They told us: "As of September 11, 2001, the world changed." They said that we were now living in a different world because the World Trade Center took that fatal body blow. Different? Really? Did the world change on September 11?

The Bible says it didn't change. The world didn't change; the world just came to us, woke us up, took its mask off, and showed us what it has always been – a howling wilderness of unfathomable evil (Jeremiah 17:9; I John 5:19b; John 1:5, 3:19).

Different? Really different? A fanatical pharaoh takes off the mask and signs the order to have all newly born boy Jewish babies thrown in the Nile. A baby escapes in a basket, a baby God will use one day to shake up world history.

Another ruler takes off the mask and slaughters the innocents in Bethlehem while the parents of the Son of God flee to Egypt. Different? Really different?

Jesus’ first years on the planet cause the world to take off its mask, as His coming inaugurates violence as the seed of the serpent comes against the seed of the woman (Genesis 3:15). Jesus preaches His first sermon in Nazareth, the town in which He grew up, and violence escalates (Luke 4). He goes to the capital, speaks, and a lynch mob picks up its rocks (John 8). Then, just outside Jerusalem, unmasked man does its last and worst as the violence culminates in the Cross.

The world often wears a mask to cover its face of evil, but more often than not, now the mask is coming off. With the mask off, the world kills, injures, explodes, burns, and destroys anything connected with Christ. Behind the mask is a culture of hate (John 15:18). From Egypt to Bethlehem to Calvary, the mask is off.

Christmas did two things: it pulled off the world's mask and it sounded an alarm bell that one day, God, through His Son Jesus Christ will take over the planet and put down evil once and for all as He restores man to the destiny for which he was created (Genesis 1:26-28).

Different? Really different? No, not now. But one day it will be. Christmas says so.

Dr. Mike Halsey, Pastor