His Star, the real story of the Bethlehem Star

Okay, bear with me. All right. Okay, so just as a disclaimer, especially because we might have some new people here tonight.

So we just want to remind everybody that while Dr. Lyle is doing his presentation, we ask that you keep yourselves muted and also keep your camera off.

And so then that avoids any distractions. If you're on Zoom or if you're watching along with us on Facebook and you have questions for Dr.

Lyle during his presentation, you can post them into the chats of those platforms. And then at the end, we'll do a live

Q &A and I'll ask him the questions that you have. So with that, let's go ahead and get started.

I'm Terri Camerizal here with Creation Fellowship Santee. And we're a group of friends bound by our common agreement that the creation account as told in Genesis is a true depiction of how

God created the universe and all life from nothing in just six days a few thousand years ago.

We've been meeting most Thursday nights here on Zoom since June of 2020. We've been blessed with presentations by pastors, teachers, doctors, cartoonists, scientists, prophecy speakers, apologists, and all around smarty pants people who love the

Lord and have a message to share. You can find most of our past videos by searching Creation Fellowship Santee, that's

S -A -N -T -E -E on YouTube. You can also find us on BitChute as Creation Fellowship and on Rumble as CFS 2020.

And our Creation Fellowship Santee Facebook page is where we have most of our videos that we live streamed and also where you can find upcoming events.

You can also send an email to creationfellowshipsantee at gmail .com so that you're on our speaker list.

And we are blessed again to have Dr. Jason Lyle with us

Dr. Lyle almost needs no introduction because for one thing, we've introduced him a couple of times before.

He's a returned speaker and you can find a lot of his work online but we do wanna make sure that you understand why he has the authority to speak about his topic tonight.

So he is an astrophysicist. He graduated from the University of Colorado in Boulder and he loves the

Lord and has been serving him in creation apologetics ministries for quite some time now. He has his own ministry, which he started in 2017.

It's the Biblical Science Institute and you can find more about him and his ministry there.

It's thebiblicalscienceinstitute .com, right? Dr. Lyle .com. And Dr. Lyle has written a number of books including

Taking Back Astronomy and also A Stargazer's Guide to the Night Sky and on several other topics like the hermeneutics of Genesis or logic or even his newest work, which is

Math and Patterns. It's his fractals book. So with that, we're happy to have him come for a

Christmas time presentation tonight called His Star. All right.

Well, thank you for having me back. And so again, this is a fun topic this time of year.

A lot of times people will ask what about the star that appeared and led the Magi, the wise men to Christ?

What was it? And can we make sense of that? Is there a scientific explanation for that?

So what I wanted to do this evening is just take a look at Matthew chapter two. If you have your Bibles with you, you might go ahead and open up to Matthew chapter two.

This is where we find the account of the Magi coming to the young Christ. And I wanna try to answer the question this evening.

What was the star that guided the wise men to Christ, that guided the Magi? And again, this is found in Matthew chapter two.

What I'd like to do is read the first 16 verses of that chapter in its entirety, just so we have kind of the entire account fresh in our mind.

And then I'll go back through and just kind of give a little bit of background and just exegete the passage really, just see what things we can figure out.

This is something that we're supposed to do as Christians. We're supposed to read God's word and then we're supposed to think about it and piece things together and build our worldview on what

God has said in his word. And the Christmas star is a great way to do that. So let's go ahead and take a look at Matthew chapter two, beginning in verse one.

It says, now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King, behold,

Magi from the East arrived in Jerusalem saying, where is he who has been born King of the

Jews? For we saw his star in the East and have come to worship him. And when Herod the

King heard it, he was troubled in all Jerusalem with him. And gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he began to inquire of them where the

Christ was to be born. And they said to him in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it has been written by the prophet and you

Bethlehem land of Judah are by no means least among the leaders of Judah for out of you shall come forth a ruler who will shepherd my people

Israel. Then Herod secretly called the Magi and ascertained from them the time the star appeared.

And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, go and make careful search for the child. And when you have found him report to me that I too may come and worship him.

And having heard the King, they went their way and lo the star which they had seen in the East went on before them until it came and stood over where the child was.

And when they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And they came into the house and saw the child with Mary, his mother.

And they fell down and worshiped him and opening their treasures, they presented to him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.

And having been warned by God in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their own country by another way.

Now, when they had departed, behold an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream saying, arise and take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you for Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.

And he arose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt and was there until the death of Herod that what was spoken by the

Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled saying out of Egypt that I call my son. Then when

Herod saw that he had been tricked by the Magi, he became very enraged and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its environs from two years old and under according to the time which he had ascertained from the

Magi. Okay, so there we have the passage. It's an amazing part of history.

It's something that's just try to put yourself into it. It's very exciting to think about that.

And so let's just go back through back to verse one and just kind of go through this and I'll spend a lot of time on verse one because I want to give some background information that I think will be helpful in trying to understand what is going on here.

I mean, we have the basic picture now, but are there any details we can fill in by logically analyzing these verses?

And so let's go back to verse one, which begins now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem. You probably know that's just because of our common

Christian heritage that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Bethlehem means house of bread. And it's very fitting that the bread of life who comes down from heaven should be born in the house, the house of bread, a town that was named that.

There's a lot of things like that in scripture, names that are very fitting and appropriate for the narrative that God is telling us.

And of course, this was in the days of Herod the King, it says, now this is Herod the Great.

The thing you need to know about Herod the Great is he's wicked. He's incredibly wicked. He bribed his way to power. He's not a descendant of David.

He doesn't have a legal right to the throne. He's not Jewish by ancestry. He is Jewish by profession and he bribed his way to become king in Jerusalem.

Now at this time, the Roman empire had conquered the entire world. And so Jerusalem, all

Judea was a subordinate nation that had to pay tribute to Rome. And there was Caesar, of course, was in charge of all that.

But Rome allowed nations to keep their own kings in many cases, but Herod was able to weasel his way into power.

He was a very wicked man. He executed his own wife and two of his sons. Of course, we know from this very account that he murdered every boy under the age of two from Bethlehem so as not to have competition from a toddler because he wanted to be king of the

Jews and he doesn't want this toddler and somebody who's born king of the Jews to compete with him. So he executes children, which is very wicked, of course.

But one of his own sons tried to poison him. So he wasn't a particularly good father. On his deathbed, he knew he was gonna die.

And so he ordered all of the leaders of Israel to be rounded up and they were imprisoned with instructions that when he died, they were to be executed.

That way there would be mourning in Israel at the death of Herod. Now, fortunately, his order was not carried out, but nonetheless, that gives you a feel for the wickedness of this leader.

And he's the one who is in charge of Judah at this point. And so that gives you a feel for the wicked environment into which

God places his infant son. If this were a movie, that would be just a captivating opening.

Just think about the wickedness and that's a worrisome place to be a righteous person at that time.

And so then there are these Magi from the East. Magi, it's where we get the word magic. They were scholars of the ancient world.

We think they were from Persia. And in fact, the Magi is the Persian word meaning priests.

