Luke chapter 01 - Jesus the Ideal Man, part 1

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Expect the unexpected

Luke's Gospel tells us about the human side of Jesus.

This is summed up by the 2016 presidential election in America: expect the unexpected.

The no-hoper who is called "the Trump" convincingly beat the firm favourite and obvious choice Hillary Clinton. Hillary had ten times more money to spend and she had the full backing of her party leaders and all the expert polls. Trump was condemned by the press and media as well as by his own party leaders. By winning,  Trump sent shockwaves around the Earth.

So what is God trying to make us aware of? What sign of the times is this?

Another trump is also going to send shockwaves around the earth.
I THESSALONIANS 4:16   For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

:17   Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

"The trump" is mentioned in association with the time of the resurrection of the dead Christians from the 2 000 years of church history. After that the living Christians will be changed into new immortal bodies which can defy the downward pull of gravity and go up to meet Jesus in the air. Christians today are pulled down by beliefs that cannot be proven from the Bible. Very few only believe what the Bible says. And they are despised and criticized for doing that. Going up is unnatural to us living humans, and few there will be of us who manage to do so.
I CORINTHIANS 15:52   In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

The resurrection and the changing of the body will be the last two events before the coming of the Lord Jesus.

"a shout" is a message like John the Baptist's to shake us out of denominational and non-denominational traditions and doctrines of man and make us Scriptural in what we believe.

The archangel is the mighty angel of Revelation Chapter 10 who comes down and uses his powerful "voice" to raise the dead from land and sea where they were buried.

Then "the trump" will be at the time of the changing of the body as "the trump" summons us up to Heaven to meet Jesus as He comes down.

A trumpet in Scripture was a warning for war.
I CORINTHIANS 14:8   For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?

A spiritual battle. The churches preach partly from the Bible and partly from man-made doctrine and tradition. This is an uncertain sound. We need to be completely Scriptural.

Before the resurrection and the trump actually happens, God sends a natural sign, as in the American election, to attract our attention and warn us that His Second Coming is imminent.

So who will be ready for the Second Coming of Jesus? Not many.

LUKE 18:8......Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?

The firm favourites who feel so complacently secure in their churches will lose out and the no-hopers and the despised and written-off "heretics" (or bad guys) who disagree with the churches will win, to everyone's shock and surprise. The so-called church experts and church leaders have got it all wrong in the same way that all the expert polls got the election all wrong.

God's thinking is very different to our human thinking.

Could such a thing be possible?

Yes. Jesus warned us that this would happen.

LUKE 14:16   Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many:

:17   And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready.

:18   And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused.

:19   And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused.

:20   And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.

Everyone had an excuse. Nobody wanted to do what the man asked them to do. They all preferred to do their own thing.

Jesus died on a Thursday to spend 3 nights in the tomb before rising on Sunday morning. The churches say He died on Friday which only gave Him 2 nights in the tomb.

Jesus broke bread at the Lord's supper which was after the evening meal at night time. The churches do the Communion or Mass in the morning. The Lord's breakfast.

The Bible never asked us to celebrate His birth. The churches make Christmas the biggest celebration of the year.

The Bible never told us His birth date. The Protestant churches copy the Catholic church who around AD 350 copied the pagan Roman emperor Aurelian who, in AD 274, declared 25 December the birthday of the pagan Roman sun god. On 22 December AD 274 Aurelian had beheaded the Bishop of Rome.

The Lord Jesus set an example of feet washing which the churches by and large ignore.

The apostles never placed a pastor as the one-man head of a local church. Today one struggles to find any non-Catholic church that has not got a one-man head, usually called the Pastor. The Catholics always have a Priest in charge as the one-man head of the church.

LUKE 14:21    So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.

The Pentecostal revival in the 1900s saw many great healing campaigns. But the Pentecostals also adopted the wrong beliefs that are listed above.

LUKE 14:22   And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room.

LUKE 14:23   And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.

