WEATHER forecasters are doing well if they get it right five days ahead.
But the coming of God into this world at Christmas in the person of Jesus Christ was foretold thousands of years ahead.
This sensational event split history into BC and AD and has been called 'His-Story'.
More than 300 detailed forecasts relating to the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ, meaning Messiah, were accurately fulfilled and the double forecast that He would be born of a virgin in Bethlehem has become the theme of carol services around the world (Micah 5:2).
One of the lesser-known forecasts appears in the book of Daniel, chapter 2.
Here we read of a dream God gave to Nebuchadnezzar (605-562BC). This depicted four empires that will be destroyed. The first is the Babylonian followed by the Persian, Grecian and then the Roman.
Daniel interpreted the dream to mean that in the days of the fourth empire, God will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed.
Centuries rolled by and the Roman empire arrived.
This woke up many Jews who knew the Scriptures and they began to wait expectantly for the Messiah (Luke 2:38). They also remembered the dying words of Jacob some 3,000 years before - he forecast that Israel would always have kings until the coming of the Prince of Peace.
One day, as the Jews waited, the Roman Caesar Augustus issued a decree that all the empire should be taxed.
The Jews knew that this meant their own monarchy had ended because their kings were now only puppets of Rome. (Genesis 49:10 - Sceptre> monarchy, Shiloah> Prince of Peace - see Isaiah 9:6).
God's timing was perfect and all His forecasts correct - the fourth empire had come!
The Jewish monarchy ceased and the Roman tax compelled Joseph and Mary to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus that had been named about 400BC!
