Thursday, December 23, 2010

The Kingdom Message of Christmas

Here's a good reminder from Chuck Colson to remember "the earth-shaking, kingdom-sized message of Christmas" - A Cosmic Culmination
Sometime this Christmas season, you are sure to hear those rousing words of Handel's Messiah, taken from Revelation 11:15: "The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ" (ESV). Tradition has it that the music so moved King George II that he stood to his feet out of respect for an even greater King. The rest of the audience followed, as have audiences for generations since. The Hallelujah Chorus is the culmination of our Messiah's story, a story that Handel rightly showed was foretold by the Prophets, heralded in the Annunciation, and has at its heart a message about a king and a kingdom....

...This Christmas, remind yourself and others of the significance of the Incarnation: that one day God will usher in the fullness of his kingdom. The kingdom of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever. God will bring about that cosmic culmination. And the chorus of hallelujahs will ring not just for a few stanzas at Christmastime but forevermore.
This also ties in well with yesterday's post about the river of history.  What a glorious season is Christmas, because what a glorious hope is ours in Christ!

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