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Is Christmas Unbelievable? Four Important Questions Everyone Should Ask · Centrally Speaking

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Centrally speaking, is the Central Schwingfelder Church's pumpkin.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It speaks about issues that would be of interest to our society.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: In particular, it addresses how a Christian worldview intersects with Western secular culture.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: In the spirit of the church's founder, we take the perspective of the middle way, which is in agreement with the historic Christian Church.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Dr.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Drake Williams, Minister of Mission and Theology at the Church.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Our website is www.cscfamily.org.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking today about a book called Is Christmas Unbelievable?
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: A book written by Rebecca McLaughlin.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: And Rebecca McLaughlin is a relatively newer author.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: She has written books such as Confronting Christianity and then also The Secular Creed, both published in 2019 and then also 2021.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: But she's written this book, Is Christmas Unbelievable, this year?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: And her subtitle is Four Questions Everyone Should Ask About the World's Most Famous Story.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very pleased to be joined with my good friend and colleague in the ministry, uh Dr.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: David McKinley, who's been a pastor here at Central Schweinfeller Church for 19 years and senior pastor since uh 2006.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: So welcome to the show and glad to be discussing this book with you today.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Drake.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's a pleasure to be with you.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: I know you've been drawn to this book, Is Christmas Unbelievable, due to the four questions that Rebecca McLaughlin asks about this great day of Christmas.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I wonder if we might just be able to talk them through your impressions about them and maybe start with why do you think these particular questions are so very important?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thanks, Drake.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: I really enjoyed reading the book.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: And what's best about it, maybe, is that you can go through it in just a couple of hours.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: And what's good about it is that it brings the spiritual aspects and the historical aspects of Christmas to the forefront.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: You know, during the Christmas season, we all get wrapped up in so many activities, whether it be concerts or uh meeting with friends or family, or then, of course, the infamous shopping.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: And we can get far away from the spiritual significance of celebrating Jesus' birth.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: But what I really appreciate about this book is it seems to put these questions right up there to one, reinforce those of us who do believe in the Christmas story and it's the greatest story ever told, or to present a cogent and convincible argument for traditional Christmas and the historical aspects surrounding Jesus' birth and the spiritual aspects of it and why we should take notice.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: I thought it was a great book.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we should just mention some of those four questions before discussing them further.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Was Jesus a real person?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Can we take the gospels seriously?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Third one, how can you believe in a virgin birth?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then fourthly, why does it matter?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Those seem to be very relevant questions for today.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Although some of these questions are things that people didn't ask at all in the past.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Particularly, was Jesus a real person?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody used to assume that, but that's how this book starts.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Did you find that striking?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And what were some of the things that you found very noteworthy about the way that she answered the first question?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I thought that that was a very interesting question to present.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: And in reading the book, uh, Rebecca brings out the fact that there's a quite a shocking statistic that says that 40% of the British population, adult population, did not believe that Jesus was a real person.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: 40%.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: In my young time on this earth, growing up, I never doubted that Jesus was a real person.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just something that was always assumed.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: But we live in a post-Christian society.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: We live in an era where people are brought to a place where they doubt first.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so doubting that Jesus was a historical person, and you say, well, it's in the Bible.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: To many, that's not good enough.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so we have to look at it deeper.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: And the truth is that the gospels are very reliable and they're very accurate.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: But then the Bible is not the only place where Jesus is presented in history.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: You've got the Jewish historian Josephus and the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: Both of those sources cite that Jesus was a real person.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: For instance, Josephus in around AD 93 reports that in A.D.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: 62, about three decades after Jesus' death, the Jewish high priest had a man named James, the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ, and certain others stoned or executed.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: And then another citation that comes from a second century document by the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus reports how the Emperor Nero blamed the great fire of Rome of AD 64 on a class of men loathed for their vices whom the crowd called Christians.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: Both of these instances tell us that Jesus was an historic person.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: And in the Apostles' Creed, which its finished product dates back to maybe around the fourth century, that's the reason the creed says that he suffered under Pontius Pilate, because Pontius Pilate was a real historical person, and his name serves as kind of a landmark to present the fact that Jesus actually existed in the first century.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, this is very interesting that secular society seems to be doubting whether Jesus existed and then disregarding these non-Christian sources.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: You reference is a Jewish historian writing to make sense of how the Roman Empire was taking over Jerusalem and Judea and asking them to go along with the Romans.