It was the darkest day the earth had ever seen.

Literally.

At noon, when the sun should have been at its highest, the sky went black. Not clouded. Not stormy. Black. Like the heavens themselves turned their back on what was happening at Skull Hill.

Colin Smith’s *Heaven, How I Got Here* ends where history paused—between two worlds.

One man—the thief—is no longer with us. Neither is the Man on the middle cross. Their lifeless bodies hung in silence as the crowds shuffled home, bloodstained and stunned.

The Christian world is celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Even non-Christians recognize Jesus as a moral philosopher whose teachings and example provide guidance on how humanity should live.

CNN’s Don Lemon, who grew up Baptist and attended a Catholic school, wrongly claimed this week that Jesus “admittedly was not perfect” when He was on earth.

“Here’s the thing,” Lemon told fellow CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, who is Catholic. “Jesus Christ — if that’s who you believe in, Jesus Christ — admittedly was not perfect when He was here on this earth.”

Cuomo, despite his own religious beliefs, nodded along approvingly.

A leader for the Black Lives Matter movement said Wednesday he believes Jesus “is the most famous black radical revolutionary” during the same interview in which he said wants “black sovereignty by any means necessary.”

Hawk Newsome, head of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, told Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum he wants to “burn down the system” if the country “doesn’t give us what we want.”

Left-wing activist Shaun King called Monday for the removal of statues, murals and stained glass windows that depict Jesus as a “white European,” which he claimed “are a form of white supremacy.”

“Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down,” King, a former surrogate on Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, wrote on Twitter. “They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been.”

As the world prepares to celebrate Jesus' birth, one author is inspiring us to look deeper and more introspectively at the Christmas story.

Daniel Darling, author of "The Characters of Christmas: The Unlikely People Caught Up in the Story of Jesus" recently told "The Pure Flix Podcast" why he finds the story of Jesus' birth so incredible.