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So lets start. It is crucial to note that The Star of Bethlehem, which signaled Christ’s birth is not only mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2, but in Numbers 24 as well regarding cataclysmic events.
So lets start first in Matthew 2, it speaks of when Christ was a threat to the Edomite king and the Anti-Messiah of his day, Herod:
“When Jesus therefore was born in Bethlehem of Judah, in the days of King Herod, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem. Saying, Where is he that is born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and are come to adore him…” Who having heard the king, went their way; and behold the star which they had seen in the east, went before them, until it came and stood over where the child was. And seeing the star they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.”
But this star was foretold in the Old Testament Numbers regarding Messiah’s first coming and also included another major incident to take place regarding His second coming as well:
“A star shall rise out of Jacob and a sceptre shall spring up from Israel: and shall strike the chiefs of Moab, and shall waste all the children of Seth. And he shall possess Idumea: the inheritance of Seir shall come to their enemies, but Israel shall do manfully. Out of Jacob shall he come that shall rule, and shall destroy the remains of the city.” (Numbers 24:15-19)
To understand the Star of Bethlehem, we need to think like the three wise men. Motivated by this “star in the east,” they first traveled to Jerusalem and told King Herod the prophecy that a new ruler of the people of Israel would be born. King Herod was alarmed at this star and worried about Christ’s first coming and was seeking to kill him and defeat God’s plan by persecuting God’s little children where Rachel wept all the way to Ramah:
“This is what the LORD says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” (Jeremiah 31:15)
Few think, and it is time they do as the wise men. While the beginning signs of the star was joy for the wise men and shepherds in my village near Bethlehem in the Shepherd’s Fields (today is called Beit Sahour where I was born and raised), it was also tears for the children of God. And so will it be when the star appears again, tomorrow, two millennium later, it says that soon, the children born of Idumea will seek to destroy the children born of spiritual Israel.
Such persecution is also recorded in detail by St. John who saw how the woman (Mary) “she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron” (Revelation 12:5), this is no doubt Christ, and therefore is this woman John speaks of signifies the hatred of Mary (the woman), the Church and also to be redeemed, Israel:
And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. (Revelation 12:17)
The beginning of the prophecy by both Jeremiah and John was great persecution where in Jeremiah the children of God were massacred with the new born Israelites.
King Herod’s Fortress
It is time therefore to embrace ourselves for the wave of persecution against the Church first, then just as after Mary’s birth pangs came, the Messiah was delivered, and so it will be, that after the coming birth pangs, the Star will come and defeat Idumea and Messiah shall “possess Idumea” as foretold in Numbers 24.
Most fail to focus, the references to Mount Seir and the land of Seir (or Idumea) are real places and not some pie in the sky allegory. These references to the land where Esau and his descendants, the Edomites, made their home. This would embrace a great part of Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of not just Islam, but the Antichrist it produced: Muhammad, the world’s leading heresiarch.
Ezekiel stresses that the whole of Idumea (“all Idumea, even all of it”) will be caught up in this massive conflict and will be made desolate by the Messiah which will stretch from Teman, in today’s Yemen, to Dedan, an ancient city in central Saudi Arabia: |
