John Bytheway: 00:01 Welcome to part two of Dr. Jeff Chadwick on the topic of Christmas.

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 00:06 Go back to verse 1 of chapter 1 in Matthew, which says, “When Jesus is born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod, there came wise men from the east of Jerusalem.” There’s an immediacy in that verse. It doesn’t say two years later, they came to Jerusalem. It says when Jesus was born, wise men came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where’s the king of the Jews? We’ve seen a star in the east.”

  00:31 Now, the east is going to be Mesopotamia. It’s going to be either Babylon area or Persia area, and by the way, who were the wise men? We always debate this. They’re called magi, which means magicians really, but it actually means mystics. There were Jewish mystics even back then. I think the wise men were Jewish. They were maybe Persian or Babylonian Jews, but nobody else was reading Hebrew scripture other than Jews, so nobody else is going to know the prophecy of a star rising in the east that you see, like say from Numbers 24 or other places. We know there was a real star. The Book of Mormon tells us, so these Jewish mystics in the east are looking for this sign, and when they see it, do they wait two years to go to Judea? “Oh, there’s the sign of the Messiah. Let’s wait two years to go see it.” No, they go immediately. There’s an immediacy to this story.

  01:26 It’s about five, six weeks to make the trip, so those magi in the east, those, I presume Jewish mystics who recognized the sign of the star, and we know it was a new star … Whatever actually in the heavens happened, it looked like a star. The Book of Mormon says there was one, and those guys in Babylon and Persia sought, and they got ready as quick as they could, takes a week to get a trip ready, and they made their way, so that about seven weeks later, they show up in Bethlehem. In verse 11, they find the young child with Mary in the house that’s been finished, which Joseph and Mary had prepared in order to live in Bethlehem, so Jesus could grow up there.

  02:14 By the way, how do we know that it’s that long? How come it’s not four, three weeks? Because if you go to Luke 2, Jesus will be circumcised eight days after His birth, but then He’s presented in the temple 40 days later. Actually, that’s six weeks. You have to wait for 40 days, then go on the 41st or 42nd day. So, it’s six weeks after Jesus’ birth that in Luke 2, the baby is taken to the temple. The wise men haven’t arrived, and Joseph hasn’t left Bethlehem. It’s at least six weeks later that Jesus is taken to the temple, and then it’s sometime very shortly after that temple episode in Luke 2 that the wise men show up in Matthew 2. After they leave, Joseph is alarmed by the revelation and leaves Bethlehem in the middle of the night to escape to Egypt.

  03:06 This young couple, who for now 11 months, 12 months, which includes Mary becoming pregnant, going to Jerusalem, being with Elizabeth, being found pregnant, and the stir around Nazareth because of that, the episode with Joseph and the revelation, they get married, they understand who their child will be, they move to Bethlehem. They go. They become registered residents of Bethlehem, so that when Jesus is born, there must have been somewhere in the archive of Bethlehem, a document that said Yeshua ben-Yosef [foreign language 00:03:45] Bethlehem. Jesus, Son of Joseph, was born here in Bethlehem, but the Romans destroyed Judea in 70 A.D. and burnt everything. That means that any document that said Jesus was born in Bethlehem wouldn’t exist.

  04:05 In any case, their great plan in bringing about the righteousness of God, in being there with a house so Jesus could grow up in Bethlehem is thrown into chaos then, when having not been the victims of circumstance before, having not been driven by a taxation law to Bethlehem before, but having done that of their free will and choice, all of a sudden because of Herod’s murderous intent, they do become victims of circumstance and have to go to Egypt. Then, when they come back, it’s still not safe to go back to Bethlehem and everything they have built, so they have to go to Nazareth and make a new life there where their family is. Jesus would become known as a Notzri, as the branch, as the Nazarene.

