An Apologetic Study

The Why

            Matthew 1:23 "Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us."

            The birth of Jesus is a phenomena that has been preached and wrote about for two thousand years now and for those of us who marvel at the ways of our God it never loses it's wonder. The Church has made the belief in the virgin birth a part of it's universal statement of beliefs that determine whether or not you are in heresy, along with the doctrine of eternal damnation and the imminent event called the Rapture. Ordinarily this is all I would need to hear to place myself on the heretical side of the virgin birth, and indeed, I know there are those that disavow that there ever was a virgin birth. However, I will attempt in this writing to make a case for the reason why I still believe in the virgin birth of Jesus and hopefully bring to light things about the birth that the nominal Church has failed to see or at least to make known.

            It is important to understand the difference between the revelation truth of this third day of Christ's revealing and the truth that the modern Church has preached for the last two thousand years. The difference is that we dare to take the established truth and take it a step further than our forerunners. Most established Church doctrine is based on the obvious instead of the hidden things of God. The early Church father Origen wrote that the scriptures contain three layers of truth, which he likened to the Body, Soul and Spirit.

            The body of the scripture is the outer layer which can be read and understood by all men. It is the most obvious and shallow of the layers of truth contained in the scriptures, and is the most widely accepted view of truth since it does not require any spiritual insight.

            The soul of the scripture is that layer of truth which requires a certain degree of spiritual insight in order to read it with the understanding of the mind of God. This layer is the dimension of the "revealed Word" of God. Revelation Truth is the unveiling of the body of scripture to reveal the hidden meaning within the text that goes beyond the obvious. This dimension deals mostly with individual truths, or revelations. It is, for this reason, a dangerous realm of truth. If not held in check, it has been known to lend itself to puffing up of the ego and tends to lead the revelator to build altars in honor of a specific truth which results in creating "sacred cows", i.e.: truths that become more important than the God that they are meant to reveal. Ultimately, fences are built around these individual revelations. which divide and seal off the believers of that particular truth from those that see anything deeper or shallower. The fences are meant to keep out error, but they also shut the inhabitants off from further truth. Entire denominations have been birthed in this way.

            The Spirit of the scripture is that layer which is the perfect revelation of God's intent and purpose. This layer is the most secret of the scriptures. The primary meaning for the Greek word translated "perfect" is WHOLE. The person that delves into the third layer of scriptural truth is one that must see the end from the beginning, seeing with the sight of the spirit that looks at the WHOLE truth of the plan of God for the ages. You must have a desire to dig under the surface and to see what is beyond the norm in order to come into this dimension. The difference between this layer of truth and the soul of the scriptures is that this layer brings all the individual truths together to form a mosaic of truth. This realm deals with THE truth that is made up of many truths. It channels a lot of streams of truth into one great river of life! As this layer is revealed it opens up to us the vast and complete plan of salvation for mankind. It is a network of truth that opens up doors that interconnect and merge into other doors until we come to understand that "in my Father's house are many mansions", many revelations but only one Truth, Christ Jesus. With this layer in mind, we will endeavor to delve into the Spirit of God's Word concerning the Virgin Birth.

            The Body of this event is that Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary in a manger. We want to go a step further than what is obvious, so we will ask ourselves WHY? What was the reason for the birth of Jesus to be accomplished in this manner? The scripture plainly says that He had to be fully man in order to redeem man from the curse. He had to be tempted in like manner, feel emotions in like manner, die in like manner in order to be our eternal sacrifice. So why not let him be born as we were born? There must have been reasons for this type of birth.

            One of the reasons for this type of birth is found in the obvious. If we study God's Word we find out that God is a God with a purpose, established in Him since the beginning. He is determined to fulfill His will and purpose and shows throughout the history of his dealings with man that He will go to great lengths to accomplish His good pleasure. If we follow His mode of operation we will find that He is not hesitant to change the rules in order to accomplish His intent. Man will never hold God hostage through disobedience. If we continually fail He will remove us and insert someone else. He has been known to have the elder serve the younger, allow Jacob to impersonate Esau, tell Moses to stand back while He consumes the people so He can raise up others, and even seek Moses' life for his disobedience. He is not a God to be messed with when it involves His destiny for creation. He seems to have no qualms about changing horses in the middle of the stream if necessary!

            With this in mind, we draw your attention to the lineage of David. It is out of David's line that Christ is to be born. This is one of the requirements for the birth of Jesus, is that he must come from the tribe of Judah and be born of David's house. The intended lineage is through Solomon. It is Solomon that gets the commission to build the house that his father could not build. However, the lineage from Solomon to Jesus had to be pure. It wasn't. In Jeremiah 22:24, 30 we find a curse placed upon Coniah the son of King Jehoiakim of Judah . "As I live, saith the Lord, though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah were the signet upon my right hand, yet would I pluck thee thence; Thus saith the Lord, write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days: for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah."