Now God turns to the ruffians, the rejects, the hard-cases. What we would call the bad guys.

LUKE 14:24   For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.

None of the good, saved people in the churches will be caught up to the Wedding Supper in Heaven because they insist on doing unscriptural things. Being saved, they will not go to hell. But because of all the church errors that they believe they will get straightened out in the 3.5 years of great Tribulation where they will oppose the final Pope and be killed for their faith. They form the great multitude that John saw in Revelation Chapter 7 that he could not count. The foolish virgins, saved but fooled by the church systems. They get into Heaven the hard way as they miss the catching up to the Wedding Supper.

So we are warned. All of today's churches that get saved and live a clean life are not going to make the Wedding Supper. They need to know what the Scripture says and be strictly Scriptural.

They also have no name for their Trinity God. You cannot find one name for three People.

They also cannot find a name for the Holy Spirit.

So Luke's Gospel will tell us what we do not want to hear.

We need to change if we want to be ready for the Coming of the Lord.

His Coming is going to be different from what we think or expect.

4 beasts tell us of how the church survived the ages

In the New Testament, God has four beasts or living creatures around His throne that act as bodyguards for His Body, which is the church.
EPHESIANS 5:23   For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

:24   Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ,

Only the body of believers that Jesus saves and who remain subject to His Word, form His spiritual body, known as His Bride or the wise virgins.

This is the heart of Christianity. We must be saved and also be obedient to what is written in the Bible.

REVELATION 4:6   And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind.

:7   And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.

A calf is a young ox.

It is always difficult to describe a spiritual vision of Heaven in our earthly terms, but Ezekiel saw something similar in the Old Testament about 600 years before John's Book of Revelation.

EZEKIEL 1:10   As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle.

The eagle would be flying above them.

In the New Testament, God’s throne is where He dwells in the hearts of born again men and women.

The four chambers of the heart symbolize the four creatures around God's throne.

God has described the launch of His church (the body of Christ) in the Book of Acts.

This church was at its best during New Testament days and then, making the mistake of becoming subject to human leadership, it began to fall away in the Dark Ages.

Luke is the third of the four Gospels that surround and protect the Book of the "Acts of the Holy Spirit in His early church apostles".

As such, Luke also represents the third beast seen around the throne of God, that had a face as a man.

Luke thus presents Christ as the perfect Man and also tells us Christians how we should believe so that our human behaviour and deeds can please God and further His Kingdom on earth.

It was only because Christ was in His church and controlling them, that they were able to produce the Book of Acts.

The four Gospels are thus the heart of the Bible as our eternal life depends on the life and sacrifice of Jesus.

Matthew presents Christ as King since the lion is the king of the beasts. Mark shows Him as the tireless Servant or ox. Luke introduces Him as the perfect Man. John states that Jesus is God in a human Man.

His cleansing Blood is critical as it pumps eternal life through the believers in the Book of Acts. This set the standard for how God wants His church to operate.

The four Gospels tell us how to protect our experience with God so that we remain led by the Holy Spirit and not ruled and directed by human leaders. Satan wants human leadership to replace the leading of the Holy Spirit that guides us to obey the written Word of God, the Bible.

Only the Blood of Jesus could pump eternal life through the believers of the seven different ages and circumstances that the church would pass through during the 2 000 years of its history.

This third beast representing Luke's Gospel must then also describe the main attributes of the Holy Spirit operating in God’s church during the Reformation Ages starting in 1520. God's Spirit blessed and used the human wisdom and scholarship of Martin Luther in Germany to restore that "the just must live by faith".  Christians had to repent and get saved rather than trusting in ancient relics and indulgences. Then God began to further restore the church back to the New Testament by using the human wisdom and scholarship of John Wesley in England as he revealed the truths of holiness, brotherly love, and evangelical outreach.

This laid the foundation for the great missionary age that was arguably the greatest age of human endeavour in the service of God, since the early church. That ended about 1904 - 1906 with the Welsh revival and the Pentecostal revival of the Holy Ghost baptism that began in 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles, California in America.

