This, the second of the three-sermon series, deals with “Christmas Present”. It begins with a quick recap of part 1 and then describes how Satan has attempted to divert people from the one true religion by establishing a diversity of counterfeit religions around the world, all based on the model of “Mother and Child to be worshipped”. “In trying to conceal the truth in his deceptions, he inadvertently revealed it to an extent even most Christians would have missed!” Yet again Satan had “shot himself in the foot”…. 😂 !
The main block of the sermon elucidates in detail the time and place of the birth of The Messiah. Not in an open-air hut as shown in common Christmas cards, but in a strong, protective tower. Not lain in a rickety wooden crib, but in a sturdy, protective stone manger. Not showing lots of bare skin but carefully wrapped in cloth of from a source of highly-significant spritual nature. Not surrounded by a crowd of shepherds and Three Kings/Magi/Wise-Men, but attended by several awe-struck priest-shepherds (the Magi came later).
The time and place are deduced from several items of historical fact and various items of meterological information. There is a wealth of information about the nature of the place, the people involved and the circumstances that led to the events that unfolded. There’s the prophecy in the book of Micah tied into it all.
To conclude there is a proposed “Christmas Greeting” designed to avoid giving offence to the current crop of individuals who are reported to have started taking offence at “Happy Christmas”! (This proposal may be a little “tongue-in-cheek” 😉)
ZXZXZXZXZXZXZXZXZXZXZXZXZXXZXZXZXZXZXZXZXXZXZXZXZXZXZXZXZXZXZXZ
The transcript will be available within a few days 😊
PS0: ::: The latest development on the “Transcript” section is that the text-file will be subject to far less preparation than before – less editing and correction. It will still be converted to sentence-column form as before, but any trimming and polishing will be left to the user. Any shortcomings in the transcription software should be pretty obvious and so not a problem in getting the meaning (and the audio file will provide the necessary clarification if required 😀🎧 )
PS1: ::: {not-so-}NEW FORMAT of the transcript.
To ease the processing and preparation of the transcript, and we hope improve the readability of the text, a new format was been adopted in mid October. This breaks the text into sentences instead of arbitrarily-sized “paragraphs”. When the reader opens the file in a program such as Notepad (in MS Windows), then the appearance can be just like a newspaper column. The format is such that the user has many options available, depending on preferences and what software they like to use.
Any feedback on usefulness, improvement suggestions, or whatever, would be most welcome.
PS2 ::::: TRANSCRIPT OF THE SERMON
There is a “button” labelled “Save Video” (or “Download Video” sometimes). This actually links to a text-file to download. It is a transcript of the sermon. At present it is at an experimental stage: it is an aid to getting the most out of the sermon audio. There is no substitute for listening to the verbal delivery of a sermon. However, searching through an audio file lasting the best part of an hour can be somewhat difficult. When you approach the search knowing that you’re sure there is something about “redemption”, for example, then a transcript text-search can take you right there and show you the time in the recording where you will find it! The file is simple “text” rather than a more sophisticated form so that you can edit or reformat as you prefer. This transcript is in 2 forms (in the one file). One half consists of normal text arrangement. These ‘blocks’ were at purely arbitrary boundaries (boundaries were inserted at about 800 character intervals, purely to avoid having one huge unbroken deluge of text, i.e. no attempt at grammatical accuracy). The format has now been changed as described above in PS1. The other section is short bunches of words (8 to 12 nomally) beneath the TIMES at which they occur (for the whole sermon).
This facility is in development (“experimental” as mentioned above) so any feedback on usefulness, improvement suggestions, or whatever, would be most welcome.
