Trusting/believing God for the impossible - Mary
Trusting/believing for the impossible - Mary
Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 102–103].) Nazareth was not on any of the major trade routes; all the important roads bypassed it. It was well off the beaten path, far from the important centers of Jewish culture and religion. Moreover, Galilee, where Nazareth was located, was known as “Galilee of the Gentiles” (Isa. 9:1; Matt. 4:15) because of its proximity to Gentile regions. God’s choice of Nazareth to be Jesus’ birthplace reveals that He is the Savior of the world, not of the powerful and elite of one nation only, but of all “those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks” (1 Cor. 1:24; cf. Isa. 11:10; 42:6; Luke 2:32; Acts 10:34–35; 13:48–49; Rom. 15:9–12).
more binding legal arrangement than a modern engagement. Only death or divorce could sever the contract, and the couple could be referred to as husband and wife. If her betrothed husband died, the girl would be considered a widow. The couple did not live together or have sexual relations during the betrothal period. During that year the girl was to prove her faithfulness and purity, and the boy was to prepare a home for his bride-to-be. When the year was up there was a seven-day wedding feast (cf. Matt. 25:1–13; John 2:1–11), after which the couple began their life together as husband and wife. Only then was the marriage consummated.
Born near a small town in Ontario, Canada, on May 28, 1934, the Dionne sisters became the first known set of quintuplets to survive infancy. For the first decade of their lives they were Canada’s biggest tourist attraction—bigger even than Niagara Falls—generating several hundred million dollars in tourist revenue. January 11, 1974, saw the birth of the Rosenkowitz sextuplets, the first recorded set of sextuplets to have survived to adulthood, in Cape Town, South Africa. The seven children born to Bobbi and Kenny McCaughey of Des Moines, Iowa, on November 19, 1997, are the first set of septuplets to survive infancy. Another notable birth involved only one child. On July 25, 1978, Louise Brown was born in Oldham, England. What was noteworthy about her, however, was not her birth, but the manner of her conception: she was the world’s first “test-tube baby,” conceived by means of in vitro fertilization. And in 2008 a single woman gave birth to octuplets by means of in vitro fertilization. All are currently alive.
Jesus’ virgin conception cannot be explained away as an example of parthenogenesis (lit., “virgin creation” or “generation”), which is found in some lower forms of life. Parthenogenesis in humans, even if it were biologically possible, could only result genetically in a female child, since women do not have the Y chromosome necessary to produce a male child.
Highlighting the crucial, indispensable role of the doctrine of the virgin birth John M. Frame writes,
The consistency of this doctrine with other Christian truth is important to its usefulness and, indeed, to its credibility. For Matthew and Luke the chief importance of the event seems to be that it calls to mind (as a “sign,” Isa. 7:14) the great OT promises of salvation through supernaturally born deliverers, while going far beyond them, showing that God’s final deliverance has come. But one can also go beyond the specific concerns of Matthew and Luke and see that the virgin birth is fully consistent with the whole range of biblical doctrine. For example, the virgin birth is important because of: (1) The doctrine of Scripture. If Scripture errs here, then why should we trust its claims about other supernatural events, such as the resurrection? (2) The deity of Christ. While we cannot say dogmatically that God could enter the world only through a virgin birth, surely the incarnation is a supernatural event if it is anything. To eliminate the supernatural from this event is inevitably to compromise the divine dimension of it. (3) The humanity of Christ. This was the important thing to Ignatius and the 2d-century fathers. Jesus was really born; he really became one of us. (4) The nature of grace. The birth of Christ, in which the initiative and power are all of God, is an apt picture of God’s saving grace in general of which it is a part. It teaches us that salvation is by God’s act, not our human effort. The birth of Jesus is like our new birth, which is also by the Holy Spirit; it is a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). (“Virgin Birth of Jesus,” in The Concise Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell, abridged by Peter Toon [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991], 540, emphasis in original.) (For a further discussion of the virgin birth’s crucial doctrinal importance, see John MacArthur, Nothing But the Truth [Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1999], 101–13, and God in the Manger [Nashville: W Publishing, 2001], 1–12.)