            We must never underestimate God's determination concerning His plan for creation. As a result of the evils of Coniah of the house of Solomon, God cuts off the lineage of Solomon and goes through David's other son Nathan. This necessitates that Joseph is left out of the birth process and Mary's lineage is chosen to birth the Savior. All because of the curse on the lineage of Coniah. The virgin birth was not brought about to prove Jesus is the Son of God. It is rather a necessary phenomena to keep the Word of God true as spoken by His prophet Jeremiah.

            This is the obvious truth of the virgin birth. However, there is deeper truth involved here. God was after more than just a pure lineage back to David. This was to make Jesus King of the Jews. But as Paul revealed in his ministry, Jesus was more than the redeemer of Israel , He was to be the savior of the whole world. So God was actually after a lineage that went past David all the way to Adam. Jesus had to be of the same genetic makeup as Adam in order to redeem the house of Adam. The Church misses the point when they just preach Jesus as an Israelite. He was first and foremost a MAN! His purpose was to redeem mankind and His birth by a woman fulfilled this requirement.

            The scriptures contain two accounts of the lineage of Jesus. The book of Matthew starts out with this account in the first sentence: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." Matthew wrote his Gospel with an aim toward a Jewish audience. As a result he gives the lineage from Abraham to Joseph. This satisfies the Jewish inquiry into Jesus' lineage to David and also back to father Abraham.

            The other account found in Luke is written with another audience in mind. Luke goes beyond the obvious and looks at the birth through the eyes of a physician. Luke's medical mind understands the consequences of the birth being virgin, that is, without the involvement of man. As a result, his account of Jesus' lineage is very different from Matthew's. His account starts in Luke 3:23 "And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of JOSEPH, which was the son of HELI," Aha! Here is a marvelous thing. Luke tells us that there is a supposition concerning Jesus' birth and Matthew records that supposition as the lineage of Joseph. But Luke being the physician he was, sees the birth process as a link to our forefathers. Hence, he gives a lineage, but it is the lineage of Mary, even though he uses the name Joseph! Notice in Matthew 1:16 that Joseph's father is listed as Jacob. In Luke 3:23 it is listed as Heli! This is Mary's father and the rest of the lineage is Mary's genealogy. It is still legitimate for Jesus as redeemer of Israel because it ends up in David, albeit, through another son. It is equally astonishing that Luke sees the need to list the genealogy past Abraham all the way to Adam. He saw the fact that Jesus did not come to redeem us from the Jew in us, but rather the sin nature that reigns in us.

            Luke is thinking as a scientist, and as a result he has asked the million dollar question, WHY? Why list the lineage of Joseph if it is indeed a man-less birth? Also, why stop at Abraham if our natural lineage is linked beyond the father of faith? Some of this ability to think past the Abrahamic lineage may be because Luke is "not of the circumcision" and may have been the only Gentile writer of the New Testament. To be sure, Luke is lacking in the knowledge of genetics such as we have available today, but he is aware that God is a God of generations. He is the God OF Abraham, the God OF Isaac, the God OF Jacob. His blessings go from generation to generation as does His judgments. I have often stated that the highest title that can be bestowed on us is to be a man or woman OF God. The word "of" gives us a lineage into Him. It connects us to Him as being of His loins and made up of God-stuff. What an honor to be a part of His lineage. Sons OF God!

            Although God could not talk to our forefathers in terms such as we have today, He did speak to them in ways that were familiar to them in their every day lives. The word "seed" is used in place of what we might think of as sperm. The seed of a man and the seed (egg) of a woman. This was an agricultural term that the average person was familiar with. The pattern of conception is played out in a variety of ways throughout nature and the concept of seeding an empty field and seeing life come forth was known and recognized by all. If you plant an apple seed, you get apples. If you plant wheat seed, you received wheat. Seed produced kind after kind. Jesus used the agricultural aspects of seeding many times in His parables of the Kingdom.      Every once in a while, the bible records an astounding insight by the writers that goes beyond their own knowledge. For instance, the writer of the book of Hebrews states in Hebrews 7:9,10 that not only did Abraham pay tithes to Melchizedek, but "And as I may so say, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, paid tithes in Abraham. For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchizedek met him." Well, I guess you can say that, anointed writer of God! Talk about ministering beyond your knowledge! This old boy is talking genetics here. The premise stated is that we can partake of things both past and future by being OF someone else. And if that isn't enough to curl your toenails, think about the responsibility this places on this present generation. Future generations are depending on what we do in God. If we don't do it, they don't do it. If we are blessed, they are blessed while still in our loins! Mind boggling.

