8. The Conception of Jesus Christ
The moment Mary said these words, "Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word," the Lord Jesus Christ was conceived in her womb.
I received the following question in my email. This question has stirred up a whole lot that I have been pondering in my heart, and I want to answer it through the articles in this volume.
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This (The Entrance of the Holy) was a great blessing and I read it many times. I have a couple of questions I hope you will answer. The illustration you gave of the Father and Mary at the cross was priceless… are you saying that although the circumstances of our birth are different from Jesus, that in being born from above in opening our hearts to the Father and all He accomplished in Jesus that we actually become sons of God in the same way as Jesus with the only difference being that He is the First Begotten of the Father?
What you are pointing to would be fiercely rejected by mainstream Christianity… I don’t care personally about orthodoxy, only about entering in the greatest possible way into the ultimate purpose of God.
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There are three very big questions that confront each of us. 1. Who are we? 2. What is our relationship with God? 3. What is our purpose and mission?
These three questions I circle around in all of my writing over and over. I have an entire series exploring the question of who we are. Many of my letters are an attempt to explore the nature of our relationship with God, and, of course, our mission.
We must start with one of the things we know absolutely about ourselves. John said, “It has not yet been revealed what we shall be.” In other words, we do not know who we are.
We do not know who we are.
There we must start, but keeping in mind Paul’s statement that the Holy Spirit reveals to us the hidden things that are not known. I have learned this over thirtyyears about the revealing that comes by the Holy Spirit – even though a revelation of the Holy Spirit can alter our thinking and our path, yet our minds change only slowly, bit by bit, over years of His dealings. At the present time, one does not go from ignorance to full knowing in an instant. The human psyche cannot handle such a change.
First, we must see for real by faith before we will see outwardly.
Most Christians imagine they know exactly who they are and where they are going. We do not. That is one of the biggest differences between ourselves and most of Christianity. And that is why I spend so much time hammering against the doctrine of heaven as the goal of the believer. Most Christians will say, “I am a sinner saved by grace and going to heaven.” Unless that whole thing is somehow shattered and cast off, a Christian cannot agree with John that we don’t know who we are, and thus be free to be taught by the Holy Spirit.
But we cannot begin to know who we are until we know who the Lord Jesus Christ is, and so a study of our union with Christ must begin with “Christology,” or a study of Christ.
Who is Christ? — What is His relationship with the Father? — What is His purpose and mission?
If we can answer these questions correctly, then we can know who we are, what is our relationship with the Father, and what is our purpose and mission. John said that when we “see” and thus “know” the Lord Jesus Christ, we are just like Him. Whatever He is, we are. Whatever we are, He is.
Now, in answering these questions, I want to stay with what God says in the New Testament, and with all that God says. I despise the practice of pitting one thing God says against another. If you see something God says in the New Testament that I miss, then I will gladly add that understanding, but I will not use it to eliminate something else God says.
I care nothing for any other source of understanding outside of the New Testament as it is revealed to our spirits by the Holy Spirit.
First, what Christ is not. Jesus Christ is not “God the Son.” God never found it needful to say “God the Son,” or “God the Holy Spirit” in the Bible. People make that up. God does say, over and over, “God the Father,” but the Son and the Spirit are called only “the Son of God” and “the Spirit of God.” Again, I care nothing for the orthodox definitions of “the Trinity,” only for what God actually says.
Second, Christ is not the Father. I understand the “Jesus only” teaching and find it to be empty, just one of many ways to use one thing God says to eliminate other things God says, one more way to echo the serpent in the garden. Jesus said, “The Father and I are One.” He also said, “The Father is greater and mightier than I.” Both words. Paul said, “There is one God, the Father, and one Mediator between God and man, the MAN, Christ Jesus.” God is not a man. I have written out every verse containing reference to both Father and Son. The argument of the apostles in every instance was that Jesus Christ is subordinate to the Father and that Christ Jesus is a Man.
Third, Christ is not some “Force” separate from the Person of the Lord Jesus. That is not a New Testament teaching. The apostles always equated “Christ” with the Lord Jesus. Those who want Christ without Jesus must follow their own spirits into the ether. And they are terrifyingly on their own; I don’t want to know where they go. Maybe they have never failed, stumbling head first into the mud as I have. I sure don’t know what I’m doing, and I really don’t believe they do either. I need One, my close Friend, upon whose breast I can lean my head. I need Him, and I will always need Him. A million years from now, I will need the Lord Jesus Christ as much as I need Him now.
Now, just as most Christians claim that they know who they are and where they are going, so they claim that they know who God is and who Christ is.
