On What Day Was Jesus Christ Born
part 4
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By adopting the Gregorian calendar of 1582 and making other changes, the heterodox are doing as Winston Smith does — doctoring the historical record for the sake of political correctness. When the Pope of Old Rome did this in 1582, it was to please the then-reigning astronomers in Italy. When the Anglicans did this in 1752, it was to please the King of England, George II of Hanover. The Julian and the Gregorian calendars were then eleven days apart. (8) In Scotland, the last remnants of the Jacobites, who had fiercely resisted the Hanoverian tyranny and had left their glorious warriors slain at Culloden Moor, fled across the Atlantic deep into Nova Scotia and into the southern Appalachian Mountains where "The Cherry Tree Carol" is still sung in protest against the Hanoverian tyranny. It is said that more than a century earlier, King Charles I had admonished his subjects, just before he was beheaded by the Puritans, to "Remember," and remember they did. The last verse of this lovely eighteenth-century Christmas carol goes as follows
On the fifth day of January My birthday will be

When the stars and the elements shall tremble with fear

When the stars and the elements shall tremble with fear
When the Archbishop of Athens followed suit in 1924, with the Julian and Gregorian calendars then thirteen days apart, it was to please the cabal of Freemasons determined to bring down the monarchy of King Constantine of Greece and replace it with a republic. Whether it was for political correctness or other reasons, however, the result has always been the same: confusion about when significant historical events had occurred. In 1984's totalitarian state, the dictator BIG BROTHER depended on this kind of confusion to per-petuate his rule. By resisting this, Winston Smith threatened the established order. This may help explain why Orthodox Christian resistance to the calendar change produced a violent police-state reaction in Greece, replete with beatings, exiles, and martyrdoms
George Orwell was delivering a warning when he wrote his 1984, although he may not have had the calendar itself specifically in mind as he wrote. He was not the first to warn against such tinkering with time. It will be recalled that the Holy Prophet Daniel delivered this exact warning to the Jews during the Babylonian Captivity when he prophesied that the Antichrist, when he comes, will attempt to change time (Dan. 7:25). While Pope Gregory XIII may not have been the Antichrist, it cannot be denied that by introducing a differently calculated calendar and a new and different Paschalion, he attempted to change the measurement and recording of time throughout the world. To do this he erased ten days from the Roman Catholic calendar. Those who followed his lead have had to take even more drastic measures. In Russia, after the calendar change, the martyrdoms numbered in the millions. Was it worth it? One wonders if the revisionists have ever even bothered to count the bodies. After all, the new calendar is their omelette. And as Robespierre is said to have remarked in regard to what had been wrought by the French Revolution, You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs
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It may reasonably be objected that St. Luke should have said "Tabernacles" instead of being vague by making reference to "the days of his ministration" (Luke 1:23 AV). Why would St. Luke have violated a basic canon of sound historical writing by being vague about something so important as exactly when St. Zacharias's vision happened? He was writing for the benefit of Theophilus, a catechumen, who could hardly be expected to know what St. Luke meant by "those days" (Luke 1:3, 23), and he himself claims to have had a "perfect understanding of all things" (Ibid.). As to why he was not more forthright, it is possible that St. Luke was trying to conceal sensitive material from the Roman authorities, given that Christianity, when he wrote, was considered a threat to the Roman Empire. He would have been particularly anxious to protect from official scrutiny the privacy and whereabouts of Mary, the Mother of our Savior. Too closely identifying the day and year when St. Zacharias had offered incense could have been the equivalent, in that age, of releasing a Social Security number, given the extensive nature of the records kept at the Temple of Solomon --more accurately the Temple of Herod but seldom so called because Herod the Great was so despised by Jews and
Christians alike

There are frequent and usually very unfriendly references in the Holy Gospels to a class of people called scribes. Jesus called the Temple scribes "hypocrites" and "blind leaders of the blind" (Matt. 15:7, 14 AV). The scribes professionally produced, stored, searched, and retrieved documents. That was how they earned their living. We may think of them as first-century theocratic bureaucrats. St. Luke would not have wanted these feared bureaucrats searching their records for information which the Romans would use to hunt down enemies of the state, if the "enemies" in question were his fellow Christians in general, and in particular the Ever-Virgin Mother of God, Mary Most Holy