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: And yet he throws in this reference to Jesus.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's very significant.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think so.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: This wouldn't be anybody who should be positive to Jesus at all.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: He would be a distraction, yet he incorporates him in this history.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's rather striking.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then Tacitus, one of the great uh Roman historians who was known as being very accurate, also uh refers to Jesus as well.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how 40% of the British adult population wouldn't uh believe that.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Any thoughts on this?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe it's just not information being circulated well enough.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: If you look at the uh British society, and I I've never been to Britain, but you know, we have access through BBC and and other things.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: And we also hear uh reports from missionaries, and you yourself served in Europe for 13 years in the Netherlands as a missionary.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, Europe has gone post-Christian, and so the church, many churches are non-existent.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: Churches were existent, say 25 to 50 years ago, have now shattered their doors.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: Big gothic cathedrals are no longer having congregations meet within them.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's a more secular society, and with secularism comes agnosticism and atheism as the position of default.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that that element, as well as the general disinterest in history and knowing history and understanding history, I think contribute to the doubt that Jesus was a real historical person.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: And yet we have the sources that wouldn't be trying to encourage Christian belief at all, yet recognizing that he does exist.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And McLaughlin also talks about this census that took place under Kyreneus.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: How does that inform her argument?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there is some dating discrepancy on that, but what we can't get around is that that was a real event that took place in either four or six AD, and that is described in the Gospels.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: So you have something that is historically verifiable that also shows up in the Gospels, uh, provides a sort of parallelism, that the Gospels are not making this up as they go, but rather they dovetail and they are parallel with what we know to be true historical events.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: That there was a governor named Quirinius, there was a census that was taken, which would then demand that Joseph take his betrothed Mary and go to Bethlehem and register for the census.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: And all of this is exactly what the gospels uh describe.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it fits together then.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: How will we then doubt that the Christmas story would be believable?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: It actually seems as if it fits.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: But then that perhaps leads us on to the second question about taking the gospels seriously.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: There seems to be a fair amount of doubt today about Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm wondering if you might add how McLaughlin sees the skepticism there and how he also sees these things to be believable.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's great to know what life was like in the first century.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, they did not have the luxury of the printing press.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: Things had to be hand printed.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: What McLaughlin points out is that the events surrounding the Lord Jesus were so significant that they were preached and proclaimed for at least a couple of decades, if not more, before anything was written down.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: Today we live in a scribal society, a society that values things being written, not so much on paper anymore as much as on the computer screen.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: We live in an information society.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: But the first century was not an information society as such.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so she points out that the gospel was proclaimed in synagogues and marketplaces for years before it was ever being written down.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: And we see this in the life of the Apostle Paul.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: He would go to Athens and proclaim in the marketplace.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: He would point out how you believe in all these gods.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: Let me tell you about the unknown God that you even have an altar dedicated to.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: As nearly a thousand people witnessed the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, you couldn't contain that in a small area, that that got out to the point where many people were talking about it.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: Then you had the apostles going around preaching, and what accompanied their preaching were miracles.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: People were being healed, people were being transformed.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so the gospel of Jesus Christ and the lives transformed by it, it was just like a bomb that went off that affected so many for nearly a generation before these things were written down.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: Drake, as you and I both understand, the Gospel of Mark was written first, almost like the headline edition, the most expedient way of getting the message of Christ out.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then Matthew and Luke written maybe 20 years after that, and then the Gospel of John written toward the end of the first century as kind of a recap and filling in the holes of what the others did not.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: It all creates a beautiful mosaic of the life of Christ that is certainly believable.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: It certainly does.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the fact that these gospel writers wrote similar things is significant too, where there weren't so many documents that were being written.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: And if Mark wrote one, and Matthew would want to correct me, he could, but uh he seems to replicate a lot of it, as does Luke.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: And John is different, of course, than Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but still fitting into the just the general overall thrust.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: If they were in competition with each other, they could have done that, but they seem to be replicating each other, saying generally there's agreement here.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: When you look at it that way, it makes uh the scriptures pretty convincing.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: And yet, with the similarities, uh then there are differences, differences of audiences.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: Matthew was written to what we think, primarily a Jewish audience.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: Luke was written to a Gentile audience.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: So it's really pretty fascinating when we think about it.