Reason 26: The Ultimate Christmas Gift

Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of evangelist Billy Graham, founder of AnGel Ministries, and author of several books including a new children's book, Heaven, God's Promise for Me made the following statement in the USAToday, December 5, 2011, online edition:

"The Christmas gift that has made the greatest impact on my life is the one God gave. The gift originally came as a baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger. When I received the gift of God's Son as my personal Savior and Lord, I also received eternal life, which not only includes forgiveness for my sin and a heavenly home when I die, but a personal, permanent relationship with God here and now. Embracing His Gift, and knowing the Giver, is the magnificent obsession of my life."

Reason 25: The Unconquerable Christ

"There is more to see in this portrait of the unconquerable Christ.  Ever since Biblical times men have tried to conquer Him.  Men of thought.  Men of philosophy.  Men of letters.  Men of knowledge.  Voltaire made the statement that he would show the world [that] although it took twelve apostles  to establish Christianity, it would only take one [Voltaire!] to tear it down.  The Bible would be an antique, he said, [no later than] one hundred years after his death.  'God is dead,' says Nietzsche.  'Christianity is through,' says Voltaire.  The Bible is an antique.  Conquer the unconquerable Christ?  How preposterous it all sounds when we are still talking about Jesus today!"  Jesus The Revolutionary, H.S. Vigeveno, p. 19.

Reason 24: I Could Never Go Back

"After coming out of forty years of secular life and then spending a dozen years in the Christian life, I can tell you:  the relationships people have in Christ don't exist in the secular world.  I could never go back.  There's not enough money or power in the world to draw me back into the kind of partisan bickering that went on in politics -- or in my law firm, for that matter.  I just wouldn't want to live that way."  Who Speaks for God, Charles Colson, former aide to President Nixon, p. 178.