This age saw human wisdom and scholarship blessed by God's anointing so that they produced the most accurate translation of the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, the King James Bible that was translated and checked between 1604 and 1769. No other Book has been so thoroughly checked.

This is the only Bible with no copyright. Thus it is the Word of God. All other Bibles have copyright to protect the author's viewpoints and financial income. Thus they are the words of man.

Referring to  "a face as a man" draws attention to the "head".

This headship of the church is one of the most fundamental problems in the church world.

The King James Bible is the true Word of God and is thus the head and only source of true Christian doctrine. These are the words that are spoken from the mouth of God.

The King James Bible is "Thus saith the Lord".

The wise virgins with their lamps lit shine that light onto the King James Bible in order to illuminate the true Word, Who is  Jesus Christ. They only believe what the Bible says.

The alternative is that you have to make an arbitrary choice of one or more versions from the more than 100 versions of the English Bible that are available, all of which differ from each other.  In addition to all the corrected upgrades that keep appearing. This is a recipe for confusion.

In true Christianity, only Bible verses are believed to be the basis of doctrine because this alone establishes Jesus Christ as being Head of the church. (Believing some other idea or opinion makes some other person your head or my head.) The believers who only trust the written Bible, only call themselves Christians.

They want no other name because a wife only takes on the name of her husband.

EPHESIANS 5:23   For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

EPHESIANS 5:24   Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

The first serious mistake made by those brave reformers who opposed the Roman Catholic church was to adopt the Roman Catholic church system of having a man at the head of the church. This is unscriptural and produces denominational "Churchianity".

Following a human head as a pastor, spelled disaster. Since the Reformation, 45000 different kinds of denominational and non-denominational churches have emerged. Human leaders have developed endless variations of doctrinal error.  The Word of God alone is what we should follow.

In denominational "Churchianity" some man (pastor, priest, bishop, pope, etc) is the head of the church and the members call themselves by the name of their church movement or church leader - Lutheran, Methodist, Wesleyan, Baptist, Pentecostal, Message believer, Branhamite, etc.

Trying to prevent the church from going down this multi-headed denominational path, Luke describes Jesus as the ideal Man that we should follow.

He, and He alone, is fit to be Head of the church as Jesus alone is the visible face of God.

This is similar to the American president being the face of the American nation.

So Luke reveals key points that we humans must remember as we endeavour to follow our ideal human role model, Jesus Christ. He is God in human flesh.

Luke focuses on the humanity of Christ, the human Man.

John’s Gospel will focus on the God Who dwelt in the human Man, Christ.

Jesus is the Face of God

LUKE 1:76   And thou, child, (John the Baptist) shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways;

Since Jesus is the face of God, Luke introduces Jesus as a Man.

Luke’s banner is thus the face of a Man. The face of Jesus Christ.  He is the human face of God.

Thus Jesus alone is the Head of the church. All our so-called church leaders can at best be parts of the body of Christ. He is the Head, we are the body. All the parts of the body are controlled by the head.

Jesus is thus a fellow human being. This means that God came down to our level to show us how to think and live. As human beings, we must not look to our church leaders (who are flawed vessels) but to Jesus Christ as being our supreme example of what a human being should be like.

Luke was a doctor.

COLOSSIANS 4:14   Luke, the beloved physician,

A doctor is the best person to describe a man. Luke favours the Gentiles because the church is the body of Christ Who alone is the Head of the church. The bulk of the church body over seven church ages was and is made up of Gentiles.

So God chose Luke who was very sympathetic towards the Gentiles to write for the Gentile church. Luke also wrote the Book of Acts. The last portion of the Book of Acts is dominated by Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, as he sets up the foundation of the Gentile church during his three missionary journeys.

Luke is the longest Book of the New Testament which reflects the long time, almost 2 000 years, that will be covered by the seven Gentile church ages.