And of course, Judah itself had been taken captive by Babylon, Babylon part of Persia. And so that gives us the context of these priests.

They're more than just religious priests though. They're scholars of the ancient world. Again, the area around Babylon and so on, the

Persian. Now, Persia is about a thousand miles due

East of Jerusalem, okay? And so they're at the same latitude, but it's about a thousand miles away, but it's an extensive region.

Babylon's a little closer. It's on sort of the Western rim of the Persia area. So who are these

Magi then? Well, according to the historian Philo, he describes the Magi as quote, men who gave themselves to the study of nature and contemplation of the divine perfections worthy of being the counselors of kings.

And so these were, again, the scholars of the ancient world, the scientists of the ancient world, the counselors of the ancient world.

If a king wanted to know when the next eclipse was gonna happen, he would consult with one of the

Magi or when sunrise would be and so on. The Magi could perform those kinds of calculations.

We don't know to what accuracy, but they would have been knowledgeable of astronomy, of chemistry and at the level that was possible about at that time.

And they're sort of a jack of all trades. At that time in history, you could know all the different sciences because of course we didn't know as much about the world as we do today.

Today, you have to specialize. So much is known scientifically that scientists specialize in a particular field.

And even my own field of astrophysics, we know so much. I've specialized in solar subsurface supergranulation and so on.

It's a very specific field. But back then, less was known. And so you could know a little bit about all the sciences and astronomy in particular.

The astronomy was very important in the ancient world because you needed to know when to plant, when to harvest and so on.

And you needed to know how to read the stars to be able to do that in terms of, I mean, that's the purpose for them being created to be for science seasons, days and years, to help us keep track of time.

And the Magi would have been very knowledgeable of that field in particular. And so that kind of leads us into why, one of the reasons why they noticed this particular star when it seems like most other people didn't.

How many Magi? Well, if you've seen the Christmas cards, you know there were three, but of course the

Bible doesn't actually say there were three. It just says Magi. There's at least two because Magi is a plural word.

Magus would be the singular. So there's at least two, but there were probably many. There were probably a lot more than three.

The reason some people think there were three is because they presented three gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh. But that doesn't mean that there were just three people.

There were many Magi. Now, maybe not all of them made the trip. Maybe just a smaller group of them made the trip.

We don't know, but there were probably many and they traveled with their own personal army.

So this was not three people on camels. This would have been a caravan and more likely riding on horses than camels.

The Persians were accomplished horsemen. And so they would have had their own army with them traveling through the region in between Persia and Jerusalem.

So it would have taken quite a bit of time depending on how fast they traveled. It takes a little while to travel a thousand miles in the ancient world, even by horseback.

The Magi had the power to depose kings. And this is relevant because we're going to find that Herod is very troubled when they come.

And now we're beginning to understand why. If there was a dispute about who was the rightful king, the

Magi could be called upon to settle that dispute. And their decision was binding and they had their own personal army to be able to enforce that decision.

So you can imagine how Herod was feeling when these Magi arrive and they're asking about the king of the

Jews, not Herod, the real king of the Jews, right? The one who's been born king of the

Jews. And so you can imagine that's got Herod a little bit worried. Are they here to depose

Herod? Or what's going to happen? Are they going to remove him and install this child as the king of the

Jews? Especially considering the fact that Herod did not have a legal right to the throne. You can imagine why he might be concerned about that.

It's very significant that Matthew records men from the East following the star who were looking for the king of the

Jews. And these, of course, these would have been Gentiles from a pagan nation, but the

Jews weren't looking. And that's a real indictment on the majority of the

Jews at that time. Matthew, well, each of the gospels gives us a different, records different events around the time of Christ.

I mean, some of them record the same events, but from a different perspective. That's a wonderful gift because each of the gospel authors has a sort of theme in mind.

And so he records the events that are pertinent to that theme. And by reading all the gospels, we have a very rich picture of what happened at the time of Christ's earthly incarnation.

And so Matthew in particular focuses on Christ's kingly office as the son of David.

And so he's the rightful king of the Jews. And so you can see why Matthew records this event.

The other gospels do not record anything about the star that guided the Magi at all.

But this really is a judgment against Israel for rejecting their own Messiah. Well, the Gentiles accept him.

The Gentiles come looking for the king of the Jews. The Jews are not looking for the king of the Jews. And of course, if you think about it, it was the chief priests who wanted

Christ dead at the time of his crucifixion, of course.

Jesus himself had some not so nice things to say about the leadership of the Jews at that time.

In the temple, he overturns the table. We read about that. We read about, in Matthew 21, 19, we read about the fig tree.

Remember that Jesus came to the fig tree. God had created fig trees to produce fruit.

Jesus was hungry. He goes to the fig tree to collect some of that fruit, but there isn't any fruit on it. And so he cursed it because it wasn't doing what

God created it to do. And therefore, it immediately withered. And by the next day, it withered away.

And so, because it wasn't doing what God commanded it to do. And the link there is obvious that the

Israel as a nation was not doing what God commanded it to do. They weren't acting like God's people.

God had chosen Israel in the ancient world to represent his people. Not that every Jew was saved, not that every

Jew was a believer in God, but a lot of them were. And that nation was supposed to represent what it means to serve

Yahweh, the living God. And the Israelites at the time of Christ's incarnation, very few of them,

I mean, there were some Jews that received him as Lord and Savior, but very few did. And so, and again, we see that throughout

Matthew. In Matthew chapter 21, we read about the parable of the landowner. And you remember the parable, the landowner, he goes away on a trip and he has his servants work the field.

And then he sends people to collect the produce, but they kill him. They beat one stone, the next.

And then he finally says, I'll send my son. And what do they do? They kill the son. And Jesus asks his disciples, what do you think the landowner will do when he comes?

And he says, you'll put those wretches to a wretched end. And the connection is obvious that that represented the

Jewish leaders at the time of Christ's earthly ministry. They were not serving God the way they were supposed to.

And therefore they missed, they had an opportunity to go and worship

Christ, to see the living God as a toddler. And they missed it, whereas these

Gentiles from a pagan nation, because they had a repentant heart and they offered, and they came and worshiped this young Christ.

So this really is a scathing indictment on the unbelieving

Jews at that time, to the point that some liberal scholars have said, well, Matthew's anti -Semitic, he's anti -Jew.

Well, Matthew was a Jew, so he's not gonna be anti -Semitic, but he's just pointing out that the majority of Jews were unbelievers at this time.

They were not looking for the Messiah and they should have been. And so they are shown up by Gentiles from a pagan nation.

A lot more I could say on that. Matthew 23, a scathing indictment of the religious leaders at that time. Matthew 24,

Jesus points out that the temple will be destroyed as an indication that Israel is no longer

God's chosen people. It's only those who have trusted in him for salvation that are his people.

So more could be said on that, but I think it is very relevant. And this is one of the reasons why Matthew records this account in the other gospels.

They're focused on different things, but Matthew shows that it's one of the great ironies of scripture, that it was the

Gentiles who followed the star and got to see God in the flesh and worship him.

