http://www.scroogeandmarley.tv/message.asp



"So you think the world would be better off without Christmas?"
Jacob Marley asks his old law partner Ebenezer Scrooge. To Scrooge, the
answer is obvious. He has no use for Christ or Christmas-even
offering a toast "to a world in which Jesus had never been born!"

But what if Jesus had never been born?

"So you think the world would be better off without Christmas?"

Jacob Marley asks his old law partner Ebenezer Scrooge. To Scrooge, the
answer is obvious. He has no use for Christ or Christmas-even
offering a toast "to a world in which Jesus had never been born!"
But what if Jesus had never been born? What difference would it
have made in history, culture, even our daily lives, if a Bethlehem
stable had not served as a makeshift delivery room 2,000 years ago?

http://www.scroogeandmarley.tv/message.asp

"So you think the world would be better off without Christmas?"
Jacob Marley asks his old law partner Ebenezer Scrooge. To
Scrooge, the answer is obvious. He has no use for Christ or
Christmas-even offering a toast "to a world in which Jesus
had never been born!"

But what if Jesus had never been born? ...

If Jesus Had Never Been Born ?

Would You Want To Live In A World Without Jesus?

http://www.scroogeandmarley.tv/message.asp

But what if Jesus had never been born? What difference would it
have made in history, culture, even our daily lives, if a Bethlehem
stable had not served as a makeshift delivery room 2,000 years ago?

It was a dangerous thing for a baby to be conceived in classical
Rome or Greece, just as it is dangerous once more under the influence
of the modern pagan.

Science, too, is a consequence of Christianity.

Finally, the phenomenon of education for the masses has its origin
in Christianity.

Furthermore, the phenomenon of the university has its roots in the
Christian faith as well.

But what if Jesus had never been born?

Much of what we take for granted-our high regard for human life,
the elevation of women, education, science, charity, hospitals,
capitalism, the abolition of slavery, representative government,
literacy, and the development of art and music-all find their roots in
Christ and his teachings.

http://www.scroogeandmarley.tv/message.asp



"So you think the world would be better off without Christmas?"
Jacob Marley asks his old law partner Ebenezer Scrooge. To Scrooge, the
answer is obvious. He has no use for Christ or Christmas-even
offering a toast "to a world in which Jesus had never been born!"

But what if Jesus had never been born? What difference would it
have made in history, culture, even our daily lives, if a Bethlehem
stable had not served as a makeshift delivery room 2,000 years ago?

A great deal-as Ebenezer Scrooge discovers firsthand in Scrooge &
Marley. The fact is that Jesus, the greatest man who ever lived, has
changed virtually every aspect of human life-and most people don't
know it. The greatest tragedy of the Christmas holiday each year is not
so much its commercialization, but its trivialization. How sad it is
that people have forgotten Him to whom they owe so very much, for
without the influence over time of Christ and His Church, life today
would be nasty, brutish, and short.

Much of what we take for granted-our high regard for human life,
the elevation of women, education, science, charity, hospitals,
capitalism, the abolition of slavery, representative government,
literacy, and the development of art and music-all find their roots in
Christ and his teachings.

And yet Christianity is ridiculed as a brake on progress, a bane,
and remains today the one safe target of contempt and prejudice. The
idea that Christ has darkened the corridors of time sometimes finds
expression in the charge that more people have died through religious
wars than all others combined. But the sober fact is that more people
died in the twentieth century from atheistic communism than have been
killed in the name of Christ in the last twenty centuries.

And while the Church has strayed badly at times from her
Master's teaching in, for example, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and
the blight of anti-Semitism, it remains true that the overwhelming
impact of Christ on earth has been to the good. Consider Christ's
profound influence in five areas: respect for life, the status of
women, the family, science, and education.

It was a dangerous thing for a baby to be conceived in classical
Rome or Greece, just as it is dangerous once more under the influence
of the modern pagan. In those days abortion was rampant and abandonment
of infants was commonplace. It was common for infirm babies or unwanted
little ones to be taken out into the forest or the mountainside and
left to be consumed by wild animals or to starve or be picked up by
others for their own perverted ends.

But then Jesus came. He did not disdain to be conceived in the
virgin's womb, but humbled Himself to be found in fashion as a man.
Since that time, Christians have cherished life as sacred, even the
life of the unborn. In ancient Rome, Christians saved many of these
babies and brought them up in the faith.

Abortion disappeared in the early Church. Infanticide and
abandonment disappeared. The cry went out to bring the children to
Church. Foundling homes, orphanages, and nursery homes were started to
house the children. These new practices, based on this higher view of
life, helped create a foundation in Western civi=ADlization for an ethic
of human life that persists to this day-although it is currently under
severe attack.

And it all goes back to Jesus Christ. If He had never been born,
we would never have seen this change in the value of human life.

Women, too, have immensely benefited from Jesus Christ. In ancient
cultures, the wife was the property of her husband. In India, China,
Rome, and Greece, it was believed that women were not able or competent
to be independent. Aristotle said that a woman was somewhere between a
free man and a slave.