GALATIANS 2:8    (For he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision [ the Jews ], the same was mighty in me [ Paul ] toward the Gentiles:)

Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles. And Luke was his faithful companion as they traveled amongst the Gentiles. So Luke always felt a strong kindred spirit towards the Gentiles.

II TIMOTHY 4:11   Only Luke is with me.

Paul here comments on Luke’s faithfulness to the Gentile missionary work.

Dealing with Christ as a Man, Luke emphasizes the birth of both John and Jesus. Every man starts as a baby. So Luke, as a doctor, records the conception and pregnancy details.

LUKE 1:1   Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us,

LUKE 1:2   Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word;

LUKE 1:3   It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus,

Luke had an excellent understanding. He knew what he was talking about. He writes like a scholar who can instruct us so that we can learn the truth.

LUKE 1:4   That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.

Abia is the course of priests who served 2 weeks in May

LUKE 1:5   There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth.

Abia is the Greek spelling. Abijah is the Hebrew spelling.

I CHRONICLES 24:10   The seventh to Hakkoz, the eighth to Abijah,

The course of Abia (or Abijah) was the eighth course.

Each course of priests served for a week, changing on the Sabbath day.

Three times a year they all served for an extra week. The feast of Unleavened Bread. The feast of Weeks included the Day of Pentecost. And the feast of Tabernacles.

The Jewish year begins in March.

Zacharias did one week extra with all the priests during the third week.

Thus his 8th week actually fell on the 9th week.

The course of Abia would fall on the 9th week but then Zacharias had to stay for the 10th week as all the priests had to serve on the Feast of Weeks.

II CHRONICLES 23:8   So the Levites and all Judah did according to all things that Jehoiada the priest had commanded, and took every man his men that were to come in on the sabbath, with them that were to go out on the sabbath: for Jehoiada the priest dismissed not the courses.

Zacharias would only be able to go back home on the 11th week.

LUKE 1:6   And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.

LUKE 1:7   And they had no child, because that Elisabeth was barren, and they both were now well stricken in years.

LUKE 1:8   And it came to pass, that while he executed the priest's office before God in the order of his course,

LUKE 1:9   According to the custom of the priest's office, his lot was to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord.

LUKE 1:10   And the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense.

LUKE 1:11   And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense.

LUKE 1:12   And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.

LUKE 1:13   But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.

LUKE 1:14   And thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth.

Elizabeth could only fall pregnant in the 11th week when Zacharias was allowed to leave the Temple.

LUKE 1:15   For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb.

John the Baptist could not speak in tongues while he was in his mother's womb.

So speaking in tongues is not essential as far as the Holy Ghost baptism is concerned.

LUKE 1:16   And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God.

The disciples as young men were the children of their Jewish fathers who kept the law. As children, they needed to be trained by Jesus. Then, after Jesus left,  the disciples grew older and became the fathers of the early church who knew them as apostles.

7 and 12 are key numbers

LUKE 1:17    And he (John the Baptist) shall go before him (Jesus Christ) in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.

This statement was to show how John the Baptist was referred to in a prophecy made by Malachi.

The “hearts” of the fathers meant that the Jews had broken up into about five different denominations. The two main religious groups were the Pharisees who controlled the synagogues, and the Sadducees who ran the Temple. There were also Herodians (who were politically involved with king Herod), Zealots (who were fanatical in their desire to kill enemies), and Essenes who separated themselves into the wilderness as indicated by the seven Qumran Old Testament scrolls that were found in caves near the Dead Sea between late 1946 and early 1947. Between 1949 and 1956 another 930 scrolls were found in the Qumran area, mainly fragmented, but twelve were in a state of good preservation. This was brilliant archaeological proof of how valid the Old Testament is as an accurate history of the Jews.

This reminds us of the seven baskets of fragments and the twelve baskets of fragments that were left over when Jesus miraculously fed the 4000 men and the 5000 men.

