Leading The Way

Dr. Michael Youssef: Anyone can say that I'm a messenger of God. But the one true God told us who he is. And in Genesis 3:15, as we have been seeing throughout this series of messages, from the very beginning, God promised Adam and Eve that his son is going to come in a bodily form. And when he comes, he's going to crush Satan's head. And that's exactly what Jesus did right on God's schedule. He died on a cross and rose again on the third day and thus crushing Satan's head.

Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to Leading The Way with pastor and author of more than 50 books including An Unholy Alliance, brand new from Dr. Michael Youssef. In fact, if you'd like to learn more about the compelling content in An Unholy Alliance, you may want to take a moment to visit Leading The Way's website, ltw.org. In addition to ordering details, you can dig into the compelling content.

Today on Leading The Way, how Bethlehem's star pointed people of that day to Jesus and points people of today to the Savior. It's not just a Christmas story, it's a story transcending and impacting eternity. So listen with me now as Dr. Michael Youssef begins his teaching.

Dr. Michael Youssef: I think we all know how easy it is to believe a lie that is repeated so often more than the truth that is maybe announced only once. I came across a quote that I want you to guess who made this statement as I read it: "By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell and hell is heaven." Did you guess it? Adolf Hitler.

And you see that is exactly the modus operandi of the devil. That is how Satan works by selling us the greatest lie, and he is succeeding in our society today. He uses his emissaries in the media, in the government, and yes, in the churches, to try to confuse people and to disbelieve even indisputable truth. It was Mark Twain who once said that get your facts straight first, then you can distort them as much as you want.

Satan knows his facts. He knows them well. And he knows exactly how to distort the facts. In fact, the Bible said that Satan believes in Jesus and he trembles at the sound of the name of Jesus. Every time I think of how our society is blindly heading into the abyss, I think of a story that Bedouin, who was in the Arabian desert, who woke up in the middle of the night in his tent and was hungry.

And the only thing he had in that tent was a bunch of dates. So he lit a candle and he began to eat the dates. And as he looked at the first one close to the flame of that candle, he noticed a big worm just coming out of the date. So he threw it out. Picked a second one, looked again at the light of the candle and saw another worm, big worm. He tossed it out.

A third date, tossed it out. And then he began to reason. He's hungry. If he's going to see those worms in every date that he is going to try to eat, tossed out, he's going to go about hungry. So he decided to blow out the candle and eat the dates, worm and all. You see, there are so many people around us like that.

And some when you share the gospel, the truth, the facts, the evidence with them, they will respond with all sorts of false information. I made a list through the years and I won't give you the whole list, but through the years I've heard it all. Isn't the Bible really a bunch of myth? Isn't there a dispute between religion and science? Hasn't science really disproved religion? Isn't God just so vast to allow one true religion?

And on and on and on. And in this series of messages, we have been dealing with these indisputable truths. In the last message we saw the first proof was the unity of the Bible. 1600 years from the beginning, the first writer to the last writer and all varieties of people, variety of time, variety of places and yet the whole book tells the same story.

Most of the so-called sacred writings of all these other religions is a bunch of hodgepodge of contradictory statements and philosophical mumbo jumbo. Anybody can make a claim. Anyone can say that I'm a messenger of God. But the one true God told us who he is. And in Genesis 3:15, as we have been seeing throughout this series of messages, from the very beginning, God promised Adam and Eve that his son is going to come in a bodily form.

And when he comes, he's going to crush Satan's head. And that's exactly what Jesus did right on God's schedule. He died on a cross and rose again on the third day and thus crushing Satan's head. But that's not all. There are literally mountains of evidence that supports the claims of Jesus. Claims that he and he alone is the only way to God, is the only way to the Father, is the only way to salvation, is the only way to heaven.

Today I'm going to give you more indisputable proof. And we're going to begin with the birth of Jesus. Begin with the beginning. For those people who throw around statements like isn't the Bible just myth and all this story of the virgin birth and all this stuff? Well, you need to tell them that even the advance of science and astronomy and computer science of today are giving us more powerful confirmation of the biblical account of Jesus than ever before.

Everyone knows the story of the Magi and the star of Bethlehem. And for centuries, people have interpreted the story suggesting that the star of Bethlehem moved around in the sky guiding the Magi from place to place and then led them to Bethlehem. Then came an American lawyer by the name of Frederick Larson. Larson worked as a lawyer and a prosecutor and a judge and he knows how to investigate facts, facts, not fiction.

And when he began to investigate the evidence, he ran smack into the truth. Larson used a sophisticated astronomy software to map the skies over Jerusalem in the years 3 and 2 BC. And he made an amazing discovery. He made a discovery that Matthew's account of the birth of Jesus fits perfectly with the behavior of the appearance of planet Jupiter as it passed through the night sky in 3 BC.

Listen carefully. In Matthew's time, the planets were known as the wandering stars. Because of their motion around the sun against the background of the fixed stars in the universe. Jupiter was known as the king of the wandering stars. That motion of Jupiter brought it into proximity with the star Regulus. When? It was September 3 BC.

