What child is this?
Today is December 25, 2023 AD - which stands for “in the year of the Lord” - as we celebrate the 2,023rd birthday of Jesus Christ. Whatever your beliefs - I have a story to tell you that just might transform your life!
You’ve probably heard of J.R.R. Tolkien, the English writer and scholar who wrote The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–55) which went on to be the one of the best-selling books ever written, with over 150 million copies sold around the world in 30 different languages.
A film version of The Lord of the Rings, by director Peter Jackson, released in three installments in 2001–03, achieved worldwide critical and financial success, broke the one-billion-dollar barrier and won a total of 11 Oscars (something only two other films in history, Ben-Hur and Titanic, have accomplished) - including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Lord of the Rings is deeply Christian, but not overtly so. And I think that is one of the reasons why it had such a broad appeal.
But what you probably didn’t know is that J.R.R. Tolkien convinced his friend C.S. Lewis to accept Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lewis convinced Tolkien to finish his books! According to Lewis, Tolkien was known for not finishing anything!
Early on a Sunday morning, September 20, 1931, three English professors took a stroll together on Addison’s Walk at the University of Oxford:
32-year-old C. S. Lewis
39-year-old J. R. R. Tolkien
35-year-old Hugo Dyson
Their time together had begun the evening before at dinner, but their debate went until 4am.
Lewis chided his friend, Tolkien, for not accepting “the recognized scientific account of the growth of religions.” Back then, Lewis was an atheist and wrote that the miraculous stories of the life of Jesus were “on exactly the same footing” as that of Adonis, Dionysius, Isis, and Loki. All religion, he wrote, was an attempt by primitive man to cope with the terrors of the natural world. Just so with Christianity: The story of the resurrection was a sublime retelling of ancient pagan myths about gods and goddesses who, by initiating the cycle of the seasons, represented the pattern of death and rebirth.
Sigmund Freud, an atheist, had shaped the thinking of the time and called faith a symbol of weakness:
“The origin of the religious attitude can be traced back in clear outlines as far as the feeling of infantile helplessness. There may be something further behind that, but for the present it is wrapped in obscurity.”
C.S. Lewis had bought into Freud’s dogma as a teenager and young man.
By the end of the night, talking with Tolkien & Dyson, C.S. Lewis was transformed and believed that God was actually there guiding his path: “We began on metaphor and myth—interrupted by a rush of wind which came so suddenly on the still, warm evening and sent so many leaves pattering down that we thought it was raining. We continued on Christianity: a good long satisfying talk in which I learned a lot: then discussed the difference between love and friendship.
What Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: That the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened.”
Later C.S. Lewis would write that we need to accept Jesus as the Son of God or reject him as a madman, a demon and a lunatic - there is no middle ground:
LEWIS: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Christ.
[People say] things like: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’
That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice.
Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse…. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
Lewis and Tolkien became friends in 1926 over their love of literature. Lewis, who gave up on God after the death of his mother at 10 years old, began chiding Tolkien over his acceptance of the reality of Jesus. Lewis saw Jesus as a myth in the same way that he would have seen Hercules or the Greek pantheon.
That is, until he went for a walk with Tolkien.
You can watch below an imaginative reconstruction of their conversation:
On September 28, 1931—just nine days after Lewis’s conversation with Tolkien on Christ being the true myth—Lewis took the final step in embracing the divinity of Christ.
After this conversation, Lewis joined Christianity and became “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”
LEWIS: “The story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference — that it really happened.”
By the 1950s, C.S. Lewis had become the most popular spokesman for Christianity in the English-speaking world.
For Lewis, the definition of love was what most sharply differentiated the Christian worldview from the secular worldview. In 1960, he wrote a book called The Four Loves, which compared the divine, unconditional love inherent in Christianity to the affection for family and friends and sexual love that Freud covered in his work.
The difference, he said, was that the divine love enables a person to love without any direct personal benefit, while most other forms of love are at some level motivated by a desire to fulfill a self-interest. This unique form of love did not simply evolve from human experience, in Lewis's view, but rather, was implanted in every human being by God.
Tolkien went to visit Lewis on his deathbed and wrote about him positively. After Lewis’s death, Tolkien credited his friend as the man who “was for so long my only audience.”
