Speaker Identification
Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin, Host
Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal, Co-Host / Guest Teacher
Speaker 3 - Music / Transition

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
Welcome, everybody. Brother Goodwin here on Prophecy in the Spotlight. We have a special show for you today. We're doing Christmas in July. We've never done this before. It was my wife's idea, and if this doesn't turn out right, you can call and - well, no, I'm kidding. It was her idea, and it was a good idea. We're looking forward to this.

We're going to do just one show today, and we barely caught July. I think this is going to air July 31st on VTN, and some of the other networks may air it on August 1st. So we're calling it Christmas in July.

Doc has a new book he is working on concerning Christmas. I think it is going to be called The Road to Bethlehem, but it is not ready yet, so do not look for it quite yet. It will not be long, though. It is not just a Christmas story that he is working on. He is working on something for you, and when you watch the show today, we are going to talk about it. You will get to hear some of the details.

I am going to read a verse for you, and then we will bring Doc in. Micah 4:8 says, "And thou, O tower of the flock, the stronghold of the daughter of Zion, unto thee shall it come, even the first dominion; the kingdom shall come to the daughter of Jerusalem." Boy, what a mouthful that is.

All right. We are going to have the music come on, and we will be right back. Doc is here, and we are going to jump right into this. Stay tuned.

Speaker 3 - Music / Transition
Music plays.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
Hey, welcome, everybody. Glad to have you with us for our Christmas in July. We have some lit trees up here that we dug out of the back room. I wish we had our red candles, but we did not have them. That is okay. We are going to have a good time.

We are not going to talk about the typical stuff that we usually talk about. I want you to see all the stuff here. His DVD set is right there, the CD set where you can listen to it instead of looking at it, and over here is a flash drive that has everything that is in here. She has it up there now for you. Doc has a real good deal there. It looks like almost half price if you buy two of them. So look at that on the website and get a head start on this.

Here is the book. The book came out after Christmas, so it did not make some of the headlines of the show that we did during Christmas. This came in a little later. Doc, I love the book. I love the cover of this book. This is really nice, and I like how it is set up with the big headings.

This says "Swaddling Clothes." It kind of goes in order and talks about putting her away privately, the tax, and it goes all the way back to the taxing. Then the inn. What the inn is - it is not what we have been taught. The tower of the flock. Then it jumps from there straight to the swaddling clothes and what that meant. The shepherds are in here somewhere, I think. Yes, they are. There they are right there. I love that. I love to preach on that. It is a wonderful truth.

Then, as you mentioned, they are not just shepherds. They are working for the government, basically.

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
Well, they are sanctified shepherds. They are a part of the priesthood, and they are providing the lambs that were sacrificed over and over.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
That is why they knew when the angel told them where to find the baby. You will find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. The angel said, "This shall be a sign unto you." That means they knew what he was talking about.

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
They did. They knew right where to go.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
You have the section here on the angel's message, what the angels said in Luke chapter 2: the Savior has come. You have "Born to Die," "Born for Calvary" in here, "Heaven's Star." That is an important star that the wise men are going to follow. Very interesting. There is a lot in here, and much more. The wise men are in there.

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
Yes.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
And the wise men are not there at the birth of Christ. That is why they are at the end of the book. They are going to show up maybe a year and a half later, maybe two years later.

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
About 18 months.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
One way we know that is Herod had all the boy babies killed, and they knew the difference in those days. They had biologists back in those days. They knew the difference between a boy baby and a girl baby. Herod ordered all the boy babies from two years old and younger to be killed because he was afraid to miss Him. He wanted to make sure he got them all. That is evidence right there that these men show up later.

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
I put a little bit of information out of the Roman archives concerning the trial. Herod was put on trial at the Senate in Rome, and he told that story and a lot of other events that go with it. Rome was upset with him for what he did.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
Absolutely. It almost triggered a major war.