  04:52 This, to me, is what makes Christmas such a wonderful story because Christmas actually, the story is about Joseph and Mary. It’s about the parents of Jesus who were the servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, doing what ultimately he needed them to do. Christmas is about the birth of Christ and the gift to us in the world, and that’s what we should remember, but the story itself is really the story of the faithfulness of Joseph and Mary, these two wonderful people who would raise the Messiah and Savior of the world. If you ever needed better examples of who to be like in mortality, Mary and Joseph are the two. If you wonder why some of our friends, particularly our Catholic friends revere Mary, there was never a greater woman in the history of the universe, Eve notwithstanding, than Mary of Nazareth. There was never a greater and more trusted servant of the Lord, all the prophets notwithstanding, than Joseph of Nazareth whom God the Father, would trust to raise His Son.

Hank Smith: 06:07 That’s great.

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 06:08 So, when I take groups to Nazareth and there’s a church there, the Church of the Annunciation, which honors Mary, and next door to it, as you both know. is a church-

Hank Smith: 06:18 For Joseph.

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 06:19 … honoring Joseph, I like people to know that these two, those people in the Holy Family, that woman and that man are my heroes. The Son of Mary is my Lord and my ultimate hero, but Joseph and Mary mean the world to me.

Hank Smith: 06:39 If you don’t read it within this context, you don’t see the sacrifice.

John Bytheway: 06:43 Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 06:44 I wrote this all up years ago in the book that you mentioned, Stone Manger: The Untold Story of the First Christmas. I was trying to find a muse how to write this story.

Hank Smith: 06:53 Tell us why you wrote that book.

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 06:55 Oh, well, I’ve been working for 40 years in Israel. In fact, this year, this is 2022, marks the 40th year since I began teaching for the BYU Jerusalem program way back years before we actually built the Jerusalem Center. It was a privilege that they asked me to teach there when we used to live at the kibbutz that overlooked Bethlehem at Ramat Rachel. I’ve been involved in the archeology and the research of the land ever since. It’s been a great and wonderful blessing of a career, but I’ve always loved the Christmas story.

  07:25 It occurred to me very early on that as an archeologist, the only artifact of the Christmas story that you see in the text of the Bible is the manger. The manger is mentioned. A stable isn’t mentioned because there wasn’t one. Other things are mentioned. There’s no Christmas trees. There’s no drummer boy that’s mentioned, okay? The wise men don’t show up for weeks, so they’re not there on the night of Christmas. The shepherds show up, but they do not bring their sheep because they’d never got there with them. So, what’s the only thing that is material in this story? It’s the manger.

  08:02 Well, I always thought I would write a book called The Archeology of Christmas and have it surrounding how you would tell the story from the perspective of a stone manger, which is what these troughs were made of. So, when I finally wrote the story up, I decided maybe a book called The Archeology of Christmas wouldn’t really be interesting to people. So, I decided to call it the Stone Manger. The reason I wrote the book was that my mother of blessed memory, years ago before she died, and I’d been involved in Israel for over 30 years by then, said, “Jeff,” because she loved Christmas. She was the Christmas queen. She’d never gone to Israel with me. She said, “Sometime, I’d like you to just sit down with me, and we’re just going to take an hour, and I want you to tell me about the real first Christmas because we have these manger scenes and these decorations. They’re lovely, but every time I hear you talk about it, it’s very different than all my decorations. I’d love to do that with you.” I said, “That sounds like such a great thing. We’ll do that. Okay.”

  08:59 I never did. It just was one of those things we were going to do, and then she contracted a terrible disease called ALS and died rather quickly. As I was coping with that, the first Christmas after her death, I thought, oh my goodness, I never got to do that. As I was working through that the year after her death, I thought, it’s time to write down that story that I would’ve told her, what you can know and maybe assume about the Christmas story based on the context. So, I did, and it was great therapy. So, I dedicated the book to her when I finished it the next year. It’s really my gift to my mother, the story I hope that maybe she’s heard of where she’s at now, but that’s how Stone Manger got written. That’s why I did not name it the Archeology of Christmas.

John Bytheway: 09:46 I’ve always loved the idea too of Jesus being called the chief cornerstone, and that His birth would start with something about stone.

