For many years there was
no bigger name in journalism than Larry King. His talk show was a mainstay of
CNN for over twenty-five years. But before the end of his illustrious career he
was put in the hot seat for once and was interviewed about his time as media
mogul.
The reporter interviewing
Larry King asked him, “If you could interview anyone in history, who would it be
and what would you ask them?” And with no hesitation, Larry King, this man who
had interviewed nearly every noteworthy person of the late twentieth century,
looked into the camera and said, “I would interview Jesus Christ and I would
ask him if he was indeed born of a virgin because the answer to that question
would define all of history.”[1]
I think Mr. King has made
an astute observation, because the virgin birth of Christ is essential not only
to the Christian faith as presented in the Bible, but it is the line of
demarcation by which we record history—B.C and A.D. If the Virgin Birth is true
then our timeline is accurately divided by the entrance of the Son of God into
humanity from eternity. And if Jesus is virgin born then that makes Him unique
among all self-proclaimed prophets and religious leaders.
The doctrines of Christianity
are interconnected, like a line of dominoes, if one falls then so do the
others. The Virgin Birth is one of those non-negotiable doctrines of the faith,
for if we try to remove it, then the rest of doctrinal dominoes will begin tumbling
down as well. Without the virgin birth then much of what we celebrate during
the Christmas season would be lost.
Yet, this great doctrine
has been attacked and maligned in recent times. First, skeptics deny it. Perhaps one of the first American’s to deny the
virgin birth was our third president, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in 1823 to
John Adams, “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus in the
womb of the virgin, will be classed with the fables of Greek mythology."[2]
In December 2004, both Newsweek and Time magazines featured the birth of Jesus on their covers. Newsweek’s cover story was entitled:
“The Birth of Jesus – Faith and History: How the Story of Christmas Came to
Be.” While Time’s cover proclaimed to
unveil the “Secrets of the Nativity.” Both articles argued that much, if not
all of the story, of the birth of Jesus was an invention of the early Church
rather than an accurate chronicle of what really happened.
One of the reasons why
skeptics deny the Virgin Birth is because they have anti-supernatural bias. In
other words, their worldview of naturalism is allergic to the idea of miracles.
However, if God exists then miracles are not only possible, but actual. If an
all-powerful God does exist, Who spoke all creation into existence, then a
virgin birth would be mere doodling.
In his book, Miracles, C.S. Lewis diffused the
objection that is commonly raised by skeptics who say that the virgin birth
might have been believable back then, but not today:
“Thus you will hear people say, ‘The early Christians
believed that Christ was the son of a virgin, but we know that this is a
scientific impossibility.’ Such people seem to have an idea that belief in
miracles arose at a period when men were so ignorant of the course of nature
that they did not perceive a miracle to be contrary to it. A moment’s thought
shows this to be foolish, with the story of the virgin birth as a particularly
striking example. When Joseph discovered that his fiancée was going to have a
baby, he first decided to repudiate her. Why? Because he knew just as well as
any modern gynecologist that in the ordinary course of nature women do not have
babies unless they have lain with men.
No
doubt the modern knows several things about birth and begetting which Joseph
did not know. But those things do not concern the main point—that a virgin
birth is contrary to the course of nature. And Joseph obviously knew that . . .
Belief in miracles, far from depending on ignorance of the laws of nature, is
only possible insofar as they are known.”[3]
Lewis is stating that it’s
wrong to say that miracles like the virgin birth made sense to ancient people
because they didn’t have all the medical and scientific knowledge we have
today. A miracle in the 1st century was just as awe-inspiring and
perplexing as it is in the 21st century.
Can you disbelieve in the
virgin birth and be a Christian? Well, you cannot fully understand the virgin
birth and still be a Christian, but you cannot deny the virgin birth and still
be Christian.
Second, liberals discredit it. One of the most popular objections today concerning
to the virgin birth is that Christianity actually borrowed the idea from pagan
religions and Greek mythology.
This was a major theme in
Dan Brown’s wildly successful The Da
Vinci Code which claimed that, “Nothing in Christianity is original,
everything of importance in Christianity from communion, to Jesus’ birthday, to
the deity of Christ and the virgin birth, to Sunday worship was taken directly
from earlier pagan mystery religions.”[4]
In other words, Matthew
and Luke plagiarized the idea of the virgin birth from the ancient stories of
Zeus and Hercules, massaged the details here and there and passed it off as a
Christian counterfeit. For example, there was a myth told about Alexander the
Great that he was supernaturally conceived when Zeus took on the form of a
serpent and then seduced his mother, Olympia, resulting in a world-conquering
son of the gods.
Lee Strobel thoroughly
demolished this poppycock in his book The
Case for the Real Jesus:
“Some of the supposed parallels break down upon close
examination. Greek mythologies are full of anthropomorphic gods who lust after
human women, which is decidedly different from Jesus’ story. The mythological
offspring are half gods and half men and their lives begin at conception, as
opposed to Jesus, who is fully God and fully man and who is eternal but came
into this world through the incarnation. Also the Gospels put Jesus in a
historical context unlike many of the mythological gods. The argument of pagan
derivation assumes too much in the way of parallelism and overlooks the radical
differences.”[5]
Thirdly, cultists distort it. The truth is that
Mormonism will never be Christianity, because, among other things, it denies
the virgin birth of Christ. Mormons believe Mary and God the Father were united
sexually and that Mary was married both to God, the Heavenly Father, and Joseph.