Their friendship was a true one. Like Lewis wrote, “While friendship has been by far the chief source of my happiness, acquaintance or general society has always meant little to me, and I cannot quite understand why a man should wish to know more people than he can make real friends of.”
SCOTT POWELL: Today, many people think that Jesus of Nazareth was just an idea - and not a real person. Yet, in ancient times there was no debate about His existence. They knew He was very very real. The historical evidence for Jesus is early, detailed, established and widespread.
There are many religions with different founders, prophets, and teachers going back thousands of years. But only one of them, Christianity, has a founder who professed to be the Messiah—the son of God.
Christ is also the only person in history who was pre-announced starting a thousand years before he was born, with 18 different prophets from the Old Testament between the tenth and the fourth centuries BC predicting his coming birth, life, and death.
Hundreds of years later, the details of Christ’s birth, life, betrayal, and manner of death validated those prophecies in surprisingly accurate and minute detail.
One thousand years BC, David prophetically wrote about the crucifixion of Christ at a time crucifixion was unknown as a means of execution.
Every other consequential person of history came into the world to live. The death of other religious leaders—such as Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Mohammad, and Confucius—brought an anticlimactic end to their lives and their work.
But Christ came into the world as God’s son in order to die and pay the price for man’s sin. His sacrifice was the ultimate climax of his life, done for the benefit of all mankind—opening the way to eternal life in heaven for all who believe.
Of the four major world religions built on personalities, only Christianity claims its founder is still alive, having overcome death through resurrection.
No Jew ever believed that, after Abraham died and was interred, his tomb ever became empty. After Buddha died, no disciple ever claimed that he or she saw or spoke to him again.
As for Mohammed and his teachings that are the basis of Islam, there is no trace of this founder appearing to his disciples or followers after he died at age 61.
Christ was unique in that he gave up his life as a sacrifice to fulfill why he came into the world. Christ set the highest standard of love possible, both in his teachings and in making the ultimate sacrifice—giving his life to rescue and save mankind.
Then, to provide “seeing is believing” evidence, God brought Jesus back from being dead in a tomb to being alive—resurrected—so people would have living proof of who he was.
The New Testament provides accounts from multiple sources who witnessed Jesus firsthand after the resurrection. In fact, Jesus made ten separate appearances to his disciples between the resurrection and his ascension into Heaven, over a period of 40 days.
Some of those appearances were to individual disciples, some were to several disciples at the same time, and once even to 500 at one time.
There were no accounts of witnesses who came forth and disputed these appearances or called it a “hoax.” Not a single one. Nor do we find any historical record of any witness accounts that were contradictory.
While there are skeptics of the biblical account of Jesus, there’s actually far more reliable historical evidence for his life, teachings, miracles, death, and resurrection than for any other historical figure of ancient times.
About 1,000 times more manuscripts preserve the deeds and teaching of Jesus in the New Testament (about 25,000 total) than there are preserving other classical ancient works of historic figures who lived at approximately the same time.
We know the historical Jesus mainly through four different accounts known as the gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—not written hundreds of years later, but within a generation or two of Jesus’s life. Apostles Matthew and John provide eyewitness accounts from their years of walking with Jesus as disciples.
Mark also had eyewitness experience, although he was only a teenager when Jesus began his public ministry. Luke, the doctor, learned about Jesus from his friend Paul, the apostle who wrote the most letters in the New Testament.
Because of their experience with the resurrected Jesus, the apostles were in a unique position, knowing with certainty that Jesus was truly the Son of God. They had been present for the life, ministry, miracles, and death of Jesus. If the claims about Jesus were a lie, the apostles would have known it. That’s why their commitment to their testimony was so powerful and compelling.
Additionally, the apostles’ willingness to die for their claims has tremendous evidential value, also confirming the truth of the resurrection. No one will die for something he invented or believes to be false.
Seeing, talking to, and touching the risen Jesus transformed the apostles, who then committed the rest of their lives to educate and advocate for the truth about the message of salvation through Christ.
With the exception of John, who died exiled on the island of Patmos for his testimony of Jesus, the other 11 apostles—including Matthias who replaced Judas, the betrayer of Jesus—died as martyrs for their beliefs in the divinity of Christ.
