Merry Christmas and welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

I'm Bill Crowder and I called our reading The Promise of Christ's Birth.

In November 1962, physicist John W. Mockley said,

there is no reason to suppose the average boy or girl cannot be master of a personal computer.

Mockley's prediction seemed remarkable at the time, but it proved astonishingly accurate.

Today, using a computer or handheld device is one of the earliest skills a child learns.

While Mockley's prediction has come true, so have much more important predictions, those made

in the scriptures about the coming of Christ.

For example, Micah 5-2 declared, but you Bethlehem Ephrotha, though you are small among the clans of

Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old,

from ancient times. God sent Jesus, who arrived in tiny Bethlehem, marking him as from the royal line of David.

The same Bible that accurately predicted the first coming of Jesus also promises his return.

Jesus promised his first followers that he would come back for them.

This Christmas, as we ponder the accurately predicted facts surrounding the birth of Jesus,

may we also consider his promised return and allow him to prepare us for that majestic moment

when we see him face to face.

Today's Our Daily Bread Devotional Scripture reading is from Luke chapter 2, verses 1 through 7.

In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire

Roman world.

This was the first census that took place

while Quirinius was governor of Syria, and everyone went to their own town to register.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth and Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of

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