December 1928
738
T h e
K i n g ' s
B u s i n e s s
Sarah was “as good as dead.” Isaac was in a true sense born of God. The story of his life is God’s picture of His only Son. V. Doctrinal! y.—Most important is the doctrine of the Virgin-Birth of Jesus. The Saviour of men was “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners,” “that Holy Thing” (Luke 1:35). He was indeed tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin. In Him sin found no response. There is no suggestion in the New Testa ment that He even gave a moment’s deliberation toward any moral temptation. He came through the fierce fire unscorched. If He had failed in the test, He could not have been our Saviour. If then our Lord was so different from all other men, the Virgin-Birth becomes a necessity. Without this truth we cannot conceive how the Divine and the human could be united in one person. The Son of God must needs be born of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit must needs overshadow a virgin. If the Son of God was not born of the Virgin Mary, we may surely say that He has not yet been born. Magnificent Tributes to Dr. Morgan OT in many years, to our knowledge, have any religious papers carried such striking tributes to a living servant of God, as have the Conser vative journals of England paid to Dr. G. Campbell Morgan, whose visit to England the past summer blessed so many thousands of people. Says one writer in The Life of Faith, the outstanding Fundamentalist paper of England: “It has been our painful and not infrequent experience to meet earnest Christian people, including a few preachers, who have come to the conclusion that the Bible and the Gospel have lost their power of appeal in our day and generation. A still larger number, we fear, though they might hesi tate to express themselves in terms so boldly pessimistic, are disposed, nevertheless, to paint the future of Evan gelicalism in colors all too sombre. “It must have been a salutary experience if any of the Lord’s people, prone to such moods, visited West minster Chapel last Friday evening. Half an hour before the service was timed to begin, every seat in the great auditorium, including the lower platform and the spacious pulpit, was occupied, and the late comers were being directed into the three halls at the rear, where ‘loud speakers’ had been installed. E xposition D id I t “What, may we ask, had brought nearly 3,000 people, among whom youth was splendidly represented, to a place of worship on a wet Friday evening? It was to listen to a Bible lecture! Not a lecture about the Bible, but a simple straightforward exposition of a dozen verses or so, by a man who has consecrated his unique teaching gifts to the elucidation and enforcement of what he unhesitatingly accepts as the Word of God, divinely authoritative for our own age—as for every age. The wonder is enhanced when we recollect that on that same day a thousand city business men and women had assembled to hear the same preacher during the lunch hour. That is the unique achievement of Dr. Campbell Morgan. “The secret of Dr. Morgan’s popularity is not hard to discover. Bishop Phillips Brooks, a generation or more ago, defined the two essential elements in all preaching as ‘truth’ and ‘personality.’ Dr. Morgan is a virile, magnetic
V IRGIN BIRTH
AN ABSOLUTE
NECESSITY
B y J. A. A. i n The Christian
O unbiased student of Holy Writ will readily contend that the Bible does not teach the Vir gin-Birth of our Lord. Whether or not we can accept the Bible narratives is another mat ter, but if we do, we are morally bound to accept the traditional teaching about the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. We may view the subject in a fivefold way:— I. Historically. —In the New Testament Scriptures, generally accepted from the earliest of days after they were written, we find our Lord’s birth by a virgin clearly taught. Both Matthew and Luke record the birth of Jesus by the Virgin Mary, and there is such beauty and delicacy in the narratives as to stamp them as of God. They are unadorned and undefiled, pure as Him of whom they speak. We get two records quite independent, yet perfectly harmonious. The evangelists are not relating something that they had seen, but giving the Holy Spirit’s revelation, of something in which He had played such a notable part. The angel, Gabriel, whose name means the “might of the Mighty One,” comes not here to the temple, nor to Jerusalem, but to Galilee of the Gentiles, to Nazareth, to a virgin. All this shows that God was breaking the long silence, not in judgment, but in grace, and that man’s hope was not in man. Out of the ruin God would raise a redeemer. This Son of God (and none else could be a redeemer) must needs be born, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. The Apostolic Fathers of the second century had no doubt about the credibility of this Gospel story; and it has been accepted by the church in all ages. R easonably and P rophetically II. Reasonably. —It is only reasonable to conclude that if the Son of God must come into manhood in order to redeem us, then He must be born of a virgin. Any other thought would here be impious, and the mir acle involved presents no difficulty to the humble believer in the Divine revelation. Those who believe in the bless ing that came to Sarah and Elizabeth, find little difficulty in believing in the blessing that came to Mary. There is no folly here. No patent fiction that would make us blush for the foundations of our faith. The record is acceptable to the heart made right by grace. III. Prophetically^ L-Matthew had no doubt that Isa. 7 :14 referred to Christ. “All this was done that it might be fulfilled” (Matt. 1:22, 23). A fair survey of the ground indicates that the word used means what we ordinarily understand by a virgin, and we have no record of another virgin bearing a son, and calling his name Immanuel. In Gen. 3, it is the woman’s seed that is to bruise the head of the serpent. The seed of the woman is a unique thought in Scripture and surely points to a virgin birth. T ypically and D octrinally IV. T y p ic a lly . The birth of Isaac (Gen. 21) was no doubt intended to typify the Virgin Birth of Jesus.
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