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 09:57 Well, that’s the interesting thing too, because Joseph was a tekton. That’s the word used in Matthew and Mark to describe them in Greek, a tekton, a builder, and you build of stone, but Jesus was that too, that that’s what Joseph would’ve raised him to be. Jesus was a stone mason. If I ever write a sequel to Stone Manger, I’m going to call it Stone Mason, what was Jesus’ life like before He became Rabbi Jesus? When you look through the teachings of Jesus, He very frequently employs stone architecture or stone masonry imagery in His teachings. He doesn’t ever use wood carpentry imagery, but He uses a lot of imagery that has to do with stone and stone masonry, the chief cornerstone quoting Psalms, et cetera.

Hank Smith: 10:45 The wise man builds his house.

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 10:47 Builds his house upon the rock. He knows how to build houses. Jesus probably built houses. There are wonderful scholars that have done a lot of research into this that note that the great Roman regional capital of Sepphoris was being built just north of Nazareth, and probably Joseph and Jesus worked as builders in Sepphoris, which was a short walk from Nazareth. If you ever wanted to ask yourself, well, what would Joseph have done for a living moving from Nazareth to Bethlehem, well, building had to happen there, but within an hour and a half’s walk of Bethlehem was the biggest building project in the eastern world. Herod’s temple was being built, and they needed builders. So, there was work for Joseph to do. He had to commute like I do. It’d take him an hour and a half to get to work, but Joseph could build and use his talents all he needed to at Jerusalem and work on his own house a day or two a week, and they would have money because a builder made two dinars a day if they were skilled, and Joseph was.

  11:54 Jesus, because He had this background, and I assume He worked as a builder, He even named His chief apostle, He called Simon, which was the apostle’s name Shimon, He called him Cephas. Cephas is an Aramaic word, which refers to an unfinished stone. Cephas. You see this in the New Testament occasionally spelled C-E-P-H-A-S, which most people pronounce as cephas, but the S is a Greek contrivance. If you take it off, it’s actually C-E-P-H-A, and it’s not C as in city. It’s C as in county. It’s Cephas, and Cephas then means a rough, unhewn building stone that’s only been roughly finished, a rough rolling stone, shall we say. So, that’s why when Peter’s nickname given to him by Jesus is rendered into Greek, it becomes Petros or stone.

Hank Smith: 12:47 Think of petrified wood.

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 12:49 Jesus never called his chief apostle Peter because Jesus didn’t converse with him in Greek. Jesus called Simon Cephas, and that, when you see the Aramaic there bleeds through in a couple of passages in John and a couple of passages in the writings of Paul where they’re actually giving you the Aramaic that Jesus used to address His chief apostle. Cephas. In John 1 where this appears, it says, “You shall be Cephas.” Then, it goes on to say, which interpreted is a stone, or you shall be Peter, which is interpreted as stone. What John was really writing is, you’re going to be Cephas, and interpreted into Greek, this is Petros, a stone. So, Jesus is, He’d been using that stone building imagery with His chief apostle.

  13:34 It’s interesting too that going on this, in Matthew 16, Jesus says to Simon, right, “Thou art Cephas.” Thou art Peter, right? “And upon this rock, this Petros, will I build my church?” Now, we’ve always gone to great length, and I love President Kimball who made a huge statement about this back in my mission days that the church is not founded upon Peter, but the rock is revelation. Remember that? It’s the rock of revelation that Jesus is referring to. Yes, true, but actually, at the very same time, it is Peter. It is that rock, that apostle, because Peter was the chief apostle, the senior apostle, the one authorized representative of the Lord Jesus Christ. The church really is built on the rock of revelation, but it is built upon the person who is that rock of revelation. Christ himself is the rock first and foremost, but his senior apostle is that rock in perpetuity.

  14:48 It was Peter then. It’s Russell M. Nelson now who is that one person that rock upon which the revelation to this church is delivered. Either way, you look at that scripture using Jesus’ original stone imagery. It points to the very question we’re asked in a temple recommend, do you recognize the president of the church as the person who is authorized to receive revelation and manage the church?