And most of the Jews missed it. They missed out. Now, it should be obvious from this that the

Magi apparently had some knowledge of the Bible. They were looking for the King of the Jews. So how did they know that?

Well, recall Judah had been captured by Babylon 500 years prior to this.

And so there was a Jewish influence there. Babylon itself had a massive library.

The Magi, they were scholars. They had their own library. And certainly some of the books on that library would have been books from the

Jews, the Jewish scriptures that had been left behind when they, at the time that they were, then they returned back to Judea.

Some of those books would have been retained in that library. Of course, and we read about in Daniel, Daniel took place during the time of the captivity in Babylon.

And in fact, Daniel chapter five, verses 11 and 12, Daniel, he rose to power and he was actually appointed chief of the magicians, chief of the

Magi. So Daniel himself was the leader of the Magi at the time in which

Daniel lived, at the time of the captivity in Babylon. So now don't you think that Daniel would have shared his faith in the living

God with these other Magi? Perhaps many of them were not Jews. They were just Babylonians from the area, but nonetheless,

Daniel was a Magi and the leader of them at one point. So no doubt they had knowledge of at least some of the scriptures and certainly

Daniel's scriptures. And Daniel himself, of course, we read in his prophecy, there's the prophecy of the 70 weeks, which these are weeks of years, 77s literally, and or 490 years, the time between when a certain decree was issued and when the

Messiah would come. And so Daniel knew when the Messiah would come. And therefore the

Magi, who are the spiritual successors of Daniel, albeit centuries later, they would have had access to his writings.

And so they knew the approximate time that the Messiah would come. But how did they know that the star represented

Christ? Well, we'll come back to that. We'll come back to that. So it's interesting too, that these

Magi arrive in Jerusalem, not in Bethlehem. And so we have this

Christmas card picture of the star leading them to Christ. And I believe it eventually did, but it seems to me that at this particular time, the star was not guiding them for whatever reason, because they are in the wrong city.

Now, if the star appeared over Christ, which I believe it did, and we'll come to that passage shortly.

If it appeared over Christ, and they're in Persia, they can see that the star is over the land of Judah, over Israel, the remaining tribe of Israel.

But Jerusalem and Bethlehem, you can't distinguish them because they're so close together. They're only a few miles apart.

And so from Persia, you can't tell if it's over Jerusalem or Bethlehem. There would be no way to know that. They just knew it was somewhere in Israel.

And apparently by the time they arrived in Jerusalem, and in Jerusalem it makes sense, it's the capital city, where else would you find the

King of the Jews, except in the capital city, that would make sense. So you can see why they would go there if the star were not guiding them at the time.

Why wasn't it guiding them at the time? I don't know, maybe clouds, maybe it faded for a little while. For whatever reason, in God's sovereignty, the star apparently was not guiding them.

And so they arrive in Jerusalem and they ask this question, where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw a star in the

East and we've come to worship him. They don't ask if the King of the Jews has been born, they ask where.

There's no doubt in their mind, he's been born. So that's interesting. Perhaps again, they had access to the documents that Daniel had left.

And they knew about the 70 weeks, they knew the time was right. And somehow they knew that the star signified his birth.

It's interesting too, this little phrase, he who has been born King of the Jews. We take that for granted because we hear it every

Christmas but it's a very unusual phrase because most people are not born King. You might be born heir to the throne, but you're not installed as a

King when you're a baby or a toddler, you have to come of age first. And, but that's not the case with Jesus because he's always existed.

He's already the Lord, you see. And so as soon as he comes, he's installed as King. He's already the rightful

King of the Jews. He is a descendant of David. He has the right to the throne. For we, and it says, for we have seen his star in the

East. And I think that's interesting that they call it his star. They don't give it a name. They don't call it

Jupiter. They don't call it Venus. They don't call it a comet. They don't call it a star. We've seen his star, the star of the

Messiah, God's star. Now, of course, all stars belong to God.

They're all his stars. He made them. He spoke them into existence, but there must be something very special about this star that it's the star of the

Messiah. And that's something that's gonna help us to clue in what this might've been, because it's not something that has a common name, apparently, it's his star.

It's the star of the Messiah. But how do they know that? How do they know it was his star? We'll come back to that.

We saw his star in the East. And this little phrase is interesting because it's a little bit ambiguous.

What do they mean? We saw his star in the East and have come to worship him. There's two ways you can interpret that.

It could mean we saw his star in the Eastern sky. That is, we were looking East and we saw the star in the

East. Or it could mean when we were in the East, we saw the star without giving the location of the star.

And you can see how either of those could be read into that sentence. For we saw his star when we were in the

East or we saw his star in the Eastern sky, which is it? And there's another possibility

I'll throw in in a moment. But if we take the position that we saw his star in the Eastern sky, which seems at least in English to be the more natural reading, then there's this perplexing dilemma because Persia is

East of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. And so if they're in the East and they see a star that's in the

East, why did they go West? Right? It doesn't make any sense. We saw his star in the

East and said, hey, let's go the opposite way. Let's go West. How does that work? If they saw his star in the

Eastern sky, why did they go West toward Jerusalem? That's an issue. And that might make you think, well, maybe the other interpretation's better that we being in the

East saw the star. But there is actually another possibility. And this bothered me for years until I had enough knowledge to go back and look at the

Greek. And in the original Greek language, that phrase in the East, the literal translation of that is actually at its rising, at its rising.

So they're really saying we saw his star at its rising. Now, why did the King James and New American Standard and several other translations translate that phrase in the

East? And the answer is because in the ancient world, at its rising was a figure of speech meaning in the

East because the sun rises in the East. And so if you wanted to say, I'm from the

East, I'm from the rising, I'm from the sunrise. That makes sense. If I'm from the

West, I'm from the sunset. The sun rises in the East and not just the sun, the moon rises in the

East and all stars rise in the East. And so you can see how those two, how that would be a very natural figure of speech indicating in the

East. Now you might say, well, what does it matter then? If we saw a star in the East or at its rising because normally it doesn't matter.

If I said to you, I saw the sun rising this morning, you can bet I saw it in the East, in the

Eastern sky. If I said, I saw the sun in the East, you know I saw it while it was rising because the sun is always in the

East when it's rising and it's always rising when it's in the East. They're interchangeable. And likewise with the moon.

If you see the moon in the East, it's rising. If you see the moon rising, it'll be in the East. So what does it matter?

Well, it matters because this star may not be like other stars in the universe. And in fact, if it rose in the

West over Israel, that would be highly unusual because natural stars do not do that.

And so I'm going to suggest, and we'll see there are verses later on that we'll see that this particular star actually rose from the perspective of Persia, it rose in the

West over Israel and they did follow it toward Israel, toward Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Again, it would be indistinguishable which of the two to go to. So probably the best translation of this particular phrase, for we saw his star at its rising.

And in fact, some Bible translations do translate it that way. The ESV and the NLV both translate it at its rising.

So they're seeing his star, not in the Eastern sky, but at the time that it rose, which may not have been in the Eastern sky, it might've been in the

West. And if it was, that would indicate there's something very, very unusual about this star.