The birth, death and resurrection of Jesus is real and it changes everything.
There’s not only a mountain of historical evidence and eyewitness testimony that Jesus existed and is the Son of God but even modern-day scientists say that God “could” have created the heavens and earth - as the Bible says - because modern scientific theories don’t hold up under scrutiny!
In 2017, the scientists at CERN said that the "big bang theory" that we were all taught in school did NOT make sense - and that if it really happened that way - the universe should NOT exist!
The scientists at CERN said that their research showed it was MORE likely that the universe was made by a creator! They say the universe is truly a MIRACLE unexplained by our understanding!
So when your atheist friends tell you there is no God - tell them that even "science" says there is a God!
Besides, who are we to say there’s no God?
I would also encourage you to watch a compelling documentary called “Is Genesis History?” which features over a dozen scientists and scholars explaining how evidence from the world supports the history recorded in Genesis. From rock layers to fossils, from lions to stars, from the Bible to artifacts, this fascinating film changed the way I view what I was taught in school about evolution, archaeology and geology.
The film proves a reasonable case for Creation in six normal days, a real Adam and Eve, an actual fall, a global flood, and a tower of Babel and attempts to deal with the question: Is the biblical account of creation and flood meant to be understood as history? And does the world give evidence of recent creation and a catastrophic flood?
“The film strengthens confidence in Scripture, clarifies understanding of the relationships of revelation, science, history, and faith, and enhances understanding of difficult questions all while being both beautiful and entertaining.”
Finally, many of you know that I am an alcoholic in recovery and regularly attend AA meetings and Celebrate Recovery meetings. My sober date is October 12, 1994.
Bill W. was the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous and this is the Christmas greeting that he sent to all AA members in 1944 - on the 10th Anniversary of AA.
I went to an AA meeting in my small town this Christmas and they read it out loud. We closed the meeting with the Lord's Prayer.
What a blessing! This letter was the best Christmas gift of all this year - in a world that seems to have forgotten Christ in Christmas! God is Good!
To all AA members,
Letter: From Bill Wilson
Greetings On Our 10th Christmas, 1944.
Yes, it's in the air! The spirit of Christmas once more warms this poor distraught world.
Over the whole globe millions are looking forward to that one day when strife can be forgotten, when it will be remembered that all human beings, even the least, are loved by God, when men will hope for the coming of the Prince of Peace as they never hoped before.
But there is another world which is not poor. Neither is it distraught. It is the world of Alcoholics Anonymous, where thousands dwell happily and secure. Secure because each of us, in his own way, knows a greater power who is love, who is just, and who can be trusted.
Nor can men and women of AA ever forget that only through suffering did they find enough humility to enter the portals of that New World. How privileged we are to understand so well the divine paradox that strength rises from weakness, that humiliation goes before resurrection; that pain is not only the price but the very touchstone of spiritual rebirth.
Knowing its full worth and purpose, we can no longer fear adversity, we have found prosperity where there was poverty; peace and joy have sprung out of the very midst of chaos. Great indeed our blessings!
And so Merry Christmas to you all - from the Trustees, from Bobbie and from Lois and me.
Bill Wilson
So, this Christmas, as we celebrate the 2,023rd birthday of Jesus Christ - a man that even atheists agree existed, remember that God didn’t send his son into the world to condemn it - but to save it. He came to rescue us and save us from our sins. We’re trapped in our sin, unable to save ourselves and in desperate need of rescue. The incarnation was a rescue mission.
That’s the beautiful truth of Christmas. When God saw us in our sins, he didn’t turn away. Instead, he sent his son to rescue us. He became one of us to bring hope to a broken world in desperate need of a Savior.
And today is no different. Jesus Christ is Emmanuel, God with us. He is present in our suffering and brokenness, bringing calm in the midst of calamity. Regardless of what’s happening in the world today, He is near and He is Lord of all.
And that, my friends, is the really GOOD NEWS of Christmas! Let his light shine through you and go tell it on the mountain!
I love you all! I pray that you will know His great joy and lasting peace now and in the coming year.
“In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
