Virgin Birth Part 7

When sharing your faith with a Latter-day Saint, it helps to know what their church has taught on several basic topics. For this reason, Mormonism Research Ministry has provided its Crash Course Mormonism. Crash Course Mormonism includes concise articles highlighting what LDS leaders and church manuals have taught on issues that will probably come up in a typical conversation.

You can find these informative articles at CrashCourseMormonism.com. That's CrashCourseMormonism.com. Viewpoint on Mormonism, the program that examines the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a Biblical perspective. Viewpoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry. Since 1979, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's Viewpoint on Mormonism. Welcome to this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism. I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, and with me today is Aaron Shafowaloff, my colleague at MRM. For the past several broadcasts, we've been examining the teachings of Mormon leaders regarding the incarnation of Jesus, more specifically, whether or not they were really espousing what we know in Christianity as the topic of the virgin birth. Now, in many of these past broadcasts, we were bringing up statements made by Brigham Young and old leaders such as Orson Pratt and folks like that.

James Talmadge, Bruce McConkie. And a Mormon might say, well, that's the old days. I hear this a lot, Aaron, that, well, that was guys way in the past.

Well, wait a minute. If they're all getting their information from the same source and the decrees of God are unalterable, as it says in the Book of Mormon in Alma 41-8, then why is there this distinction between the Mormonism of time past and the Mormonism of the present? Yeah, Mormon apologists give the impression, well, we don't teach that.

We don't believe that. But what I'm really interested in is, do you have influential leaders claiming to be prophets and apostles who are responsible for long standing traditional beliefs among your people that today are still persisting, unrepudiated? It's easy for them to distance themselves from the leaders of the past by saying, well, we believe in a living prophet. We have living prophets that guide us today.

And my response to that is very simple, folks. Weren't those living prophets alive when they made those comments back then? And a lot of the living prophets, the living leaders today just don't touch on a lot of these issues. It's sort of like generic morality. A lot of what you get is generic stuff from the pulpit today. And a lot of what Mormons believe today isn't merely explicitly coming from the pulpit of General Conference. It's a kind of carry on vestige. I humorously call it zombie doctrine.

Sometimes it's sort of like it's living, but it's supposed to not be living. Maybe some according to some people, it's perpetuating. It's I mean, it's part of that that that massive, heavy train of the of the momentum of of Mormon tradition. And we should mention that not only are we quoting Mormon leaders such as the prophets and the apostles of the Mormon Church, we're also we've been quoting from church curriculum, which is supposed to be put together under the auspices of the first president. We quoted modern Mormon apologist Kevin Barney, one of the more respectable intellectual defenders of the Mormon Church in some relative sense. But, you know, Bill, I was at the BYU bookstore meeting with a friend for dinner, and I always go into the bookstore at Cougar 8 and I look at the books, the religion books especially. And they had a book called Mary, Mother of Jesus by Bruce Dona. Dana. Dana. We're not quite sure how to pronounce it. D-A-N-A.

We've done it both ways, so we've covered our bases. It was published in 2001, continues to be sold. I got it in 2010. And I was just floored by I mean, this is being sold to, you know, college BYU students. And page 52 of this of this Mormon book sold at a BYU bookstore, I should emphasize. Subheading 52. Subheading says, Jesus Christ was born of a virgin.

I'll just read this part. The scriptures emphasize that Mary was a virgin. This includes the time before and after the birth of Jesus until she was known by her husband, Joseph. The question naturally arises, if indeed the father and Mary conceived Jesus by a literal union, how can Mary remain a virgin?

That's the same question we ask. To answer this intriguing question, we turn once again to Elder Bruce McConkie for explanation. This is him quoting McConkie. Mary was a virgin until after the birth of our Lord. Then for the first time, she was known by Joseph, her husband and other children, both sons and daughters, were born to her. She conceived and brought forth her firstborn son, while yet a virgin, because the father of that child was an immortal personage. So we're not the only ones who are looking to McConkie to, you know, to see explanations of this kind of thing. Mormons are looking to McConkie as to explain this issue.

Quoting on from Bruce, Donna or Dana. From this explanation, we learn that Mary's virginity was retained because of the fact that the conception of Jesus Christ was a union between a mortal woman and an immortal man. Mary ceased being a virgin when she was known by Joseph, her husband, because that particular union was between a mortal man and a mortal woman.

I feel like just kind of yelling out, that's what we've been saying. That's what we've been hearing from Mormons on the street. That's what I've been hearing from Mormons on the internet board sometimes.

I mean, this is, yeah, anyway. So the next, what's really interesting is, even if you were as an intellectual defender of Mormonism, were to somehow construe that as not teaching that God the Father had sexual relations with Mary. You gotta ask yourself, why in the next chapter does the author have this title? Jesus Christ's conception was not degrading. Some individuals, quoting Bruce, some individuals may believe that if there were a literal union between the father and Mary, that this act would degrade God and debauch Mary.