            The two accounts of the lineage of Jesus stated thus far are examples of the body of the scripture and the soul of the scripture. Matthew gave the supposed, logical account, and Luke went a step further into the limited knowledge he had on genealogy.

            In order to reveal the hidden truth of the birth of Jesus we must look at this event through the knowledge that has been given to us in this modern time. It is my conviction that God has kept certain truths and understandings of those truths hidden in Him until a time appointed. He has used many methods of hiding these truths from us. One is to keep our minds veiled with the same veil that was over the face of Moses when he came down from the mountain of God . That is, an ignorance of spiritual things as a result of not being regenerated by His Spirit. Also, He has reserved knowledge of processes in the natural world we live in until this present age of technological wonder. It is important for us to understand that God is the original creator of every chemical, biological, and astronomical wonder in the universe, and it is only in this century that we have been allowed by God to glimpse His handiwork in things that have been invisible to our naked eye, but now are made manifest. We take for granted the ability to look through a microscope and see things that in other ages were counted as spiritual processes because they couldn't be seen with the naked eye. During the terrible plagues that swept through the world in centuries gone by, the cause of the deaths were attributed to spirits and demons. Now we know that there are microscopic viruses and bacteria that we breathe or eat every day and we are in constant battle against these enemies every minute of our life. That, my friend, is privileged knowledge reserved for this age.

            In this study we will be dealing with the virgin birth with some privileged knowledge that other ages were not allowed to have. As a result, we will have an advantage on even the writers of the Bible since God could not speak to them in terms that they would have no way of understanding. We will be using phrases that are not in the Bible but are nevertheless necessary in order to deal with the scientific reality of this glorious event. So, let us study this most mysterious subject that we know as the virgin birth in a new and living revelation!

The How?

Luke 1:26-37. "And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee , named Nazareth , to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible."

            In this study on the Virgin Birth, we have attempted to answer the question WHY?. We shall now attempt to answer the question HOW?. These were the first words that Mary answered the angel Gabriel with. "How shall this be?" This is a reasonable question and we are in an excellent position to throw some light on this dilemma of Mary's. Many times in dealing with God we find Him moving in realms that seem to defy all the laws that we are familiar with. Man tends to put boundaries up according to things he is knowledgeable of and things that he is ignorant of. Those things he is familiar with fall into the category of what is possible, and all unfamiliar items get tossed into the category of impossibilities. God is therefore spending a lot of time getting us familiar with those things termed impossible since it is in this realm that He lives and moves. So, when Jesus says in Mark 9:23 "If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.", He is really telling us that there is a realm that goes beyond our narrow boundaries of perception and knowledge. Another term used for that which is known and unknown is "natural" and "supernatural". Natural being the term used for processes that occur within the parameters of things experienced over and over by the vast majority of civilization, and supernatural being the term used for processes that occur outside of our sphere of knowledge.

            I think we will all agree that if there was truly a virgin birth it would have to fall into the category of the supernatural. However, let us not be confounded by this term and do like the Church has done for two thousand years and say, "I don't understand it, but I believe it anyhow!". The very term supernatural gives us hope. It implies that it is a natural process, accomplished in a super way! In fact, it is my belief that God never breaks His laws of the universe, but rather uses them in a hyper active mode when doing the "impossible". As many of us can attest to, He is still healing our bodies in a supernatural way, but what we know now about our bodies is that there is a built in healing process resident in us all along. When the Spirit moves upon us, certain natural abilities are released in our bodies that accelerate at an incredible rate and cancer is dissolved, heart disease eliminated, broken bones mend, etc. etc.. It is important to remember all of these things occur on a daily basis without our knowledge. Only God knows how many times your body has rejected cancer, or how many other life-threatening diseases we have naturally conquered. Still, God reserves the power to accelerate those healing processes to Himself, and thus is glorified in our healings that fall within the boundary of the supernatural.

            Immortality is a message that involves the metamorphosis from mortality to immortality. Scientists tell us that we age because there is imbedded within the genetic code of our DNA little time bombs that start to go off at a certain age. This is the result of God numbering the days of man and giving him a certain amount of time in the realm of the living. Universally, at a set time of life, genetic switches are thrown that start to cause our cells to explode and die. The final result is aging, deterioration, susceptibility to disease, and finally, death. It is our belief that God is going to "supernaturally" change us from this cursed state of being into a new creature that is no longer subject to aging or dying. HOW? By a natural process hyper-accelerated by the Holy Spirit! If switches can be turned on through a natural process, they can also be turned off by a supernatural process. Oh Hallelujah! Paul said in II Cor. 5:1-4 that if this outer house were dissolved, we would see another house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. He also said we groan, not to be unclothed, but to have our mortality swallowed up of life.

