Let’s Go to Bethlehem: Christmas Eve Celebration
Scott Maze
Matthew 2:1-6
Thank you for being a part of one of three Christmas Eve services tonight. If we could travel anywhere in the world tonight to celebrate Christmas Eve, where would you want to go? Many of us might choose the house we grew up in celebrating many wonderful Christmas family celebrations. Others may choose to go to your home right now because of the warmth of family and friends. But I think a few of you would want to travel to Bethlehem. Because it's there in Bethlehem that the Savior is born.
Now, the little town of Bethlehem has ben the subject of countless Christmas carols and Nativity plays. If you visit the little town from Israel, you'll need to pass through a secure security check because you are moving out of Israel and into the Palestinian-controlled West Bank. Now, when you are in and around the town, you can see the outskirts of Jerusalem and Israel just across the ravine. A big wall separates the two and you can often see graffiti all over the white, tall walls as near the Palestinian side of the security check.
If you visit the Church of the Nativity as most Christian pilgrims do, you'll likely wait in a serpentine line to descend the steps of the purported place of Christ's birth. A reported 1.5 million people will visit the small town this year. It was there my family of five visited for the first time in 2015. We understood that three different denominations control the church: the Armenians, the Greeks, and the Roman Catholics. You will descend a narrow set of steps to visit the purported place of Jesus' birth - they even have a star in the ground that marks the spot. Across from it, you'll see a place where the animals were located that evening.
The Church of the Nativity was built over a cave which Helena, mother of Constantine, believed to be the site where Christ was born in AD 335. According to Hieronymus, a Christian scholar of the 4th century, the cult of ...
Scott Maze
Matthew 2:1-6
Thank you for being a part of one of three Christmas Eve services tonight. If we could travel anywhere in the world tonight to celebrate Christmas Eve, where would you want to go? Many of us might choose the house we grew up in celebrating many wonderful Christmas family celebrations. Others may choose to go to your home right now because of the warmth of family and friends. But I think a few of you would want to travel to Bethlehem. Because it's there in Bethlehem that the Savior is born.
Now, the little town of Bethlehem has ben the subject of countless Christmas carols and Nativity plays. If you visit the little town from Israel, you'll need to pass through a secure security check because you are moving out of Israel and into the Palestinian-controlled West Bank. Now, when you are in and around the town, you can see the outskirts of Jerusalem and Israel just across the ravine. A big wall separates the two and you can often see graffiti all over the white, tall walls as near the Palestinian side of the security check.
If you visit the Church of the Nativity as most Christian pilgrims do, you'll likely wait in a serpentine line to descend the steps of the purported place of Christ's birth. A reported 1.5 million people will visit the small town this year. It was there my family of five visited for the first time in 2015. We understood that three different denominations control the church: the Armenians, the Greeks, and the Roman Catholics. You will descend a narrow set of steps to visit the purported place of Jesus' birth - they even have a star in the ground that marks the spot. Across from it, you'll see a place where the animals were located that evening.
The Church of the Nativity was built over a cave which Helena, mother of Constantine, believed to be the site where Christ was born in AD 335. According to Hieronymus, a Christian scholar of the 4th century, the cult of ...
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