What Caesar Did

Tony Perkins, Family Research Council: We are in transition in Washington these days. The sitting President isn't sitting much. George W. Bush is determined to "finish sprinting." We wish him well and we thank him and his family for what he has accomplished and what he has been willing to endure to keep our nation safe and free. These days most people are focused, understandably, on the words and deeds of the incoming President. As the new administration of Barack Obama takes shape, we will certainly have much to say.

Political power has always attracted attention. The people's eyes naturally go to the wielder of the sword and the scepter. It was so in Biblical times. The Gospel of Luke tells us that "a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed." The Roman Empire was vast in those days. It stretched from Britain in the north, to Spain and Portugal in the west, deep into Africa and Egypt in the south, and as far east as modern-day Syria. Caesar Augustus ruled all of this territory and the teeming millions who inhabited it. Rome needed increased revenues, and Caesar knew how to get it. He first ordered that a census be conducted. He wanted a head count in order to apportion the amounts of money each provincial governor-like Cyrenius, governor of Syria-would be required to raise.

We can envision Caesar's imperial decree being inscribed by hand on vellum, a material made from the scraped-clean hide of an unborn calf. From the Emperor's residence in the House of Hortensius on Rome's Palatine Hill, runners would have carried the document to waiting horsemen, the imperial couriers. From Rome, these horsemen would likely have proceeded in relay, changing horse and rider as each messenger reached the border of one of Roman Italy's 11 administrative regions. Passing through Latium and Campania to Samnium, to Apulia along the Appian Way, the riders would make for Brundisium, a port city on the east coast of Italy.

There, Caesar's decree probably would have been received aboard a Roman warship. It might have been a quinquereme, propelled by galley slaves who rowed in banks of five. On board this red cedar-built craft, Caesar's order would cross the Mediterranean Sea to the Roman province of Palestine. Palestine was a distant outpost of the Empire, far from the most important of Rome's imperial holdings. All this ordering and obeying, this saluting and receiving of salutes, this "hail caesaring" was necessary to bring millions of people together in their ancestral villages. And so Joseph, who was of the House and Lineage of David, also complied with Caesar's decree.

Thus were Joseph and Mary brought into Bethlehem. Caesar thought he knew what he was doing. He had never heard of Bethlehem. He had never heard of the Hebrew Prophet Micah. Micah had written: For out of you Bethlehem-Ephrata...shall come one who is to be ruler in Israel; whose origin is of old...his greatness shall reach the ends of the earth; he shall be peace. (Micah: 5:2, 3, 5) God knew what He was doing in Palestine. Today, we know that the birth of Jesus in that little town of Bethlehem was, is, and ever shall be more important than all the Caesars, all the kings, all the presidents who ever ruled. In Bethlehem's dark streets there appeared an everlasting light. It shines for us still.

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