I will make this assertion. The understanding most Christians hold in their minds concerning the nature of God, of Christ, of salvation, and of themselves comes almost entirely from things they read about in the Bible, or hear from some church authority, drawn through the spirit, the definitions, and the denials of the serpent and lodged in their carnal minds. When I say, “carnal minds,” I mean minds that think separation from God.
And this is the problem. Christians use Bible and “Christian” phrases to talk and think about God. But they do not realize that their minds use those “Bible” things to build and promote Satan’s definition of God. The definition and view of God held in Satan’s mind (an image of himself) is the definition and view of God held in the minds of most believers, including ourselves, still in some ways.
Let me ask of us these questions. Are we walking in all the fullness of God? Do mighty rivers of life flow out of us visibly transforming all things we pass by? Are we manifesting the full measure of the stature of Christ? Do we see all things God says in the New Testament fulfilled in all fullness in our lives right now?
All we need to do is answer, “No.” And thus understand that we ourselves still hold many definitions of God and of ourselves that are of satanic origin.
As John said, “We do not know who we are.” We must begin here. Anyone who says, “But I know…” has cut him or herself off from the truth by calling God a liar.
Paul said it this way, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to Face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.” 1 Corinthians 13
I receive responses to my letters from two kinds of people. One kind is from those who are seeking to know the Lord with me, the other is from those who already “know” and who “need” to set me straight in some way. The brother whose questions sparked this letter from me is one whose “deep” longing to know the Lord meets the same “deep” inside of me. But I never find any place of connection with the spirits of those who already “know.”
When you click on the “What We Believe” button on most Christian websites, you read the same thing – the Nicene Creed – or some alteration thereof.
The Nicene Counsel was a gathering of intoxicated (as in drunk) bishops (think religious-political power) quarrelling at each other and presided over by a non-Christian dictator who gained power to dominate people’s lives by murdering thousands. The Nicene Counsel was a significant part of that worst of centuries in the history of the Christian church, the full and final fall into Roman darkness. May I suggest that the Nicene Creed is not the beginning of our path to know who Christ is and thus to know who we are?
So how do we begin to know who Christ is? There is only one place my heart knows to start – with a little teenage girl in the hill country of Galilee. I write these words with tears streaming down my face and with the thought that we will never know God until we know Mary. And I say that with the very opposite in mind of what Catholicism has done with her.
It was in Mary’s womb that the eternal became time, that God “became” a man, that God becomes knowable, first to earth, and then, somehow, to heaven as well. I place quotation marks around “became,” because of Jesus’ words, “I am the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
What happened in that little room in a stone house in that dusty village when this most-contrary-to-all-human-understanding of things happened. We know Mary was young, let’s say not yet sixteen years old. (The typical age of marriage for young ladies before modern times was 13-15.)
Let’s look at the exact words that she heard.
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And having come in, the angel said to her, “Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!”
But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of greeting this was. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name JESUS. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.”
Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?”
And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. Now indeed, Elizabeth your relative has also conceived a son in her old age; and this is now the sixth month for her who was called barren. For with God nothing will be impossible.”
Then Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her. Luke 1
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The moment Mary said these words, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word,” the Lord Jesus Christ was conceived in her womb.
Let us speculate on what actually happened. To do that, we must draw on the understanding that the physical realm is directly connected to the realms of spirit. Things in the heavens are seen in physical form in the earth, and things seen in the earth have their direct counterparts in things in the heavens. Nothing found in the physical operates separately from the substance of the spiritual realms.
Let’s start with the words coming into Mary’s ears. Her ears heard because the air vibrated a certain frequency, and her brain interpreted that “air frequency” into meaning in Mary’s mind. But the physical vibrations in the air were simply an extension of the Word issuing forth from the Father. Next, Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord!” Those words came out of Mary’s heart; she was a descendant, a daughter of David through his son, Nathan. The heart of David beat in Mary more than in most of his other descendants. Mary believed what God said with all of her heart.
The faith of the human heart IS the entrance of the Holy into the visible. At the same moment that Mary said, “Be it unto me according to Your word,” her egg was traveling down her fallopian tube. Every single egg that Mary carried in her ovaries had been there from before her birth. The egg that was dislodged for that time had jostled among the many others she had carried all her life.
I want to include here two definitions I just pulled up from the Internet.
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Unlike men, who produce new sperm daily throughout most of their lifetime, women are born with all their eggs in one – okay, two baskets (ovaries). To be more precise, a woman is born with about one to two million immature eggs, or follicles, in her ovaries.
Throughout her life, the vast majority of follicles will die through a process known as atresia. Atresia begins at birth and continues throughout the course of the woman’s reproductive life. When a woman reaches puberty and starts to menstruate, only about 400,000 follicles remain. With each menstrual cycle, a thousand follicles are lost and only one lucky little follicle will actually mature into an ovum (egg), which is released into the fallopian tube, kicking off ovulation. That means that of the one to two million follicles, only about 400 will ever mature.”
http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/1639.html
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A woman’s eggs are fully formed and stowed away in her ovaries from before birth. Each mature egg contains one copy of each gene in the human genome – half the amount necessary for life. (Each sperm also contains a single copy of each gene in the human genome.)
