Emmanual

[phareztamar]

Spring greetings.

EMMANUEL



Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

The virgin birth is foundational to Christianity. Few would argue that. For 20 centuries, man has written, and sang, about Emmanuel…a name that Jesus was never called; neither in his short life, nor in the epistles that followed.
Whether you believe in God or not, it’s hard to ignore, what Christ’s birth has become today. From childhood, you’ve celebrated Christmas once a year. From grade school, you’ve dated all assignments, with the years since his appearing. Our very calendar pivots upon this birth…an honor ascribed to no other event. For 40 centuries before Christ, the brutal winters of late December were never called, the most wonderful time of the year. But now, they are.
Certainly, the birth of every child, is a miracle in its own right. In that light, Christ’s birth, was no different from your birth. Same labor pains. Same bloody exit from the womb. Same umbilical cord, attached to a placenta. Indeed, the miracle was not so much his birth, but his conception. And what a miracle this is. From all time, 98% of humanity passed this way, never knowing the microscopic wonders of conception. But to us…to this final 2%...does this rose unfold her petals. It is knowledge too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. And though our science breach the mystery of this miracle; even we, cannot follow it to its nano-end.

Human pro-creation begins with two single cells. We’re in the hidden world here…of microns and angstroms…unseen by the naked eye. Each of these two cells have a nucleus…the heart and life of a cell. Inside each nucleus, are 23 chromosomes. Each chromosome has lots of genes.
When the single-celled male seed, penetrates the single-celled female seed, he sheds his propulsion tail and fuel tank. The two nuclei of the two cells, then fuse together, becoming a single cell. This new cell has one nucleus with 46 chromosomes…23 from him, and 23 from her.
At this moment of fusion, a new life has begun. This is how you and I started. This is how the word was made flesh and dwelt among us started. This is how Emmanuel started. That one original cell is called a zygote. It begins dividing in half, making exact copies of itself. The one fertilized cell splits into two identical cells. The two then become four. Four become eight, then 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1,024, etc… After about 6 days of bounding down the fallopian tube, the zygote at last attaches itself to the uterus wall. Here, its name is changed to a blastocyst. Rapid cell division continues from embryo, to fetus, to birth, and beyond. A fully grown human is roughly 300 trillion (300,000,000,000,000) exact copies of that original zygote.

The bible suggests that Mary enjoyed a normal nine month pregnancy. Aside from the microscopic conception, God chose to bring about the birth of His only begotten son through normal channels. A nine month gestation, a bloody birth, suckling at mother’s breasts, circumcision, poopy diapers, and growth to adulthood. So says the Spirit:
In all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren.

During a normal ovulation cycle, Mary donated a single cell to this miracle. Some have argued that Mary’s gene pool, was entirely too infected to be used by God to birth his son. Still others hold a phobic position, that the genetic pool of all humanity is so rife with physical defect, that it affects every child ever born. By extension, Mary’s seed could not be used.

Okay, hereditary disease and defect have been around since the garden, when sin entered into the world. But look around you. Even today, here at the ragged end of time and humanity, the overall percentage of such cases is small. As always, most humans are born healthy…a testament itself, to the resilience of God’s original design.

