as the shepherds acknowledged. If they came from Babylon their journey was approximately six hundred miles and would have taken at least six weeks. If they had arrived one or even two days earlier, the forty days of “purification” would not have been up, and Joseph and Mary could not have fled to escape the massacre. If they had arrived one or two days later, the family would have already left for Jerusalem and then Nazareth. God’s timetable was as exact at Jesus’ birth as it was at His death, when