It's different from the other ones. But how did they know it belonged to the Messiah? How did they know this was the

Messiah star, that this was the star indicating the birth of the King of the Jews? And again,

I think they might've had access to the scriptures. They almost certainly would have because they were the scholars of the ancient world and they would have known about numbers, chapter 24, verse 17, which is

Balaam's prophecy. Balaam's prophecy, I'm gonna read just the middle of it, which says, a star will come out of Jacob, a scepter will rise out of Israel.

This is a prophecy of the coming Messiah. And it uses this poetic parallelism to indicate that a

King is gonna come forth from Israel, from Jacob and Judah in particular, the remaining tribe of Israel at that time.

And it's interesting, it uses the scepter. A scepter is a symbol of a King, but it also uses a star, interesting.

Now, if you take that verse literally, at least the first part of it, a star will come out of Jacob or Israel. That might've been exactly what happened.

There might've been a star that rose over Israel. And from the perspective of Persia, that would be a star rising in the

West, which no natural star does. So you can imagine that. You can imagine these wise men, these astronomers of the ancient world, seeing this new star appear in the

West, rising in the West, and thinking, wow, that's weird, a star.

We've never seen anything like that. And then one of them says, wait a minute, I think it's over Israel. And I think I remember reading somewhere about a star rising over Israel.

And they go back and look at numbers 24, 17. I mean, this is speculation. We don't know what they knew, but they were the scholars of the ancient world.

And so it seems very likely they would have had access to numbers. I mean, it's part of the Torah. So that would have been, they almost certainly would have had access to that.

And if just one of them remembered that there's this verse about a star rising over Israel, and now we're seeing it, they would recognize that's the star that represents this king who's gonna be born king of the

Jews. So that may be how they were able to know that. And again, from the distance of Persia, this would explain why they went to Jerusalem and not

Bethlehem, because those two would be indistinguishable. The distance between them is so small that from Persia, they couldn't tell.

They would just know it's in Israel. And so it made sense for them to go to the capital city if the star had disappeared by the time they arrived in Jerusalem, either because it had faded or because of weather.

But in any case, and by the way, it doesn't have to be a particularly bright star. The fact that it rose in the

West would get the attention of astronomers. And by the way, it would not get the attention of most other people. If you're not really familiar with the night sky, you might not notice a new star in the

West, but the Magi did, and they would have noted its peculiar behavior as rising in the

West when natural stars do not do that. On to verse three, when

Herod the king heard it, he was troubled in all Jerusalem with him. Well, it's not surprising that Herod is troubled.

This caravan of Magi who have the power to depose kings and have their own personal army with them are in town looking for the king of Jews who they think is not

Herod. You can imagine he's troubled. He thinks he's gonna lose his throne.

What's again an indictment and ironic is that Jerusalem was troubled with him because you see, this is the capital city of the

Jews. They should have been ecstatic. First of all, they should have read the prophecy in Daniel and recognized, hey, this is the time.

This is about the time that the Messiah should come. And they would have had access to numbers 24, 17.

They might've looked for a star rising over Israel. They weren't looking for it. And instead of being excited about him born king of the

Jews, they're bothered because they know this is gonna enrage Herod. And Herod's a wicked king.

Who knows what he's gonna do at this news. So they're troubled with them. So instead of being excited, they have the same reaction as a very ungodly, a very wicked man.

So what does Herod do? Well, he gathers together all the chief priests and scribes of the people. Now that he knows that there's this king of the

Jews allegedly being born, he wants to know all the details he can. He asked him, where is the

Christ to be born? And of course they said to him, in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it was written by the prophet.

And they had now quote Micah chapter five, verse two. And you Bethlehem land of Judah are by no means least among the leaders of Judah for out of you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people

Israel. Now they are quoting Micah chapter five, verse two. And if you look at Micah five, two, the wording is a little different.

And you might think, were they paraphrasing? No, they're quoting from the Septuagint. The Septuagint of course was the

Greek translation of the Old Testament scriptures. And generally in the

New Testament, when people quote scriptures, they quote from the Septuagint because most of the

Jews actually couldn't read Hebrew at that point, interestingly. But Greek was the international language of the day.

And so if you were educated, you could at least read Greek. And so the Septuagint was the

Bible of the early church, not the Masoretic texts, not the original because most people couldn't read it.

So anyway, that's why there's a slight difference there. And they only quote part of the verse. The rest of the verse says, his goings forth are from long ago from the days of eternity.

And I love that because it's a reference to the deity of Christ. This leader who's going to come forth from Israel, his goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity.

He's always existed. That's pretty neat. This leader who will at some point come in the future has always existed in the past.

And of course that makes perfect sense in light of the incarnation of God himself. God, the son takes on human nature.

Although he's always existed in the form of God, he takes and clothes himself in human flesh. That might've been a little bit mysterious.

We know it was to Old Testament Jews. They hadn't quite figured out the nuances, the details of the gospel and how that would work out.

They knew there would be a Messiah coming who would somehow take care of the problem of sin. They understood substitutionary atonement.

This animal dies in your place. You live in its place. That pointed forward to what the Messiah was going to do in reality.

They knew that only God could be a savior. Yahweh alone can save. It seems like they couldn't quite put all the pieces together.

But we as New Testament Christians can look back at those scriptures and say, oh yeah, I see the

Trinity there and there and there. That's pretty amazing. So what does

Herod do? He secretly calls the Magi and he ascertains from them the time the star appeared.

This indicates a number of things. One indicates that Herod was not aware of the star. Okay, and apparently it was not common knowledge.

He had to ask the Magi when they saw it. Why? So he knows when the child was born.

So the assumption here is that the star appeared at the time of Christ's birth. And I think that's probably the right conclusion to draw.

Now we don't see it in this verse, but later we find that Herod slaughters all the children in Bethlehem and the surrounding regions that are under two years of age based on the time that he learned from the

Magi. So apparently they had said, well, we saw the star about maybe a year and a half ago.

Probably wouldn't be two years because Herod would be rounding up to make sure he covers all of his bases, right?

So it might be a year and a half ago that they saw it. And why so long?

Well, it took them a while to make the trip. First of all, the trip might've taken several months at least they might've had to make preparations for the trip.

So they might've taken time to do that. They might not have recognized the significance of the star immediately. Maybe it took them a year to figure out what it was.

But in any case, it's very clear from this and from other scriptures that the Magi did not arrive at the nativity scene.

You will a lot of times see around Christmas, the nativity scene, the shepherds and the infant

Jesus there in the manger and three wise men. The Magi did not come at that time.

They came a year, year and a half later. And there are other ways we know this too.

For example, remember at the temple when Jesus was presented, something that they were required to do by law after the birth of a male child, 40 days after that birth, they have to go to the temple and they make a sacrifice on behalf of the child.

And in fact, they make two sacrifices. They sacrifice a turtle dove and a lamb.

But you'll notice if you read Luke 2, verse 24 that Joseph and Mary sacrificed two turtle doves.