Elder Melvin J. Ballard gives this inspired explanation, and we've already quoted that in the prior podcast on this. He goes on to say, From these inspired and enlightening words, we understand that mortals view the creative power differently than the father. For as Isaiah has well written, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not your ways, said the Lord.

By the way, I bet when Isaiah said that, I don't think he ever imagined. Someday a Mormon author, including Ballard and Bruce here, would construe that to justify the idea that God the Father had sex with Mary. I think you're right.

I think you're right. That's a stretch. Elder Ballard has explained it so plainly, Bruce writes, yet powerfully, that the creative power is the most sacred holy and divine function that can be performed by man and God.

So, go on. God the Father is the most holy, righteous, and pure-minded of all men, man of all men. Further, he has the most respect for women and womanhood above all others. When Mary was in his presence and he overshadowed her, he performed a most sacred and holy function with divine tenderness and love and respect. Thereby, he did not degrade or debase himself or Mary. This most righteous woman knew why she was in the Father's presence. Gabriel explained this to her while she was in Nazareth. Would we be wrong to believe that she and the Spirit communicated about sacred things while she was being bodily transported to the presence of the highest? Further, would it not be unreasonable to believe that for a short length of time the veil was taken from her mind and she was able to see the presentation of the Father's plan of salvation before his spirit children as well as her own calling to the mortal mother of Jesus? To sum total here, what you have is the teaching that God the Father was able to have sexual relations with Mary. We read earlier in other quotes that the Spirit empowered her.

Basically, to put it bluntly here, this is our last podcast on this issue in this series. Mormon leaders, Mormon authors, collectively here, have taught that Mary needed the presence and power of the Holy Spirit to have sexual relations with God the Father. And that somehow that did not take away her status as virgin. And that afterwards she loved the whole thing as a beautiful sacred function and she said, He has done great things to me. And this is being celebrated by this Mormon author as a beautiful thing about the story of Mary.

This fits into the larger picture. He feels like he has to justify this as not being a degrading or a botching thing by basically quoting Ballard as saying that the function, the sacred function of sex, is something that God has given a gift to all men to do and that some other men abuse this. Well, I think it needs to be restated too. You bought this book at the BYU bookstore. So this is a book that students are probably buying, probably reading, probably embracing. And really what he does in this book is quote a lot of the same people that we have been quoting.

And he's coming basically to the same conclusion as we have. We get in trouble from Mormon apologists for quoting these same quotes. But when Mormon authors quote them, somehow it's okay. He even says when he quotes the Melvin J. Ballard quote, he says, from these inspired and enlightening words.

This isn't speculative, you know, sort of throw it in the trash opinion. These guys take their own leaders very seriously. They do. And it seems like the ones who don't take them very seriously are the very apologists that are supposed to be defending the Mormon faith. They are really what I have called the Mormon anti-Mormons. They don't agree with this stuff. And yet they sustain these guys as leaders in the church every year.

Hey Fair, hey Farms, hey Shields. Instead of going after us for pointing out this not so virgin birth teaching of your leaders, why aren't you going after Bruce E. Dana and Mary Mother of Jesus? You know what? A quote and quote anti-Mormon literature isn't sold at the BYU bookstore. But this is. This is having an impact and an influence on BYU college students. Do you care about them? Do you care more about, you know, sort of sparring with us and criticizing us for pointing out the mistakes of your own leaders? Or are you going after, you know, Mormons who actually take your leaders seriously and quote this stuff? I mean, I get upset about this. Well, I don't blame you.

It upsets me as well. But I think it's important to recognize the fact that there are many Mormons who have to try to downplay and even outright deny some of these conclusions that we get from reading these same quotations. There are Mormons who get the same conclusion as we do just by reading the words on the page. If words have any meaning, this has a significant meaning to it.

And you can't just throw it away and arbitrarily try to deconstruct it and say, well, I think this is what they meant when the words don't prove that. And next time it comes to celebrate Christmas, I'm on the radio here, but I'm looking just straight in the eye, my friends. You think about this issue. Can you, with integrity, celebrate Christmas when you have acquiesced or tolerated or accepted the teachings of your own leaders over God the Father having sexual relations with Mary? When you look at the baby Jesus in the manger, when you think on the virgin bush story, when you sing Silent Night, Holy Night, round young virgin mother and child, when you sing those things, can you do so with integrity, not yet having repudiated and denied and disaffirmed what your leaders have egregiously taught about the not so virgin birth of Jesus and the Mormon Jesus in Mary?

Well, as you can tell, we're pretty passionate about this subject, and it does bother us as we hope it bothers you as well. We thank you for being with us in this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism. Thank you for listening. If you would like more information regarding Mormonism Research Ministry, we encourage you to visit our website at www.mrm.org, where you can request our free newsletter, Mormonism Researched. We hope you will join us again as we look at another Viewpoint on Mormonism. We'll see you next time.