bread and they consecrated the bread and did as Jesus told them to do this in memory of me.
And that clearly is laid out in the Bible, particularly in the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles.
But there's no reference to celebrating the baby Jesus' birthday.
It probably didn't come about until somewhere in the And it was originally, the earliest they can get back to is about 200 AD, and they picked January 6th as the date.
And then in the mid-4th century, in the mid-4th century, I believe it was Pope Julius I, moved it to December 25th.
And he moved it to December 25th, and so this is another reason why Christmas is put in doubt by the Puritans.
But he moved it to December 25th because it coincided with some great pagan festivals that Romans participated in, and that many of the Christians and Jews participated in because they participated in the Fun part of it, the way non-believers in Jesus participate in the fun parts of Christmas.
And the two, if I recall correctly, there were two of them.
I'll show you how they're spelled because they're Latin words.
One was Saturnalia and the other was Juvenalia.
So one was for the god of agriculture and the other was for the god of light.
Actually, a Hindu god.
But the Romans celebrated this, and they celebrated these around the time of the winter solstice.
It's the shortest day of the year, I should say.
And it's beginning.
From that day on, every day will be longer.
The sun will be out longer.
So, among other things, both Even the one god of agriculture is the god of light.
They celebrate light and they celebrate the fact that things are going to be more beautiful and more open.
This is a period of time, particularly the Saturnalia Feast, where poor people The working people are elevated to a status in which the richer people, the more significant people, serve them and help them and bring them gifts.
I'm guessing now that it's probably a sort of thank you for the harvest, you know, a way of thanking the people who made it possible.
So then Julia is thinking like a Like a good executive said, I'm going to be nice and comfortable for my Roman converts.
If I placed a great feast right there and we can have our feast and they can have their feast and who knows, maybe many of them will come over and boy, did it work.
He made December 25th the date.
He took January 6th and made it the date of the epiphany.
Which was the arrival of the three kings to celebrate Jesus.
The official Christmas really, where you can be sure of it, because the 2nd century part is somewhat foggy, is the 3rd century, Julius I, who Who describes December 25th as the Nativity, and then the other becomes the epiphany, or the presentation of the Magi to Jesus.
So that sets the beginning, right? And how does this all become, I don't know what it became.
I mean, I'd like to answer a few of the obvious, more interesting questions.
Santa Claus.
Who's Santa Claus?
The best we can tell, Santa Claus is a saint who lived on a Greek island, a bishop who lived on a Greek island, who came from a very wealthy family.
But because he was a Christian, He was, he was persecuted.
He was tortured, actually.
His name was Nicholas of Bari, St.
Nicholas of Bari.
And St.
Nicholas of Bari would, would give gifts to children, and he would appear and help them in extraordinarily difficult situations.
One who was deformed, he helped cure.
Several daughters who were in a family that didn't have any money, weren't able to get married, he secretly provided dowries for them.
Many acts, all directed toward children.
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Welcome back. Well, we've been talking about a great subject
cynicals. And this will kind of give you an example of how this
this extremely serious religious story, religious act or set of
facts become secularized first in a rather beautiful way and
then sometimes in a in a in a very demeaning way, but So, St.
Nicholas.
Best we can tell, as I said, was a 4th century bishop of then the Latin Church, the Roman Church.
There were two parts to it then, but together, Western and Eastern.
Large distinction being that the Western said Mass in Latin.
The Pope was the undisputed leader of it.
And the eastern mass was said in Greek, and the patriarch was the leader of it.
There were many patriarchs, and it was unclear as to whether they accepted the Pope as the leader.
Some did, some didn't, and eventually that became the reason for the scissor between them, although they remained together for 1,000 or 1,100 years with slightly different practices.
But they both accepted the 25th as the day of Christmas, with the exception of the Armenian Church, which uses the Epiphany as the day of Christmas.
So St.
Nicholas was born in Asia Minor.
He was tortured for his faith by the Roman Emperor Diocletian, and he was released and saved by Constantine the Great, who is, of course, Made Christianity legal, and really, eventually made it a religion of the Empire.
So St.
Nicholas of Bari is the gentleman who appeared to a terrified boy who was kidnapped and enslaved.
He comforted the boy and brought him back to his mother, who had been without her child for over a year.
When children got lost playing, And in one case, they were beaten very badly by a butcher.
Nicholas prayed to God and he cured them and brought them back to the mother.
And of course, the story about the daughters and the dowry, which is kind of a really interesting one.