But the law required a turtle dove and a lamb. Why did they sacrifice two turtle doves? Well, because according to Leviticus 16, verses six through eight,

God had put a provision in his law that if you could not afford a lamb, you could sacrifice a second turtle dove in its place.

That indicates that Joseph and Mary were poor at the time of the birth of Christ.

So 40 days after Christ's birth, they could not afford to purchase a lamb. They had to sacrifice two turtle doves.

So they were dirt poor at that time. But remember the Magi, when they came and presented gifts to Christ, they presented frankincense, myrrh and gold.

See, if Joseph had gold, he'd have had plenty of money to be able to buy a lamb. They're not that expensive.

Gold would more than cover it. So obviously the Magi came long after the birth of Christ, after the dedication in the temple, probably about a year and a half after the birth of Christ.

And in fact, when they present gifts to him, he's referred to as a child, not as a baby or an infant.

It's a different word. And so he was actually a toddler at that time. He wasn't in the manger scene.

They were in a house at that time. And anyway, so that tells us that this, again, blows away one of those

Christmas card conceptions of the Magi being present at the nativity. They weren't, they were there about a year and a half later.

So then after their conversation, we don't know the details of it, and we know they gave the time to Herod and he gave them the location.

He had learned that from the Jewish scholars that Christ would be born in Bethlehem. And he sent, and so he sent them to Bethlehem and said, go and make careful search for the child.

And when you found him, report to me that I too may come and worship him. And of course we know that Herod had no intention of worshiping

Christ. He had every intention of killing Christ, but he at least thought that he could trick the Magi into giving him that information.

And then we come to verse nine. And having heard the king, they went their way, and lo, the star which they'd seen in the east went on before them until it came and stood over where the child was.

And so this is interesting because it went ahead of them. It says the star went ahead of them. So it seems like it moved, and then it stood over where the child was.

So it actually moved and led them apparently to the very house they were supposed to go to. They didn't need to know to go to Bethlehem because Herod told them that Christ was in Bethlehem.

They already knew the city. The star apparently led them to the exact house. And that's one aspect the

Christmas cards actually get right, because apparently, I mean, it says here, it stood over where the child was.

So the star was hanging above the location of Christ and led the

Magi apparently to the exact house that they needed to go to. They already knew he was in Bethlehem.

So it apparently went ahead of them. At least, we don't know if that refers to sort of a motion relative to Earth's surface or whether it's relative to the other stars, but there's some kind of motion there that ends up with the star being over the house where Christ was living at that time as a toddler.

And this is interesting. It says, when they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. That's a little perplexing because they had already seen the star.

They'd seen it nearly two years ago, right? Back when they were in the East, they saw his star at its rising.

The first time it rose, they saw it. And now they're rejoicing when they see it again.

And this is another reason why I believe that the star had apparently abandoned them for a little while, maybe due to clouds.

Maybe it had faded. For whatever reason, when they arrived in Jerusalem, they didn't know where to go. The star wasn't guiding them.

And so when they see it again, they're rejoicing that, oh, okay, it's back. We know where to go now.

We know how to, we can follow it. So, and by the way, this isn't unique.

I mean, there was another time in history where God used a celestial phenomenon to guide his people.

Remember the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night that led the Israelites through the wilderness. So God can do these sorts of things.

And the Magi apparently were very pleased to see it again. It could be the case that they were getting a little frustrated.

It could be that when they arrived in Jerusalem, and you can imagine this, they arrive in Israel. They don't know exactly where to go because the stars, apparently they're not seeing it anymore.

And they think, well, Jerusalem, that'd be the capital city. We'll go there. Certainly we'll find the King of the Jews there, the one who's born

King of the Jews. They're asking around and nobody knows. That might've been frustrating to them.

And they go and talk with Herod. He hadn't even seen the star, apparently. He had to ask them about it. So they might think, did we read the signs properly?

Did we read the text of scripture properly? Are we on the right track? Has God abandoned us?

Is this something that God really wants us to do? And then after meeting with Herod, they see the star again and it confirms, oh, we're on the right track.

And it might've also confirmed, oh, and we're close because it's very high in the sky now. We're almost underneath it.

We're close to the location of Christ. And so that could be the reason. The text doesn't give us details on that, but that could be the reason why they were so very excited to see the star again.

It confirmed that indeed they were on the right track and they were very close to the end of their journey, to being able to see

God face -to -face. And they came into the house and they saw the child, not the baby, the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him.

And of course, the word worship has multiple meanings. It can mean worship in the sense of something that only

God is worthy of, or it can mean bowing in respect. And I'm not sure in what context, but certainly they at the very least understood that this child deserved their respect.

They bowed down before him, whether that was in a religious sense or not. It might've been, it might've been they understood that this was the savior of the world and they're bowing to him in the religious sense of worship.

And opening their treasures, they presented him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.

Now it's interesting, these gifts do have some significance because it was commonplace in the ancient world when one kingdom would conquer another kingdom, sometimes they would allow that kingdom to, the subordinate kingdom, the subservient state to continue to exist, but then the subservient state would offer tributes to the superior state.

If you were a leader in a conquered kingdom, you would present gifts to the superior kingdom, the king of that kingdom.

And so it basically, it's a way of saying I'm a king, but you are the king of kings. And so they would give gifts. And a lot of those gifts were, by the way, gold and sometimes frankincense and myrrh.

And you can read about some of these in first Kings chapter 10, verse two, for example, Genesis 43, 11, presenting gifts of gold to the king and so on.

And in fact, these gifts, at least two of them were prophesied in Isaiah chapter 60, verse six, that I think it was frankincense and gold that the

Gentiles would present them to the king. And so this is something that Isaiah prophesied 700 years before it happened, which is just awesome.

That's something only God can do, that the Gentiles would bring him gold and frankincense. And also gold is mentioned in a similar capacity in Psalm chapter 72, verses 10 through 15.

So God knew this would happen long before it did. And of course he knows that because he's God, it's not a problem for him.

So now that we have a little more of a full picture of what's happening here, a star that rises out of Israel, that leads the

Magi to the general vicinity of Israel, perhaps disappears for a while. We know they saw the star at least twice when they were in the

East, right? We saw a star at its rising. So when it first rose, and then they saw it again after they met with Herod, they saw the star at least twice.

And the star went ahead of them and stood over where the child was. And so given that description, we're now in a position where we can kind of ask, what is this star?

And the first myth we have to blow up is we need to remember, it doesn't have to be a burning ball of hydrogen gas billions or trillions of miles away, right?

That's the modern astronomical definition of a star. But the Greek word for star is aster.

And that term would be used for anything that's any small bright object in the night sky.

It would be used for stars. It would be used for planets as well. Planets were referred to as wandering stars.

That's where the word planet comes from. It means wanderer. And so the Greeks would have referred to planets as a class of stars.

Comets would undoubtedly be classified as stars. They're a type of aster. They're a hairy star. Supernova as an exploding star would be classified as an aster, a star.

