When Jesus came into the world the first time, he had a star over the cradle and prophesies spoke of him.  Nowadays, with technology, with our current culture, and with world events, how do we know Jesus when we see him?

How will it happen?

Thanks!

Unfortunately, I have to agree with those of Jewish faith on the matter of the 'Only Son of God.' While Yeshua of Nazareth (whom most of you would know as Jesus) was most definitely a real person that walked this planet a few thousand years ago, he was most definitely not the son of any god. He was a normal man, born to normal parents (no immaculate conception, sorry), and lead a normal life up until his late 20s, when he essentially began building the foundation of the Christian faith.

Despite my having lost confidence in all the major religions, I have still been extremely curious about the topic of religion and the way it affects people. This is easily my second favorite subject, next to linguistics. For that reason, I have spent a great deal of time studying and researching many aspects of numerous religions, even the odd or silly ones (I.E., Mormon, Scientology). One of the topics that has intrigued me the most is this strange and mystical man that everyone called 'Jesus'. 

Being a logical thinker, the idea that God had a son sounded out of place in the style of faith that we see in the Western Religions, almost as if someone had read a little too much Greek mythos and then incorporated it into a system of belief. Not satisfied with any answer I could ever glean from religious sources, I chose to do some research on my own, from a logical and historical point of view. For the benefit of the doubt, I will recite briefly what I feel is the true history of the man called Jesus.

First and foremost, it needs to be noted that the name Jesus, as I mentioned earlier, isn't this man's true name. 'Jesus' is a transliteration. His real name was Yeshua. How we came to call him Jesus can be explained thusly:

Yeshua is a Hebrew name which has been transliterated into Greek as Iesous. The English "Jesus" comes from the Latin transliteration of the Greek name into the Latin Iesus. Now Greek has no "y" sound, but the Latin "i" is both an "i" and a "j" (I.E., it can have a consonantal force in front of other vowels), the latter of which is properly pronounced like the English "y". That is why we spell Jesus as we do, taking it straight from Latin, but we pronounce the name with a soft "j" sound because that is what we do in English with the consonantal "j".

Some people even go as far as to claim that his full name was Yeshua Ben Yosef, but I won't touch on that for now. The point is, the true name of Jesus is Yeshua. For the sake of discussion, I would also like to point out that Yeshua can by translated roughly into the English name 'Joshua', so one could also refer to him as 'Joshua of Nazareth'. Not that I would. That would just be further diluting an already diluted name.

Now that I have that out of the way, I can continue. It can by historically proven that this man, Yeshua, did truly exist and was the founder of Christianity and, summarily, Catholicism. He was born in Nazareth, not in a manger in Bethlehem, into a Jewish family. His family did not leave for Egypt during the fall of King Herod. They remained in Galilee, where Yeshua and his father would have plied the family trade, widely accepted to have been carpentry.

From here, things get a bit hazy. There are some accounts that Yeshua as a child was a bit of a troubelmaker. I cannot confirm or deny the validity of these claims. I believe it is fairly clear that in his youth, even before he began is ministrations, Yeshua was religiously out-spoken and somewhat of a rabble rouser. Another clear fact is that Yeshua traveled abroad during this time. Namely, into India and Tibet. Here is where his life really begins to take shape. While traveling abroad in India and Tibet, Yeshua was exposed to Buddhist and Hindu teachings. These would have a marked effect on Yeshua, and would play an instrumental role in the rest of his life.

For, you see, I surmise that Yeshua's reason for traveling abroad was disillusionment with the Jewish faith. Perhaps not satisfied with the answers the Jewish faith had to offer, he chose to travel in search of further enlightenment. This is strictly presumption on my part, however, based on facts and logic. The point is, he went to those regions and learned about these teachings. He then incorporated Buddhist and Hindu philosophy into the Jewish faith to form his own person set of beliefs. This was the foundation on which Christianity was built.

Upon returning to Galilee, Yeshua would begin his ministrations. For, in reality, Yeshua was a religious reformist. He was attempting to blend the Eastern philosophies he had encountered with his Jewish faith. At first, his ideals were largely rejected, but they would eventually catch on. He acquired a sizable following, most of whom would travel him for town to town, as he attempted to spread his teachings. In the end, however, he drew the attention of the religious leaders in Rome, who would label him a heretic and call for his death. The rest is largely how we know it today. Yeshua was arrested and crucified for his supposed crimes and for spreading heresy. The largely Pagan Roman Empire and the Jewish leaders of Judea co-conspired to carry out the execution of Yeshua the 'Heretic'.

While Yeshua was most definitely not the 'Son of God', he was a very important person the human history. One of the most important, as a matter of fact. He tried to use the philosophy on unity and inner peace to help temper the furor of religious hatred that, even to this day, still boils tempestuously over us all. That is the mark of a great man. It is not, however, the mark of a man who will someday return to this planet in order to bring us Salvation. That is something that can only happen in fairy tales. That simply isn't the way this world works. There will be no Second Coming, there will be no trumpets blasting in the air. No angels are going to descend upon us and take the righteous to the Promised Land. These are all empty promises made to give people something to look forward to once their life ends. But that is a matter for another time.