Do you know what that was? That was Rosh Hashanah, the beginning, the new year, Jewish new year of that year. Most astronomers in the ancient world regarded Regulus as the king star. And Larson explained that when the king planet appeared to touch the king of the wandering stars at that day of the first day of the Jewish new year, the Magi believed that it is a sign of the birth of a great Jewish king of which Daniel has prophesied and told them about more than 400 years earlier. I'm going to come to Daniel in a minute.

Between September 3 BC and June of 2 BC, the Magi traveled this arduous route from modern day Iran, that's where they come from, to modern day Israel. And they traveled mostly at night in the cool of the night because you couldn't travel, it's too hot during the day. And according to the computer-generated sky maps of the time, Larson said that in December of 2 BC, the Magi looked south in the wee hours.

There hung the planet of kings over the city of the birth of the Messiah. You say how can a star stop? Well, according to that computer-generated sky map of the time, Jupiter, the king planet, experienced a period of what the astronomers call a retrograde motion. Though the planet was actually moving in the orbit around the sun, Jupiter appeared to stop in its tracks when it's viewed from planet Earth.

And that means that it came to a dead stop relative to the background of the other stars. Then it appeared to move once again and the Magi were conscious of the moment that the star appeared to come to a halt. Again, the sky maps show that Jupiter appeared to stop in December 25, the year 2 BC. Here we are 21st century science has confirmed and affirmed Matthew's account of the birth of the Messiah that was promised by God back in Genesis 3:15.

But that's not all. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, he grew up in Nazareth, and he performed his first miracle at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. When they ran out of wine and his mother came to him to perform a miracle to save the day, Jesus' response to her request is of vital importance. Listen to me. It is of vital importance. Don't miss it. Here's what he said: "Dear woman, my time has not yet come."

So instead of creating a ruckus and a spectacle, he quietly performed the miracle. What does he mean by my time has not yet come? In John chapter 7, when his brothers who did not believe in him and they were skeptical—but after the resurrection they died for him, James and Jude both died martyrs for Christ—but before that, they were taunting him, they were making fun of him.

They said to him, "Why don't you go to the temple and reveal your Messiahship? Why keep it a secret? Anyone with 1% of your power would want to go in there and attract attention to themselves and declare his Messiahship." And Jesus replied, "I'm not seeking publicity, not yet. My time has not come. My time has not come." On several occasions throughout his earthly ministry, he referred to the fact that he had a secret timetable that he was following.

That he has a heavenly calendar, not an earthly calendar by which he's operating. And finally three years after his teaching and healing the sick and raising the dead, he comes into Jerusalem and enters the week before his crucifixion and resurrection on the Sunday which we call Palm Sunday. And he comes in there riding on a donkey just like Zechariah said. And that was the time they declared him king.

Now is the fulfillment of that secret timetable. Now is the heaven appointed hour. Now is the time to declare his kingship. And when the crowd who heard his teaching and benefited and was touched by his miracles, when they saw him coming on a donkey, they began to cry out and say, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord." Ah, but his enemies, they did not like that at all.

Like the enemies of Christ today. Keep that name out of public life. We don't want to hear the name of Jesus. Don't you pray publicly in the name of Jesus. We don't want to hear the name of Jesus. You know why? Because the devil trembles at the name of Jesus. And so they cried out to him and said, "Silence them, silence them." And we all know the story but we take it for granted on what it really means.

And here's what Jesus said. He said, "If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out." What is he doing? He's now permitting them to declare his kingship. Now he is saying, "Go ahead, call me king for that's what I am." What has changed? Why did he do it in the beginning of his ministry? Why did he wait until that moment and he allowed them to call him king?

Oh, because that's the time which was meticulously and miraculously and precisely foretold by Daniel the prophet. Listen carefully. In Daniel chapter 9, the Archangel Gabriel gave Daniel an exact date and time on when Jesus is going to be crucified and resurrected. It wasn't a haphazard guess within a matter of few days or few weeks or few years give or take. No.

Jesus is no founder of a religion. Jesus is not another prophet. Jesus is not a preacher of the God consciousness. No, and a million no. He is the only one true God. And if you do the math in Daniel chapter 9, and I encourage you to do that, you will find the exact number of days from the time of Daniel to the time of Jesus entering into Jerusalem, it was 173,880 days.

It was March 14, we know that from Nehemiah. It was March 14, 445 BC when Daniel was given that prophecy. And if you add 173,880 days to that date of March 14, 445, you will come up with the fact that Jesus arrived to Jerusalem on Sunday, April 6, 32 AD. When Jesus kept on saying, "My time has not yet come, my time has not yet come, my time has not yet come," he was saying, "Listen, in the heavenly courts' records, the day of my coronation was recorded before the foundation of the Earth."

And it was Sunday, April 6, 32 AD. Facts. Our faith is built on facts. Who said, I don't know if it happened or not, I just believe, I exercise faith? We don't have the kind of blind faith. Our faith is a reasonable faith, is based on reason and based on facts of history. But I haven't come to the empty tomb yet.