A small moon that was orbiting the earth. If it was small enough where you couldn't see any size to it, that would be classified as a star under the

Greek convention. Or a very close conjunction of two planets where one planet passes another.

If they passed close enough where they appeared as one, you might call that a star. And every one of those has been proposed as the explanation for the

Christmas star. A planet, a comet, supernova, a small moon, or a close conjunction of two planets.

And every one of those explanations does not fit the description of what the Christmas star did. Because none of those explanations, no natural star in our night sky, no planet, no comet, no supernova, no small moon, or no close conjunction can go ahead of the magi and then stand over the house of the

Christ. I'm gonna suggest to you that the Christmas star actually was a supernatural manifestation of God's power, relatively close to the earth.

Because if it's really high up, you couldn't tell if you're underneath it or not. It wouldn't lead you to the right house if it were a hundred miles up.

Am I under it now? No, three feet to the left. Am I under it now? You couldn't do it. But if it's closer to the earth, high enough up to be seen from Persia, but close enough to the surface of the earth where you could tell that you're underneath it, or it seems to have moved too, at least in the sense of guiding the magi.

No natural object does that. And the reason no natural object does that is because the earth rotates.

And so any natural star that's directly over Bethlehem at one moment will not be directly over Bethlehem a minute later because we're on a rotating planet.

And so the natural stars, they can't keep up with that. Now planets move, but not nearly fast enough.

Planets do move. If you look at Jupiter and Saturn are out right now, if you wanted to go out and take a look, look up that really bright one that you see in the

South, that's Jupiter. And it does move. If you watch it from night to night, it moves relative to the background stars, but not nearly fast enough to keep up with the rotating planet earth.

A star nor a planet, neither one of them can possibly stay over a spot on the earth like Bethlehem.

A supernova can't do that. A supernova is an exploding star. It's a star blowing itself to bits. It actually lasts several months because stars are big.

And so when they explode, they remain extremely bright. For a period of time. And frankly, that wouldn't make any sense because everyone would notice a supernova.

And it's very clear that only the Magi, as far as we know from the text, only the Magi recognized the star that appeared over Bethlehem.

What about a small moon? There are man -made satellites, man -made moons that we put in orbit around the earth.

And if you launch them at just the right distance, they will maintain their spot over the earth, over the earth's equator.

Those are called geostationary satellites. And if you have a satellite TV, it's pointed at one of those.

The dish is pointed at one of those. And it can do that because it's orbiting at the same rate the earth rotates. Could that have been the star over Bethlehem, a geostationary satellite, albeit one that God made?

Well, no, that's not gonna work because a geostationary satellite, first of all, they're thousands of miles out in space.

And you wouldn't be able to tell if you're underneath it or not. But also they can only orbit around earth's equator.

Geostationary satellites can only remain in a certain spot that's directly above the equator because the orbit has to go around earth's center.

If it were at a different latitude, it would appear to go up and down over the course of 24 hours. So it can't be a moon.

I mentioned a conjunction. A conjunction is where one planet passes by a star or passes by another planet.

And conjunctions, they're pretty common. Jupiter and Saturn conjuncted last year.

Jupiter was in conjunction with Saturn on December 21st, interestingly. And it was a beautiful event.

I got to see it. That happens every 20 years though. Every 20 years, Jupiter passes Saturn and you get a conjunction.

So, I mean, why do people think that's the Christmas star? Well, there's a DVD produced by a lawyer.

He's a nice guy. I think he's a genuine Christian. And he says, that's what the Christmas star was. It was a conjunction of either,

I think he says Jupiter and Venus. Now there was a conjunction of Jupiter and Venus in the year 2 BC, a really good one to the point where the two stars might've briefly looked like they were one star because whatever the star is, it's used in the singular.

It's not, we haven't seen his stars plural. It's his star singular. But you might say, well, the conjunction was so close.

They appeared as one star, but for only one evening. But the problem is that's 2

BC. We think that's probably about two years too late. And it only happened once. That super close conjunction only happened once.

Conjunctions happen all the time, but ones that are that close are pretty rare. So the time's wrong. And we know from the text that the

Magi saw the Christmas star at least twice before they met with Herod nearly two years earlier.

And then again, after they met with Herod. So a conjunction is not going to do it. And frankly, there's no way a conjunction would lead you to the right house.

A conjunction cannot go ahead of them and stand over where the child was.

Some people say, well, that's non -literal language. It's, you know, going ahead is the star going one way, and then as it backs up to undergo retrograde motion, that's the standing over.

But that's just not what the text says. It went ahead of them, of the Magi, and it stood over where the child was.

And a conjunction simply won't do that. So no natural object, no known natural object can remain suspended over Bethlehem for two years.

So it seems to me that it may have been a supernatural light that rose over Bethlehem at Christ's birth and remained there, not particularly bright, but bright enough to be seen from Persia.

And then as they got closer for a while, it abandoned them. It may be due to cloudy weather, but in any case, after they meet with Herod, they see it again, and it's much closer now.

They know they're rejoicing with exceedingly great joy because they know they're very close. So, but again, that would make sense if this was something that was an extraordinary supernatural manifestation of God's power.

And there are different avenues in which God does miraculous things.

Could have been an angel. God could have given an angel a temporary physical body for the purpose of being that star.

It could have been just the shock kind of glory of God that he allows to appear at this particular point. It could have been an inanimate object that God created that rose up in Bethlehem, hovered over it for two years, and at some point faded, never to be repeated.

And that explanation answers five questions that people naturally have when they read the text about this star.

So first of all, of these five questions, why did the Magi go West? Well, if you follow this explanation, they went

West because that's where the star was. It rose in the West. It rose in the West over Israel, and they see that.

And so they follow it. And so that's why they went that way. They saw his star at its rising. It has happened to be the only star in the history of mankind, at least before 1957, that rose in the

West. By the way, today you can occasionally see a star rise in the West. It's a satellite, but those didn't exist before 1957.

It answers the question, how did they recognize it as his star? And the answer is because no natural star rises in the

West. They knew that. They were the Magi. They were scholars of the ancient world. They were familiar with the constellations.

They would have recognized another star that doesn't belong to that constellation, and one that remains suspended in the

Western sky as all the other stars are setting there. The star rose and hovers over the location of Christ.

It explains why only the Magi recognized it. A person who's not that familiar with the night sky might not recognize a new star in that constellation.

And unless you're watching it for a long period of time, you may not recognize that it remains there while all the other stars are setting.

So again, many laymen would not have seen it, but it makes sense that the Magi would have recognized it. It explains

Balaam's prophecy, right? Because again, in Numbers 24, 17, it says a star will come out of Jacob, a scepter will rise out of Israel.

And so that seems to have been what literally happened with the Christmas star in that it rose out of Israel, out of Judah, indicating the birth of this king who would come forth out of Israel.

Many prophecies have kind of a primary meaning and then kind of a secondary meaning. And then finally, it answers the question, how did they arrive at the right house?

The star, they did not need the star to guide them to Bethlehem, at least not after meeting with Herod, because Herod told them the child was in Bethlehem.