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
Yes, because the wise men had already paid homage to Him, and when they got news of that, the people who had sent them were ready to come to war.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
Fifty-two pages. You can put this by your bed at night and read yourself to sleep every night. It would not take you long to read this. I would encourage you, if you cannot get anything else, get this book. I think this book would be very helpful to you. You will be the talk of the family at Christmas this year because you are going to know the truth. That is right - The Truth of Christmas. That is the title of the book.

You are going to know the truth about the wise men and when they showed up. You are going to be able to tell your family why those shepherds knew where to go. That can be trivia at Christmas dinner: does anyone know how those shepherds knew where to go? You will be able to tell them very simply, and many more things.

All right, Doc. Let us turn you loose here on your new material about The Road to Bethlehem. This is interesting.

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
Well, none of it is new to me, but I just recently got to thinking about the book when she mentioned a few weeks ago doing this kind of show. That is when I started thinking about writing another book to go with the first one. I do not know exactly the name of it, but it is The Road to Bethlehem. I take everybody all the way back to Genesis chapter 3, where it all starts.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
I think that is a great title, but it needs a subtitle.

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
It needs something. I am still working on it. I will be following the line of agriculture. I am an agriculture guy. I grew up on the farm, and your Bible uses agriculture all the time. Things are written in parabolic form to do with agriculture.

The seed of redemption's prophecy is in Genesis 3:15. As you read a while ago in Micah, he said, "unto thee shall it come." What do you find in Genesis 3:15? "It shall bruise thy head." The "it" is very obvious because before that sentence is finished, it references Him. Jesus is what it is talking about.

So I am going to start and help you understand how a seed operates: germinating inside the process, then the radical or the root that starts out, then as the root continues to grow, it puts its shoot out. Then, as the root gets established, it has its stalk and its leaves, its flowers and its fruit. That is exactly how the road to Bethlehem, or the birth of Christ, actually operates.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
So in a brief little summary here, what you are saying is the seed starts out growing, and that seed, which is Christ, is going to become the offshoots, like the apostles?

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
That is why each of those different things happen, and I will explain it when I get into the book. The purpose is that the vine or the stalk, whichever it is, somewhere along the line, its premier purpose arrives. Take a stalk of corn. There is a certain place at a certain time that the process comes that makes that ear of corn. But there are a lot of things that go into it before it gets there.

So there is a road that you can follow through your Bible, through the historical line of how God chose. First of all, He made Adam, but Adam sinned. Then the first boy is born, and what does Eve say? "I have gotten a man from the Lord." She thought this was their Savior. But what happens? Murder takes place. Cain killed his brother.

Then what you have next, and it is obvious from chapters 4 and 5, is that God selects Seth. We know later the Bible says that Adam and Eve had many children, but the line that is followed through the Bible is the line of Seth because God is choosing which branch at that moment, which limb or whatever you want to call it, is going to be the branch.

Then you come to the story of Noah, who found grace in the eyes of the Lord. You come to chapter 12 and the calling of Abram, but you have already passed through chapter 10 and realized that this is not only Abraham's calling. From Noah to Abraham, God chose him.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
Does Genesis 6 come in with the sons of God and the daughters of men, the line of Seth? I think so too.

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
There is no reason to have spent two chapters, chapter 4 showing the unrighteous generation that took place in society, and then laying over it, like an overlay, chapter 5, the line of Seth and righteousness. It is no coincidence that Lamech and Enoch are both the seventh from Adam, showing that no matter how bad the world gets, you can still walk Enoch's walk of faith in Lamech's world.

So when you get to chapter 6, he is not talking about fallen angels having some kind of ability to do something that they were never given the ability to do. Chapter 6 is showing you that God had made a promise to humanity in Genesis 3, and He is going to keep that promise. Even though it has gotten down to one family, Noah's, God will keep His promise.

Now He is going to pick Shem. Out of Shem, He is going to pick Abraham. Abraham was not the only descendant of Shem, but it is obvious when you look at all of the places where He chooses individuals. He is not only choosing genealogy, because the whole purpose, according to Hebrews, is that a body will be provided for Jesus. This is all about redemption.

