We Saw His Star - There's More to the Magi than you've been told..

The NET Bible (Matthew 2:1–2)

2:1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem1 in Judea, in the time of King Herod, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem saying, “Where is the one who is born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.

Christmas Week Podcast

https://bethlehemstar.com

https://nakedbiblepodcast.com/podcast/naked-bible-138-what-day-was-jesus-born

For many the Star of Bethlehem and the Three Wise men who were guided by that star are a part of the Christmas story that gets included in most every Christmas play and retelling of the the story.

But have you ever questioned the significance of this story? Why did Matthew feel the need to include this in his account and all the other gospel writers didn’t.

The gospel of Matthew focuses on how Jesus fulfills all the requirements as the Christ, the promised Messiah and the inclusion of this story is LOADED with rich evidence of this truth, evidence that the Abridged Version of the Christmas story that we get every year leaves out.

It may seem a bit hypocritical coming from a man that operates a Short-Form Podcast, to say that we have been getting the short story of the Magi our whole lives, but my intent is always to give you the unabridged version in a succinct way that opens the doors for you to go deeper and discovery for yourself the evidence that Jesus is the Son of God.

This episode may take a bit longer than my normal episodes, but it’s Christmas and I’d like ask for the gift of a few extra minutes of your time, so tell a little more about this Wise Men and the Star that lead them to the King of Kings.

Welcome to the Re/Man Initiative

Matthew 2:1–12 (NET)

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, in the time of King Herod, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem saying, “Where is the one who is born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When King Herod heard this he was alarmed, and all Jerusalem with him. After assembling all the chief priests and experts in the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. “In Bethlehem of Judea,” they said, “for it is written this way by the prophet: And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are in no way least among the rulers of Judah, for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’ ” Then Herod privately summoned the wise men and determined from them when the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and look carefully for the child. When you find him, inform me so that I can go and worship him as well.” After listening to the king they left, and once again the star they saw when it rose led them until it stopped above the place where the child was. When they saw the star they shouted joyfully.As they came into the house and saw the child with Mary his mother, they bowed down and worshiped him. They opened their treasure boxes and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.After being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they went back by another route to their own country.

What great story! And the details that Matthew includes are stunning when we start to look beyond the Nativity scenes.

Hold on to your seat- this will a lighting round of information and most of it is mind-blowing.

What I’m going to share with you next is based on the work of many biblical scholars and learned men.

God in his typical fashion chose an unlikely man by the name of Rick Larson, a man who was not an Astronomer but a lawyer.. to pull together some the most amazing work I’ve every seen on the Star that led our Magi.

You can find that work at https://bethlehemstar.com

I’ll reference the work done by one of my spiritual mentors and teachers, Dr Michael S. Heiser who presents some fantastic scholarship done on the birth of Jesus.

I’ll include a link in the show notes to some of his work as well.

Ok, who were the Magi? Matthew says that came from the East. Philo, and jewish philosopher who was a contemporary to Jesus, living in a jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt writes about a group of noble Magi, who were in an Eastern School of Wise Men believed to be in Babylon.

If you know a little Bible trivia, you would know that Daniel was a jewish man who became the leader of all the Magi in King Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian court.

Since Jews of Philo’s days despised pagan magicians and astrologers, the fact that Philo, a Jew offered such praise for the Magi from the Eastern School in Babylon, seems to indicate that these Magi were trained in the order of Daniel and were likely of Jewish decent as he was.

When I first started my research for this episode, I asked myself “Why, would pagan wise men from some country far in the East, loaded up a caravan, travel 700+ miles, a journey that likely took 6 weeks to a couple of months, to look for a Jewish King who they were convinced they’d find, because they saw HIS STAR rising?

That makes no sense, unless they were Astrologers who were of Jewish decent, trained by Daniel the Prophet, knew the prophesy of the coming Messiah and saw something so convincing in the behavior of this Star, that they knew they had to find him and worship him.

The very fact that Herod, a Jewish King even gave them audience is again evidence that this is very likely the case.

And What this Star, they saw rising, that they watched for months and months, what story did this star tell, that convinced them to mount up and find this new born King?

Let me briefly say that I know the discussion of Astrology is touchy for a lot Christian folk, but your Bible is full of Star language and the prohibitions on Astrology given in the scriptures was on worshipping the stars and believing them ruled an man’s life instead if Worshipping Yahweh, Most High God who created the stars and truly does rule the affairs of men.

In Luke 21 Jesus himself says , there will be signs in the Sun the Moon and the Stars

The bottom line is Astral signs are discussed through out our Bible.

We may look to the stars for signs from God, but we are told to not revere or worship the stars themselves.

In Matthew’s account this Star is given 9 distinct qualifications.

Using the laws of planetary motion first discovered by Johannes Kepler in 1609, laws and math that NASA and every other Astronomy program in the world still uses today and software that NASA and Planetariums across the globe have been using for year; we can actual map the stars and recreate the images that show their exact locations for any given date and time. We can also view those images as they would be seen from any place on the planet.

Rick Larson, using the information given us in the Scriptures and the software did just that and what has discovered is almost too amazing to fathom.

The Star of Bethlehem was real and it behaved exactly as the Magi said it did and as Matthew recorded.

The Nine Qualifications were as follows

It signified birth.

It signified kingship.

It had a connection with the Jewish nation.

It rose in the east so it was not a Polar celestial body.

It appeared at a precise time.

Herod didn’t notice it when it appeared.

It endured over a long period of time.

It was directly ahead of the Magi the night they traveled south from Jerusalem to Bethlehem.

And It stopped over Bethlehem where Jesus was.