Hank Smith: 15:21 Jeff, I wanted to ask you something out of the manual. There’s a section called I rejoice in my Redeemer, and it says, “Christmas is known as a joyful season because of the joy that Jesus Christ brings to the world. Even people who don’t worship Jesus as the Son of God can often feel the happiness of Christmas. Ponder the joy you feel because Heavenly Father sent His Son.” Then later on, there’s another section that’s called His name shall be called wonderful. I would want you to comment on your thoughts on both of those sections.

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 15:56 As I was saying when I told the story before, Christmas is just a time that we should be happy. In our clime, you need something to rejoice about occasionally with these short, cold winter days, but that’s just our local climate. Wherever you’re at in the world, the whole season of Christmas and the whole theme of Christmas is something to rejoice over. This is simply the follow-up on what the angel said to the shepherds who came to Bethlehem, to that grotto and saw Jesus in that stone manger on that very night. If you go to Luke 2, you see the words that the angels said to the shepherds. This is 2:11, Luke 2:11, “For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior which is Christ the Lord, a Savior Yeshua, that is Christ, the Messiah, who is the Lord, and this shall be a sign unto you. You’ll find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in that stone water trough,” right, but before they said all of that, they described this as being good tidings of great joy.

  17:08 Verse 10, “The angels said unto them, “Fear not. I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people,” and not in that era, only the people of Israel, but eventually, to all people. Now, in our day, all people have the right to claim their Israelite heritage through the covenant, but the point is the joy of the birth of Christ is for everyone. Maybe even if they don’t know what we are, what we know, maybe even if they’re not Christian, this should be the most joyous occasion because it’s joy to all people. So, when you go back and you alluded to, I think, Isaiah 9 there with the word wonderful, we read that wonderful scripture in Isaiah 9:6, “Unto us, a child is born. Unto us, a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder. He’ll be the king, and His name shall be called wonderful, counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the prince of peace. Of the increase of His government and peace, there shall be no end upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom to order it, to establish it with judgment.”

  18:18 This is all joyous. It’s also all very political. Going back to that earlier question of Jesus and His kingship and what the Messiah was to be, yeah. The Messiah is the King of Israel, but very often in our classrooms, and I giggle a little bit about this because I often sit back and think, “Boy, I wish I was teaching this class, so I could get it right.” Then, I think to myself, “You’d just ruin the class, Jeff. Just keep your mouth shut. Let the teacher teach.” That’s my rule when you’re sitting in somebody else’s Sunday school class is sit on your hands. I do not make comments in people’s classes because it’s not my show. I let the teacher teach. Now, I’m on your show now, and you’ve asked me to talk but-

Hank Smith: 19:02 We want you to talk.

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 19:02 … if I’m sitting in a Sunday school class, I am not tearing apart somebody else’s lesson. That’s just not what we do. Let the Spirit speak through the teacher that’s being called.

Hank Smith: 19:11 That’s beautiful.

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 19:12 Occasionally, I hear something like this when we talk about Jesus and His relationship to the Jewish people in the New Testament. The teacher will say something like, and I’m exaggerating now, but they’ll say something like, “Oh, those silly Jews of that age because they were looking for a political Messiah, and they didn’t realize that that’s not what they should be looking for. They should be looking for a spiritual Messiah, not a political Messiah.”

  19:41 Well, no. A political messiah is exactly what the Scriptures predict. They predict He will be a King of Israel. They predict that He will have the government upon His shoulder. They predict that He will reign upon the throne of David. He will change the political order. Whether that is at His coming in mortality or whether at His Second Coming, the expectation is the same. Latter-day Saints expect a political Messiah. Now, we have the story of His first coming, and while we see that He was regarded as king even by the Jewish people on Palm Sunday, on the last Sunday of Jesus’ life, He rode into Jerusalem in the biggest parade Jerusalem had ever seen at that time. What were the people saying?

Hank Smith: 20:24 Hosanna.

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 20:25 Hosanna to the King of Israel. Hosanna to the Son of David. The populous recognized that He was the candidate to be this king, and it didn’t turn out that way because the Romans killed Him later that week with the collaboration of the Sadducees, the chief priests. The great untold story of the New Testament is obvious on every page. That is that Jesus was wildly popular with the Jewish people. He was not rejected by them, not in His lifetime. He was so popular that the crowds thronged Him everywhere. You couldn’t get close enough to touch the hem of His garment most times. The only place we see Him cast out of on one occasion was His own hometown of Nazareth because of their jealousy, but everywhere else He went, He was not cast out. He was welcomed, and Jerusalem welcomed Him. It was a very small group, powerful political Sadducees that opposed Him, but most of the Pharisees were intrigued with Him like Nicodemus.

