Jesus walked into the throne room and sat down next to his Father and the Holy Spirit. There was silence for a while. Even the angels stood quietly by with their wings folded and their countenance somber.

“It is time,” said the Lord.
“Yes, I know Father,” said Jesus.

“Are you sure you want to go through with this? This must be your choice. Most of the people there do not worship you. They are greedy, self-seeking, proud, and have no desire to keep the commandments you gave them from the beginning of time. From the day you are born you will suffer constant temptations from your adversary the devil. He will abuse you and make life difficult. You will be leaving the glory of our beautiful, magnificent home to go down to earth, a tiny speck. You will be born into poverty and hardship. Your brothers will ridicule you. Your life will be filled with hard work as a carpenter.”

“As you begin your ministry they will despise you, seek to stone you, and speak hate against you. Those who chose to follow you will be a handful of misfits. They will think they will receive thrones in an earthly kingdom instead of a heavenly one. Instead of being there to support, comfort, and proclaim the good news that you are the Messiah, they will doubt your divinity, fight among themselves, abandon you, and one will even betray you. And some who follow you will turn on you and cheer on your crucifixion.”

“When you are brought before the high priest, your own disciples will flee. One will curse and deny you three times. As you are beaten, spit upon, thorns crushed down on your skull and forehead, ridiculed, scorned, and nailed to a wooden cross, they will call you to come down, if you are indeed the Son of God. Satan will hurl his most vile curses at you from the crowd. They will mock you and call you all kinds of terrible names until the end. The majority will never accept you as their Lord and Savior.”

“Through the ages, the majority of those who you gave everything for, by dying on the cross, will not want anything to do with you or believe in you. Their lack of love for one another will be more and more pronounced. They will be consumed with the glitz, glamor, commercialism, and festivities around the celebration of your birth, never realizing that Christmas is the day you set aside to start the journey of spending eternity with them.”

“They will not heed the warnings that I, the Lord, will be withdrawing my presence from the earth because they have not wanted me to be there with them. They will blame all the catastrophic things on me that will soon come upon them, due to Satan’s fury. Are you truly sure this is what you want to do?”

“Yes, Father, if even one person repented, I would be willing to come down to their earth and die for them. I see the moment I will be hanging on the cross; the thief asks me to remember him when I come into my kingdom. You see, Father, these are my faithful ones, who truly love me and thank me daily for the gift of my sacrifice for them on the cross. There are those who are faithful and love the Christmas story in spite of the ones who have filled it with secularism and commercialism. They know that Christmas is just a symbol of the sacrifice that I made for them to come down to them as a babe.”

“It is time.”