Prior to Christian influences in India, widows were voluntarily or
involuntarily burned on their husbands' funeral pyres-a grisly
practice known as sut=ADtee. As can be imagined, this practice shocked
the Christian missionaries coming from the West.

Furthermore, infanticide-particularly for girls-was common in
India, prior to the great missionary William Carey. Carey and other
Christians detested seeing these little ones being tossed into the sea.
These centuries-old practices, suttee and infanticide, were finally
stopped only in the early nineteenth century and only through
missionary agitation to the British authorities.

In the nineteenth century, Charles Spurgeon told of a Hindu woman
that said to a missionary: "Surely your Bible was written by a
woman."

"Why?"

"Because it says so many kind things for women. Our pundits
never refer to us but in reproach."

How ironic that the feminists today do not give any credit to
Christ or Christianity; in fact, they say it has oppressed women. In
reality, Christianity has elevated women enormously. Had Jesus never
come, Gloria Steinem, had she survived childhood, would most likely be
wearing a veil today

It was the Church following her Savior that introduced family
values to an ancient world riddled with every conceivable kind of
sexual immor=ADality and perversion. The early Church stood out like a
beacon in a dark land. In the midst of moral chaos, Christians brought
purity to an impure world.

In 125 A.D., the Christian Aristides, an Athenian philoso=ADpher,
wrote a defense of the Christian faith to Emperor Hadrian. Here's
what he said regarding sexual matters:

They do not commit adultery or immorality . . .Their wives, O king, are
as pure as virgins, and their daughters are modest. Their men abstain
from all unlawful sexual contact and from impurity, in the hopes of
recompense that is to come in another world.

Christianity has helped preserve the family as the basic unit of
society. It has prevented millions of people from sexually-transmitted
diseases, and produced great happi=ADness on the part of those who obey
the biblical teaching.

Science, too, is a consequence of Christianity. Our gadget-filled,
comfortable existence-the fruit of science-would not be possible except
for Christ. The late Francis Schaeffer points out in his book, How Then
Should We Live?, that both Alfred North Whitehead and J. Robert
Oppenheimer "have stressed that modern science was born out of the
Christian worldview." Whitehead, a mathematician and philosopher,
said that Christianity gave birth to science because of "the medieval
insistence on the rationality of God."

Some of the greatest pioneers of science were committed
Christians. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) coined the phrase: "thinking
God's thoughts after Him," for his study of nature. Blaise Pascal
(1623-1662) not only made innovations in mathematics and probability
science and helped pave the way for the invention of the computer, but
was also a devout Christian.

And Isaac Newton (1642-1727) also viewed science as thinking
God's thoughts after Him. While he is some=ADtimes classified as a
Unitarian, he professed to believe in Christ and in the message of
salvation. His strong faith in God undergirded his scientific
worldview. "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and
comets," he wrote, "could only proceed from the counsel and
dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."

Finally, the phenomenon of education for the masses has its origin
in Christianity. Dr. Samuel Blumen=ADfeld has demon=ADstrated that the
roots of education for the masses goes back to the
Reformation-especially to John Calvin. The Reformers believed that the
only way the Protestant Reformation would hold would be if
people-laypeople-could read the Bible for themselves. Calvin, the
Reformer of Geneva could be viewed as the de facto father of modern
education in numerous countries, including America.

Furthermore, the phenomenon of the university has its roots in the
Christian faith as well. The greatest universities worldwide were
started by Christians for Christian purposes. Indeed, almost every one
of the first 123 colleges and universities in the United States has
Christian origins. Engraved in stone by the entrance of Harvard are
these words:

After God had carried us safe to New England, and we had built our
houses, provided necessities for our livelihood, reared convenient
places for God's worship, and settled the civil government; one of the
next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance learning and
perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to
the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.

Had Jesus never been born, man would yet remain in the darkness of
sin and the darkness of ignorance. It's unlikely that there would be
education for the common man.

Life, women, the family, science, and education. These are just
five areas where the message of Jesus has brought transformation and
incalculable benefits to our temporal existence. There are many more.
He is, indeed, the light of the world.

But as wonderful as Christ's profound impact on this world is,
it is his transforming power in the lives of countless individuals down
through time that is far greater still. The benefits in time of the
Christian faith are far outweighed by the wonder of what He has done in
providing eternal salvation to all who, by grace, place their faith in
Him. Truly, Jesus Christ is a Savior to be celebrated in both time and
eternity.



D. James Kennedy, Ph.D., is the author, with Jerry Newcombe, of the
book, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?, a groundbreaking exploration
of Christ's transforming impact on the world in which we live. Dr.
Kennedy is senior minister of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort
Lauderdale, and president of Coral Ridge Ministries, an international
radio and television outreach.

What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?, published by Thomas Nelson, is
available from Coral Ridge Ministries by calling 1-888-334-4502.