This is why, just recently, we looked at the Abrahamic covenant, and God and God alone walked between the halves, because redemption for humanity is too important for man to have any part in it. God and God alone.

It is amazing, though, that when you get to Abraham's life, you pick up not only genealogy, but this is when you begin to pick up God's sovereign plan of geography. It is kind of like a seed. Abraham had no idea. He knows the promise that God has made him in his calling - that in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed. I do not think Abraham had a full understanding at all. We have the ability, because of where we are, to look all the way back through history and through a completed Word of God, and it is so obvious to us. But if you were living in the moment, as they were, I doubt you would have had what we have.

What happens? Sarah dies in chapter 23. Abraham needs to find a place to bury Sarah. It is amazing. He is in the promised land, and Genesis 23:3 says, "And Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spake unto the sons of Heth, saying, I am a stranger and a sojourner with you: give me a possession of a burying place with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight."

It is amazing. He is trying to find a piece of land to buy, and if you read the text, you realize that they say he is a great prince. He was probably greater and more powerful in his possessions and his servants and all that he had than any of them. Yet he is demonstrating in many ways that you can be satisfied to be a sojourner even though you are living in the land of promise. Abraham never, never, never once lived in a city, the best we can tell, because he was looking for the city that was coming.

Then in verse 10 it says, "And Ephron dwelt among the children of Heth: and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the audience of the children of Heth, even of all that went in at the gate of his city." So they sat down at the city gate because they did not have a city hall like we do. All of the business transactions were taken care of at the gate of the city. There were stones set up, and the elders of the city usually sat there early in the morning as people were making their way to their fields out of the city. If there was business to be transacted, the elders would sit there, and the transaction took place before the presence of the elders. It is like going to the courthouse and signing the contract.

So Abraham is at the city gate. Later, the Bible says in Genesis 48:7, talking about Israel, or Jacob, "As for me, when I came from Padan Aram, Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan in the way, when yet there was but a little way to come unto Ephrath: and I buried her there in the way of Ephrath; the same is Bethlehem."

It is amazing. God has chosen Abraham. It is going to be through the seed of Abraham that a blessing for the entire world is going to be provided. So at the death of Sarah, Abraham purchases a piece of land that begins the choosing of the actual geographic place where the promise is going to happen in the future. The city gate is important.

Then we find that Jacob is going to bury his wife there at that same exact place. It says that the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre - the field, the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field and in all the borders round about - were made sure unto Abraham at the city gate. Later in chapter 35, Israel, or Jacob, is going to bury his wife at the same place. Verse 21 says, "And Israel journeyed, and spread his tent beyond the tower of Edar."

Here we go. You have the city gate, and from the city gate, maybe a little over a football field away, standing on this big hillside, you have the tower of Edar. The tower of Edar in those days was used as a military outpost for the Jebusites, because at that time it was not Jerusalem; it was Jebus. It will not be until David takes it that it becomes Jerusalem.

It was a military outpost. The same place where Abraham purchased the land at the city gate, the same place where Jacob, or Israel, is going to bury his wife, he is going to settle down at that exact same place. You are seeing genealogy and geography at the same place.

It does not end there, because we know that you go on and find the story of Joseph down in Egypt. Then it is going to be out of Egypt. God chooses Moses to be a leader. Then you find Joshua and the judges. About a quarter of the way, or not quite halfway, into the era of the judges, you find the book of Ruth. The story of Ruth takes place about a hundred years into the judges after they have settled in the land.

In Ruth 1:2, it says, "And the name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife Naomi, and the name of his two sons Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem Judah." That tells you they are living in the exact same place that Abraham originally purchased and where their father Israel had settled down.

If you are not familiar with the book of Ruth, you ought to read it. It is one of the most exciting books in the Bible.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
One of my favorites. It is tremendous.