In the Jewish Temple were the 7-branched candlestick and the 12 loaves of shewbread that represented the seven church ages of the New Testament and the 12 tribes of Israel from the Old Testament. The Jews and the church are God’s main focus on planet Earth.

1947 was also a key year when the United Nations voted by a majority of about 2 votes to give the Jews a homeland in Israel. Russia, under the Jew-hating Stalin, suddenly backed the Jews for about 18 months.

In 1948 Israel declared itself a nation for the first time since it had been destroyed by Rome in AD 70 and again in AD 135. Five Arab armies immediately attacked Israel.

By 1949 they had beaten the five Arab armies that were backed by seven Arab states to establish their homeland in Israel.

In 1956 they again beat Egypt in another war in the Sinai and then smashed the Arabs in the 1967 Six-day war.

God was obviously turning back to Israel. The Qumran scrolls were found just when Israel was being re-established as a nation after about 1800 years.

The mirage of finding safety in a church system

In 1946 an angel appeared to William Branham in America, which launched his spectacular ministry in the supernatural gifts of healing and discernment, and this ignited a huge revival amongst the Pentecostals during the 1950s and the 1960s. During the 1960s there were times when the Oral Roberts Pentecostal Association was collecting one-quarter of the tithes money that was collected in the free (non-communistic) world.

God gave the supernatural a huge boost in the Pentecostal churches during these days.

The non-Pentecostal churches also made dramatic successes in the realm of evangelism during this period with Billy Graham, one of the greatest evangelists, setting the pace.

So God was reviving the supernatural gifts with the Pentecostal revival and the remarkable Bible teachings of William Branham in America.  At the same time, God was re-establishing Israel as a nation with its six-pointed star of David being the oldest national flag in the world. David, a man who lived 3000 years ago.

But later in the 1950s, American president Eisenhower’s customary good sense failed him, and he mistakenly sent about 700 military advisers to South Vietnam to oppose the communists in North Vietnam rather than having a free election for all of Vietnam to vote on the issue of unity. Then President Kennedy, a Catholic, amplified Eisenhower’s error by sending 15 000 more advisers to South Vietnam in the early 1960’s to back the dictatorial and corrupt Catholic president Diem of South Vietnam. But when religion and politics combine it produces a macabre dance-of-death as good intentions produce the unintended effect of death and destruction. Things then got worse when president Johnson made the huge mistake of escalating this war dramatically in 1965 and historians claim that the next 15 years were the years when America tried to commit suicide. The American military had fought bravely and never lost a battle, but these three presidents produced a war policy that was indecisive and muddled, so that they badly compromised the war with increasingly irresolute decisions.

President Nixon skillfully disengaged America from Vietnam and by 1980 America began to recover, but the Pentecostal churches no longer seemed to have the spiritual impact that they had twenty years previously. Meanwhile, the church world continued to splinter under equally muddled religious leaders until by 2016 there were about 45000 different kinds of denominational and non-denominational church systems. Bible-based knowledge of true Christianity was being replaced by smugly optimistic "churchianity" attitudes.

Finding safety in a church system has become the central mirage in our modern age of religious delusion. Self-satisfied professions of church traditions and the doctrines of men replaced “believing in the written Word of God”. Jesus was being pushed out of our churches. He stands outside the door of the church and knocks. The people in the churches are more concerned about being recognized and accepted by the elevated church leaders.

The religious leaders were called poisonous snakes

REVELATION 3:14   And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write;

:20     Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

In John the Baptist’s day, the Jewish religion had also fragmented, but not as badly as today’s church world. Luke’s use of the plural “hearts” shows all these divisions that existed amongst the Jewish fathers, which were the challenges that John had to contend with.

LUKE 1:17   And he [John the Baptist]shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,

All of these groups had their own interpretation of the Law of Moses. Each group was convinced that they were right, but they all were wrong.

Each religious group had such an exalted opinion of themselves that John could only resolve the issue by calling them all snakes or serpent seed. He thus condemned the whole multitude of Jews who came to hear him preach, men and women.