  21:26 The people did not reject Him. Sometimes, even in the videos, we depict the Jewish people as rejecting Him and spitting on … This did not happen. He was wildly popular. So, why did the Jewish people not wind up recognizing Jesus as the Messiah? Well, because their understanding of what the Messiah would be is that Messiah would bring them freedom and redemption and throw off the yoke of their burden, which they understood as being foreign government that imposed upon their freedom. Everyone expected in the New Testament that Jesus would do this. No one expected Him to die. Even Peter, when Jesus indicated He would die, said, Lord, “This be far from me.” No one expected. Even if they believed that Jesus was Messiah, and even if they believed He was Son of God the way the apostles and many of His followers did, that He had been sent to die. That was the last thing they expected. They expected that a program went on another year or two, He would become the King of Israel. When instead, He died, this was a huge blow-

Hank Smith: 22:39 Absolutely devastating.

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 22:40 … to the church membership, but to everyone who had looked at Jesus as the best candidate for Messiah ever. That expectation that He comes and overwhelms the foreign government and sets up the redeemed kingdom of Israel, Jesus didn’t wind up providing that during His mortal life. Jewish people, who in the New Testament were quite excited about Him, must have simply reasoned He would’ve been a great Messiah, but I guess we look for another because He didn’t fulfill the expectation that the Scriptures make of Him becoming the head and king of the government and changing the order and bringing in an age of redemption.

  23:20 Now, we know that that’s still coming at a Second Coming of the Messiah. So, yes, we too expect a political Messiah who will change the order and usher in the age of redemption, but the differentiation between a First Coming and a Second Coming is only something that even in the New Testament, the apostles gradually came to understood. They didn’t understand it during Jesus’s lifetime. They did not expect He would come to die. We have the advantage with 20/20 hindsight of looking back on the New Testament and saying, “Oh, they shouldn’t have thought that He was coming as a political Messiah in His First Coming.” Well, nobody, even Peter, understood that his First Coming wasn’t a political change. That only came gradually.

  24:04 So, our sometimes saying of those Jewish people, “Oh, they’re so silly to have not understood what was going on,” if we’d have been there, we wouldn’t have understood it either because Peter didn’t understand it until after it had happened, and none of the best of them did. So, I like to tell folks that I teach, let’s not be so smug and think that we’re so much more insightful than people of past generations. The marvelous thing about the four gospels is that Jesus was wildly popular with those Jewish people, and the reason they did not ultimately accept Him as the Messiah throughout Jewish history is because He did not do what the expectation was that was clearly there in Scripture. It clearly was. We have the advantage of knowing something more than the very best of the Former Day Saints in the New Testament did not know when He walked among them.

John Bytheway: 25:05 So, if a teacher said something like that, they’d be correct in thinking that they were expecting a political Messiah, but that wasn’t what Jesus was going to do at His First Coming. Those prophecies of Isaiah, King of King and Lord of Lords, and government upon His shoulder was an ultimately … That’s a millennial expectation type of a thing. It’s coming, but it wasn’t the First Coming.

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 25:28 Yeah, right. Well, what you see in all of the Messianic passages of Isaiah is this triumphant royal King Messiah. There is essentially no prophecy about the coming of the Messiah that points to His death that was recognized by anyone in that age, even the apostles. Now, we always point robustly to Isaiah 53 as a prophecy about the suffering and death of the Messiah, but in all of Isaiah, that’s the one thing that’s not like the other. That’s the one suffering Messiah passage when everything else is triumphal Messiah.