            It is this process of "swallowing" that is the key to the change! When a tadpole changes into a frog, it is not limited to the process of growing legs and arms. It must do away with the tail and gills, literally swallowing them up and dissolving them into its new form. The digestive tract undergoes a transformation from digesting vegetation, to a digestive system that feeds carnivorously. The gills must be done away with and lungs formed. Eventually, the tadpole is no more, and the frog is all that is seen. The same process is involved with the butterfly. Both are  natural processes of change. Is it any harder for God to supernaturally initiate a built in process of growth and elimination in us when the time to change is at hand? It is this similar process that will be used to put on the new man, and swallow up the old form.

            I have used these examples to give us confidence when contemplating the virgin birth. It is only different from our birth because of the term "virgin". The main processes are the same as anyone else's. Jesus was every bit as physically solid as we are. His body had the same organs and systems that ours have. The only difference is in the way He was conceived, which was "supernatural". Notice that when Mary asks, "How can this be?", the angel refers her to Elisabeth, Mary's cousin. She is in her old age, beyond her child bearing years, and yet she has conceived. Not quite the same as Mary's situations to be sure, but still a miracle! There are no easy miracles versus hard miracles. They are all in the realm of the impossible. As Shakespeare wrote, "What is in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet." Whether it is a miracle conception having to do with old age or a virgin birth, it is still the hand of God. The intent here is to give Mary some familiar background. She knew Abraham and Sarah were visited by God in their old age to birth Isaac, the seed of promise. God seemed to be softening the blow of this unusual birth by giving her a point of reference in what He had already done for others. Lastly, the angel says, "For with God nothing shall be impossible".

            Mary is to be honored for her faith in God and her ability to yield to the impossible. Her reply is, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word."! The Catholic Church and others have chosen to give Mary a position above other saints. They give her great authority and a title of "Mother of God". This is a sore point to many in the Protestant ranks, and they choose to rant and rave about this blasphemy at every opportunity. Personally, I don't see her any different than any wonderful saint of God that has dared to believe His word. I do hold her in esteem for her faith however, and honor her in the way I honor the Apostle Paul or any other biblical hero. Just ask yourself what your reaction would have been if you were visited with the same salutation. I have to believe I would have a few more questions than she did! So I say with Elisabeth, "Blessed art thou among women, Mary, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb!".

            The virgin birth is only mentioned a few times in the scriptures. It is not surprising since the focus of the Church through the ages has been on the life, death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. As stated, the in-depth revelation of the birth of Jesus had to wait for a generation that could understand its complexities. The Hebrew viewpoint of man advancing in the plan of God was in the fashion of rowing a boat. One backed into it with the vision toward the past. Christianity has viewed our advancement as one walking with his eyes upon the horizon and what the future holds. One looks only at the past, and the other looks longingly at the future. Our mission in this present age is to view the plan of God from the beginning to the end and from the end to the beginning. We are those of the Alpha and Omega order, the first and the last. Our vision comes from another plane, separate from the present time, out of the mind of the Father, who sees in the totality of His plan of the ages.            Thus we can connect the old and the new and like a pioneer trail blazer, we search out the narrow path of truth that runs like a small vein of pure life throughout the scriptures, making sense out of confusion and answering the critics and the gainsayers. If there is any one thing this present age needs, it is to define the Day. By defining it, I mean to take it out of the shadows of part truths and what men think they believe and revealing what God's word says concerning His plan. We who have ministered this Day have, for whatever reasons, left the scriptural proof of what we see alone, leaving the people at the mercies of a Church system that is full of dead man's bones. These religious graveyards are full of monuments to past heavens and former glories, offering the people of God nothing more than garbage heaps of rotting food, which, if one sifts through enough, there is barely enough sustenance to keep them from perishing. Enough! Let us define the Day! Call forth the wine and the oil, the bread and the grains. Prepare a table of plenty and open the door to the storehouse of God's immeasurable truth.

            As we continue, we will trace the virgin birth of Jesus back to the other virgin birth in the garden. We will show what actually took place in the womb of Mary, as the "power of the highest" overshadowed her. Finally, we will reveal the third birth, the womb of the church, where God is birthing another man, not just a man, and not just a god, but a Godman!

