Ex-Intelligence Agent and Death-Row Inmates
One of the most popular authors or political journalists in Japan is Mr. Masaru Sato, an ex-intelligence officer of the Japanese Ministery of Foreign Affairs.
He was arrested and put into custody in 2002 due to involvement in a political scandal of pro-Russian conservative politician Mr. Muneo Suzuki. But while spending 512 days in the Tokyo Detention House, he read many books, wrote a diary which was later published to become a best-seller, and observed people in the jail house including death-row inmates.
According to Mr. Sato, one death-row convict became a different type of animals on a different day. One day he was a cat, an owl another day, which could be easily found as he cried or vocalized like such an animal. Other convict cried, "Yes, I killed two, but the last one was not my real target. It was an accident. I don't want to be executed!" This person lost sanity of the mind and health of the body to be carried out on a stretch somewhere.
But there was one inmate who silently read books and looked communing with himself and reflecting his past. Mr. Sato was highly impressed with an attitude of this death-row convict. So, Mr. Sato asked a lawyer to find his family; then Mr. Sato wrote a letter to his mother describing how her son was spending his last days in the Tokyo Detention House. Then the mother sent a letter showing gratitude to Mr. Sato who was occupying the attention of the society due to his involvement in a certain criminal case of the notorious politician Mr. Muneo Suzuki (though they claim it is a political conspiracy to excommunicate them from the Japanese Government and political circles).
In addition, Mr. Sato graduated from the School of Divinity of a certain Japanese university, a rare background for Japanese bureaucrats or ex-bureaucrats.
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Tonight I really saw Jupiter and Venus so close to each other, though it is not perfect conjunction or merging into one bright star like in 1818 and probably June of 2 BC.
Yet, something great or horrible can happen, folks, as I feel it for some reasons.
Finally, on June 17, 2 B.C., Jupiter and Venus, the two brightest objects in the night sky except for the moon, came so close that their disks appeared to touch. This exceptionally rare event could not have been missed by observers such as the Wise Men.
The Bible does not mention how many Wise Men there were or where they came from. (The tradition of three Wise Men developed from the Bible's description of three gifts -- gold, frankincense and myrrh.) It is reasonable to suppose that their journey took months, however, since they had to cross several hundred miles of desert to reach Jerusalem. If they were in Jerusalem before dawn on Dec. 25, 2 B.C., they would in fact have seen Jupiter almost directly over Bethlehem to the south. They could have traveled the five miles to Bethlehem and presented their gifts that day. By then Jesus would have been a child living with his parents in a house, not a baby in a manger. There is a reference not to an infant (brephos in the Greek) but to a toddler (paidion), indicating that the birth itself had been some months before.
This would mean Jesus was born in the spring or summer, which makes a better setting for Luke's account of the shepherds. In December in Judea it was too cold for sheep to graze in the open fields, and they were kept under shelter during the winter months, especially at night.
There is no conflict with the traditional date of Jesus' birth, because Dec. 25 was an arbitrary choice. Early Christians changed the date numerous times to avoid discovery by the Romans when persecution of Christianity was at its height. When Christianity finally became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the festival of Christmas on Dec. 25 observing the birth of Jesus replaced the pagan festival of Saturnalia at that time, which had celebrated the "rebirth of the sun" as the days got longer following the winter solstice.
Designating Jupiter or the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus as the Star of Bethlehem eliminates a number of problems, but probably neither is the last word on the subject. So little is known historically about the period when Jesus was born that new information may well provide a more accurate picture of what happened.
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/OCM/packages/bethstar.html
We might not be wholly deserted by God.
Mar 3:16 And Simon he surnamed Peter;
Mar 3:17 And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder:
Mar 3:18 And Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Canaanite,
Mar 3:19 And Judas Iscariot, which also betrayed him: and they went into an house.
Mar 3:20 And the multitude cometh together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread.