<TITLE>08. Par 34-38</TITLE>L-34 Now, notice when it crossed that, it's--it's in that... See, now, after December the twenty-first, the days will start getting just a little shorter each, or a little longer each day, until it comes down around in July. Then it starts shortening up again till it gets right... And that's just the relaxing time. And the Roman pagans said that was the sun god's birthday. From December the first--or December the twenty-first till December the twenty-fifth, they had the--the Roman circus, the chariot races and so forth was on that, during that time.
Well then, when the Christians or the Roman Christians, adding their dogma to get both sides, both the pagan and the Christian, they said, "If it's the sun god's birthday, let's just make it altogether the Son of God's birthday." There's your twenty-fifth day of December for your mass: Christ's mass. Oh, what a terrible thing. See?
Now, to connect... Why, you say, "Wouldn't any other day do?" Yes, but connect Christ with pagan... The very thing He come to abolish, they connect Him back with it again. See? That's the thing that's wrong.
And Santa Claus, some old man in Germany, named Kriss Kringle, would go around giving kids presents on Christ's mass day; he was a Catholic, and they made him a saint; now it's Saint Nicholas. See? Oh, I better just... They'll... That... You know that anyhow. See, we got them in the church ages.

L-36 But this morning, what I want to say is this, that this coming Christmas day finds the world in no better condition than it was nineteen or twenty hundred years ago when Christ come. It's not any different. Just about the same condition as it was then, so is it now. They... If I would draw a conclusion from what, or a text from what I'm going to say, would be: "The Falling Apart Of The World."
When Christ came on Christmas nineteen hundred years ago, the world was falling apart; everything had come to pollution. The religious world had been polluted. The Roman world, morally, was on its lowest ebb. Oh, the immorality of the world... The Jews had forsaken their God and taken their sacred solemn feasts and had made it a ritualistic tradition. God had departed from them. And they knew that there was something had to happen; the whole world did; because to keep it together... It was falling apart. And the something to keep it together, every nation in their own way was looking for something or someone to come to hold it together.

L-38 If that isn't the picture today, I don't know the world. It's looking for something to hold it together. It's just like it was two thousand years ago. The world two thousand years ago was looking for a Messiah to hold the thing together. But two thousand years ago, God gave the world a Messiah. Because if we're expecting something and looking for something, God will send it to us. And now, the world after two thousand years, has got back into the same condition it was two thousand years ago. She's dropping apart, nations... There's no--there's no foundation nowhere. Communism, Catholicism, Protestantism, politics, moral, everything has fallen apart.
And they're praying for a Messiah. But here's what I want to say: If He would come, would we receive Him, or would we do like they did? Would we refuse Him? Do we know what we really need? Sometimes we want--we pray for our desires, and sometimes our desires is not our need. We must realize that we do not understand what we need; we think we do. But God promised to supply our needs, and that He'll do.


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