The Who

            So far, we have attempted to answer the questions why? and how?. The WHY was explained when we stated that the virgin birth was necessary to fulfill the pure lineage in the flesh back to David, which was through Mary and not Joseph, due to the curse on Joseph's lineage by reason of Coniah. (Jeremiah 22:24-30) As a result, God re-routed it through Nathan instead of Solomon. We then discussed the HOW by explaining that God moves through natural processes in a super way, thus performing supernatural works. We also showed that a miracle is a miracle regardless of its magnitude. There are no small miracles in God! It takes no greater effort on God's part to heal you of a headache, or a cancerous tumor. So we see throughout the bible instances of miraculous births. Sarah (Gen. 21:1-7)(Romans 4:16-21)(Heb. 11:11,12), Rebekah (Gen. 25:21), Rachel (Gen. 30:23,24), Manoah's Wife (Judges 13:3-24), Hannah (I Sam. 1:19-20), and Elisabeth (Luke 1:13) are all examples of miraculous births, every bit as miraculous as Jesus' was. The birth process itself is really secondary to WHO was being birthed.

            This is also true of Jesus being raised from the dead. He was not the first man to be raised from the dead! Other men had been raised even in Old Testament times. The significance of the resurrection was not in the ACT of raising from the dead, but WHO it was that arose! He was the prototype of all sons to come after Him. He had the power to procreate, i.e., the ability to dominate the gene of the female host! This is what determines the value of a stud horse or a prize bull. They must be able to pass their attributes on to their offspring, without being dominated by the weaknesses of the female. This is true procreation, and, as we will see, is the reason why the actual birth process was not the true miracle, but WHO was birthed.

            However, we must face the fact that there was a physical birth. All the invisible promises of God must take on visibility, or, as the Holy Ghost cried out of Elisabeth, "and blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.". The only difference in the birth of Jesus and, say, that of Samuel,  was that Jesus was born virgin, that is, without sperm. In light of what we stated at the beginning of this article, this is really no big deal to God. If He was able to raise Abraham's sperm count to life again, and to revive a long dead process of making eggs in Sarah, then it is no greater miracle to birth Jesus without sperm.

            Let me at this point take a stand on some irreverent and carnal minded doctrines that have been suggested in the past. God did not have sex with Mary! Neither did Gabriel or any other angelic being. All of the process took place in the WOMB of Mary. The scripture says "And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb." verse 31. It goes on to say that "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee." verse 35. The Greek word for power in this verse is "dunamis" #1411 in the Strong's Concordance. It means "Force; specifically miraculous power; Mighty (wonderful) work". The Greek word for Highest is "Hupsistos" #5310 in the Strong's Concordance. It means "The Supreme (God); highest place". The Greek word for overshadow is ""episkiazo" #1982 in the Strong's Concordance. It means "To cast a shade upon; i.e. (by anal.) to envelop in a haze of brilliancy; fig. to invest with preternatural influence.". This is the same word that is found in Matthew 17:5 at the transfiguration of Jesus. When the disciples suggested building three tabernacles to honor Jesus, Moses and Elijah, a bright cloud enveloped them and a voice said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, hear ye him”. This is the same overshadowing presence that enveloped Mary's womb and the same power from the Highest that transfigured Jesus and later raised him from the dead and is the same miraculous, mighty, wonderful working Holy Spirit that worked the mysterious work of God within her reproductive system and brought forth the Savior of the world. What a mighty God we serve, people!

            God let Mary know that it is the same miraculous power visiting her that has in times past visited the wombs  of old testament women. Indeed, their testimonies may be the reason why Mary received this word with so much faith. As an added assurance, the angel tells Mary that Elisabeth has also conceived IN HER OLD AGE. And, finally, the statement: "For with God nothing shall be impossible."

            Eventually, we will delve into what actually took place in Mary's womb. We will stick to our premise that God moves within the confines of His natural laws and processes but uses them supernaturally. We will take advantage of the God-given knowledge available to us in our present age and try to present a scenario of the physical performance of God's promise to Mary, and to the entire creation, that He would send a savior to redeem us from the curse of Adam and to be our elder brother, or, the one through whom our inheritance flows. We will be using some scientific terms that we will do our best to use in such a way that we all can grasp the meaning of them. Do not let the unfamiliarity of the terms intimidate you. If we can understand the types and shadows of the tabernacle in the wilderness, surely we can comprehend the types and shadows of the house pitched without hands. Indeed, as we will show if God permits, they are both one and the same!

