The Magi, the Epiphany, and Ben Hur
Breakpoint
Colson Center
4.8 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2025
⏱️ 4 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The littlest known Christian holiday with major significance.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. |
| 0:05.2 | For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. |
| 0:09.0 | Well, for most Americans, the Christmas season has been over for about a week already. |
| 0:13.7 | But it really isn't. January the 6th is a major Christian holiday that most Americans know little |
| 0:19.4 | about. That is still part of the Christmas season. |
| 0:22.9 | The feast of the Epiphany from the Greek word meaning manifestation |
| 0:25.9 | celebrates the visitation of the Magi to the infant Jesus and to his family in Bethlehem. |
| 0:31.6 | In fact, in many times and places throughout Christian history, gifts were exchanged on Epiphany, |
| 0:36.9 | not on Christmas Day. A former colleague of |
| 0:39.6 | mine, who lived in Puerto Rico when he was a kid, recalls neighborhood children leaving straw out for |
| 0:44.7 | the Magi's camels on the night before Epiphany. Today, of course, people in Puerto Rico and pretty much |
| 0:50.3 | everywhere else have shifted the gift giving to December 25th. Still, Epiphany has lessons |
| 0:55.8 | to offer our Christian faith and is worthy of our attention. Among those who understood this was |
| 1:01.5 | Lou Wallace. Few, if any, Americans have lived as eventful a life as Wallace did. Some Civil War buffs |
| 1:08.0 | will tell you that he actually saved the Union at the Battle of Monocacy in 1864. |
| 1:13.2 | His forces delayed Confederate General Jubal early just long enough to prevent him from possibly |
| 1:19.1 | capturing Washington, D.C. Later, as territorial governor of New Mexico, Wallace dealt with the likes |
| 1:25.0 | of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, but it was a reunion, a Civil War veterans, that led to what Wallace is best known for today, |
| 1:33.2 | as explained by Colson Fellow John Murray, a while back in a Fox News article. |
| 1:38.5 | It was on a train ride in 1876 on the way to a reunion in Indianapolis |
| 1:43.9 | that Wallace ran into Colonel Robert Ingersoll, |
| 1:47.9 | someone known as the Great Agnostic. Ingersoll traveled across the country deriding and challenging |
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