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
When you understand the story and the picture that is painting of the kinsman-redeemer, you cannot help but see the sacrifice and of Jesus. Where is it taking place? Ruth is going to become Boaz's wife at the city gate. That is the exact same gate where Abraham started this all. What you are seeing is this seed that started is growing together. Now we have genealogy and geography, and it all revolves around one little place that is not any bigger than a city block.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
Is there any wonder they are fighting over that property?

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
Not at all.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
All of this today is a part of what is called the West Bank, folks. We will leave it at that, but we have done quite a bit of excavation work there.

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
Listen. In Ruth chapter 4, a son is born to Boaz and Ruth, and the women, her neighbors, gave it a name, saying, "There is a son born to Naomi." It was not Naomi, but it is Naomi through Ruth that the land comes back into the family. His name is Obed.

Notice, he is the father of Jesse, the father of David. I tell folks all the time, when those women sang that song, they did not know that. So why does it say he is the father of Jesse and the father of David? Because the Old Testament we have is the product of bringing the Old Testament back after captivity because it had been lost. So it is brought back to life again, and everything is brought up to date. They would put that extra in there: he is the father of Jesse, the father of David. They would not have known that when they were talking about the baby being born.

Where did it all happen? It all happened at the same city gate. Like I said, the majority of your Bible is actually in about a 25-mile radius. Almost everything is right there. When you go to Israel, you do not have to go two days' journey to find something.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
I think they said Jesus never went further than a hundred miles.

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
Probably right. It is probably less than that.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
I think what they have right now is like a hundred-mile strip of land surrounded by Arab nations and the Mediterranean Sea. They say Israel has too much land. Do not you know? But we understand that.

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
Then the storyline progresses, and you find in the book of 1 Samuel the story of David bringing the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem. What you need to understand is that he had built a new tabernacle because the old tabernacle was destroyed. It has been coming this way while the Ark of the Covenant has been going that way. He has brought the old shambles of the tabernacle, built a new one, and he is bringing the Ark of the Covenant to it.

When he does, he is going to reestablish proper worship because it has been in disarray for a long time. What is he going to do? He is going to take the descendants of the 24 grandsons of Aaron, and they are going to become the priesthood. They need a proper place, steady reserves of lambs for sacrifice.

So where would be the best place if you were David? We no longer need that tower of Edar for a military place. Our kingdom is all the way out over here and all these miles away. I know where it would be a good place: let us choose the tower of the flock. They renamed the tower of Edar the tower of the flock. That would be the place where the lambs would be born.

Jump forward a thousand years, and you go to Matthew and Luke, and you find the story of the birth of Jesus at the exact same place that it all began: at the city gate of Bethlehem.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
It is amazing. These places throughout history - there are things in the Bible that happen. You just went through a whole bunch of things, and this is not even the end, because yes, He was born there, but He is coming back.

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
That is right.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
He is coming back at the end of the church age. He was born to be the Redeemer, and He was born as the Lamb of God for the purpose of Calvary's cross. He is coming back to that same piece of property.

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
He is coming back.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
He is going to rule from there for a thousand years. It is an amazing book, this thing called the Bible.

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
Amen.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
Tying in geography with this seed is amazing. Of course, God did it.

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
Yes. You cannot explain this otherwise. I am going to be trying to figure out the probability that by chance all this happened. It is astronomical and could not be. It has to be directed by the providence of God.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
Well, folks, there you have it. This is a new book coming.

Speaker 2 - Dr. Charles Hiltibidal
I hope to have it ready before Christmas.

Speaker 1 - Daniel Goodwin
Okay, before Christmas, this one. Right now these are ready. This book is on the website. Everything you see right there is on there. You can get it right now.

None of that will matter, though, if you miss heaven. When you die, if you have not trusted in that seed that came into the world and paid your sin debt, if you have not trusted Him, none of this will matter. You will spend eternity apart from God.

If you have any problem, if you have any question, if we can help you with that, call the 800 number or message us somehow. We would love to help. Until next time, keep your eyes on the skies.

Speaker 3 - Music / Transition
Music plays.