Ezra Benson, a former
president of the Mormon Church wrote, “The body in which Jesus performed his
mission in the flesh was sired by the union of Mary and the same Holy Being we
worship as God, our Eternal Father.” Moreover, Brigham Young stated, “The man
Joseph, the husband of Mary, did not have more than one wife, but Mary the wife
of Joseph had another husband: God.”[6]
The Virgin Birth According to the LDS Church
The idea that Jesus was
conceived as a result of God and Mary having a one-night-stand is not only
repugnant, but it makes Mary out to be polygamist (which apparently the Mormons
don’t mind) and it contradicts the Biblical teaching that it was the Holy
Spirit who overshadowed Mary and created a human nature for the eternal Son of
God (Luke 1:34-35).
I hope you can understand
the seriousness of these attacks. Sowing doubts about the reliability of God’s
Word is one of Satan’s favorite pastimes. His typical strategy is to try to
make some foundational element of a great truth appear insignificant, then
ridicule it and call it into question. If he can get people to doubt or deny
doctrine, then he can eventually destroy their faith and make them captives to
lies. Here are 3 reasons for the centrality of the virgin birth.
·
The doctrine is central to the Scripture’s authority
The virgin birth was
foretold in the Old Testament (Is. 7:14) and fulfilled in the New Testament
(Matt. 1:23). This is very important because, God predicted hundreds of years
in advance that a Savior was coming and He gave His own people all the
distinguishing features of Christ’s coming so they would not miss Him. God
validated His word by sending His Son to earth exactly as He said He would by
miraculously creating life in Mary’s womb. Fulfilled prophecy is an undeniable supernatural
sign that the Bible is uniquely inspired by God and 100% trustworthy.
·
The doctrine is central to the supernatural identity
of Christ
Two essential components
that were needed to ensure that Jesus was a qualified savior was that he had to
be fully human and fully divine. There was only one way God could have met all
of those requirements and that was thru the virgin birth. Consider the
possibilities:
If Jesus would have been
born of an earthly father and mother then He would have been merely a man and the
result would have been a fully human child that inherited the sin nature of his
parents. Another sinner helps no one! In order be rescued you need a Savior who
is not also in need of a rescue! The drowning don’t need doggy-paddlers, they
need the Coast Guard!
On the other hand, if
Jesus would have descended from heaven bathed in ethereal light then He would
have been God, but not man. If Jesus
would have come directly from heaven then he would have lacked a complete
register of human emotions, human experiences, human pain, human joy, human
suffering. We would have been given a
savior that we could not relate to.
But God in his divine
omniscience knew how to meet all the necessary conditions. Because Jesus was not the flesh-and-blood son of Joseph, Christ was able to preserve his
full deity. And the fact that Jesus was
born of woman ensured that Jesus would obtain a full human nature. Through the virgin birth we have Savior that
can reach out and span the infinite gap between God and man.
·
The doctrine is central to the sinless purity of
Christ
The Virgin Birth was God’s
way of circumventing the sinful problem of humanity. How was God going to
preserve the sinless nature of Jesus during that nine month incubation process
while Mary was carrying the fetus of Jesus in her womb? Listen carefully, the
following are the comments of Dr. M.R. DeHann a medical doctor turned Bible
preacher from the 1950s. In his book Chemistry of the Blood he explains:
“It is unnecessary that a
single drop of blood be given to the developing embryo in the womb of the
mother. Such is the case according to scientists. The mother provides the fetus (the unborn
developing infant) with the nutritive elements for the building of that little
body in the secret of her womb, but all the blood which forms in it is formed
inside the embryo itself.
From
the time of conception to the time of the birth of the infant not one single
drop of blood ever passes from mother to child. The placenta that mass of
temporary tissue, better known as ‘afterbirth’, forming the link between mother
and child is so constructed that although the soluble nutritive elements such
as proteins, fats, carbohydrates, salts, minerals and even antibodies pass
freely from mother to child and the waste products of the child’s metabolism
are passed back into the mother’s circulation. No actual interchange of a
single drop of blood ever occurs normally.
All the blood which is in that child is produced in that child
itself. The mother contributes nothing.”[7]
How wonderfully God
prepared for the Virgin Birth long ago when he designed the process of
pregnancy at creation. The foresight was
there all along from the days of Eve. God provided a way whereby Jesus, would
retain his deity, obtain a body human body and still be sinless, so that when
Christ’s blood was shed on the cross redemption and payment for sin was made.
[1]
Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God (Nashville,
TN: W Publishing, 1994), xviii.
[2]
Mark Beliles and Jerry Newcombe, Doubting
Thomas: The Religious Life and Legacy of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Morgan
James Publishing, 2015), 341.
[3]
C.S. Lewis, Miracles (San Francisco: Harper One, 1947), 73-75.
[4]
Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (New
York: Double Day, 2003), 232.
[5]
Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus (Grand
Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 179.
[6]
John Ankerberg and John Weldon, What Do
Mormon’s Really Believe (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 2002), 81.
[7]
M.R. DeHann, The Chemistry of the Blood
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1943), 31.
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