Book 16: Fifth Seal (A.D. Chronicles #5) by Brock and Bodie Thoene
My rating: ****
"Here he comes! Such shoulders. He'll carry his father's beams, I warrant. A strong one he'll be. Push! No wonder you had such a hard time. There you go, Mary! Look at those big hands. Must be a boy with such hands. They're wide-open. See? He's reaching out to the world. Once more - yes, that's it! Now push. Harder. One more time! And...there! Yes! A son, Mary! A baby boy!"
You know what blows my mind? Jesus' birth. I hadn't really ever thought about the details surrounding the entire ordeal until reading these books. He was born like any other baby. Jesus. Immanuel. God with us was BORN. The even crazier thing would've been being a Jew living during this time. Crazy in the sense that all of this was not even close to what they were expecting and hoping for. I mean, they lived daily at the whims of a crazy man, King Herod, who was the self-proclaimed "King of the Jews." He was so crazy that he didn't think twice about having anyone killed who threatened his throne - even his own 2 sons who he had strangled to death. It was against the law to speak against Herod - punishable by death and most like crucifixion at that. The Jews were anxiously awaiting the Messiah - the One who would come and overthrow Roman rule and drive Herod from his tyrannical reign (much like Judah Maccabee when he drove Antiachus Epiphanes out, cleansed the temple, and reestablished traditional Jewish worship). They were waiting for a triumphant king to ride in and save them, but what they got was a baby born in a stable to a nobody couple. God always has other (better) plans. But even though He came as a baby, Jesus did indeed come to change everything and put the world back right.
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