Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis - Bill O'Reilly Talks About the Significance of Jesus

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Bill O'Reilly talks about Jesus, the man, and his significance this Christmas season. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Bill O'Reilly here. Well, let's talk about Christmas. Okay? Coming up fast. Less than three weeks. Christmas. That's Jesus, right? Catholics, Protestants, Christians believe that Jesus of Nazareth is God.

The Christ. That means God. Jesus' name wasn't Jesus Christ. It was just Jesus. the Nazarene. So I wrote a book called Killing Jesus. History book, not a religious book. Massive bestseller. It was on the New York Times bestseller for a year. One book on for a year. And it was number one, three weeks in a row. Sold more than a million copies just in the USA. And it was translated, even China,

They even translated Killing Jesus into Chinese. I have copies of it. And then it was a movie. All right, Killing Jesus. It was the highest rated show in National Geographic Channel's history. You can buy it, pay-per-view, killing Jesus. Well worth your time. Now, why am I bringing this up on the YouTube channel?

because Christmas celebrates the life and the death of Jesus. Now, how can you celebrate a death? Well, Christians believe that once Jesus was executed by the Romans, that original sin was wiped away and that everybody had a new chance to gain heaven, paradise. So that's the celebration. Now, in America, we are largely a secular society. Everybody knows that. Church going way down across the board. Even in Muslim communities, it's not as fervent as it used to be. The people

don't go the organized religion route for a variety of reasons. But Christmas is devoted to Jesus. So we should talk about it. in a history way, because Jesus, the Nazarene, is the most famous human being to ever live. Think about that. In the whole history of mankind, Jesus is the most famous human being, the most widely known person. Now, there are idiots who say, oh, you never even existed, like, you know, what do you got to do? there are Jewish records, there are Roman records, what do you got to do? And the Bible is not a history. The Bible is theology.

So when we researched killing Jesus, it was very difficult. We had to go to Israel, and the Israeli government cooperated with us. We got all the records that they kept, Josephus, the historian, all of that. Then we had I go to Rome. We did most of Rome by remote, most of the Italian records. the Roman records, Tacitus was the guy, Caesar Augustine was in charge, Augustus, I should say, was in charge at the time. But here's the most startling thing that I found out and why I'm talking to you about this. So it might be wise for all of us at Christmas time to think about

the worthiness of Jesus. If you look at what he preached, if you look at what he preached, if you If every human being practiced that, okay, love God above all and love your neighbor as yourself, there'd be no wars, there'd be no strife, there'd be no stealing, there'd be no assaults, there'd be no rapes, there would be no, none of that. If everybody followed what the Nazarene put forth. Now, why did he become the most famous person ever? That is the key question. he's poor. He's born into a communal home in a backwater called Nazareth. I've been there,

you can go there. It's in Israel. Not a calm place, as we all know at the moment, but he's born into a home where a bunch of families are living. So when you read the Bible and it says, my brother, my sister, there were four or five families living in one dwelling. That's how they lived communally. Jesus' father, Joseph, was a stone cutter. Now, I was taught in Catholic school that Jesus was a carpenter, but he wasn't because there weren't any trees. If you go to Palestine, there's a few, but there aren't building homes with trees, because there aren't any is the desert. They build them with stone. In fact, the Roman crosses were wood. The Romans had a reuse the crosses to execute people because there wasn't enough wood to make one cross for one execution.

Anyway, so here's a guy, and he's a stone cutter, and for 30 years, he lives with his family in Nazareth, and he's just a regular guy. Then he goes out, and he begins to preach. He goes out by himself. He doesn't have the apostles. He doesn't have anybody. He goes out by himself. And he walks around in a very small area, and he starts to preach. And there were a lot of people doing that. John the Baptist did it, a bunch of people. And the reason that there are so many preachers, the preachers got paid by food and clothing and people donated things to them.

So it was like an industry. So Jesus goes out and he attracts a bunch of people that's become with him, Peter, and James and John. they call him the apostles, and they follow him around. And he starts to attract crowds. But why? How? How would he attract crowds? You couldn't hear him. There's no microphones. So he stands in a place where you could see him on a mountain or out in a boat in the middle of the lake. And if you could see him, they couldn't hear him. And he would give. lectures, he would give sermons. And his apostles would pick up the themes and things like that. But most of the people who came out to see the Nazarene did not hear him or couldn't get close to him because there were a lot of people. And the crowds got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. Thousands of people. How do we know this? Because the Sanhedrian, the Jewish authorities of Jerusalem,

had spies following Jesus because they were worried about them. And the Romans had spies as well. That was Pontius Pilate, the governor of Palestine, who had a report back to Tiberius. So there were spies in the crowds, and they wrote stuff back to the Jewish leaders and pilot, saying, hey, this guy, there were 2,000 people there, there was this, and with that, why did he attract so many people? Again, you can't hear him. him. And very few of the thousands got to meet him. Here's what we came up with.

In the spy dispatches to the Romans and the Jews in Jerusalem were references to the works, W-O-R-K-S. The works were put in the Bible as miracles, healings, primarily. The spies, because they were afraid, would say, so-and-so was healed by Jesus, so they say, or witnesses say. And that became the works. Jesus was performing works. Now, the Jews in a Sanhedron didn't believe it, and Pilots certainly didn't believe it. Harry didn't believe it. He was head of the Jewish Federation, let's call, but the Romans had control over the area. So the authorities didn't believe it. But if you step back and you say, well, how can a guy with no money and no infrastructure can't advertise, nobody can hear them, draw two, three thousand

people, there had to be something going on there that people could see. So, if you read the Bible, there's multiple cases of Jesus healing people from dreaded diseases, even rising people from the dead. Now, as a historian, all I can do is report to you why Jesus attracted so many people. And it had to be the works, the healings. Now you're free to believe or not believe whatever you want. But just step back and say, how does one poor man become the most famous person in history? And how did he attract so many thousands of people in a small area?

How did that happen? And when Christmas Day rolls around and you're seeing the baby Jesus in the manger and you're hearing the Christmas carols and all of that, you might want to think about it. all that. I certainly am convinced, and I'm pretty tough when it comes to analyzing evidence. So that's what my faith is based on, plus, as I said in the beginning, the theology, which makes perfect sense if you want a peaceful world. Okay, that's my Christmas sermon. I hope you enjoyed it. Catch us on bill o'Reilly.com. Talk to you again soon.