BETHLEHEM

The above picture shows how it looks across the Shepherds Field toward the city of Bethlehem.  This is where the first Christmas carols were sung and the announcement was made of the birth of the Messiah in Luke 2.  Bethlehem ("house of bread") lies 5 miles south of Jerusalem near a main highway to Hebron and Egypt. It was at the outskirts of Bethlehem that Rachel died at the birth of Benjamin as recorded in Genesis 35:16-19, and her tomb can still be seen today. The story of Ruth unfolds in and around the little town of Bethlehem. This is where Ruth met Boaz after the death of her husband and two sons. She became the great-grandmother of King David, and King David himself was born in Bethlehem around which he tended sheep. This is where Mary and Joseph came during the census 2,000 years ago, and the Lord Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem as prophesied in Micah 5:2 in the eighth century B.C. Matthew and Luke tell the beautiful story of that first Christmas when Jesus was born in Bethlehem. They also tell of the angels, the shepherds, the visit of the Wise Men from the East, and the flight of Mary and Joseph and Jesus to Egypt to escape the death of the infants at the hands of King Herod. The traditional site of His birth is in a cave beneath the Church of the Nativity. Before this church was built, the site had been identified by fathers to their sons down through the generations.