The Great Christ Comet (56 page)

when God was manifest as man to bring the newness of eternal life.

That which had been prepared by God began to come into effect. Therefore all things were perturbed, because the abolishing of Death was being worked out.

12

“The Light Everlasting That Fades Not Away”

The Ongoing Story

In the course of this book we have made mention of many participants in the Christmas narrative—especially the Magi, the king of Judea, Mary and Joseph, Jesus, and the Star. It now remains to update the story. What became of these main characters, in particular Jesus and the Star?

The Magi

The Magi went back home to Bab­ylon, no doubt excitedly telling others about their amazing adventure with the comet and the one whom it represented and to whom it led them. Ignatius (
Eph.
19:3) may imply that the Magi who followed the Star turned away from the theology of the Magians (
mageia
) and the practices of sorcery. Likewise, Justin Martyr (
Dial.
78–79) claims that the Magi escaped the demonic dominion of evil when they came to worship Jesus as Messiah.
1

Herod the Great

Herod—Hydra in human form—failed in his horrendous quest to assassinate the messianic child. As Matthew tells the story, he was, quite simply, outmaneuvered by God. A dream warned the Magi of Herod's malicious scheming against the Messiah, prompting them to avoid Jerusalem and Herod on their way back home to Bab­ylon. Thus deprived of the information necessary to mount a targeted strike at the Messiah (Plan A), Herod sent in his troops to massacre the baby boys of Bethlehem (Plan B). However, Joseph was warned in a dream about Herod's assassination attempt and so fled with Mary and Jesus to Egypt and remained there until Herod died.

The hard-hearted king of Judea got his comeuppance. On March 12/13 in 4 BC there was a striking omen in the heavens that seemed to proclaim in terms the sick king could well understand that he would soon die: the dreaded partial lunar eclipse.
2

When Herod awoke, he found that his illness had taken a dramatic turn for the worse. As soon as the report of the location of the lunar eclipse in the sky reached him, the thought must have crossed his brain that God had issued the death penalty against him for his attack on the baby Messiah. For, incredibly, the lunar eclipse was over the womb of Virgo, right where the Sun had been on September 15, 6 BC, and where the cometary coma had been on September 29/30 and over the following days (
fig. 12.2
). Instead of determining to worship the Messiah upon hearing of the great sign in the eastern sky that had brought the Magi to Judea, Herod had sought to assassinate him. Indeed he had even tried to outwit God, using information gleaned from the Magi's records of the comet (in particular, when it first appeared) and from Scripture to assist him in this enterprise. Herod, the chief agent of Hydra, had schemed to murder the one whose birth had been announced by a great wonder focused on Virgo's womb. Ironically, it was in this same womb that the divine realm seemed to announce Herod's death sentence. Within the next few weeks, despite his desperate efforts to resist his fate, he died a horrendous death.
3

Mary and Joseph

Joseph and Mary remained in Egypt until Herod the Great died. At that point, “an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel'” (Matt. 2:19b–20a). Straightaway, that is, in the immediate aftermath of Herod's death, Joseph “rose,” “took the child and his mother,” and “went to the land of Israel” (v. 21). Joseph and the holy family entered the territory of Greater Israel and prepared to go into Judea, obviously assuming that the angel meant Judea when he said “Israel.” However, when the announcement that Archelaus had been made ruler (ethnarch) of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea in Herod's place reached Joseph's ears, he was surprised and filled with fear. That Joseph had to be warned in another dream not to enter Judea implies that his fear concerning Archelaus was entirely justified—the ruler
did
constitute a serious threat to Jesus. In response to the dream, Joseph took Mary and Jesus to another part of Greater Israel, namely lower Galilee, and in particular Nazareth, where they could live in safety. This was familiar territory to Joseph and Mary (Luke
2:1–5
).

Joseph evidently died before Jesus began his ministry. Mary, however, remained alive throughout Jesus's ministry and suffered the trauma of watching her precious son being executed in the most brutal way imaginable—by crucifixion. It was almost certainly she who was the primary source of the birth narratives preserved in the Gospels.

Jesus

Jesus grew up in lower Galilee, in the town of Nazareth, with his mother and father and, in due course, brothers and sisters. He seems to have labored as a carpenter (Mark 6:3). When he was in his 30s, Jesus began a ministry of teaching and healing from a base in the Galilean village of Capernaum. Although Jesus did travel outside of lower Galilee, for example visiting Judea and Tyre and Sidon, he spent the lion's share of his time in rural Galilee, the very area which Tiglath-pileser had crushed so devastatingly in 733/732 BC. According to the Gospels, Jesus taught and preached and did miracles throughout the region. It was there that he preached the Sermon on the Mount and did countless wonders. His impact in Galilee was seismic, with multitudes from all across Galilee, as well as surrounding areas like Judea and the Decapolis, flocking to him (Matt.
4:23–25
).

