And if He could not knowingly tell a lie, and could not be mistaken, then how and from whom could He learn all that He spoke?

The mysteries that Christ revealed to the world could not be known to Him as a Man. Declaring them to be the will of His Father, that is, of God, Who sent Him into the world, He said: "He who sent Me is true, and whatsoever I have heard from Him, that I also say to the world" (John 8:26); and in his farewell conversation with the Apostles He said: "Believe Me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me... believe Me according to the very works which I have done" (John 14:11).

So Jesus said that everything He taught was told to Him by God Himself, and that as He is in God, so God is in Him.

Jesus Christ, as the Witness of the truth, can either be fully believed or not believed at all; There can be no middle ground. But since the unconditionally truthful in everything, sinless and omnipotent, resurrected and ascended Jesus cannot be considered an unreliable witness, cannot be considered only a Man, there is only one way out: to believe Him unconditionally in everything, even if some things are inaccessible to the limited human mind.

CHAPTER 1. Angel's prediction of the birth of John the Baptist. Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Meeting with Elizabeth. The Birth of John

The Gospel story begins with the story of the Evangelist Luke about the events that preceded and accompanied the birth of John the Baptist and our Lord Jesus Christ, but, unfortunately, the Evangelist does not explain in what year these events took place, but confines himself to brief indications that it was in the days of Herod, king of the Jews (Luke 1:5), when there came from Caesar Augustus the command to take a census of all the earth (Luke 2:5). 1).

Determination of the year of birth of Jesus Christ.

The most ancient Fathers and teachers of the Church, who mention the year of the Nativity of Christ (Justin Martyr and Tertullian), speak of this in general vaguely. The Roman monk Dionysius, who lived in the VI century, nicknamed the Lesser, considers the year of birth of Jesus Christ to be the 754th year from the foundation of Rome; This year was accepted by Christians as the beginning of a new chronology. Later research, however, proved that Dionysius was mistaken. According to the testimony of the Jewish historian Josephus, a contemporary of the destruction of Jerusalem, Herod the Great, in whose reign Jesus Christ was born, was appointed to the throne by decree of the Roman Senate in the year 714 from the founding of Rome and died 37 years later, 8 days before Easter, shortly after the lunar eclipse (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 17), but since the 37th year of Herod's reign corresponded to the year 750, According to astronomical calculations, the lunar eclipse occurred on the night of March 13-14, 750, and the Jewish Passover in that year fell on April 12, then it must be recognized that Herod, king of the Jews, died at the beginning of April, 750 from the foundation of Rome, and that, consequently, Jesus Christ was born before the year 750. For a more accurate determination of the year of birth of Jesus Christ, the following data are used:

a) The Evangelist Luke testifies that the Baptism of Jesus Christ by John took place on the fifteenth... the year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, and that at that time Jesus was about thirty years old (Luke 3:1, 23); but since Augustus accepted Tiberius as co-emperor two years before his death, in January 765, and, consequently, the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius began in January 779, and Jesus Christ was then, according to the expression of the Evangelist, thirty years old, it must be admitted that the birth of Jesus Christ should have followed no earlier than 748 and no later than 749; and

b) all the Evangelists testify that Jesus Christ was crucified on Friday, the day of the Jewish Passover; and since, according to astronomical calculations, the year 783 was the only one at which the Jewish Passover (always celebrated from the evening of the 14th day of the first spring lunar month of Nisan) was to fall on Friday, April 7, it must be admitted that Jesus Christ was crucified on April 7, 783. If He was then thirty-four years old, then He was born in the year 748, and if He was then only thirty-three years old or thirty-four years old, then He was born in the year 749 from the foundation of Rome. Therefore, some researchers consider the 748th, while others consider the 749th year from the foundation of Rome to be the year of the birth of Jesus Christ. Thus, the Dionysian chronology lags behind the more accurate one by at least five and no more than six years.

At the time of the birth of Jesus Christ, Palestine was part of the Roman Empire, and it was ruled by the Edomite Herod, who was called the king of the Jews, by appointment of the Roman emperor. Thus, the scepter (royal power) departed from the descendants of Judah, and, therefore, according to the prediction of Jacob, the time came for the coming of the Mediator (Gen. 49:1, 10); it also came because the weeks of Daniel were coming to an end (see Introduction, pp. 71-74). Everything spoke for the imminent appearance of the promised Deliverer-Christ-Messiah, and the Jews were waiting for Him to appear and deliver them from the hated Roman yoke.

At that time, among the priests serving at the temple of Jerusalem, was the aged Zachariah. Probably, there were many priests of the same name, because the Evangelist Luke, speaking about him, considered it necessary to add that he was from the Abian family (Luke 1:5). At first only the descendants of Eleazar and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron, were appointed to serve at the tabernacle, but when these descendants multiplied and, as a result, it was necessary to establish a queue between the priests in the performance of their duties, David divided them into 24 sections, so that they would perform the service every week; These queues were observed even after the construction of the temple, to which the tabernacle was transferred.

Although Zachariah and his aged wife Elizabeth were distinguished not only by their strict observance of all the commandments and statutes, but also by their highly moral life and true righteousness, they were childless, and this was considered God's punishment for sins among the Jews.

Once, when Zachariah was serving at the temple, he had to go out to burn incense in the Sanctuary of the temple.