And so they didn't need that. They needed the star to go to the right house. And so I would suggest that's one of the few things the

Christmas cards get right, is that the star did, the text says it stood over where the child was. And so it led them to the correct location.

So again, the star apparently was a relatively small object close to earth's surface, in the atmosphere probably, but well, maybe not, but in any case, relatively close, close enough that they could tell when they're underneath it, at least by the time they get close to it.

And a natural star would never do that. Now, supernatural, when we talk about that, that basically supernatural means an unusual and extraordinary manifestation of God's power.

It is unusual and it is extraordinary, but it's no less or no more a demonstration of God's power than natural.

People tend to think that supernatural means God did it, and natural means it kind of happens on its own. People have this clockwork view of the universe, that God made the universe and it kind of operates like a clock on its own.

That's natural. And every now and then God does something. He intervenes and that's supernatural, but that really is not biblical.

Natural, when we talk about what is natural from a biblical perspective, we mean what normally happens.

And what normally happens is God accomplishing his will by upholding the universe by the word of his power.

See, God didn't just leave the universe to run on its own. He is constantly controlling it and controlling every atom.

The reason that atoms circle, the electrons circle around the proton is because God's making that happen.

His power is causing that. People say, oh no, no, it's an electromagnetic force. That's just the name we give to the way that God causes it to happen.

That's just the laws of nature are not a replacement for God's power. They are God's power. And so when we say, why do planets orbit the sun?

Well, gravity's causing that. Well, that's the name we give. Gravity is the name we give to the way that God causes planets to orbit and causes things to fall.

It's not really an explanation. It's just a name we give to our ignorance. And the fact that it's really ultimately

God who accomplishes his will. And normally, God accomplishes his will in a very orderly way that's consistent.

And that's for our benefit. And he promised that in Genesis 8, 22. He promises that the basic cycles of nature will be in the future as they've been in the past.

It's for our benefit. That's why we can do science. Now, God doesn't say that he will never make an exception though.

And so that's the thing we need to recognize about this. Something that is supernatural is not more a manifestation of God's power than something that's natural.

They're equally manifestations of God's power. And a lot of times atheists say, well, if I could see something that was just absolutely a miracle,

I'd believe. Well, first of all, no, you wouldn't because there were people who saw Christ resurrected and they still didn't believe.

Matthew 28, 17, some doubted. Okay, they saw the resurrected Christ, they still doubted.

So that's a problem. And secondly, it's not miracles that should persuade you of the existence of God.

It's the general lack thereof. The fact that the universe obeys these orderly patterns as if it's being upheld by the mind of God, which of course it is.

And so the point is God can certainly use a natural manifestation of his power.

That's how he normally does things, but he's not limited to that. And based on the description that we've read in this text, the star that appeared over Christ and led the

Magi appears to have been a supernatural manifestation of God's power. And therefore not something that will ever be repeated.

When the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn happened last year, people said, this is the Christmas star. No, it's not.

It was a beautiful conjunction. I'm glad I got to see it. It was a particularly close one. Again, Jupiter and Saturn conjunct every 20 years.

This was a really close one though. In fact, closer than had ever been seen since the invention of the telescope.

So that was pretty neat. I'm glad I got to see it. It's not the Christmas star. The Christmas star was a unique manifestation of God's power that did something that a conjunction just can't do.

It went ahead of them and stood over where the child was. And it is a wonderful part of history, wonderful part of history.

And I'm so delighted that the Lord recorded this for our enjoyment. And I think the takeaway of this too, we need to remember the takeaway of this is that the people who should have been anticipating the

Messiah, the Jews, largely missed it. There were a few of those that had real humility like the shepherds.

There were a few that got to see the birth, got to see Christ at his birth in the nativity.

And then the wise men, even though they're Gentiles, even though by Old Testament law, they have no right to see

God. Nonetheless, they followed the, they apparently had read the scriptures and they recognized the sign.

And so that's the lesson here is that when you see the light, you need to follow the light.

You need to follow the light that God gives us. And so that I think is where I'll close today.

And then we'll take questions at this point. Hope that was enjoyable to you. That was enjoyable and very interesting.

And so far there's not any real questions in the comments, although,

I mean, in the chat or the comments, although there are a couple of comments.

So just Robin said that she had never thought of it as being an angel and she likes that idea.

And she said, isn't that like God to do something to confound the wise? So, yeah, so now is the time if you are watching on Facebook, it doesn't seem that there are many watching live on Facebook, they'll watch it later.

But for those, we have a pretty big group in here on Zoom. So if you have any questions for Dr.

Lyle specifically about this presentation, but even if you have some other questions, now would be the time to put them in here while we're waiting to see if a couple of questions come up,

Dr. Lyle, do you wanna go ahead and share with people your ministry, how people can find you?

It's called the Biblical Science Institute and we're on the website, just biblicalscienceinstitute .com.

And it is a resource to help people to defend the Christian faith, particularly in matters of science and origins.

I kind of specialize in the defense of creation, Genesis, the literal timescale that the Bible presents to us, really helping people to discern truth.

In fact, we have a webcast called Discerning Truth that you can go, you can find out on Rumble. We have some older episodes on YouTube, but YouTube's getting a little too sensory.

So we're gonna celebrate our American freedom to freedom of speech on Rumble.

Well, you do make quite a few controversial comments on there, Dr. Lyle. But they're true and that's the key.

You don't wanna censor truth. Yes, I am, yes. When you censor something the way

YouTube does, what that really shows is that you don't have a good counter argument. Because if you had a good counter argument, you'd make it.

If you cannot defend your position, the only way you can prevent rational scrutiny is to shut down the opposition by censoring them.

That's what we're seeing. We're seeing that at a level that I never thought we'd see in this country. It's amazing. That and then, oh,

Robin, you have quite an echo going there. That and then also fear of the truth, suppression and fear of the truth, of course.

So people still aren't posting any questions. Maybe you just answered everything so thoroughly and I'm at a loss because I don't have any questions either.

Well, I have questions. Okay, Robin, go ahead. I hear, do

I still have an echo? Not so bad. You sound a little bit like you're in a tin can, but it's not terrible.

I've got too many computers going and I'm hearing myself. Anyways, I hear a lot of people talking about these conjunctions being the

Bethlehem star. You said we should have something good to defend our position.

What's something short and sweet to say that, hey, that's not the Bethlehem star? First of all, a conjunction would be called two, is really two objects.

It's always two objects, right? So Jupiter and Saturn are in conjunction. That's not a star, it's two stars, okay?

So that's a problem. The only one I could see them saying, well, it could be this one, is when

Venus and Jupiter conjuncted in the year 2 BC, I believe on June 17, 2

BC. And that one was so close that they might've appeared as one star.

And so you might say, okay, but here's the problem. That only happened once. And the year's wrong.

We think Jesus is born around four or five BC. 2 BC is pushing it. Granted, we don't know exactly what year he was born, but 2

BC is really pushing it. So the date's wrong. And the real key is none of those things do what the

Christmas star did. His star went ahead of them, went ahead of the Magi, and stood over the location of Christ.