But Nicholas was so good to children that This painting was done by Mattia Prezzi.
It's called The Glory of St.
Nicholas of Bari.
It was done in 1653.
I don't know how well you can see it, but you can try to find it in art books.
You can see the great saints, and the great saint here is being given gifts.
The young people are are giving him gifts.
And it almost seems like he's offering those gifts up to God, or he's acknowledging to God, God, you're the reason that I was able to do this.
You see the children and their faces, they're quite, quite expressive, and very, looks like they're very grateful.
And he has his arms up, almost as if, I don't deserve, I don't, I don't deserve this.
This is you, not me.
Well, I showed you that.
I could show you so many others, right?
Fra Angelico and his unbelievably beautiful paintings of the Virgin and the Child.
He spent all his life doing that.
He painted it thousands and thousands and thousands of times just to get it right.
So much of the art that makes up the art of Western civilization is religious.
In fact, for a while it was only religion, and so also the music.
Music developed from the chant, became eventually the Gregorian chant, and then composers, German, Italian, began doing pieces with instruments and not just voices.
At first that was frowned upon.
Then we get all of the great religious music.
That becomes the basis for opera and symphony eventually.
The one that I recommend, because what I am going to recommend to everyone is reading
the story to your family every Christmas.
I'm just going to read whatever order you want.
Matthew 1, 18-25.
That's not that long.
Luke 1, 26-38.
And then we do the epiphany.
That's not that long. Luke 1, 26 to 38.
And then we do the epiphany, second book of Luke 1 to 20.
And I think, first of all, that sets aside all of the claims that,
oh gosh, it's not appropriate to celebrate because there was no
celebration laid out in the Bible.
The Bible suddenly lays out all the reasons why it is quite, quite appropriate to have a celebration.
A substitute for reading it would be to listen to Or go to a performance of, with a libretto, Bach's Christmas Oratorio, which was originally composed by Bach for the Twelve Days of Christmas in the Lutheran churches for their Vespers service.
In the late afternoon, and it has six parts and it relates to Christmas, the second day, the third day, the epiphany, and it borrows from the Gospels of Mark and Matthew.
So you're reading it, reading the story.
You're getting also some of the greatest music ever composed by any human being, the Johann Sebastian Bach.
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Welcome back on this Christmas Eve and let's get to the more difficult part now.
Christmas and the celebration of Christmas has had enormous challenges over the almost 2,000 years.
First, it wasn't recognized and it had to be decided on as to what it was, where it
was.
Then various things were added to it.
The Christmas tree, which comes from many of the traditions of bringing trees into the
house at the wintertime to celebrate nature, just to create beauty.
The Santa Claus that we talked about, the giving of gifts that comes out of many different
backgrounds, Roman, Northern European, Asian.
Christmas went through a period of time when it was religiously doubted during the break between, not so much the Reformation, it was after the Reformation, the break within even the Protestant churches.
It was the Puritans' real revolt was against the Church of England, which was in their view, much too close to the theology and practice of the Papist Church, the Roman Catholic Church.
So it's had a very, it's had an up and down, an up and down experience.
And Christians have been the subject of persecution many, many times over the centuries.
Not as focused on the way some other groups focus on it.
And this is not to take away from those other groups that all of that persecution is equally sinful to God and equally horrible to human beings.
But because of Christianity's great success, because it's become the religion most practiced in the world, it almost maybe makes Christians feel Uncomfortable, complaining, and also their love makes them somewhat even more sympathetic to others who are being persecuted, because others are being persecuted.
But at different times, Christians were persecuted, certainly during the Roman era, certainly during the rise of the The Muslim invasions of Europe and songs like Silent Night, for example, were composed during this period.
It's composed in Germany by a composer named Franz Gruber from lyrics that were given to him by a priest who had written them who had written them, and he didn't have anyone that he thought could really do justice to it.
The priest's name was Joseph Mohr, and he was an Austrian priest.
And he was walking through the snow covered forest, I guess of Austria.
And he was just struck by the beauty of it.
And he wrote down the words for Silent Night.
He wrote down Stielenacht.
German is Stielenacht, Hillignacht.
And then he was not a lyricist.
So he went to his friend, Franz Gruber, who was a school teacher.
And he was the church's choir master.
Kind of a poor man's, you'll answer Boston Bach.
And together they did Silent Night and they performed it.
You've formed it.
They performed it that Christmas at Midnight Mass.
There is a movie that I saw, I cannot find it, with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., in which during the development of it, the organ in the poor church goes out.
