The Eclipse Theophany

REMEMBER THE DESCENT: November 24

The Eclipse Theophany - The Foundation of Our Faith

To Our Beloved Congregation and All Who Seek the True Father - Each year, as the season turns, we approach a day of profound and sacred remembrance. It is not a celebration of birth into a world of lineage and law, but the glorious commemoration of a Divine Arrival - the moment our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ, descended into this world in fully human form to reveal the true face of the Father.

"In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being Governor of Judea, Jesus descended into Capernaum, a city in Galilee..." - Evangelion 1:1

On the twenty-fourth day of November, in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar (29 AD), history was split in two. In the city of Capernaum, as a total eclipse blotted out the sun at the height of day, a greater Light descended. Jesus did not emerge from the genealogy of earthly kings or the covenants of a tribal god. He came from the Father. The God of grace, the God of love, the God unknown to the world until that very hour. 

This is our foundational truth: the Eclipse Theophany.

On that day He sent His own presence, His living Word, to pierce the darkness of this world with a revelation so complete it needed no prior introduction. As the sun vanished, the Son appeared, not as an infant subject to the powers of this age, but as the authoritative Teacher, the Healer, the Redeemer in his full power. Remember this, brothers and sisters: Our faith does not begin in a manger, under the shadow of empire and temple. It begins here, on the shore of Galilee, with a divine declaration of independence from all earthly and spiritual bondage. It begins with a command to unclean spirits that is also a promise to us: "Let us alone; what have we to do with you, Jesus? Are you come to destroy us?" (Evangelion 1:1). Yes, He came to destroy - not life, but the chains that bind it. Not the world, but the dominion of the ‘god of this world.’

As we remember November 24th, let us reflect on what this means for us: Our God is a God of Sudden Grace. He is not bound by the slow cycles of human birth and decay. He breaks into our darkness, our confusion, our slavery, with the startling, immediate light of salvation. When all seems eclipsed, He arrives. Our Christ is the Christ of Authority. He came teaching with power, not pleading for legitimacy. His word was, and is, final. He needs no certificate of birth from Jerusalem or Rome; His authority flows from the Father alone. Our Gospel is a Gospel of Liberation. He descended to call us out - out from under the law, out from under the curse, out from identities forged by bloodline and statute, and into the glorious freedom of the children of the true God.

This day is our anchor. In a world that still preaches a god of wrath and a faith of complicated laws, we hold fast to the simplicity of the Theophany: God revealed Himself definitively in Jesus, and that revelation was one of pure, unmerited, world-overcoming love. Let the memory of the eclipse remind you: the deepest darkness is but a prelude for His light. The world’s powers, like the sun, may be eclipsed, but the Light from the Father never falters. Prepare your hearts. 

On the Twenty-Fourth of November, we do not look back to a beginning bound to the old world. We celebrate the beginning of the end for that world, and the glorious dawn of our redemption. In the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.