It was a typical Saturday in September of 1910. Clarence Hiller had painted the railings of his front porch during the day, enjoyed a good dinner and then retired for the evening. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, he heard someone trying to enter through a window of his home. He went down to investigate.
Hiller’s wife then heard two men fighting on the porch, two gunshots, and then the sounds of a man running away. She went out to see what happened and found her husband Clarence, dead on the porch.
Police apprehended Thomas Jennings a short distance from the Hiller house with the same caliber gun which killed Hiller in Jenning’s pocket. But police didn’t have any other evidence. It seemed Jenkins would go free.
The next day, an investigator who had been recently trained in the new art of finger printing. went to the crime scene. To his amazement, he found impressed in the newly painted porch railings a set of fingerprints. They matched those of Thomas Jennings perfectly. Jennings was later tried and convicted of the murder of Clarence Hiller primarily on the evidence of his fingerprints. 1
Fingerprints – each of us has a unique set which distinguishes us from every other human being. But what do fingerprints have to do with Christmas? The season of Christmas is all about Jesus Christ. The word Christ means Messiah or Savior. In the Old Testament there are many references to a coming Savior. They provide clues to what this coming Savior would be like and what he would do. Today, we look back at those prophecies, most originating more than 500 years before Christ’s birth, and we compare them to what the Gospel accounts tell us about the life of Jesus. What we find is that the life of Jesus matches the prophecies just like that of a finger to its prints.
Join us this weekend for one of our worship services. Your confidence in the truthfulness of the Christmas message will be strengthened.
1 Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ (pp. 230-231)
Saturday evening worship: 6:00 pm
Sunday morning worship: 10:00 am
