(End of the American Dream)—When we celebrate the birth of Jesus, we are celebrating one of the most improbable miracles in all of human history. You see, the truth is that not just anyone could have showed up and claimed to be the Messiah. According to the Scriptures, the Messiah had to come from a very specific bloodline, the Messiah had to be born at a very specific place, and the Messiah had to be born at a very specific time.
It was exceedingly unlikely that anyone would ever be able to fulfill all of those prophecies, but Jesus did. The prophecies about the first coming of Christ that we find in the Bible are powerful evidence for the reality of the Christian faith, and yet these prophecies are rarely taught in our churches today.
Even though the birth of Christ is most commonly celebrated on December 25th in the western world, scholars openly acknowledge that Jesus was not actually born on December 25th. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, people did not start celebrating the birth of Christ on December 25th until hundreds of years after the time of Jesus…
In the 3rd century, the Roman Empire, which at the time had not adopted Christianity, celebrated the rebirth of the Unconquered Sun (Sol Invictus) on December 25th. This holiday not only marked the return of longer days after the winter solstice but also followed the popular Roman festival called the Saturnalia (during which people feasted and exchanged gifts). It was also the birthday of the Indo-European deity Mithra, a god of light and loyalty whose cult was at the time growing popular among Roman soldiers.
The church in Rome began formally celebrating Christmas on December 25 in 336, during the reign of the emperor Constantine. As Constantine had made Christianity the effective religion of the empire, some have speculated that choosing this date had the political motive of weakening the established pagan celebrations. The date was not widely accepted in the Eastern Empire, where January 6 had been favored, for another half-century, and Christmas did not become a major Christian festival until the 9th century.
The Bible does not give us a specific date for the birth of Christ, but based on the chronology that we are given in the gospel of Luke it probably happened during the fall months.
And as I noted earlier, the Messiah could not have been just any random person.
In my new book entitled “Why”, I explain that the Scriptures mandate that the Messiah must come from an extremely unique bloodline…
-He had to be a descendant of Abraham. (Genesis 12:3)
-He had to be a descendant of Isaac. (Genesis 21:12)
-He had to be a descendant of Jacob. (Numbers 24:17)
-He had to be a descendant of Judah. (Genesis 49:10)
-He had to be a descendant of Jesse. (Isaiah 11:1)
-He had to be a descendant of David. (Isaiah 9:6 and Jeremiah 23:5)
-He had to be a descendant of Solomon. (2 Samuel 7:13)
In addition to coming from a very specific bloodline, the Scriptures also require that the Messiah must be born in the town of Bethlehem.
This is what Micah 5:2 tells us…
But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.
The Scriptures also require that the Messiah must be born of a virgin.
What are the odds of that happening?
I think that Henry Morris was being quite generous when he assigned a probability of one in 40 billion…
Consider also the matter of the virgin birth, which was prophesied over 500 years before its fulfillment. “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). The imminent fulfillment of this amazing prophecy was finally announced to Mary’s espoused husband, Joseph, also by Gabriel: “Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 1:20).
There has been no other virgin birth recorded in all human history, in comparison to perhaps 40 billion normal births since Adam. However, an evolutionary skeptic might argue that such a thing is theoretically at least possible, especially in view of such modern genetic developments as artificial insemination, cloning, etc., as well as examples of parthenogenesis among animals. So perhaps we could assign a probability of one in 40 billion to a human virgin birth (or better, virgin conception—the actual birth being fully normal in Jesus’ case).
On top of everything else, the Scriptures require that the Messiah must be born at a very specific time in human history.
Daniel chapter 9 contains some of the most complex prophecies in the entire Bible. As I explain in my book, that chapter gives us a very specific timeline, and it also gives us a way to check to see if we have interpreted that timeline correctly. Daniel 9:26 says that the Messiah must die before the city of Jerusalem and the Temple are destroyed, and of course the city of Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed in 70 AD.
What this means is that the Messiah had to show up before 70 AD, and that is precisely what happened.
At just the right time, and in just the right place, the Messiah came into the world. I recently came across an editorial that discussed just how unlikely this really was…
Some people love math. I barely tolerated it; just enough to get by. Then there are people that have a passion for statistics, and others love to postulate on statistical probabilities, adinfinitum.
OK, let’s try this scenario on for size. What are the chances that a virgin teenage girl, say 13 or 14, named Mary, who lived in the village of Nazareth along with her fiance Joseph, would immaculately conceive by the Holy Spirit and later give birth to a little boy, after traveling fully pregnant, on a donkey about 90 miles — a 4-5-day journey on foot — to the birthplace of Joseph’s ancestor, King David? This little baby would grow up to eventually save humanity from their sins. Come on, stat-people and mathematicians, I’ll wait for your answer.
Overall, there are over 300 prophecies in the Bible regarding the coming of the Messiah that were fulfilled by Jesus Christ.
After He rose from the dead, Jesus explained the importance of fulfilling all of those prophecies to His disciples. The following is what Luke 24:44 tells us…
And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.
Yes, anyone could theoretically show up and claim to be the Messiah.
But there is only one man that fulfilled all of the criteria set forth in the Scriptures.
Jesus is the Messiah, and that is definitely something worth celebrating.
Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