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: And written generally about within a generation of Jesus' crucifixion, which is about the amount of time that memory studies are currently in universities are saying that's the time to write things down so that when things are most fresh on people's minds.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: So it all seems to make sense that the gospels are worth taking seriously rather than starting with doubt.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the largest doubts in secular society now is this problem of the virgin birth, or what some perceive to be the problem of the virgin birth, that Mary conceived Jesus without a human father.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: How does Rebecca McLaughlin address that?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: And what do you think is significant about the virgin birth?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: Well, one thing that she points out is that Christianity is the fastest growing religion and the most diverse religion on the face of the earth.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: She says that today Christianity is the most widespread and the most racially and culturally diverse belief system in the world.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: About 31% of humans identify as Christian, and they are roughly evenly distributed between Europe, North America, South America, and Africa.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: And the church in China is growing so fast that they will almost certainly be more Christians in China than in the United States by 2030.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's only nine years away.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: She says, and some experts believe that China could be a majority Christian country by 2060.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: By then, the proportion of humans who identify as Christian is expected to increase slightly from 31 to 32 percent.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: And this makes Christianity the largest religion in the world.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's what's so interesting.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we have maintained that the United States was built upon Judeo-Christian values, and we want to continue to say that America is a Christian nation.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: Now, practice and identity might be two different things, but what is so interesting is that the faith that comes from Jesus Christ revealed is upon every continent, spans so many different cultures, and it's growing faster.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: And you would know this from your mission work, it's growing fastest on the continent of Africa and in the country of China.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's just amazing what God is doing.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: Christianity in Iran, for instance, where they had religious police that seem to be keeping an eye on everyone who is not Muslim.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: The church is growing the fastest there.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: They can't keep up with the amount of baptisms that are happening there.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: These things speak of a faith that's really otherworldly, that it's in fact supernatural.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so the fact that Jesus came to this earth supernaturally should not cause us to question then the supernatural aspect of the faith today and how it's growing.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it certainly is growing.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm wondering if you might share something about God as creator and just how he creates and how this might fit in line with the virgin verse.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's a great point.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: As Christians, we believe that God created ex nilo or out of nothing.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: We see this in the first chapter of Genesis.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: God said, Let there be light, and there was light.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: And the repetition of let there be and then something coming into being by the word of God.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: Only God can do that.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: Only He can make something out of nothing.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: What's also interesting to keep in mind is that that goes right along with what science believes to be what is commonly known as the Big Bang Theory, that our universe came into existence from a cataclysmic event that happened in a moment, in a flash of light, and that we have been dealing with that event ever since it happened, that the universe is not static, but rather it is expanding all the time, which, if you rewind the quote-unquote tape, it would speak to a singular, dense event that brought on an explosion.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so, as Lee Strobel points out in his film, The Case for a Creator, the Big Bang Theory sounds a lot like Genesis chapter one.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's not that the virgin birth is so utterly strange because if you compare that with can God cause his one and only son to be born from a virgin?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: And yet a lot of people who believe in secular understanding of the origins of the earth, they believe that the universe was created out of nothing.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: So it's almost as if you have to pick your own miracle.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: You either pick the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus or pick the virgin birth of the universe.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: I love the way that McLaughlin points that out in her book.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's a particularly interesting part of her book.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Christians believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, atheists believe in the virgin birth of the universe.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Choose your miracle, she says on page 45.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you can also say, too, if God created a world out of nothing, the virgin birth would fit in with that.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: To create life in the womb would fit if God is the creator.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of this goes back to the creation, doesn't it?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: It does, and it points to God.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't point to, you know, we as humans, we want scientific explanation about everything and uh how something was done.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: We want to figure it out.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: But there has to be room in our world for the unexplainable and that which we don't know.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: McLaughlin brings up the whole situation surrounding the star and uh the star guiding the wise men.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: And the truth is that we don't know how that happened.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: But what we do know about these men from what's thought to be Persia is that they studied the stars.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: They were astronomers, and they believed that their journey was being guided through looking up in the sky and seeing the constellations or seeing the direction and the and the message that they got from that.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: We don't know exactly how the star guided them.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: We just know that we're reading this through first century language.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: First century language written down by eyewitnesses who witnessed these events.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, her last question then is this one why does it matter?