Celestial events like Comets, Meteors and Novas got ruled out quickly because they can’t display all 9 of these trait.

That left us with Planets or what the ancients called wandering stars.

In September of 3 BC, at the time of the Jewish New Year, Rosh ha-Shanah, which BTW is the time when the Jewish nation would typically coronate a New King, Jupiter known as the King Planet, because it is the largest, moved into a dance with Regulus, know as the king star.

Jupiter will sometimes exhibit what looks like a backwards motion. Astrologers call this retrograde motion.

If you have ever been sitting still in a car and the car beside you moves backwards, giving you the illusion that you rolled forward, then you have experienced a type of retrograde motion

The earth is a moving platform that we see the planets and stars from so sometimes a planet will look like it’s moving backwards, but really we are moving forward.

In the time frame of 3 to 2 BC, Jupiter’s retrograde wandering would have gained a lot of attention. Jupiter moved into conjunction and the into retrograde around Regulus, not once but three times. A triple pass like this is rare.

Over a period of months, our stargazing magi would have seen the Planet of Kings incircle the Star of Kings three times. The pathway of the triple pass would have created a crown over Regulus. It was seen as a heavenly coronation. A King was on the Scene.

This triple conjunction—occurred within the constellation of Leo, The Lion.

If the concept of our Wise Men being Jews is correct, then they would have known that the Messiah was to come from the tribe of Judah which was known as the Lion.

So an event of this magnitude occuring in the Constellation of Leo would have likely caused these Magi to concluded they were seeing signs of the promised King of the Jews. Their question to Herod, proves as much.

“Where is the one who is born king of the Jews?

If this was the only thing being told in the Stars at this time, it would be a marvel but there is more.

The Apostle John describes the birth of Jesus using astrological terms in Revelation 12 and there are fascinating details, that as modern readers, we have blown right past.

Rev 12:1  A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 

3Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. 4 His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. 5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron sceptre…

I can remember being taught that this was about Satan’s fall from heaven and the rebellion before the Sin of Eden, but that is not what is being described here.

A woman in labor, a dragon bent on infanticide and a ruler of the nations?

The Child is the Messiah, Jesus. The woman would be Mary, the mother of Jesus.

And the dragon which waits to kill the child at birth would be Herod operating under the influence of Satan, who attempted that very thing.

John says in this passage that he saw “the woman clothed in the Sun”. and “She had the moon at her feet”

In Larson’s study he was able to show that in September of 3 BC, what seemed like an odd vision that John was detailing was an actual Astral event that occured.

As Jupiter was beginning the coronation of Regulus, The constellation Virgo, the Virgin was rising in the east behind Leo.

When Jupiter and Regulus were first meeting, the Constellation Virgo was position with the Sun at her mid-section (Clothed in the Sun).

And as John said, the Moon was at her feet. During this event, a new moon was directly at the feet of Virgo, A Virgin Birth

It was about here that it struck me that my Father in Heaven wrote the story of my King and my Redemption in the Stars before he ever set them in motion. I could help but think of the passage in Revelation that speaks of the lamb who was slain before the foundations of the world.

By this time in my study I am in full blow bible geekdom.

A yet there is even more.

In June of 2 BC, Jupiter continued its pageantry and had spectacular rendezvous, this time with Venus.

This conjunction was so close and so bright that it is today displayed in hundreds of planetaria around the world by scientists who may know nothing of Messiah.

They do it because this particular conjunction between Jupiter and Virgo was spectacular.

in 2 BC, No one alive would have ever have seen anything like this and we haven’t seen anything like it sense.

In December of 2 BC, we can see that Jupiter, the Planet of Kings hung over the city of Messiah’s birth.

So, on the Night that the Magi left Jerusalem and started the 5 mile journey to the South this Star would have been directly in front of them and pointing to their destination.

We know now that on December 25 of 2 BC ,Jupiter once again entered retrograde and to eye reached a full stop in its travel through the fixed stars.

Our Magi on that evening would have seen it stopped in the sky above the little town of Bethlehem.

Jesus was not born on Dec 25th.

If you follow the link I posted from Dr Heiser, you’ll learn that there is a great deal of evidence that shows the actual day Jesus’ birth to be Sept 11 3 BC.

This is why the Magi find Jesus, Mary and Joseph in a House when they visit, not in the stable.

Only the Shepherds on the night of his birth are ever said to be at the Stable

It also explains why Herod had boys under the age of two murdered, because some time had passed since the Magi first saw his star rising.

That said, this night when the Magi came bearing gifts of worship, it was indeed the first Christmas Night where gifts were offered to our King and Wise men Bowed in Worship to him, Dec 25th, 2 BC

Oh, one last thing, when Jesus was crucified, their were signs in heavens on that day as well.

On that day, Venus was rising and the Moon was once again at her feet only this time the moon wasn’t a new moon it was a full moon, representing a full life and it was also in a particular state of eclipse- On that day it was a Blood Moon.

Here’s what blows my mind…this isn’t theory or conjecture

All of this can be mathematically proven and in fact already has been

The stars have been perfectly timed and the math is precise. Like a magnificent clock, wound by the hand of the Father, the heavens themselves bear an eternal witness to the truth of the birth of Jesus and the Sacrifice of his Life as the Ransom for Humanity.

The Star of Bethlehem and the Magi who were lead by it were real and if they were real then the King the sought, found and worshipped was real too!

The evidence is present and there to be seen by those who care to look for him.

I usually don’t like the cheesy things churches will put in there signs by the road, but in this case I guess it is true,

Wise Men still see the signs, Seek Him Out and Worship Him as King!

I hope you find a Magi in you this Week.

Merry Christmas