Baruch 5:1-9

What's a Baruch? Well, the Bible was finalized in the 4th century by a guy named Jerome. This was known as the Latin Vulgate and it was the Bible for about a thousand years. It included this book which includes some talk about purgatory. People once gave money to the Roman Catholic Church if they believed their loved ones were in purgatory. That would hasten their move into heaven. Martin Luther hated this idea and gave us Protestantism, which didn't have that. So Protestant Bibles don't have this book.

Who was Baruch? Well, we can't be sure, but he was probably writing during the time Israel was under the rule of Greece or Rome, in the last centuries BC. Either way, it was a colony and oppressed by those occupiers. The words he reports might sound familiar, "Let no one rejoice over me, a widow bereaved of many; I was left desolate…God brought a distant nation against them, a nation ruthless and of a strange language, which had no respect for the aged and no pity for a child". Fear of the "other". But Baruch says not to be afraid, to trust in the glory and it will bring peace. We can hope he thought that his values were the right values and he was trying to inspire people to live up to them. That we still have this type of oppression and this type of fear, tells us we still need to figure what the right values are.

Luke 1:68-79

This is Zacharias's Prophecy. He is an old man who has miraculously fathered a son. That son is John the Baptist. Of course he wouldn't know the whole story at that point, but that's why it's a prophecy. Verse 76 being the key verse. The rest is connecting other significant figures and events to birth and life of Jesus.