Merry Christmas and welcome to the Ransom-Tart Podcast. I'm Alan Arnold and we are in week two of an

Advent podcast series. It originally aired in 2014 and features John Eldridge and Craig McConnell.

Now if you're curious about when Advent is this year, it begins Sunday, December 2nd,

and it goes through Monday, December 24th.

Today's message is God's wild, wonderful ways.

Now here's John and Craig.

Let me open this week with a passage on the Christmas story.

Not from Luke, not from the Gospels, not from the Old Testament.

Actually a comment that Paul makes in Galatians.

He says this, but when the time had fully come,

God sent his son, born of a woman born under law to redeem those under law that we

might receive the full rights of sons.

Because you are sons, God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts,

the spirit who calls out Abba, father, so you are no longer a slave, but a son. And since you

are a son, God has also made you an error. So much in that passage, of course, my goodness, so much goodness. But the thing I want to

point out is that interesting phrase, when the time had fully come.

Like, wow, what did God know

about that moment in human history, all that had gone on before it, all that was going to come after it,

you know, why that timing?

And when you begin to unpack this a little bit, why that village and why that girl?

And wait a second, why even this whole approach?

Like, one of the things Advent is really doing for me this year in a disruptively

...