Common sense aside, to not use Mary’s seed would alter the spirit of scripture. If Mary’s seed wasn’t used, then God spoke the whole package into her womb. A male and a female cell…already fused into a single-celled zygote…was placed into the oven. This reduces Mary’s role to a warm womb. In such a case, Mary never really conceived in her womb. Instead, a transplant of sorts took place. A pre-fertilized egg was placed in a warm womb. This is at polar odds with the scriptures, which say:
Thou shalt conceive in thy womb. And again to the angel: how shall this be, seeing I know not a man?
Of course, God can do anything. He could have formed Jesus from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. He could have presented his son on a white flying horse, wearing a golden crown. He could have spoken a completely fertilized zygote into the womb of Mary. But, lucky for us, there is one thing our God cannot do. He cannot lie. And He had promised to defeat our enemy through the seed of a woman. Though God created many sons, Emmanuel would be His first, His only, begotten son. God didn’t short circuit the process of pro-creation. He embraced it. He created it. And He chose to fully participate in the way of man; from conception on day one, until death some 33 years later. He subjected himself to the very laws he created. Laws of physics and science. Laws of biology and chemistry. The very process of pro-creation. As it is written, wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren.
This phobia of a contaminated gene pool, rests upon a false premise. In the brilliant design of God, it is not the gene pool which must be pristine, but the blood flowing through ones veins. Sinless blood disallows genetic mutation. The bible and creation, teach that the life of the flesh is in the blood. To be honest, understanding blood is essential to understanding life itself.
In Eden, there was no such thing as sin and death. It was an age of innocence. Sin was a later invader; death riding in on his coattails. But when Adam was formed, and Eve made, there was no trace of death…no stench of sin. They danced naked in the garden. They spoke with the animal kingdom. They spoke with God, in the cool of the evening.
If then, the scriptures cannot be broken, and the life of the flesh is in the blood, then what coursed through Adam’s veins was life eternal. For whether mortal or eternal, the life of the flesh is in the blood. Adam and Eve were not the products of pro-creation, as the rest of us. What coursed through their veins was the original, untainted recipe…pure blood…sinless blood.
When sin entered into the world, animals became vicious, carnivorous, and fiercely territorial. Trees were felled by parasites. Big fish began eating little fish. Plants withered and died. Disease and death blanketed the lifescape. Sin subdued the whole of creation…from the microscopic to the galactic. But Emmanuel would show us that the greatest damage, was to the life serum…the blood…that filled the arteries of Adam and Eve. Life eternal no longer flowed there. Now there was shame for dancing naked in the garden. Now, the animals don’t like us anymore. Now, the voice of our God, has grown silent. A catastrophic change had taken place in their blood. What now pumped through 90,000 miles of arteries and veins, was something far less…a severe dilution of the original recipe. It included a process of aging and degradation, a slow devolution of disease, sickness and pain…and in the end, death. The chemical blood supply, for all of humanity, became infected here, at its very source. Laws of chemistry, biology, and pro-creation, ensured that not only Adam and Eve, but all who would issue from their loins, would carry this blood infection. The virus has survived for 6,000 years…and remains uncured, and undetected. Infected blood, disease, sickness, aging and death are normal to us. It’s all we know. This is the law of sin. This is the same law at work in Apostle Paul’s members 4,000 years after Adam, and at work in us today. Medical science has yet to locate it. But the child born in Bethlehem gives us our best clue.
This final generation now knows that every baby produces his own blood supply. As the fetus grows in the womb, none of the mother’s blood is allowed to pass through a cellular-thin membrane, and mingle with baby’s blood. Were pro-creation not so designed, then our Lord’s blood would have been contaminated by his mother’s, and his atonement of none effect. Where we pick up this infection, is from our father’s seed. Not only does the father’s seed…that single, microscopic cell… initiate baby’s independent blood production, but it is also the carrier of this age-old law of sin and death. It affects baby’s blood factory at its very root. Baby never had a chance…being infected in the zygote stage; before blood production ever got off the ground. This is why biblical bloodlines are traced through the male, and why all are born with this law of sin and death flowing in their veins. And so, in Adam, all are sentenced to die.
I’m certain that Mary was a very godly woman, and a chaste virgin. But our goodness or badness isn’t the point here. The point is that Mary was human. And if human…if drawn from the wells of Adam and Eve… if born from the union of her mother and father, then she was not exempt from this horrible blood infection…the law of sin and death. These are God’s laws of pro-creation…only lately confirmed by medical science. The good news is: the same laws that condemned Mary to die one day, forbade her infected blood from mingling with her unborn child’s. Her son, like all babies, produced his own blood supply. But the microscopic seed of his Father was free from the infection common to every other father’s seed. Hence, the son of Mary, within the laws of pro-creation, produced the only 13 pints of sinless human blood, in God’s entire universe. The life of the flesh is in the blood…and this one human amongst all of humanity, had sinless blood…and eternal life…flowing in His veins.
More wonderful yet, is what the mysterious union of a human and a divine seed produced. When Mary donated a single cell to this miracle, it included 23 microscopic chromosomes that held her DNA fingerprint. As she and her extended family sat beholding the face of her 7 year old son, they could no doubt see Mary’s chin, or her high cheekbones, or her hair color…or whatever other traits that her son inherited from her. But they could also see something else in that face…something majestic…something that didn’t come from Mary’s genes. Not physical traits alone: but personality, temperament, emotions, intelligence…and every other trait that a father passes on to his son.
As Mary’s seed left the ovary bank, it encountered this miracle seed…a single cell nearly 100 times smaller than her egg. We may never know if the male cell materialized inside the ova…causing instant fertilization…or outside the ova, requiring that it penetrate the shell to fertilize the egg. Either way, God’s intervention was limited to that one cell…a single microscopic seed. It was inserted at the beginning of a nine month biological process, allowed to run its full course. God chose to confine this miracle within the very laws of science, and the very laws of pro-creation, that He had Himself designed. How praiseworthy is such an incredible miracle! It is something entirely too wonderful to comprehend. Before Him lay an entire creation: plant and animal kingdoms, humankind, stars without number, a universe without end; all groaning for deliverance from the ubiquitous law of sin and death. But rather than a galactic-sized event…in keeping with the galactic size of the problem…God instead chose a microscopic seed…a single cell…to bring about that universal deliverance. A single cell, in whose nucleus dwelt 23 chromosomes…each comprised of some 31,185 genes…made up of billions of base pairs of DNA. A tiny seed, made to obey all of the complex laws of creation previously set in motion. I find new meaning in the words of the prophet: for who hath despised the day of small things. Because of this miracle male seed, the very metabolism of Jesus…the 300 trillion single cells that walked the shores of Galilee…was in the purest sense, the son of God. A human seed had merged with a divine seed on a microscopic level…making 300 trillion exact copies of that original, never repeated fusion. Yet in all of this, the complex biology of conception and birth were never compromised. God chose to strictly follow the process of normal development.
And the angel answered and said unto her, the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that Holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. His intervention was at the seed level. His participation then, includes all stages of flesh development: from zygote to blastocyst to embryo to fetus to birth to childhood to adult. Every fiber of the Master…His physical body, His personality, His emotions, His temperament, His intelligence, and everything that defines us as human…bore the genetic fingerprint of His Father, by virtue of that one, original cell. Body, soul, and spirit; Jesus was as uncompromisingly human as you and I. The beautiful exception was His blood. The latent law of sin which mires the gene pool of all humanity, was not present in the divine gene pool. And so the biology was strictly followed, yet the infection not passed. The life of the flesh is in the blood…and truly in Jesus, that life was eternal. The Word was made flesh…in the same manner that all male seeds are made flesh…a nine month journey from zygote to birth.