Yet, astonishingly, he was treated with contempt by many who should have known better. His own hometown of Nazareth rejected him and tried to kill him (Luke 4:29–30). Early in his Galilean ministry his own unbelieving siblings tried to seize him against his will (Mark 3:21). And, in the end, one of his own disciples betrayed him for 30 pieces of silver (14:10–22, 43–46). The religious leaders in Galilee and especially Jerusalem hated him and were eager to discredit and kill him. They denounced him as mad or demon-possessed. And eventually the Jewish Sanhedrin had him arrested and handed him over to the Roman authorities to be tried for fomenting revolutionary sentiment within the nation, forbidding the giving of tribute to the Roman emperor, and claiming to be the King of the Jews (Luke 23:2–3). By order of Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator, Jesus was flogged and condemned to death, in fulfillment of his own repeated predictions (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34, 45). Pilate sentenced him to be crucified, which he was, along with two criminals. And so he died and was buried. . . .

In light of what has been presented in the preceding chapters, any consideration of Jesus's life must answer the question, Did he live up to his celestial billing? Did he fulfill what the Hebrew Scriptures and in particular Isaiah had prophesied concerning the Messiah?

Isaiah 9:1–2 foretold that the Messiah would be metaphorically what the comet signaling his birth would be literally: a great light shining in the deep darkness. The prophet also claimed that the Messiah would glorify Galilee in particular by his presence and work. According to him, the Messiah would be divine in nature (“God with us” [7:14] and “Mighty God” [9:6]). At the same time, Isaiah made it clear that the execution of the divine plan would have a hidden aspect and not only would escape the notice of the people of Israel as a whole but also would offend them (8:14–15; cf. 6:9–10). Indeed Isaiah 53 disclosed that the Messiah would be rejected by his own and suffer and die as an atonement
for sins. Nevertheless, he would ultimately reign over the earth (e.g., 11:4, 9–10).

Matthew explicitly asserts that Jesus fulfilled Isaiah 9:1–2 by his ministry in Galilee (Matt.
4:12–16
).

According to the Gospel of John, Jesus himself expressly claimed to be “the light of the world” shining in the darkness in fulfillment of Isaiah's oracle (John 8:12; cf. 12:35).

However, the Gospels also indicate that Jesus regularly made efforts to restrict the disclosure of his identity as the Messiah. The reason for Jesus's reticence to go public regarding it is not difficult to explain. Most Jews in the first century AD had a strongly political conception of the Messiah—they expected him to be a human ruler who would overthrow the Roman government and establish a new world kingdom centered in Jerusalem—and the Roman authorities were well aware of this. Careless disclosure of the messianic claim would inevitably have stirred up misguided revolutionary hopes centered on Jesus, increasing crowd densities and provoking governmental intervention, and thus preventing Jesus from fulfilling his mission. Nevertheless, those who listened carefully to what he said and watched what he did were able to work out the fundamental claim Jesus was making about himself.

According to Mark's Gospel, when Jesus's chief disciple Peter declared to him, “You are the Messiah” (Mark 8:29), Jesus endorsed his judgment (v. 30) and privately took him, along with James and John, to the top of a mountain to give them a glimpse of his future messianic glory (9:1–8; cf. 2 Pet.
1:16–18
).

Jesus declared that the Hebrew Bible portrayed the Messiah as divine in nature. He strongly challenged the contemporary understanding of the Messiah as a mere mortal—since David, in Psalm 110:1, referred to the Messiah as distinct from God and yet as being “my Lord,” there could be no doubt that the Messiah was a distinct person of the Godhead (Mark
12:35–37
).

According to the Gospels, Jesus did great deeds that implied that he had authority over nature—for example, he calmed a storm, walked on water, and fed multitudes; over death—for example, he raised from the dead the daughter of a synagogue ruler and a young man from Nain; and over disease—for example, he restored the limbs of paralytics, sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and speech to the dumb, and healed those with leprosy, epilepsy, dropsy, and hemorrhages.

Moreover, Jesus had an extraordinary divine self-consciousness. According to the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), he maintained that he possessed “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18–20a) and that he was Immanuel (“God with us”) (v. 20b). Furthermore, to substantiate his assertion that he shared the divine prerogative to forgive sins, he publicly healed a paralytic (Mark 2:1–12). Elsewhere Jesus strongly intimated that he was the unique Son of God (12:6–12) with a wholly unique relationship to God the Father (Matt. 11:27). John 8:56–58 reports that Jesus stated to unbelieving Jewish opponents that “before Abraham was, I am,” plainly claiming preexistence and indeed the divine name (Ex. 3:14) for himself. According to John, Jesus also proclaimed that he and the Father were “one,” prompting the Jews to try to stone him for blasphemy (John 10:30–33), and he accepted Thomas's remarkable appellation, “My Lord and my God!” (
20:28–29
).

At his trial before the Sanhedrin, Jesus was asked straightforwardly whether he was “the Messiah, the Son of God,” and he responded, “I am,” and proceeded to declare that he would soon be seated at the right hand of God the Father and would eventually return to the earth on clouds (Mark 14:60–62; cf. Matt. 26:63–65; Luke 22:67–70). Jesus's statement was rightly interpreted by the Jewish high priest as a claim to deity, and on this basis, without any evaluation of its truthfulness, the high priest called on the Sanhedrin to sentence him to death for blasphemy (Mark
14:63–64
).

Furthermore, when Jesus was executed, his death was far from ordinary. The Roman centurion overseeing the execution was so deeply moved by the circumstances of his death, particularly Jesus's loud triumphant cry just before he breathed his last, that he exclaimed, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” (Mark 15:39).