And people try and say, well, the going ahead is prograde motion versus retrograde. No, it went ahead of them.

It went ahead of the Magi. And they say, and the stood over is where it's starting to back up in retrograde motion.

No, it stood over where the child was. This is historical narrative text. And so we need to read it literally.

And so the conjunction simply won't do that. A conjunction will not stand over a location on Earth.

It will not lead you to the right house because it takes place millions of miles out in space.

I love astronomy and then it's so amazing. I got a lot out of the talk.

Thank you. I still have an echo. I'm gonna mute. Just as you said that, that it wouldn't lead you to the right.

I just started thinking about all of the times that I wish there was a star over houses that I'm looking for.

I mean, that must have been a great GPS tool. So we do have a question on Facebook from Daniel.

Daniel King asks, are there other sightings of the star recorded? Not to my knowledge.

Not to my knowledge. Okay. Good question. And then also

Dr. Lyle, you mentioned that your videos are on Rumble, but to find them, people go to your website, right?

And then they link it from there. Yeah, they can do it either way. If they go to our website, biblicalscienceinstitute .com,

there's a videos tab. You click that, it takes you right to our Rumble page. Or if you go to Rumble and there's an option to search, you have to change it from search videos to search channel and put in either the

Biblical Science Institute or Discerning Truth, which is the name of the webcast. Okay. And it's been a while since you've made one, right?

Yeah. I've been busy. Do you have more though in the works? I think

I read that. I've got two or three in my mind that I wanna do, but we'll - 2022 is gonna be a big year, right?

Yeah. Okay. So, but, and you have been busy, so people can also find some of your other things like,

I know that I saw recently that Eli Ayala interviewed you about your articles refuting

William Lane Craig about the historical Adam. So that's one thing that you've done recently.

Do you wanna talk about some of the other things that you've done recently that people can find? That's been the main one on the website too.

I have a series of articles on the website refuting William Lane Craig. And just to bring everybody up to speed, William Lane Craig, he's a nice guy.

He's likable. You know, he's just a friendly person, but I think his theology could stand some scrutiny.

Basically, he says that Genesis, at least the first 11 chapters, didn't really happen like that.

They're not straightforward history. They might have elements of history in them, but they're clearly figurative or metaphorical.

There's no way that Adam and Eve talked with a real snake or et cetera, et cetera. So that's the kind of things he says. And the problem is the

Bible presents that as real history. Genesis 1 through 11 is real history. And in fact, every biblical author that refers to Genesis refers to it as real history.

Paul, how many times does Paul refer back to what Adam did as the basis for what's happening in the world today, as the basis for sin and so on?

Jesus quoted from Genesis 1 and 2 as history. In Matthew 19, when the religious leaders asked him about divorce to explain marriage,

Jesus went back and quoted from Genesis 1 and 2 as history, the historical foundation for marriage. So the idea that Genesis is not real history just cannot be sustained.

And the reason Craig does that is because he believes in evolution and he believes in the Big Bang and the millions of years.

He's accepted what really is a secular position on origins. And so he's trying to massage the

Bible to allow for that. It really doesn't though. And we do a grave injustice to the scripture when we try to distort it to match with the secular opinions of the day.

So I've been doing a series of web articles on that. The next one we'll post actually tomorrow morning, hopefully, if I said it right.

Anyway, so that'll come out. And then, yeah, my friend, Eli Ayala had me on his

Revealed Apologetics webcast to talk about that. And so we went over some of the things.

Yeah. And Caden, he's here with us tonight. He messaged me this week and told me that your friend

James White is gonna be talking to William Lane Craig. So - Apparently it's already happened and it will drop tomorrow.

And if you're seeing this late, that would be Friday, the December 3rd. I think it's called

Unbelievable is the radio channel or whatever podcast channel,

Unbelievable. Yeah. And James White and William Lane Craig did a little mini debate.

That was pretty neat. I'm looking forward to seeing it. I haven't seen it yet, but it was on a different issue. That was, it was on more on the issue of Molinism and God's decree, things like that.

Okay. All right, so we've gotten some questions. I got on late. What might have been the altitude of the star?

It would have had to have been high enough to have been seen from Persia. And so now that I think about that, it's pretty high, but it moved.

And so it may have dropped as they got closer to it so that they could ascertain the exact house.

But we could do, I haven't done the calculation to see. I'd have to see what the curvature of the earth is over a thousand miles.

It's not a whole lot over a thousand miles. And then calculate how high the star would have to be above Bethlehem in order to be above the horizon as seen from Persia.

I need to do that calculation, but it would be hundreds of miles at least probably, initially, and then it probably dropped as they got closer to it.

But if the earth is flat, it wouldn't be a problem. Yeah, although if the earth is flat, you'd have all kinds of problems.

And I'm just kidding. I am just kidding. And if you want to know more about that,

Dr. Lyle also has a series of articles about the flat earth. And we had, I guess, it was actually a year ago.

It was our last speaker of 2020. Yes, 2020.

Pat Roy came on and he talked about the documentary that he and Kyle Justice, I think

Kyle Justice, is that right? Yes. That they had made about, you know, showing like going out and doing scientific exercises and stuff to show that it is not a flat earth that we're living on.

So Michelle asked, she said, I miss why we think Jesus was born around four to five

BC as opposed to around two BC. Oh, I didn't go into detail on that.

And I'd have to go back and check the documentation on that. But we can pin down approximately when he was born.

There are certain events. We know that when Herod died, there was a lunar eclipse when

Herod died. And so we can go back and see when the lunar eclipses were and that pins down the approximate date.

There are other ways to do that. There's a variety of information that leads us to believe he's around four BC or five

BC. Two BC would be a little bit too late. I regret, I don't know the detail right off the top of my head of what eliminates two

BC, but that's pushing it. That would be pushing it. Yeah, I heard

John Harris, who he's been our speaker before. He's the head of Living Waters UK.

And he did a presentation for, he does a Bible study online, but he invites people from around the world.

And last year he presented that, but I wouldn't even be able to tell you. It's a lot of information.

He had a lot of charts and graphs and data and stuff. So, but it is interesting to think about that.

So, well, we are just about at the end of time. So what we're gonna do now, Dr. Lyle, is you can go ahead and tell people one more time how to find you.

I'll tell people one more time how to find us. And then if you wanna hang back with us after we turn off the recording and the live stream, if people wanna turn on their cameras to ask you questions in person, then we can do that.

So go ahead and tell people where they can find you. Okay, we're the Biblical Science Institute and our website is simply biblicalscienceinstitute .com.

Okay. And we're Creation Fellowship Santee. And we're so grateful that Dr.

Lyle came. We don't have a budget. And so we just are excited to be able to share these ministries that we can and to present this information.

So you can find all of our past, most of our past videos by looking for us on YouTube, Creation Fellowship Santee.

And then we also have our BitChu and Rumble channels, but mostly we're on Facebook, Creation Fellowship Santee.

So with that, thank you again, Dr. Lyle. And we're gonna go ahead and turn off the live stream and the recording.