            To understand the difference between the virgin birth and a normal birth, we must first know the details of the normal conception. Every one of us were conceived by a union of our mother and father. There has not been a spermless birth outside of Jesus. Many think that the virgin birth of Jesus exempted Him from being like us. In fact, He had to be just like us in order to redeem us. Some think that denial of their adamic roots will somehow assure them a spiritual exemption from death, but I must tell you dear ones, we have all received the mark of Adam and will only be released from the dominance of that gene by being born again, of an incorruptible seed. Titles (Sons of God; Kingdom People; Life Preacher) and about 75 cents will get you a cup of coffee, but that's all. We must be born again from the power of the highest overshadowing our nature and transforming our man.

First Adam - Last Adam

Gen 2:21-23  “And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;  And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.  And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. (KJV)

     To understand the significance of the virgin birth of Jesus, we must connect this miraculous birth with another earlier miraculous birth, that of Adam. It is of utmost importance to comprehend the connection of the two. Indeed, when dealing with revelatory truth, we must always ask, how does this truth fit into the entire plan of God? Does it enhance the flow of understanding from the Alpha to the Omega? Is there a relevancy to other biblical events that clarifies the thread of truth that runs through the plan of the ages from beginning to finish? We hope to demonstrate that there is a connection between the earthly beginnings of Adam and the earthly beginnings of Jesus. Jesus is the Son of God. Adam was the Son of God. Luke 3:38 "Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God."(KJV) First the natural, then the spiritual. First the sin, then the cure. First corruption, then incorruption. First Adam's birth, then Jesus' birth.

     The first virgin birth was that of Adam. He was the first of his kind, mankind. He was created by God out of the dust of the earth and was breathed into by the breath of God and became a living soul. He was a spirit man wrapped inside a dust body. His body was composed of the same elements as the rest of creation. He was chemically, and biologically an earth man, but in spirit, he was a heavenly man. He was man, but was made up of both feminine and masculine qualities.    There was none like him in all the universe. He was the only one of his kind in earth or in heaven. He was the first God-Man. He was a heavenly creature wrapped and swaddled into corruptible earth. He was both terrestrial and celestial, both light and darkness, both life and death. He was the first of many to fall from grace. He was both great and terrible. No wonder all of the Elohim was gathered around this strange and frightening creature. There must have been a pause in heaven, as when one catches his breath when startled, when the act had been accomplished. For now, the process has begun, God's plan was set into motion and there was no turning back. The creature was subjected into vanity and nothing could save him but God's everlasting grace, which was to find its way into the world in like manner, born of a virgin, wrapped in humanity, another God-Man. But this time He would come as the Redeemer, the Anointed One, the savior of the world, Emmanuel, the Son of the Highest, our Lord and King, Christ Jesus!

     Adam was the first house pitched without hands. He was the true tabernacle, the House of God. God must have a house to dwell in. He must be seen in His house, not the church buildings we meet in, but this house that we are, our body. We will always have a body. Even when we lay this body down, we have another body, eternal in the heavens. II Cor. 5:1 states "For we know that, if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." Literally translated this says that "If our earthly house of our tent were to be loosed from its parts and separated, we would see an unfinished house being built, eonian in the heavenlies." God wants a new body to dwell in. He is a God of the living and not the dead. This means He can only be revealed in the way He wants to be revealed, through the living. Those that have passed on to be with the Lord live in God, but we who remain are the only ones that God lives in! The focus and working of the Spirit is on our side of the river. Redemption must come from the visible side toward the invisible side. They can visit us, encourage us, groan for us, but we must be their saviors.

     As stated, Adam was made up of both male and female genetics. When God created Adam, he created him with the same genetic material that we have. We are his offspring. This genetic material that we pass on to each successive generation was a mystery to mankind until around 1953. That was the year that an English biochemist, Francis Harry Compton Crick and an American biochemist, James Dewey Watson presented to the world a molecular structure of our genetic material found in the nucleus of all human cells. It was the first time anyone had given form and structure to the nucleic acid responsible for birth and cell replication. The name for this beautiful and awesome structure is Deoxyribonucleic Acid, or simply DNA. I am sure you have heard it mentioned on the TV or read about it in the paper. This remarkable discovery reveals to us for the first time in all history what the great original Genetic Engineer made man from.

     The structure of DNA is that of a double helix, which, when straightened out, looks just like a ladder or a spiral staircase. It has two ribs, or sides that are joined to each other with rungs of genetic material. When our cells go through cellular division, the ladder of DNA separates the two ribs from one another, much like a zipper, and one half of the chromosomes go to one side of the cell and the other half go to the other side, and the cell divides, replicating itself and creating two exact copies. This is the process of mitosis. When creating sperm cells, or egg cells, the cell divides and separates as before, but retains only one rib of DNA, or a half of a ladder. This is the process of meiosis.

