On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me a partridge in a pear tree.

O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel.

Jesus is the long awaited Messiah, first foretold only three chapters into the Bible. Right after man had sinned, separating him from God, God already had redemption and reconciliation planned. The prophet Isaiah tells how Messiah would be born of a virgin (7:14), that he would have God’s spirit in him (42:1), that he would be rejected by his own people (28:16) and tortured to death (50:6, 53:4-8) and rise again (53:10-11). During his lifetime on earth, Jesus fulfilled over 300 prophecies that were written a few hundred years before his birth. The odds of any one man fulfilling even 30 prophecies is enormous, let alone over 300.

No credible scholar doubts that Jesus was a real person who lived in Judea. He literally changed the world - even our modern calendar centers on his birth. Where doubt comes in is whether or not he was the Son of God, but even skeptics cannot deny that:

Jesus was a real person
Jesus was crucified by the Romans
The apostles all had experiences they believed to be of the risen Jesus and died for their conviction.

The important question that faces every human being is: what will you do with Jesus? Will you realize that you are a sinner who needs Jesus to fix your separation from God? Or will your pride keep you relying on your own ability to fix yourself? The only way to get into God’s presence and stay there is by confessing that Jesus is Lord. If you do not confess that Jesus is Lord, you will be separated from God for eternity, and that will be hell.