Strange Story: The Birth of Jesus Part 17 Take Flight!

That very night the wise men were all given the same dream and “Up” was given his own angelic messenger in his own dream. In each case the message was similar, “Flee!”

The wise men were told to head home by a different route and not return to the king as he had asked them to. The urgency of the message implied that they should start out right away, which they did, regretting that they never got to meet the child’s stepfather.

“Up” was told specifically to go to “The Land Bound by Sin.” One would think that God would not want his followers, much less His Son, to go to that evil place but now they were being told to go there for a time. It occurred to “Up” that upon their return from that place, the Scripture would be fulfilled that says, “Out of Egypt I called my son” (Hosea 11:1). For some reason God wanted His son to share with mankind the experience of being surrounded by sin. 

On this journey the gifts of the wise men would prove very helpful, starting with the camels.

As they fled, the wise men to the North and then the East, and the young family to the Southwest, they were unaware of the carnage that “The Self-proclaimed Hero” ordered the next morning in the small town that was usually thought of as the place where God provided for their needs. In those days the town was inhabited by about 300 people, so the number of baby boys would not have been great. Nonetheless, the entire town felt the losses heavily because it was not only baby boys who died that day, but also those who tried to protect them. The town was ravaged, the people were enraged and broken, and the king was hated more than ever.

To navigate to Part 18 of this story click on The Birth of Jesus Part 18 Measured by Their Names.