LUKE 3:7   Then said he [John the Baptist] to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

A snake has a forked tongue. One part is truth and the other part is a lie.

The churches today preach partly the truth (Jesus died for our sins) and partly a lie.

(For example, Jesus was born on 25 December, and somehow there was a decorated tree connected with the stable. Both these ideas are completely unscriptural. - The wise men went into a house and saw a young child. They were not visiting the Baby in a stable. So what else have our churches got wrong? But hardly anyone dares oppose the unscriptural word “Christmas” or “Christ’s mass” as the Catholics first called it around 350 AD, because then you run foul of Big Business as well as the churches.)

MATTHEW 2:11   And when they [the wise men] were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother,

(There is no mention of Joseph. The wise men were spiritual men.

God, their spiritual Father, had guided them at night for two years by His Holy Spirit in the form of a Star, which no one but the wise men saw. Thus God made sure that the man Joseph who was considered to be the human “father” of Jesus was not present when these Spirit-led men arrived to worship their heavenly Father in the form of a Child.)

ISAIAH 9:6     For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

These men were not wise because they were learned. They were wise because they were seeking to find Jesus. Are you wise?

There is a thought that scares me - John called the multitude of the different denominational Jews “vipers or poisonous snakes”. If John came back in our day, then it seems that he would simply condemn all our different church groups and tell us all to be “zealous to repent”. After all, each of our different church groups is convinced that they are right. But it is also obvious, that with so many differences, all the church groups cannot be right. The scary thought is that all our church groups could be wrong. Remember, there were no groups that were right in John’s day.

The last age must be like the first church age

MALACHI 4:5   Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:

:6   And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

Elijah the prophet was promised by Malachi (some 400 years before) to prepare the people for the Lord’s first Coming.  The “heart” of the fathers is singular and as such speaks of the success of John the Baptist’s ministry because all the Jews that he turned to Jesus believed that only Jesus was the Head of the church. All these older Jews, once they were turned, then they served Jesus alone with one united heart. They left the various denominational Jewish groupings of Pharisees, Sadducees, etc and simply became Christians who believed and followed the New Testament Bible teachings.

Luke, as a doctor, accurately diagnoses that John the Baptist only fulfills the first half of the prophecy of Malachi. John the Baptist told the Jewish fathers who thought that they were keeping the Law that they were actually disobedient if they rejected their Messiah by not turning to their children, the younger generation of Jesus and His disciples. These children had both the wisdom and the truth of what was just in the eyes of God.

Then these disciples would grow up and become the apostolic fathers of the early church and write the New Testament.

The church would later fall away from the New Testament beliefs in the Dark Ages and then have to be restored back over many centuries, starting with the great reformer Martin Luther in 1517, and moving on to the incredibly effective evangelist John Wesley who laid the foundation for the great missionary age of the 1800s. After that, the great Pentecostal revival started in Wales in 1904 and then in Azusa Street in Los Angeles, California. These were the origins of the Pentecostal movement. Different groups operated under the freedom of the Holy Spirit. It began with a meeting on April 9, 1906, and continued until roughly 1915. By 1917 this Pentecostal movement had divided up into official man-made denominations under human leadership and lost its initial impact. In that year Communism launched its revolt in Russia under Lenin and God began to raise up this evil system that will one day punish the West for rejecting God’s leadership by His Spirit and His Word and replacing it with human leadership and man-made doctrines. In the same way, God had raised up Babylon to punish the Jews in 606 BC for not staying with His written Word. Then in 1919 - 1920, God sent a plague of Spanish Flu that Bill Gates claims killed 65 million people over and above the 20 million who died in the First World War from 1914 - 1918. Mankind paid heavily for rejecting the leadership of the Holy Spirit in favour of human church leadership.

MALACHI 4:6   And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

Then another Elijah ministry is prophesied for the end time, just before the 3.5 years of great Tribulation, when we as "young children", born some 1900 years after the early disciples or apostles, will be turned back to the New Testament teachings of these apostolic fathers.

