SPROUL: The New Testament is not  suggesting that a virgin walks down   the street and on her own strength and  her own power suddenly conceives a child Of all of the miracles in the New Testament—the  miracles of Jesus walking on the water, turning  

Water into wine, feeding five thousand  people, raising people from the dead,   and so on—there’s one miracle story that seems to  have been singled out for particular controversy,   and that being His virgin birth. I mean, there  have been furious debates, particularly in our  

Day, over the credibility of the New Testament  documents at the very beginning of Jesus’ life,   because the New Testament presumes to  teach that Jesus was born of a virgin. Now, some have tried to argue that  the text doesn’t really teach it,  

But that seems to be an act of despair to  support it. But others just say, “Well,   this is part of the mythical surroundings of  the New Testament documents that no scientific,   educated, sophisticated person in the twentieth  century could ever believe.” Because if there’s  

Anything that we know through our research and  our understanding of the biological process,   the system of reproduction, it’s this: that  virgins don’t have babies. That it takes two   people, male and a female. It takes the egg to  be fertilized by the sperm in order for a baby  

To be conceived—in vitro or ex vitro, doesn’t  matter. It still takes both sides. A virgin, in   and of herself, cannot conceive and have a baby.  That is an inflexible, unbreakable natural law.   And so anyone who would argue to the contrary  must be involved in fantasy, legend, or myth.

But dear friends, let me say in the first  instance that the New Testament is not suggesting   that Jesus is born “”de”” like  Athena out of the head of Zeus—that   a virgin walks down the street and  on her own strength and her own  

Power suddenly conceives a child, and this  child then is born and becomes the Messiah.   No, it’s not as if we have a biological wonder  that seeks to produce something out of nothing,   that we can have the process of birth  and the advent of life from no cause,  

No power. But rather, the New Testament is  saying, “Yes, indeed. There is a normal power,   a normal facility, by which the race is  propagated and the species replenished that   we call the reproductive system. And there is a  power unleashed through the reproductive process.”  

The New Testament’s saying is that that power  that we have in normal categories of nature   has been set in motion and injected into  this planet by a superpower that we call God,   whose power stands behind  all of creation, all of life.

Without the power of God, there can  be no egg, there can be no sperm,   there can be no life at all. The great miracle  comes from the naturalist today who tells us   that the world popped into existence on its  own power. That’s the virgin birth of the  

Whole universe. They deny the virgin birth  that God Himself brings about by this power,   this virgin birth, a very small thing for  the Lord of heaven and earth to accomplish,   indeed. And those who deny it put in its place  the virgin birth of the universe. It’s incredible  

That we have this kind of thinking going on, but  it’s there and we have to confront it every day. But the point I want to make is this,  that the New Testament says power   stood behind the birth of Christ,  but it was not the potency  

Of Joseph that generated this child,  but the potency of God the Father.”

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