So they don't have an organ and they have to accompany it originally with a guitar.
And of course it was German, and it was brought to America by the German immigrants who came to America, translated into English.
And of course the story that just brings you to tears is when they took the interruption during the First World War, where the English and French troops were one area, And the, uh, in their trenches and the Germans were across them in their area and it was Christmas Eve night and they weren't fighting and both could hear that they were singing the same song.
The, uh, the, uh, English could hear the German words, you know, steel and knock and the Germans could hear silent night, holy night.
Are we where we were when The author in Epoch Times said that the Christmas, the message of it had been completely lost and overcome.
I'm afraid we have.
I don't mean all of us, but I mean as a society.
Here's a poll which I think it tells you what you know.
In 2019, more than 9 in 10 Americans polled by Gallup said they celebrate Christmas.
Well, that's good.
But just 35% said they saw the holiday as strongly religious.
That's very, very sad.
Because even if it isn't strongly religious for you, you're denying history.
If you don't recognize it as being a celebration that exists only because you're religious.
It wouldn't be you.
And you deny one of the reasons that people have faith, because it can do things like that.
It can elevate.
It can elevate to the point that something becomes universal.
You say it might be the strength of the idea.
The religious person says it's the hand of God.
So how do we get there?
Let's come to some conclusions.
Christmas needs to be revived.
Whether we are believers, strong, moderate, or non-believers, for the education of our young people, they must know the derivation of Christmas.
It is a lie to make it appear as if this is not derived from a tremendous religious tradition and from something that many, many people, hundreds of millions, billions of people have believed is religious and still do.
You don't have to believe it, but you can't deny the history of it.
That's what communists want you to do.
They want nothing more than to wipe out the derivation of charisma.
My goodness.
Prevent communism if you kept to that derivation.
So first, let me urge you, if you do know the story, and you've broken away from it, and the faith is no longer there, let me just give you a little Test.
So, let's go back to Immanuel Kant and Kierkegaard.
So, they're great philosophers, right?
Kierkegaard is the founder of existential philosophy.
And you wouldn't think he would spend so much time on religion, but he did.
And very simply, they came up with the following theory.
Faith, belief in God, belief that God is the creator of the universe, and that there is more to this universe, meaning life after death, than we understand or realize, cannot be proven By logic, reason, science, facts, arguments, tremendous egotism.
That you know everything.
There's one thing that's absolutely true.
And it was Aristotle and, I'm sorry, it was Socrates and Plato and Aristotle who all made the point that the beginning of intelligence, reason, and philosophy is the acknowledgement And you never will, because there's a body of knowledge beyond you.
Now what is that body of knowledge?
I can't prove to you that it's God and faith, but you can take a leap.
Think of it this way.
Two mountains.
It's a big chasm between the two mountains.
Here are all the things that get you right up to defending belief in God.
There's no one that creates a bridge.
You just gotta jump.
And once you do, You'll see a certainty in the chat.
I don't know if I explained that well enough or not, but believe me, Kent and Kurt and God, although I know when you hear the word philosophy, it sounds very imposing, explain it very, very beautifully and very easily.
So one way we can reestablish Christmas is we can get more people back to the actual belief in the story.
So let's make that a big part of our New Year's resolution.
And in fact, as part of our Christmas celebration every year, let's remind ourselves of it.
The way the Jewish people remind themselves during the Passover.
Never forget.
Maybe we have to develop a new tradition.
Here's the new tradition.
The new tradition is, for those of you who believe, I want you to go to church.
There's nothing that surpasses going to church and listening to the beautiful Midnight Mass Gospel.
But whether you go to church or you don't, I want you to establish a new ceremony, tradition in your family.
I want you to read the Christmas story.
Bye.
Sometime on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day when the family gathers, either your small nuclear family or your large extended family, I want you to go take out Oh, it's easy.
It's easy.
It's very short.
Very, very short.
And if you have a couple of people who like to perform, you know, every family has people who like to perform.
They would love to read this stuff.
I mean, they would love to read it.
And it depends on how much you want to read.
I don't know that you need all the genealogies.
I'm not even sure how accurate they are.
Right.
But I would certainly begin, certainly begin with Luke.
And, um, Because I think one of the most powerful stories in the
Bible is the enunciation.
And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God.
And behold, thou shalt concede in thy womb and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.
He shall be great, and he shall be called the Son of the Highest. And the Lord God
shall give unto him the throne of the Father David.
Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?
And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee, therefore also that holy thing.
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