Saving Jesus: The Untold Story of the Wise Men

The three Wise Men in the typical nativity scene were actually courageous men of faith who outsmarted their scheming enemies and survived the perils of a thousand mile journey, and it was no coincidence that they arrived in Bethlehem just hours before the angel warned Joseph to flee to Egypt.

At the time of Christ’s birth, the Holy Land was as unstable and unsafe as today. Rome was indeed powerful, but it was not the only world power. But Israel was merely a tributary state, a small prize in a constant tug-of-war between two warring empires—Rome and Parthia.

Caesar ruled westward, 1,500 miles from the Holy Land to the Britain Isles, while the mighty Parthian Empire dominated the lands eastward for 1,500 miles, to the Indus River. Fifty-three years before the birth of Christ, Parthia, with just 10,000 troops, crushed seven Roman legions of 35,000 men. Then, thirty-five years before the birth of Christ, Marc Antony invaded Parthia, but retreated after a series of humiliating disasters. Parthia, not Rome, ruled the Holy Land until just 37 years before the birth of Christ, when Rome returned Herod to power. And when King Herod regained his throne, he was determined to destroy any possible contender, even the Son of God.

Saving Jesus, begins with the appearance of the fantastic star in the east that Matthew wrote of, and he also tells us that the Magi came from the East. Five hundred years before Jesus’ birth, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon appointed the prophet Daniel ruler over all the wise men of Babylon, and it’s reasonable to assume that the men who visited little Jesus were descendants of Daniel and his three friends.

Perhaps Joseph, the humble carpenter, wondered at the magi’s gifts of gold, myrrh, and frankincense, but their purpose surely became clear to him the very same night of their visit, for Matthew wrote, “When the Magi had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. ‘Get up!’ he said. ‘Take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the Child to kill Him.’ ” (Matthew 2:13). It was surely a miracle that the Wise Men delivered that wealth into the hands of Joseph just in time to save his family.

Then the Magi, “…having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, ... withdrew to their country by another route” (Matthew 2:12)/ There were only two caravan routes back to Parthia, one to the north around the Fertile Crescent, which they had traveled to reach Bethlehem, and the other to the south and around the north end of the Persian Gulf. It would have been foolhardy to expose themselves to Herod’s wrath by traveling back through Jerusalem to return via the fertile crescent.

Why didn't some faithful Jew who lived in Palestine provide the gold needed by the Messiah's family to flee Herod’s wrath and make their escape to Egypt? Would non-Jewish wise men have made a dangerous journey of nearly a 1,000 miles to worship a Jewish Messiah? Those wise men were used of God to save the Christ child’s life, for in bringing their gifts, they provided the means that Joseph would require to escape with his family that very night, and to sojourn in Egypt.

The major historical characters behaved pretty much as I have described them. The names—Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar—are a matter of tradition, but there were very likely more than three visitors, and they would have traveled with a large caravan for safety. Herod was not even a Jew but an Edomite, and the quality of his reign is debated today. King Phraates IV, of Parthia was little better, for he murdered all of his brothers to secure his throne, and was still ruling at the birth birth of Jesus, until his wife poisoned him.

It is my hope that this tale will delight, inform and inspire you with the miracle of Christ’s birth.