The Word Became Flesh Part 2 Kathryn Kuhlman

and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us the hardest proposition the infidel has ever gotten up against is to account for jesus christ and i believe that the only thing they can say is we don't understand it. Pause just a moment. Because you can't understand it is no sign that it is not true. There are lots of things you can't understand and yet you must acknowledge that you believe them or else acknowledge that you are a fool. You say it's unthinkable. What is unthinkable? The alleged result of such a birth. Who do you mean? You say, the union of a divine and human nature in one person. Well, now, let's see. Because that's not just exactly what the incarnation is. The union of two natures in one person, a combination of the divine and human in Christ Jesus. If you do just a little bit of real hard thinking, it may not be as unthinkable as you now think it is. But if it's unthinkable to the best human thinker that operates, that steal no sign that it's untrue. Can you understand the mechanical union of oxygen and nitrogen that makes air? Do you understand hydrogen and oxygen that makes water? Or the union of body and soul that makes yourself? You are a person. And if you can't understand this simpler union, don't growl about divinity and humanity uniting in one person. For it's no more incompatible than the union of matter and spirit that makes one person out of you. If you can't understand what makes you, you, then don't growl about not being able to understand the divinity and the human part of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. You say, if the divine in Jesus was truly divine and the human, truly human, then there must have been both a divine consciousness and a human consciousness in him. You say it can't be? One or the other of them must be sacrificed on the order of reason. But hold on just a minute. I know it's hard to understand. But here is something else. If Christ was divine, and united with the Father in the function of creating and sustaining the universe, how could he produce a storm on the Sea of Galilee and then stop it at the same time? His divine will could not act in two opposing directions at the same time, could it? You saying no? But I don't believe he ever calmed the storm. I get any miracle, but hold on. That still doesn't help Yard. You've got God to deal with. How could God make the iron axe head to swim? Could he will, as he apparently does, that iron should sink? in water and at the same time will that it should not, as he apparently did, without at least seeming to have a double consciousness in him at that particular moment. You say I don't believe God about it? In fact, I don't believe in miracles. But hold on. That still doesn't help you out any. Ruining the Bible out of court doesn't get rid of the laws of nature. These are always operating against each other. Life and death, growth and decay, and the two opposing forces, e .g. gravitation. We claim that these and all the laws are expressions of the divine will. But whether they are or not, how are you going to explain? I do know that this mysterious thing of a double consciousness in Christ Jesus is not any more mysterious than the fact of a spiritual union between God and man, as a result of which the man acts sometimes under God's impulse and sometimes under his own and sometimes under both at the same time without being able to tell just which one begins and the other ends or how they operate together at one and the same second. I'm not telling you. that i fully understand it the greatest saint that ever lived including paul himself would not dare say that he fully understood it but to avoid it shall we be wheedled into accepting Some of the weak substitutes for it. God forbid. The word was made flesh. And it was the essence of God himself that came into man and gave us the God -man. And not only a God -like. man. That were God in the flesh that walked this earth. Not a God -like man. Well, but you say, this doctrine of the burdened birth seems utterly unnecessary. When the word was made flesh, Whatever of God came into the man, Jesus, could have done so without the method of conception involved in the doctrine of the virgin birth. Surely there could have been some other way. The skeptic says the virgin birth, as recorded in the Bible, was... absolutely unnecessary. Well, in the first place, it takes an infinite amount of conceit for a little mortal like you to say what was or what was not necessary in such a stupendous thing as the bringing into the world of the only begotten Son of God. all the conceit of some mortals when that mortal is dependent on the mercy of god for every beat of his heart who am i to say who are you to say That it was not necessary in such a stupendous thing as the bringing in the world of the only begotten Son of God. Saying it was useless. Unnecessary. It's a pity God didn't wait till you were born. Graduated from high school before he undertook to do it. It's just too bad he didn't wait. until you could have given him some assistance. Watch. In the next place, it's in the Bible. And that ought to be enough for any human being. Because it is God's Word. Because it is in the Bible. Ought to be enough. Matthew's and Luke's account are genuine. The account of the virgin birth is found in every manuscript and version of the Gospels that has ever existed. And so you can't cut them out. They're there. That's what I don't understand about some of these ministers who stand behind their pulpit and would dare to do away. with the virgin birth of the Son of God, who will dare to do away with the divinity and deity of the Son of God. Because it's found in every version of the Gospels that has ever existed. portion of God's Word? Who gave you the authority to cut