To emphasize this end-time ministry, a curse will strike the earth to preview the greater curse that strikes in the time of great Tribulation. A curse is something that lingers on and does not quickly disappear. This curse was the atom bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 with their lingering radioactivity that did much damage after the initial explosions. That was a warning to us that we should be on the lookout for a prophet, like John the Baptist, who could prepare us for the Second Coming of Jesus by taking us back to the original apostolic teachings of the New Testament.  If we do not turn back to the New Testament beliefs of the apostolic fathers, then we are going be present to experience many Russian nuclear bombs are going to fall during great Tribulation time. This is the ultimate fate of America for her rejection of this end-time prophet. Watch Russia, the king of the north.

Children are endlessly curious and ask questions. Their parents get irritated because they do not know the answers and are too lazy to find out themselves, so they stifle the curiosity of the children by shrugging it off as unimportant. Eventually, the children lose interest.

Christians today no longer are curious about the Bible. Ask them why Jesus wrote with His finger in the dust when asked to stone a woman and they are not interested. They do not know themselves and do not want to find out. They behave just like typical parents. Then they say it is not important.

Thus today's Christians are not the curious children that will turn back to the apostolic fathers who wrote the New Testament.

When asked a question that your church group cannot answer, you need to be curious and begin to investigate outside your church. Once you step outside your church, you have a chance of finding Jesus, the true Word, because He stands outside the church door.

Luke, as a doctor, records the details of the pregnancy of Mary and Elizabeth from the beginning.

LUKE 1:18   And Zacharias said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years.

Zacharias looked at his physical weakness and doubted the Word of the angel.

:19   And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings.

:20   And, behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season.

Zacharias, a priest, was doubting the words of the angel. That shows the decline in the faith of the religious leaders at the time of the Coming of the Lord.

The birth of Jesus cannot be in December

LUKE 1:21   And the people waited for Zacharias, and marvelled that he tarried so long in the temple.

:22   And when he came out, he could not speak unto them: and they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple: for he beckoned unto them, and remained speechless.

:23   And it came to pass, that, as soon as the days of his ministration were accomplished, he departed to his own house.

Having finished the 9th week which was for the priestly course of Abia (Greek) or Abijah (Hebrew), Zacharias then had to complete the 10th week which involved all the priests. The day of Pentecost was the 50th day, it was the Sunday after the seventh Sabbath. The 7 Sabbaths took 7 weeks which was called the Feast of weeks as 7 weeks is a week of weeks.

The priests could only leave on a Sabbath.

II CHRONICLES 23:8   So the Levites and all Judah did according to all things that Jehoiada the priest had commanded, and took every man his men that were to come in on the sabbath, with them that were to go out on the sabbath: for Jehoiada the priest dismissed not the courses.

So in the 11th week Zecharias was free to go home.

A pregnancy lasts 40 weeks.

40 +11 = 51 weeks which is basically a year as a year is 52 weeks

So John the Baptist was born about March of the next year.

Jesus was born 6 months later around September (certainly not the end of December).

So the unscriptural 25 December which Pope Julius I copied from the pagan Romans around AD 350 is completely wrong. He called it the unscriptural Christ's Mass or Christmas (equally unscriptural). Protestants do nor celebrate a mass.

In AD 274 the pagan Roman Emperor Aurelian made 25 December the birthday of the Roman sun god, Sol Invictus.

LUKE 1:24   And after those days his wife Elisabeth conceived, and hid herself five months, saying,

God had done something miraculous for her but she never bragged about it. Instead she hid herself. This is the exact opposite of the church of the Laodiceans  who have a chance to speak and say, "I am rich".

Boasting about themselves and their wealth.

LUKE 1:25   Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men.

Mary was overshadowed by the Holy Ghost and conceived Jesus when Elizabeth was six months pregnant with John.