The maximum number of eggs that a woman will ever have is the number she has when she’s a 20-week-old fetus. She’ll have about 7 million of them then, 600,000 when she’s born, and about 400,000 at puberty. Once a woman hits puberty and menstruation begins, her ovaries release one of those eggs every 28 or so days.
During each cycle, even though multiple eggs start to develop, hormonal signals ensure that only a single egg will be released and the other eggs will regress. – Dr. Michael Roizen
http://www.sharecare.com/question/how-many-eggs-born-with
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It is pointless to speculate on “which egg God chose,” the important thing is that it was Mary’s human egg, carrying one half of the genome of the coming Lord Jesus Christ.
As this egg, released by the hormonal signals of Mary’s body, traveled down her fallopian tube, everything was normally human and physical and earthly until something quite extraordinary happened.
Mary’s words, spoken from her heart, allowed God to do something He had never done before within any part of His creation. Through Mary’s heart, God Himself entered actual creation.
Now, let’s reiterate this truth. I believe that Jesus’ words, “Our Father who art in heaven,” are to be taken metaphorically, that is, the “in heaven,” part. His purpose in saying that was to lift the eyes and hearts of those hearing Him up above the earthly plane, to cause them to see beyond the limitations of their earthly eyes. But we know that God is not known as He really is by heaven. Heaven is the source of evil in the universe and in our lives; and heaven cannot know God except as He comes through earth. The highest of heavenly beings must look to earth to know their Creator.
The entrance of God into visibility, into the fullness of His heart’s desire, began through Mary’s heart, specifically expressed through her words, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.”
It is not possible to build any true understanding of God, who He is, of Christ, who He is, or of ourselves, who we are, except we begin right here.
If you are interested, here is a video depicting conception.
http://health.discovery.com/videos/ultimate-guide-to-pregnancy-monthone.html
There is one difference with Jesus’ conception; there are no competing sperm cells. But make note of the profound truth shared at the end of this short video, although the three-week-old fetus is tied in safely to its mother’s uterus, we cannot see what it is by looking at it.
But let’s follow the path of the male sperm that pierced and entered into Mary’s egg. That male sperm began in the Father. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” In the spiritual realms, in the heavenlies, the sperm of God is called “the Word.” Issuing forth from the Father, the male sperm became the words coming out of Gabriel’s mouth; that male sperm became the vibrations in the air that Mary picked up through her ears; that male sperm became the understanding in Mary’s mind that was instantly embraced by her heart; that male sperm passed through Mary’s heart and came upon her egg traveling down her fallopian tube. And in that moment, something quite unbelievable happened – the male sperm of God became flesh. At the moment that the Word issuing forth from the Father pierced Mary’s egg, it became physical atoms arranged in the form of organic chemicals. It became human DNA.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory.
Jesus is who man is. Jesus is the second Man, but the last Adam. The first Adam was the first man. He held the potential of being a real man, that is, he was a man in innocence, but he failed to eat of the tree of life. This is a strange thing we are contemplating here. (I am drawing from Romans 5 and from 1 Corinthians 15).
First, let’s dispose of Adam. Jesus was the last Adam. That is, part of what formed Him as He developed in Mary’s womb was an aspect of the first Adam. Jesus was not “fallen” in Adam’s sin, but He walked in the “likeness of sinful flesh,” and thus carried all that Adam became in his collapse into darkness to the cross and became the very LAST Adam. When Jesus died, Adam died. There is no more Adam.
Stepping, now, far away from Adam, we look at Jesus as the second Man. But Jesus became a real Man. For the sake of His bride, who is fallen into deception and prostitution, Jesus climbed the tree of life, piercing His hands and His feet, and obtained the fruit of that tree for our redemption.
Jesus is the only real human being who has ever walked this earth. And He became fully real after His physical resurrection. We cannot know what man is unless we know what Jesus is.
We also understand this, the death of Adam in the fullness of times upon the cross was always eternally true in the nature and being of God. Because of that, we can look at the physicality of Mary’s egg without worrying one moment about Adam.
The entirety of Christianity, and the mind of the serpent in Christianity, cries thus: “If you want to know what man is, if you want to know who you are, look at the fall of Adam.”
But the entirety of the New Testament, as God is opening our eyes to see, cries thus: “If you want to know what man is, if you want to know who you are, look at the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
I have spent much time writing about the fall of Adam, not at all to know who we are, but rather to understand the incredible lie of the serpent. We must understand that lie in order to recognize it when it casts its shadow upon our thinking, and thus to be free enough to cut it off. The reason that is necessary for us is that the lie always couches itself inside of “verses” and inside of Christian theology. It takes a bold faith in what God actually says to cast off the lie.
