Matthew 2

Read Matthew 2 here (text coming …) or at Bible Gateway.

My outline:

2:1-12, The visit of the wise men
2:13-23, The flight to Egypt and return

Each of these paragraphs make their own Chiastic Structure Teaching Tool.

One objection the skeptics have to the authenticity of Matthew’s Gospel is, they say, that the Star of Bethlehem is a myth with no correlation to an observed astronomical event. But is that true? This question has fascinated believers for centuries, and in today’s modern era, computers have been put to use to map the exact night skies of history, on any date, and in any geological location.

One researcher has come up with a devastatingly logical answer to this question. His conclusion is that the Bethlehem star was not a supernatural event, but one very distinct natural but rare astronomical event fulfilling all the criteria of Scripture and history, and the witness of Matthew’s Gospel.

“If these astronomical events weren’t a special miracle from outside of the natural order, then it was something even more startling. They were clockwork signs. And that is overwhelming. The movement of the heavenly bodies is regular, like a great clock. These clockwork signs means that from the very instant at which God flung the universe into existence, He also knew the moment he would enter human history in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. He marked it in the stars. And from before the beginning of time, God knew the very moment when Messiah would breath his last on the cross. Jesus is “the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world (Rev 13:8).”

Adapted from The Star of Bethlehem

His evidence and conclusions are amazing!

If there are questions, these are good resources:

The Star of Bethlehem – Rick Larson
Who were the wise men – Forerunner staff

Caveat: Their explanation of the wise men agrees with what I have discovered in history about them, however I disagree on the identification of the star.

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