WHEN EXACTLY WAS CHRIST BORN?
   
All right, get Luke chapter 2 in one hand, and get Hebrews chapter 1 
in the other.
   
Hebrews 1:10:  "And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the 
foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands:  
They shall perish; but thou remainest"--watch it!--"and they all shall 
wax old as doth a garment."
   
The heavens are like a garment.  "And as a vesture shalt thou fold 
them up." The Lord's going to change clothes.  "And they shall be 
changed:  but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail." Then 
the universe is like God's clothing, and He's separate from it.
   
The materialist makes the universe eternal, and believes in the 
eternity of matter.  But that isn't true.  "In the beginning God 
created the heaven and the earth." So, that's something different.
   
All right, now those things are said to be like clothing.  In the Old 
Testament, what did the Lord appear in on this earth?  It was a 
tabernacle.  In the Old Testament, the Lord was in the tabernacle, 
behind the holy of holies, behind the vail, on down there.  Brother 
Batema and I were talking about the Northern Lights, which he has seen 
up there in Canada.  I've never seen them, but I was asking about 
them.  I've seen pictures of them; they look like curtains.  Like the 
curtain of the holy of holies, hanging down there.  And they are 
north.  
   
And it's like the Lord has this thing on, like clothing, and then some 
day He's going to take it off--dump it.  Then God and His holiness 
will be revealed.  "I saw a great white throne, and him that sat upon 
it, from whose face the heaven and earth fled away, and there was no 
place found for them."
   
Before you get to Luke 1, on this clothing turn to John, where Christ 
is getting ready to die on the cross.  In the Gospel of John, pick up 
chapter 19, verse 23.  Christ has one piece of clothing, which has a 
hole in the top.  "Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, 
took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and 
also his coat:  now the coat was without seam, woven from the top 
throughout.  They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend 
it"--tear the coat--"but cast lots for it, whose it shall be:  that 
the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my raiment 
among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots."
   
When the Bible speaks of Christ's clothing, it says "coat," it says 
"raiment," it says "vesture." But one word it never uses is robe.  The 
scarlet and purple robes put on Jesus Christ were put on by the Roman 
soldiers who crucified Him.  So Lloyd Douglas wrote him a book called 
"The Robe." And then Beverly Shea gets up and sings, "The robe, His 
robe, may its glory live forever."
   
Let's hope not!
   
Christ didn't have any robe.  The only robe He got was from the people 
who killed him--the Romans.
   
Now, concerning this last clothing He has, he's got four pieces.  The 
last piece He has is a pancho, and it's woven like this throughout, 
with a hole in the top, like that.  And you're regular pancho is that 
piece of material; it has a hole up here, and the guy puts it over his 
neck, and it hangs down over the outside.  That's the garment which 
has a hole in the top.
   
Now, I know this is the long way around, but this is gathered by 
deduction.  He says in Hebrews chapter 12 there's a heavenly Mount 
Zion.  In Isaiah, the devil says, "I'm going to ascend to the sides of 
the north, and put my throne above the stars of God." All right, it 
says, "Beautiful for situation is Mount Zion, the city of the great 
King, located in the sides of the north." The picture of the universe 
is a pyramid in your Bibles--a picture like a mountain.
   
All right, Genesis chapter 1:  the Lord divided the waters above the 
heavens--the firmament--from the water below the firmament, and called 
the firmament heaven.  He put the sun, moon, and stars in here--
evening, morning, so forth and so on.  The picture of the universe is 
a picture where there's water above you, and water below you, and the 
universe in the middle like that.  Then, up here is the throne.
   
All right, in Revelation chapters 4, 5, and 6, John was caught up into 
heaven--the third heaven--and saw a throne.  When he saw it, he saw a 
sea of glass.  Christ says, "I am the door." John said, "A door was 
opened in heaven."
   
Christ said, "I am the door; by me, if a man enter in, he shall be 
saved, and should go in and come out, and find pasture." You go up at 
the rapture; you come back down at the Advent.  When you go up there, 
you go up through water; when you come back down, you come back down 
through water.
   
When you go up here, you go up through a place that is frozen, and 
there's a hole at the top.  The hole at the top of that thing was made 
when Christ died on the cross, and the veil of the Temple was rent in 
twain from top to bottom.  The Book of Hebrews says, "Enter through 
the veil, that is to say, his flesh"--likening that rip in the top of 
the universe to the rip in Christ's die.  And likening that hole in 
the top to the hole in the top of a seamless garment.
   
And in all of those pictures the Lord has spoken of it as inside a 
piece of clothing or a tabernacle, with a hole or a door in the top.
   
All right, now get Luke chapter 2.  Look at verse 8:  "And there were 
in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over 
their flock by night.  And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, 
and the glory of the Lord shone round about them:  and they were sore 
afraid."
   
All right, now at the birth of Christ, He said the shepherds were "in 
the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night." Over there in 
Palestine, they bring them out of the fields before November.  During 
November and December, they're not in the fields; they're on down to 
the stable in the farm yard.  Whatever that time is there, it's warm 
enough so that they're still in the fields.  So whatever that time is, 
it's before it got cold around November and December, or after it got 
cold around February or March.
   
All right, the most logical inference from what you've got here, is 
it'll have to have something to do with the Feast of Tabernacles.  
Turn to John 1.  The Feast of Tabernacles is September or October.  
John chapter 1, verse 14:  "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt 
among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten 
of the Father)." When David is getting ready to build a Temple for the 
Lord, the Lord says, "Did I ask for a house any place?  In all the 
days I've been with you I've traveled in a tent and a tabernacle." 
That's in the Old Testament.
   
Now, there are other secular things you can get from a calendar 
that'll bring it down closer.  But, from those things there, you can 
judge that Christ was probably born at the Feast of Tabernacles, which 
for a Jew is around September 23rd--someplace around there.
   
Now, the thing that makes it real strong is this:  Here is the sun, 
and here is the earth going around the sun.  And the earth does not go 
around the sun in a complete circle.  It's four days off in that 
thing.  The center of that eclipse is right here, and the sun is right 
here.  The sun is off four days in that thing.  This gap right here is 
four days.  You check that thing in astronomy, and it'll come out 
something like this.  This thing over here is September, sitting here, 
and I believe this is March; I'll have to check some things on it.  
December is sitting up in here; and June is over in here, like that.  
They dates here, are September 20th, 21, 22, and 23--those days.  
September 21st there, September 23rd there.
   
It looks like something started here.  And then, four days later, the 
sun was placed in the center of it.  Take your Bible and turn to 
Genesis 1.  What's the sun a type of, according to what I taught you 
tonight?  It's a type of Christ.  All right, Genesis 1.  Now watch 
this:
   
Genesis 1:5:  "And the evening and the morning were the first day"--
September 20th.  Verse 8:  "And the evening and the morning were the 
second day"--September 21st.  Verse 13:  "And the evening and the 
morning were the third day"--September 22nd.  Verse 19:  "And the 
evening and the morning were the fourth day"--September 23rd.  Verse 
16:  "God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, 
and the lesser light to rule the night."
   
So, I'd say that Christ is born the 23rd of September, at the Feast of 
Tabernacles.
   