Okay, okay, Adam is buried. Let’s turn far away from him.
Jesus is the first real Man; and He is the first real Man in His ascension.
What is man? There is only one possible way to know what man is and that is to know what took place, here, in Mary’s fallopian tube.
The Word is the genetic code of God. The Word is the description of all that God is. The Word as a Spirit-substance is identical in God as human DNA is in the human body. Human DNA was designed by God, not just as a picture, a metaphor, a copy of the Word inside Himself, but even more than that, human DNA is the physical extension of God’s DNA. What that means, I do not know, nor do I feel to take that statement into human reasoning.
The Word is the DNA of God.
We have already looked at the path that God’s DNA, His Word, took as it issued forth from His bowels and has arrived, now, upon the outside of Mary’s egg. As that Word pierced the wall of that egg, it became physical atoms, arranged in organic chemicals. It became human DNA.
In that moment, two DNA’s became one. In actuality, as we read earlier, “Each mature egg contains one copy of each gene in the human genome – half the amount necessary for life. (Each sperm also contains a single copy of each gene in the human genome.)”
Let me include another bit I found on the Internet.
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DNA is the carrier of our genetic information, and is passed down from generation to generation. All of the cells in our bodies, except red blood cells, contain a copy of our DNA.
At conception, a person receives DNA from both the father and mother. We each have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Of each pair, one was received from the father and one was received from the mother. These 23 pairs of chromosomes are known as nuclear DNA because, with the exception of red blood cells, they reside in the nucleus of every cell in our body.
The 23rd chromosome is known as the sex chromosome. As with the other chromosomes, one is inherited from the father, and one from the mother. The 23rd chromosome from the mother is always an X. From the father, a person either inherits an X chromosome or a Y chromosome. The chromosome inherited from the father determines their gender. An X from the father would result in an XX combination, which is a female. A Y from the father would result in an XY combination, which is a male.
http://www.familytreedna.com/understanding-dna.aspx
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From these words we can understand a number of things. First, both male and female come from the father. Female is as much from the father as male.
Next, look at that comment about red blood cells. I found this site that explains things further. You really ought to read all of it; these things are profound.
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To tell this story to your students, perhaps an example would be useful. Compare a cell to a building project. You have a blue-print that many workers will use to make sure they’re building the structure properly. If the blue-print goes away, the workers can still do work, but they can’t go check the blue print. With the cell, you have various workers (proteins, RNA, etc.) that interact with DNA to do their respective tasks. If the DNA is gone, the various cellular components are still there, and they can still do their jobs. In red blood cells, even without DNA, there is still hemoglobin that can bind oxygen.
Without the blueprint, after a while, mistakes will pile up and eventually the building process will break down (for building and for cells). Without the ability to make new proteins, the cell will die more quickly. Also, the cell can’t reproduce without its DNA, just like you can’t start a new building without any plans.
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/mole00/mole00828.htm
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Then, let’s look at the union that takes place.
Inside the egg cell, continuing on down Mary’s fallopian tube towards her womb, is found the one side of the chromosome pair. Then, the Word issuing out of the Father’s bosom carries in it the other side of the chromosome pair. That “divine” side of the chromosome seeks out and fuses with the side of the chromosome that came from the very human Mary.
From now on, every part of Jesus’ physical body is designed according to this matched pair, one side of which came out of the being of God and one side of which came out of the being of Mary. Mary and God fused together as one. That is now the blueprint by which proteins in Mary’s egg began to reproduce the life of that one cell as it divided again and again, very quickly, to form the basis of God manifest in the flesh.
I find, here, that I have no interest in conjecturing about the “soul” of Jesus and its entrance into the picture. The truth we are searching for is sufficient in this picture so far. Whatever Jesus was and is in His soul and in His spirit, it follows the exact same pattern, one half coming from Father God and one half coming from His human mother, fused together in all ways as one.
Jesus is MAN. Over and over, He called Himself the Son of man. Christianity has tried to make Him God; He is not. Jesus is a real Man, fully God and fully man fused together as one.
Whatever Jesus was as He walked this earth, whatever Jesus is in His ascension, fully God and fully man, is what He was in the beginning, and what He is forever and ever. “I am the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
Let me finish by quoting several verses from the New Testament.
Having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever. 1 Peter 1
But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. Romans 8
And her child was caught up to God and His throne. Revelation 12
You must be born again. John 3
There is far more depths of reality in these verses and many more than we have ever considered. We need to consider again the conception of the believer. What really happened when we were born again?