out any portion of the Bible? It's there. You've got to have respect for the Bible. You don't dare take out your penknife and your scissors and cut out that which you do not agree with. then in the next place, it would seem necessary. And I'll tell you exactly why. If Christ was the very Son of God made flesh, a miracle in His birth is the very thing that one would expect. And it is just this miracle in His earthly origin that... furnishes us the necessary explanation of his supernatural person and all that goes with it. So what's the use of taking issue with it? There's nothing to gain. In the next place, it was necessary. It had to be for two reasons. First, that the scripture might be fulfilled. Isaiah prophesied and said, Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and call his name Emmanuel. That's one reason why the virgin birth was necessary. The second reason, that he might be a man and yet escape. the moral kink that comes to everyone born in the human race by natural means. This he had to do in order to be sinless. And sinless he had to be in order to offer himself a sacrifice for our sins. A sacrifice for sin had to be pure and unblemished. If just any sacrifice could have paid the price, Abraham could have died. If just any blood could have paid the price, I am sure, beloved, Moses would have gladly have sacrificed his life. I am sure that Elijah, anyone of the prophets, The prophet Isaiah himself would have been glad to have given his life on the cross. And Jesus never would have had to have come. But watch. Jesus, the sinless one, the very son of the living God, had to come because he... was the only one who was sinless. A sacrifice for sin had to be pure, had to be unblemished. If not John the Baptist or any other good man would have done. If Jesus had inherited the moral taint of ordinary generation, he would have needed a savior himself. If sin had ever touched his life, if he had sinned just once, he would have needed a savior to forgive his sin. The fellow who denies the virgin birth usually ends up by denying the virgin or sinless life of Christ. A virgin life. is just as much of a miracle anyhow in the moral world as a virgin birth is in the physical world. Oh, you say Mary was sinful and Christ would have gotten the moral taint from her as well as from Joseph. Well, what does the record say? It says Jesus was born of a virgin mother. But it says more than that. It says he was conceived by the Holy Ghost. It doesn't say a new person was created. It was an already existing divine person. Entering by this method into the human race and the divine, creative miracle wrought by the Holy Ghost precluded the possibility of any taint of sin from the earliest moment of conception. And so, Mr. Critic, Mrs. Unbeliever, if you'll just make the proper adjustment of your mental bearings, you'll see that your objections vanish into thin air. Now comes the most important question of all. Why was Jesus incarnated? What was the purpose of the incarnation of Jesus? Well, It was more than one purpose. Let's see what the Word of God says. In 1 John, the third chapter, the eighth verse, to this end was the Son of God manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil. Isn't that a piece of the most glorious news this whole world has ever heard? The Bible says the devil is a murderer. It says he's a liar and the father of lies. The Bible calls him the lawless one. And sin is a transgression of God's law, and the devil is a fountainhead of lawlessness and sin. And so, you know what the works of the devil are. Murder, lying, lust, dishonesty. Everything that is bad is born in hell. Say, do you know the only thing I'm afraid of? In God's big world, it's sin. No man ever played with sin. That sin didn't get the better of him. Don't you try to play with sin. If you do so, I'll tell you something. You're going to get into trouble as sure as can be. Don't try to play with sin. If you must do it, go out in the field. Pick up a rattler. Let it play in your bosom. Go down to the electric railroad. Play with the third rail. Reach up in disguise and play with the forked lightning. But for God's sake, don't play with sin. Whatever you do, don't play with sin. For the wages of sin is death. Spiritual death. God says so. And I believe God's word. Two little Italian boys in New York City were returning from a swim and wherever you find two little boys with time on their hands, you'll always find trouble. They were each about 15 years old. Tony had picked up a piece of copper wire, thought he'd have a little fun with the third rail of the New York Central track along which they were walking. And he poked away around the wooden covering of the rail. Nothing happened. That's funny, he said. I guess I didn't. touch the right spot. Then he pushed the point of his wire down underneath the covering. There was a flash of blue flame and a shriek of pain as 11 ,000 volts of electricity shot through the wire. In a moment and even less. His clothing was on fire, his hair, his eyebrows were burned off. He tried to drop the wires. It hissed and sputtered at a white heat, but it wouldn't let go. He tried to pull away, but it stuck to the rail. He did everything humanly possible, and yet it stuck to the rail. A little friend tried to pull him away, but was hurled to the ground with a terrific shock. And the brave little lad then threw his rubber coat around Tony and pulled him loose. And Tony started to run but fainted and fell. They took him to the hospital and the doctor said, one chance in a thousand to recover. The two boys said it. They knew there was something dangerous about that rail. They'd heard older people say so. But they didn't think it would hurt any to play with it a little. And so, beloved, sin scorches and burns and kills like a live... third rail