            The sperm is half of the man's ladder and the egg is half of the woman's ladder. When joined in the womb, they unite to form a new ladder, complete with two sides, one donated by the man, the other by the woman. This is now a new creature, made up of one half of its father's material and one half of its mother's material. This single cell wonder is termed a Zygote. It is neither egg nor sperm now, but a new thing! When it duplicates again in the womb, it will create two cells, each one having a complete ladder within it. Each time it multiplies it will be multiplying under the same genetic pattern that was in the DNA of the Zygote. It will follow the pattern and produce the head, feet, arms, lungs, brain, and so on until a complete baby is birthed from the womb of the mother. This is the wonder of the birth process, as dictated by the Master Genetic Engineer, God Almighty.

     Keeping all of this in mind, let us go on to the birth of Adam. His mother was the earth, being made from the dust. We bear the same chemical components found in the earth and atmosphere around us. Physically, we are products of the elements found in our planet. As we have said, Adam was a mixture, or compound, of that which is spiritual and that which is natural. This is what separates us from all other created beings. We are both. Adam was so unique, he could not join himself with any of the creatures made before him. So the Lord caused a deep sleep to come on Adam and He took one of Adam's ribs and from that rib He made a woman.

     I am sure this has been preached on thousands of times, but I would like us to take the present day knowledge that I have stated in the previous paragraphs and apply that knowledge to this account. This is the first genetic surgery ever performed. The scripture says God took from Adam one of his ribs and closed up his flesh instead thereof. This follows the example of zipping and unzipping the DNA molecule. God unzipped Adam's molecular structure and took from it the rib of DNA material, and then through the process of mitosis, He zipped the ladder back up, or, as the bible states, He closed the flesh up. For a long time, when I was a young Christian, I thought women had one extra number of ribs in their rib cage. Otherwise, this account is wrong if taken literally, since it says God closed Adam's side back up and never gives him his rib back. We have 24 ribs, 12 on each side. Both men and women. These are all very significant Biblical numbers, but that is another message.

            The word for rib in the Hebrew is Strong's # 6763 tsala` "a rib (as curved) literally (of the body) or figuratively (of a door, i.e. leaf) hence, a side, literally (of a person) or figuratively (of an object or the sky, i.e. quarter); architecturally, a (especially floor or ceiling) timber or plank." It comes from Strong's # 6760 tsalah "curve; to limp (as if one-sided)". Does any of this sound familiar to you? The word for rib denotes a curved timber or plank. It is mostly used in context of building foundations and deals directly with material used for the flooring and ceiling. The DNA structure is called the building block of the body. It is our genetic foundation and it is curved into a double helix. It is this structure that God took one rib of, or one side of, and made woman. He literally performed the first cell division that we call meiosis, or the dividing of a diploid DNA structure into a haploid structure, used in conception.

     The scripture says He made a woman. The word used for made in the Hebrew is Strong's # 1129 banah, "to build". He built the woman from the genetic material in Adam's DNA that was both masculine and feminine. In Jacob's dream, in Genesis 28:12-13 it states "And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed." There is no doubt in my mind that Jacob saw the structure that we have finally seen in our century. Jacob's ladder is the DNA structure that connects us to God. It is the ladder that guarantees us audience and relationship with an invisible God. It connects heaven and earth, man and God, and is the pattern of the tabernacle pitched by God and not man. Is it just coincidence that Jacob is moved to name that place Bethel (the house of God)? God even speaks to him the pattern of passing blessings on from generation to generation, seed to seed. He is the God OF Abraham, the God OF Isaac, and the God of their son Jacob, who was to be the type of Christ, experiencing a change of name (nature) from Jacob into Israel, from Adam into Christ.

     We know how God spoke to Moses to make sure he built all things according to the pattern. Genesis 25:8,9,40 "And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them. According to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it... and look that thou make them after their pattern, which was shewed thee in the mount." The word for pattern here is Strong's # 8403 tabniyth "structure; by implication, a model, resemblance". It comes from the root word #1129 banah. This is the same word used for God "made" a woman. After the sin in the garden, Adam called the woman, Eve, the mother of all living. She was the model, the resemblance of Adam. Just as the Church is the model and resemblance of Christ. There are two patterns in the earth, or two images (icons). One is the pattern of the limited, corruptible tabernacle. The other is the pattern of the true, unlimited, eternal tabernacle. Each has its own life and dynamics. One leads to life, the other to death. Jesus Christ came to bring both patterns, or ribs, together to form a new thing, a new man, a new wonder.

