The envelope....
The photo...
May I introduce you to King Herod.
(If you've not yet witnessed Amelie's scary face, this is it.
We all shutter in fright when she whips this face out.)
Excerpt from December 1990 Ensign
Article Title: Twelve Witnesses of Christ's Birth
By: Joseph Fielding McConkie
Our concluding witness is a most unlikely and reluctant one—Israel’s king, Herod the Great. Herod had made an alliance with the powers of the world: his friends were Augustus, Rome, and expediency. He had massacred priests and nobles. He had decimated the Sanhedrin. He had caused the high priest, his brother-in-law, to be drowned in pretended sport before his eyes. And he had ordered the strangulation of his favorite wife, Mariamne, though she seems to have been the only person he ever loved. Anyone who fell victim to his suspicions was murdered, including three sons and numerous relatives.
It was to this man, who personified the world’s wickedness, that the wise men from the east bore their testimony that Israel’s rightful king and ruler had been born. Such a testimony would not have been heeded had it come from Simeon, Anna, or simple shepherds. But Herod gave the testimony credence, coming as it did from these Eastern visitors whose credentials, whatever they were, established them as men of great wisdom.
The kingdom of God will never go unopposed in the days of earth’s mortality, the period of Satan’s power. Evidence of the anger and wrath of hell at the birth of God’s son makes the nativity story complete. The glad tidings of heaven brought no joy to the prince of darkness or his servants. Herod, as Satan’s servant, responded to the testimony of the wise men with murderous wrath and sought to destroy the Christ child. Thus, the decree went forth that “all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under,” according to the time that Herod had inquired of the wise men, were to be slain. (Matt. 2:16.)
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