Reason dictates that if any one of these men actually came from God, the least thing that God could do to support His claim would be to pre-announce His coming. Automobile manufacturers tell their customers when to expect a new model. If God sent anyone from Himself, or if He came Himself with a vitally important message for all men, it would seem reasonable that He would first let men know when His messenger was coming, where He would be born, where He would live, the doctrine He would teach, the enemies He would make, the program He would adopt for the future, and the manner of His death. By the extent to which the messenger conformed with these announcements, one could judge the validity of his claims.
Reason further assures us that if God did not do this, then there would be nothing to prevent any impostor from appearing in history and saying, "I come from God," or "An angel appeared to me in the desert and game me this message." In such cases there would be no objective, historical way of testing the messenger. We would have only his word for it, and of course he could be wrong.
If a visitor came from a foreign country to Washington and said he was a diplomat, the government would ask him for his passport and other documents testifying that he represented a certain government. His papers would have to antedate his coming. If such proofs of identity are asked from delegates of other countries, reason certainly ought to do so with messengers who claim to have come from God. To each claimant reason says, "What record was there before you were born that you were coming?"
With this test one can evaluate the claimants. Socrates had no one to foretell his birth. Buddha had no one to pre-announce him and his message or tell the day when he would sit under the tree. Confucius did not have the name of his mother and his birthplace recorded, nor were they given to men centuries before he arrived so that when he did come, men would know he was a messenger from God. But, with Christ, it was different. Because of the OT prophecies, His coming was not unexpected. There were no predictions about Buddha, Confucius, Lao-tze, Mohammed , or anyone else; but there were predictions about Christ. Others just came and said, "Here I am, believe me". Christ alone stepped out of that line saying, "Search the writings of the Jewish people and the related history of the Babylonians, Persians, and Romans." Even the pagan, Tacitus, speaking for the ancient Romans, says, "People were generally persuaded in the faith of the ancient prophecies, that the East was to prevail, and that from Judea was to come the Master and Ruler of the world." China had the same expectations, as did the Greeks.
The story of every human life begins with birth and ends with death. In the Person of Christ, however, it was His death that was first and His life that was last. It was not so much that His birth cast a shadow on His life and thus led to His death; it was rather that the Cross was first, and cast its shadow back to His birth. His has been the only life in the world that was ever lived backward.
As the flower in the wall tells the poet of nature, and as the atom in the miniature of the solar system, so too, Christ's birth tells the mystery of the cross. He went from the known to the known, from the reason of His coming manifested by His name "Jesus" or "Savior" to the fulfillment of His coming, namely, His death on the cross.
Bishop Fulton Sheen
Great read. And Bishop Sheen in The Life of Christ also notes that the birth of Christ struck history with such an impact that it split it into two: BC and AD.