     Is it any coincidence dear ones that the very word used in the bible (rib) is found in the word that the scientific  community has chosen to call our genetic material, deoxyRIBonucleic acid? I will let you decide if these events are chance or by design. As for me, I cannot escape the fact that God has reserved some truths for this day that could not be revealed to other ages except in types and shadows, always looking through a cloudy mirror, bound not by unrighteousness but by dispensation. In this feast of Tabernacles, is it not fitting that God would show us Jacob's ladder, not in a dream, but in reality. The invisible has become visible and the dark and mysterious things are being learned by babes.

     The first time I saw a human cell, I saw the pattern shown to Moses in the mount. Not a building of wood and metal, but a living organism, the very thing God has been after all along. There, inside the cell walls stood the outer courts with their activities of cleansing and moving in and out of the outer wall. The cell membrane is differential in it's structure, allowing certain things in but keeping other things out, much like the outer courts of the Tabernacle of Moses. The cell even has its own Levitical priesthood, keeping the tabernacle clean and performing priestly duties of maintenance and communication to the rest of the body.

            Look a little closer and you will see the nucleus of the cell, the Holy place, separated from the rest of the cell by another veil of cell membrane. The nucleus is like a cell within a cell. It's membrane is even more differential in nature than the outer court membrane. It is here that the cell receives it's instructions on how to operate and divide. Mysterious communications to and from the rest of the vast body is kept intact by complex exchanges of intelligence received and given by a specialized class of priests called ribosomes.

            Look even closer and you see a third chamber, the holy of holies of the cell. The nucleic membrane of this final chamber is extremely picky about what it allows through. This is holy ground. This is the dwelling place of the Shekinah glory of the body. It is from this inner chamber that the wings of the cherubim join together and the testimony of who we are and all that has been before us is stored. Adam's genes are in here along with every other descendant. The testimony is made up of both the good and the bad of our forefathers. Some genes give life and health, others give disease and infirmity. It is all there, the good, the bad, the ugly. It is a great and terrible place. From this holy place the command comes to grow, mature, live, heal, and later in life, to age, shrink, hurt, and to die. It is where cursing and blessing both live, health and disease, mortality and immortality, all is locked up within the double helix of DNA that calls this place home.

            When God numbered man's life, He put a genetic code of death in our genes. It is a medical fact that at a certain time of our life, genetic time bombs start going off and our cells start dying at a faster rate than when we were young. It is this death process that some of us are looking to see done away with in Christ. It is called the message of immortality and life. This will be a supernatural event, meaning that natural processes will be used in a super way to perform the miraculous. It is my belief that there is an original code of life imbedded within our cells. This pre-fall code is still intact genetically, but is superceded by the curse of Adam, which in reality is a genetic death. God spoke it out from the Logos, but fulfilled it through the DNA pattern of a limited life. If God reverses the curse and commands life to come out of death, then it follows that it will be fulfilled genetically also. This agrees with the language that Paul used in I Cor. 15:53,54, "For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory." Nothing is destroyed here in the literal sense, it is swallowed up into life. A genetic code of death is superceded and swallowed up by a genetic code of life!

            To see Deoxyribonucleic Acid through a regular microscope, it looks like a dark, cloudy mass,  Look into this through an electron microscope and you find it is not cloudy at all but made up of Chromosomes, the dwelling place of DNA. And it is here that you realize that you have looked into the face of God and have seen what prophets of old saw through dim visions and dreams, and you have seen things that you are not worthy to even consider. It humbles you and causes tears to fall from your face as you count yourself as the lowest of the low. If only Paul or Peter or Origen or Eusibius or other mighty men of the past could have seen this, what glory they could have wrought. Paul could only preach on gross anatomy, i.e. hands, feet, head, etc.. What would he have been able to do with the knowledge that we have? After all, it was unto Paul that God revealed the message of being the God of the whole world and not just the God of the Jew. Paul saw a spiritual seed that had it's beginnings in Adam, prior to the Abrahamic covenant. It is that singular seed, which is the genetic inheritance that we all share, whether black or white or brown or red, American or Spanish or African or Russian or Israelite, it comes from a common beginning and will culminate in a common end.

             Physical immortality is not the ultimate goal. It is Incorruptibility, the change of nature that will give us eternal joy and peace in our God. Without partaking of the Father's divine nature, physical immortality would be the closest thing to eternal torment that man could ever see. However, it is the combination of both immortality and incorruptibility that will identify this new creature. The ladder that Jacob beheld connects heaven to earth, and God to man. Help us, Oh Lord. Unknown to us, we have laid sleeping in the very place the Most High God dwells in, Bethel, the House of God, who we are.

The Third Virgin Birth