The Virgin Birth

Why I Believe in...

THE VIRGIN BIRTH OF CHRIST

Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”

In many quarters, ecclesiastical as well as secular, belief in the Virgin Birth of our Lord Jesus Christ is considered unworthy of twentieth-century intelligence. Biologically, such a birth is impossible. Science with claims of absolute authority has pronounced against it. Who dares to challenge the "all knowing" of such an eminent authority?

This assault on the doctrine of the Virgin Birth is, however, but one phase of a great battle to evacuate the supernatural from Christianity and to reduce it to the plane of natural religion. These naturalists in religion are out to destroy supernatural Christianity. They go through the Bible and tell us there is no supernatural revelation there; they go through the Birth of Christ and tell us there is no supernatural incarnation there; they go through the Person of Christ and tell us there is no supernatural deity there... they go through the Works of Christ an tell us there are no supernatural miracles there; they go through the Words of Christ and tell us there is no supernatural wisdom there; they go through the Death of Christ and tell us there is no supernatural atonement there; they go through the Blood of Christ and tell us there is no supernatural cleansing there; and they go through the Tomb of Christ and tell us there is no supernatural resurrection there.

Having removed the supernatural from the Gospel Ship they have reduced her to an old hulk, a derelict to be destroyed by the storms of unbelief and the reefs of infidelity.

Moses said well, "For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges. For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter: Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps." Deuteronomy 32:31-33.

As a fundamentalist I believe in a supernatural Christianity which presents a supernatural Christ Who had a supernatural Birth, Who lived a supernatural Life, Who died a supernatural Death, Who rose in a supernatural Resurrection, and Who is coming again in a supernatural Manner. To discredit the Virgin Birth is not only to strike at the nature of Christ but at the very power of God.

THE RESULT OF REJECTING THE VIRGIN BIRTH. Before coming to my reasons for believing the Virgin Birth let me point out briefly what is the alternative.

1. To reject the Virgin Birth is to ascribe the sin of sexual promiscuity to Mary. Before her marriage Mary was found with child. If this was not by an act of God then Mary must have been guilty of fornication. I cannot entertain the possibility that our Glorious Saviour came into being by an act of sexual promiscuity. Yet this is what is involved in rejecting the Virgin Birth. To reject the Virgin Birth is to imply that our Lord was a nameless bastard. What honest person could say that the Virgin Birth is not essential?

2. To reject the Virgin Birth is to imply that our Lord Jesus Christ was an imposter and liar. He claimed to be the only begotten Son of God. How could He be that, when in reality He was, according to blaspheming modernists, the bastard child of a fallen woman? Such are some of the implications involved in denying the Virgin Birth.

These alternatives are too awful to believe. I want to spend the remainder of the hour establishing the truth of this foundational doctrine of the Christian faith.

I believe in the Virgin Birth because…

#1. The Biblical Record of The Old Testament Foretold Christ Supernatural Birth. Listen to the words which the Lord God spoke to the devil after the seduction of Eve and the fall of Adam.

Genesis 3:15 “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”

The reference here is to the woman’s seed, not to the seed of the man. The common reference is always to the seed of the man-- "the seed of Abraham" (Isaiah 41:8), not the seed of Sarah, "the seed of David" (Romans 1:3), not the seed of Bathsheba, and so on. Only a unique seed, a special seed, a supernatural seed, could accomplish that unique, special and supernatural triumph "the bruising of the serpent’s head." Every effect must have an adequate cause and no son by ordinary generation of Adam’s ruined race could accomplish the effect here spoken of. The adequate cause is found in the woman’s seed, a Virgin-born Saviour.