  26:08 Well, as it turns out, Isaiah 53 was not understood by Jews of that era as pointing to the Messiah. Jews today do not look at Isaiah 53 as a Messianic Scripture. It’s called a suffering servant scripture, but Jews do not regard Isaiah 53 as Messianic in the way Christians have come to recognize it. Now, the story of this and how Christianity in general comes to recognize it is in Acts chapter 8 when Philip meets the Ethiopian government official who’s come to Jerusalem to worship. That individual from Ethiopia, who by the way. I point out was African and came as a African Jew to Jerusalem to worship and then was on his way back to Africa, back to Ethiopia, he meets with Philip. The Ethiopian is puzzled as he’s reading Isaiah, and he asks Philip, “Can you help me with this passage?”

  27:08 It says in Acts 8 that the passage he was reading was Isaiah 53. The Ethiopian’s question, he’s Jewish, he says to Philip, “Of whom doeth the prophet speak? Of himself or some other man?” but this very informed Isaiah reading, African Jewish government official does not understand that Isaiah 53 is about Messiah. It simply wasn’t a Jewish tradition that Isaiah 53, about a servant who would suffer and die, was about the Messiah. It’s only in the aftermath of Jesus’ death that the early church came to understand that you have to look at Isaiah 53 and see Jesus in that Scripture as well as all of the triumphant Scriptures, which is what Philip pointed out to the Ethiopian. That’s why Jewish people today don’t see Isaiah 53 as Messianic, whereas we as Christians do.

Hank Smith: 28:04 That’s only with hindsight.

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 28:05 Because all the New Testament saints were doing it in hindsight.

John Bytheway: 28:08 It sounds like when you read the gospels, they’re like, “Oh yeah, He did say something about this, that He would be killed and rise again.” It’s like they’re writing the gospels after this going, “Hey, wait a minute. He did talk about this,” but I’ve often thought-

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 28:21 Right.

John Bytheway: 28:22 … when we read about the triumphal entry, I’ve wondered what was going on in the Savior’s mind is kind of like, “Yeah, thank you for this conditional support, but I’m not going to be what you’re expecting this time around.”

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 28:34 I don’t think He would’ve in any way been remonstrative of the crowds. It is hard to put yourself in the mind of anyone else, and particularly to put yourself in the mind of God, but the way I might characterize that is that He may have thought, “Oh, what disappointment they’re about to expect.”

John Bytheway: 28:49 Yeah, exactly. That’s what I was thinking is-

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 28:51 That would not have been, “Oh, well, it serves them right for not understanding,” but, “I’m sorry at this time that you’re not going to have what you expect, but it will be coming”.

John Bytheway: 29:02 That’s exactly what I’ve thought. They’re thinking, here it comes. He’s going to throw off the Romans. Well, not yet.

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 29:07 There’ll be another Rome to change. There’ll be another Babylon to overcome.

Hank Smith: 29:12 Isn’t that how it is in life as well? We have certain expectations on the Lord, and when He doesn’t fulfill them, we get frustrated when He might say to us-

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 29:22 If you’re as old as I am and served your mission 25 years before the year 2000, you were conditioned back then to look to about the year 2000 as maybe when you ought to start thinking about the millennial glory arriving. We’re as far from 2000 now in the other direction as I was from it on my mission prior to 2000, and no, the millennium has not started. Jesus has not come back. All those notions of the six 1,000-year periods being six days and then the seventh thousand-year being the Sabbath, which would be the millennium, which means Jesus must be coming about 2000, well, we’ve all experienced that that wasn’t what maybe we had been taught somewhat incorrectly to expect. Now, we just wait patiently for Him to do His work.

John Bytheway: 30:19 Well, I think what you said fits with Joseph and Mary, doesn’t it? Their expectation. They thought they would be going back to Bethlehem, and Joseph is warned in a dream, got to go back to Nazareth.

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 30:30 Yep. To me, what that whole story, going back to Joseph and Mary and the way, at least, that I understand the story being very different in tradition, not victims of circumstance, but anxiously engaged people coming to understand through revelation what they needed to do and being brave enough to go do it as a couple, what an example for every married couple, every young couple. Just go and do and serve and do what you need to do, but that’s what life does to us. We’ll do the best we can, and then something will broadside us through the intersection and change the direction of everything. Then, what do you have to do? Start over, and keep going. That, again, is the story of Joseph and Mary and Jesus. Start over and keep going.