The empty tomb is the most irrefutable evidence of Jesus' resurrection from the dead. Listen to me. The tomb of Buddha is occupied, the tomb of Krishna is occupied, the tomb of Muhammad is occupied, but the tomb of Jesus is empty. The resurrection was not only written about in all the four Gospels, the eyewitness accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but all of the disciples saw and talked and fellowshiped with the resurrected Lord.

500 eyewitnesses have talked to the resurrected Lord. Even two non-Christian historians have written about the resurrection of our Lord. A Jewish historian by the name of Josephus and a Roman historian by the name of Tacitus. Beloved, listen to me. The reason Christianity grew very quickly from Jerusalem to Antioch, to Asia Minor, North Africa, and Rome, because the resurrection of Jesus Christ was a validated fact.

Hundreds of eyewitnesses who saw and heard the risen Lord, many of them were severely persecuted, brutally tortured, and even crucified. Others were burned alive as human torches to light up the garden of Nero's palace. Others were thrown to hungry lions. Why? Why? Because they would rather endure this horrendous pain and even death than deny the resurrection of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ which they saw with their eyewitness accounts.

You see, the evidence is clear and convincing. The promised Jesus in Genesis 3:15 came right on schedule just as God promised. He spoke to Adam and Eve. And in obedience to the Father, he hung on a cross and died and on the third day he bodily, physically rose from the dead and soon he is coming back to judge every human being that ever lived on the basis of whether you believed that he and he alone is the Savior of the world and the Savior of your own soul or not.

That's the basis. Jesus is the only Savior of every human being who has ever lived on the face of the Earth. He's the only one who rose from the grave. Only Jesus, God of very God who became man of very man, got up out of the grave. And the question is what will you do with Jesus? The truth and the evidence are overwhelming.

And the question is not evidence really. The question is do I have the humility to humble myself and say you are the only one, I can't save myself? Father God, I am so overwhelmed with how those of us who know you and love you are intimidated by false accusers and call us intolerant. But Father, we need your spirit to work in us today like never before.

Nero was very tolerant of all religions and he burned the Christians because he said they were intolerant. And Lord, whatever the future brings, we ask you in the name of Jesus that you breathe in us your power and your strength to stand firm in the truth and share it with everyone who would listen. Because Father, we know as you gather your remnant, things are going to get tough.

But we praise you that he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world. Be glorified in each of us. And Father, as there's a single person here who has yet to commit their life to you as their savior and only Savior and Lord, may this be the day. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Male): A call to the indisputable truth. Jesus is not just a savior, but the savior, your savior. If this is a new thought, maybe you'd enjoy speaking with one of the Leading The Way pastors or counselors. Begin a life-changing conversation by filling out a contact form at ltw.org/jesus.

Did you know that Dr. Michael Youssef and Leading The Way reach and touch lives across six continents and in 28 different languages? Words and teaching from Dr. Youssef are translated and broadcast through various media in the world's most spoken and understood languages. One high-impact outreach to briefly highlight is the Kingdom Sat. This is a channel, much like you would have on your cable or satellite service, featuring only Dr. Youssef and other solid Bible teachers.

The content focuses primarily on reaching Arabic-speaking populations, reaching into places where the name of Jesus is rarely heard. And because of this worldwide reach, our worldwide offices often hear from brothers and sisters who live in places where it is dangerous to be a follower of Christ. They contact Leading The Way and the Kingdom Sat for prayer, but our teams are poised to do more than that.

They're also offering discipleship as well as connecting these struggling people with trusted partner churches and ministries. One family recently reached by the Kingdom Sat was a man, his wife, and children originally from Syria. They found Christ, moved to Turkey to flee persecution, and due to the absence of a local Christian community to connect with, regularly watch the Kingdom Sat to learn more about faith living. Won't you consider partnering with Dr. Youssef today?

Dr. Michael Youssef: We stand at a crossroad of history and we can walk through these doors of opportunities that God has opened for us or we can do nothing. We have the choice.

Guest (Male): Leading The Way continues to embark on a bold vision to passionately proclaim the uncompromising truth of Christ in three strategic areas where the need is greatest and the doors are open. In North America, where only 4% of adults have a biblical worldview, we are delivering solid biblical teaching through every media platform available. We continue to pray for a spiritual awakening in the Western Church, asking the Lord to mobilize believers to stand firm for uncompromising biblical truth in their homes, churches, and communities.

The answer, it is not frustration, but proclamation of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and holding that truth uncompromisingly. The Middle East is open and home to 68% of the world's unreached people groups. We are proclaiming the gospel in areas with the most need through our Kingdom Sat TV channel, outreach events, audio, printed and digital content, and our strategically positioned field teams. We must take the gospel to those who have never heard it.

42% of the world's population lives in remote villages without gospel truth. Technology and language barriers have cut them off from the message. Your support will help us reach these isolated areas.

Dr. Michael Youssef: I made a vow to God that as long as he gives me a breath, that I will proclaim him and his truth of his gospel until my dying day. Will you go through it with me?

Guest (Male): Join Dr. Youssef to passionately proclaim uncompromising truth in three strategic areas. It's the Open Door campaign. Express your generosity today when you call 866-626-4356 or reach out online at ltw.org. This program is brought to you by Leading The Way with Dr. Michael Youssef.