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Why does it matter that these things aren't true?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: And do you have some thoughts that you want to share from uh your reading of the last chapter?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I do.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, there's an interesting point that's brought forth that the whole idea and understanding of human rights, personal rights, is something that's found within the human race that points to a creator God, that all the other examples of creation, birds, hyenas, gorillas, elephants, so on and so forth, they have no rights, nor do they respect each other's rights.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: They eat one another.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: But she points out that um actually she cites an Israeli historian, Yuval Noah Harari, who is not a Christian and does not believe in miracles per se, but he does give credit to the fact that the whole idea of human rights is an idea that's found in the concept of creation.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so with that, we can look at how our whole society seems to depend on respecting each other for who they are.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: We're all created in the image of God.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: We all are given certain inalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: All of that is based on the idea of creation.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: Jesus talked about creation.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: Also, Jesus talked about life from a system of civics and understanding one another and respecting each other.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: He's the one that said that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then he said, the second is like it to love your neighbor as yourself.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: Those commandments come from the Bible, and they come from an idea of a creator God that has a plan for each and every human being.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then we see the supreme act of love in the life of Jesus Himself.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: We can sit here and watch all the players in the story of the Passion of Christ, as we're talking about the birth of Christ, now we're going to talk about the end of his life.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: We can see the events unfold and we can depict Jesus as some sort of victim.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: But the truth of the matter is, Jesus is far from a victim because he wholeheartedly participates in his own execution.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's as if he himself gave his life.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: And he would say that.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: He said, No one takes my life from me, I lay it down on my own accord.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so that supreme act of love.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: And he even said, No greater love has anyone than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then he said, You all my friends if you do what I command you.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: So he spoke of the necessity of his crucifixion.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: And he also said that it was necessary for him to rise from the dead, and he predicted his own resurrection.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: So then these events are not something that can be a truth for me, but not for you.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: But they demand some response from all of us.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: They do.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: And Jesus makes that invitation.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I love the invitation that's given to us in Matthew 11, 28.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: If that's not a relevant invitation in this day and time, I don't know what is.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, I'll give you rest.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I'm gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: Who doesn't need rest in these days and times?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: And he's talking about spiritual rest, to be free from anxiety, to be at peace with oneself, and most importantly, to be at peace with God.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Guess then you would be encouraging people to be invited to uh look at these truths afresh right now at Christmas time and to consider this book as well as coming out to church.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: Might you have a word to say about that?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yes.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: At Central Schwenckfelder Church, 2111 South Valley Forge Road in Lansdale, we are having three Christmas Eve services.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: We're having a 2 p.m.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: service that is going to feature children's music, children's choirs, a communion service.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's at 2 p.m.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: in our sanctuary.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: At 5 p.m.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: in our fellowship hall, we'll have a contemporary Christmas Eve communion service, which of course, with contemporary music, uses drums and guitars and keyboards and things, and that will also offer communion.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: And then at 7 p.m.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: we have our classic candlelight communion service, which will feature chancel bells and maybe some brass wind and a chancel choir and organ music where we'll sing also traditional Christmas carols.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so everyone is invited to come out.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, if you come out to the 2 p.m., you're probably gonna hear a presentation from Joseph himself.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you work that out?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have that those great connections that you can pull in someone from the Christmas story?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's impressive, David.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: I know, I know a very brave and courageous friend that's willing to do that.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: So and for those who come who are guests, they might be able to receive a copy of this book.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to say anything about that?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: On Christmas Eve, we've secured a number of copies of Rebecca McLaughlin's Is Christmas Unbelievable.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: And we're going to make those available to our guests.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: But we want to make a copy available to those who don't regularly attend church, who may be new to the Christian faith or interested in the Christian faith.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: Someone who doesn't attend church on a regular basis.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: We want them to have a copy of McLaughlin's book first and foremost.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: So we hope that you'll come and receive that gift in the love in which it's intended.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, wonderful.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's good to be able to talk over this book with you, David.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure uh you would join me in uh wishing all of our listeners a very Merry Christmas and hope to see them at a service on Christmas Eve or throughout the coming year.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: Merry Christmas, everyone.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: Merry Christmas.