Just as Metropolitan Sergius Staragorodsky, the Russian Orthodox locum tenens of the patriarchal throne in Moscow and future "Patriarch" (1943) had made a pact with Satan in 1927 when he agreed to cooperate with the USSR, so also had the priests and scribes of the Temple agreed to cooperate with the government imposed by Rome. St. Luke had good reason, therefore, to be careful about what he might reveal to a Roman catechumen, one who could be expected to circulate widely St. Luke's statements. Interestingly, this very circumspection on the part of St. Luke helps us to date his Gospel. It would have to have been written after the commencement of the Neronian persecution in A.D. 64 and before the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70. After A.D. 70, the Temple scribes were no longer to be feared by anybody and so no circumspection by St. Luke would have been necessary. Prior to A.D. 64, systematic persecution was only a theoretical possibility, and the Roman state had even acted as protector of Christians against Temple authorities


All of the information which St. Luke provides, together with Orthodox Christian Tradition, send us to only one possible evening when St. John must have been conceived in the womb of his mother St. Elizabeth by his father St. Zacharias the priest, that of September 23, 1 B.C., according to the Imperial Roman calendar established during the reign of Julius Caesar and therefore called the Julian calendar. The conception of St. John is our linchpin for establishing the date of the Birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. The rest is simple to calculate. Six 30-day months from September 23 bring us to March 25, the date of the Annunciation (Luke 1:26). Another nine months, the normal human gestation period, bring us to December 25 (Julian), January 7 by the civil calendar presently in use in the United States. This is not brain surgery or rocket science. It is simply a very close reading of St. Luke's Gospel coupled with a healthy respect for and confidence in Orthodox Christian tradition, something that has largely waned in the West and also in the part of the East that is ecumenist


According to St. Vincent of Lerins, true Orthodox Christian teaching — what St. Vincent calls "the true Catholic faith" — is based on antiquity, universality, and consent. Since A.D. 336 at the latest, and probably even earlier than that, the Nativity of Christ was celebrated in Old Rome on December 25. From Old Rome, the feast spread to the East. St. John Chrysostom tells us that the feast was celebrated in Antioch as early as A.D. 376. According to St. Sophronius, it was celebrated in Jerusalem from A.D. 638. In all these places, the date set by the Church was December 25. There is no record of the feast ever having been celebrated in the Orthodox Church on any date other than December 25. Antiquity, universality, and consent ("everywhere, always, and by all"), clearly favors December 25 as the date when our Lord was born

If, as the revisionists maintain, Christ was born in 6 B.C., an opinion which the Orthodox Church does not accept, it would mean that the conception of St. John the Baptist took place on October 16, 7 B.C., and thus that the birth of Jesus Christ took place on January 18, well outside of the week inclusive of December 25. At no time has any Orthodox bishop or doctor in any place ever even suggested this. There is simply no evidence, therefore, to support any dating other than that established in A.D. 532 by Dionysius Exiguus. Moreover, given that the Nativity of Christ had been celebrated in Old Rome since no later a date than A.D. 336, it may reasonably be inferred that Dionysius Exiguus based his calculations on what he believed to be established Christian tradition regarding the dates of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh and the conception of St. John the Baptist. Not until roughly 1,200 years had passed and numerous records lost (records available to Dionysius Exiguus, but not to us or to his latter-day detractors) did revisionist historians question Orthodox Christian teaching about the date of the birth of Jesus Christ. When heterodox and non-Christians ask, --Why do you celebrate Christmas on January 7 (December 25, Julian), our answer should be
simply, Because that's when Jesus Christ was born

There are many Feasts of our Lord, the Theotokos, and St. John the Baptist celebrated throughout the year by churches calling themselves Christian, and a large number of these depend on the date of St. John's conception, September 23. Curiously, however, only in the true Orthodox Church and in some Old Calendar heterodox denominations is St. John's conception remembered. Roman Catholics do not observe it at all, nor do any of the Anglican or Protestant denominations. The New Calendar Orthodox retain it, but not on the true date of its occurrence. None of the standard Bible commentaries, dictionaries, and encyclopedias even mention it, and some even try to reword what St. Luke writes so as to obfuscate the plain meaning of the text being commented on.
One must conclude that the religious denominations which misdate or ignore this feast do so because they do not hold "that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all." The clergy living off the members of these denominations have been trained at seminaries which use Bible commentaries generally accepted, not over time, but only within the last one hundred years at most. Not surprisingly, therefore, a goodly amount of confusion and ignorance prevail among the heterodox about the date of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, so much so that many believe the true date is a mystery incapable of being solved. If these "Christians" do not know or understand the merely historical part of the Gospel, what part of it do they understand? If they do know and understand, but teach something else about the birth of Jesus Christ, what else do they know and understand, but nevertheless conceal? These are questions which anyone should ask and receive an answer to before leaping into involvement with a
heterodox or New Calendar Orthodox denomination


(to be contiued)