John Bytheway: 31:17 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 31:18 Man, the manual is really waxing poetic this time around. They did a great job with this. I want to read something from the manual, the second paragraph. “Their hope began to be realized when Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem. The mighty deliverer of Israel was born in a stable,” not really a stable, “and laid in a manger.”

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 31:37 It’s okay. It’s okay.

Hank Smith: 31:41 “But He wasn’t just the deliverer of the ancient Israelites. He came to deliver you, to bear your grief, to carry your sorrows, to be bruised for your iniquities so that with His stripes, you can be healed. This is why Christmas is so full of joyful anticipation even today. The Messiah came over 2,000 years ago, and He continues to come into our lives whenever we seek Him.” What would you add to that, Jeff, for our listeners to come away with?

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 32:09 The one thing about all of this is that it all wraps up together because we would have this same discussion in the same joy at Easter. We would have this same joy in the same discussion. If we were Jewish, we’d have it in the fall at the Feast of Tabernacles. We do it anyway because we have general conference in the spring and the fall, so we have the same joy at all these great occasions, but particularly Christmas is important because of its advent aspect, the beginning of our hope, the birth of this great thing, the birth of the King of Israel. Yeah, that joy is first and foremost to Israel because Jesus would be the King, the Messiah of Israel, but because everyone would become Israel, but because we would gather Israel from all nations. This joy is to all nations, and our combined message as Latter-day Saints is refining itself into a better understanding of that.

  33:06 One of the things that the spreading of the Christmas joy is an instrumental part of is in our message to all people as we gather Israel, all people. The Christmas message is just the beautiful annual way that we phrase what our entire life is about, which is that we are the servants of our King, Jesus Christ, the master, and we bring that covenant to you with the message of His First Coming and the expectation of his next coming.

  33:44 I testify that these things are true, that Christ was born in the humblest of circumstances to Mary and her husband, a young couple who were valiant in their faith, and that he grew up to fulfill his destiny in saving us at His First Coming, and that He reigns over us now and will reign personally upon the earth in a day to come. That’s what I always remember with Christmas because that’s what the angels said. “Unto you is born this day a Savior, Christ, the King, the Lord, and this will be a joy to all people.” It’s my testimony that this is true and that He stands at the head of this church today, and that through that rock who is His present chief apostle, He reveals to us our joy and our assignment to spread this with all.

  34:51 May we have a Merry Christmas. May we spread this joy to our family, to all around us and radiate it so that everyone can see it. It would be my prayer for everyone.

Hank Smith: 35:06 Well, Merry Christmas to you.

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 35:08 Merry Christmas, everybody.

Hank Smith: 35:10 We want to thank Dr. Jeff Chadwick for being with us today and giving of his expertise. This has been so fun to see the real story of Christmas and to see it in this new way has been really fun for me. John, I know it’s been great for you as well.

John Bytheway: 35:27 Got a page of notes, and it’s beautiful. Getting some of those interesting facts just makes it more beautiful and joyful, and as you said, Jeff, more admiration for Joseph and Mary.

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 35:38 Yep. Hey, by the way, I would also say that I still love all the Christmas traditions and anything that I’ve said that may conflict with what’s a joy to you, don’t let that bother you at all.

Hank Smith: 35:51 Keep your stables, right?

Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick: 35:52 I’m not an expert on Christmas, okay? I’m just a guy trying to understand it better. If anyone out there understands it differently from me, the Lord bless you. I’m completely satisfied with that. Just God bless us everyone.

Hank Smith: 36:06 We want to thank again Dr. Jeff Chadwick for being with us today. We want to thank our executive producers, Steve and Shannon Sorensen and our sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen. We hope you’ll join us next week. We’re starting a brand new year of the New Testament. We hope you’ll all join us for that full year. Come join our team of followHIM. We have an amazing production crew we want you to know about. David Perry, Lisa Spice, Jamie Nielson, Will Stoughton, Krystal Roberts, and Ariel Cuadra. Thank you to our amazing production team.