Jesus’ First 12 Years: The Mystery of Christ’s Childhood

Now, I tell that story to you that way so you can begin to get a sense of heavenly places. Gabriel opens the door and steps in, and Zachariah looks up to see an angel standing there. This angel is coming to the very apex of time and eternity. He says, “Zachariah, listen. Your wife, Elizabeth, is going to have a son, and he is going to make way for the coming Messiah, and you’ll name him John.” “I don’t believe it.” Gabriel says, “Zachariah, I hate to do this to you, but because you didn’t believe me, you’re not going to be able to speak.” And that’s the end of it. He goes out of there, and sure enough, his wife, who cannot conceive, conceives.

Great activity is now going on in heavenly places. A short time later a young maiden, a virgin, somewhere in Galilee, and the sister of Elizabeth, much younger, is perhaps going about her housekeeping business. I don’t know much about this girl, but I’ll tell you one thing: that girl had a heart for the Lord. And by the way, she knew her Bible, didn’t she…or something to that effect. She’s going about her work, and there is once more great activity in the heavens and perhaps the greatest mystery we’ll ever confront. I cannot explain it, and nothing I say will…hold me to nothing I will say it in the next few moments, because I don’t understand this, and I never will. Not even in heaven will I understand this…or in New Jerusalem.

Gabriel steps through the door again, appears before a young girl, and says, “A holy thing will be conceived in you.” Something takes place in Mary’s womb that has never happened in the heavenly realms or on earth. Something happens in her womb that was supposed to happen in the Garden of Eden. There is the egg, and again, don’t hold me to this; this may not be what happened. There is the egg, the reproductive egg in the womb of Mary; joined, it seems, by the divine spirit, and there’s germination.

Now, this may not have happened at the moment of his birth. I don’t have any idea, saints. I’m speculating; I have no idea, but I’ll put it this way. In her womb, in the first hours of conception, a body grows that has never been touched by the seed of man. In fact, when God spoke to Eve and said, “Your seed, the seed of a woman,” that’s the only time the term “seed of a woman” is ever used. Here’s the first time a woman ever had seed. A tiny embryo is growing up in her now, a body that has never been touched by the seed of man. Therefore, sin has never infested that little body, and deep within that embryo lives a living, pulsating human spirit that came from the other side of that door. Something of the heavenly realm has been brought into that small embryo, and there lives within her the human spirit. The human spirit has lived for the first time since the fall of Adam.

Ah, but that’s not all. The very God has come and indwelt that human spirit, and God lives within that spirit, and now there’s growing up a body untouched by sin with a spirit that is alive with God in that spirit. What do you have here? You have once again the union of the spiritual and physical realms. The two realms have been joined, and it is no accident, my dear friend, that the spirit part, contained by God, is of kingly lineage, and the body part is also of kingly lineage.  The body comes from the lineage of David, and the spirit and the life within that spirit come from the Lord of the heavens. That means the one who comes out of that woman’s womb will have the right to claim lordship over both realms. Okay, so something glorious is taking place here. Here’s a body that is not indwelt by sin. The fallen angelic life has not penetrated that body. It looks like our body, but it has no flesh. There’s no self-nature in it, praise the Lord.

Within His spirit is the very living God, and the two come together, and once more there is a human, the third life form on the biological chart: the human soul. Now, I’m going to tell you something: for the first time in history, one creature has two life forms. Two life forms in one creature. The highest form of life and the third-highest form of life in one creature. Contained within something very, very visible, and this is what’s going on inside. Here’s a human being. Is He a human being? Is He God? Absolutely, He has two life forms in Him.

Now, the question is: which one’s going to dominate? One life form comes from the visible, material realm, and the other comes from the invisible, spiritual realm, and both are within Him. Right now. And Mary goes and visits Elizabeth. You talk about theological complications, dear saints. We are up against theological complications. I do not understand the following passage. I don’t know why this passage has not been fought over by… I don’t know why at least a dozen denominations haven’t formed around this passage. What’s going on here? Someone in Elizabeth’s womb has the Holy Spirit in him. That’s utterly impossible. It can’t be done.

Here is an embryo that can rejoice and has the Holy Spirit in it, and when Mary touches Elizabeth, the baby in Elizabeth’s womb jumps. There is some sort of life flowing from one to the other. This is just a funny story; I’m sure it’s not true. Two men were talking about baptismal regeneration, and the one who wasn’t, who believed you had to be baptized to be saved, said that everyone who’d ever been saved had been baptized. And the other man said, “Well, what about John the Baptist?” And he said, “Well, when Mary embraced Elizabeth, the Lord Jesus reached out through Mary into Elizabeth and baptized John the Baptist.” I thought that was the funniest story I’d ever heard, and I let it go, but every time I go back and read that passage, I can’t get it out of my mind.

Something remarkable happened that day in the womb of two women. I am telling you whatever happened, and I don’t have any idea what happened. I am telling you that heavenly places are getting very, very active. Did you know this is the first time Scripture uses the term “Holy Spirit”? In the Old Testament, there is the spirit of holiness, but the term Holy Spirit isn’t found in Hebrew Scripture. Here, the Holy Spirit indwells someone who is not God. I don’t understand that. I tell you something else I don’t understand: how that little kid walked out into the desert all by himself and lived there for 30 years or 25 or something like that. Can you explain that to me? It says, “And when he was a child, he went out into the desert and lived there his whole life.” I want you to know I don’t know who John the Baptist is, but that’s got to be just about the most special human being who’s ever been born. It must have been awfully important to God that someone so special cleared the way for His Son’s coming.

Now then, please watch this embryo grow in Mary. Are you ready? Are you watching? Mary’s womb becomes an incredible place. It’s a place, obviously, enclosed, dark; there’s no light there; it is a non-realm, covered with water. In some ways, Mary’s womb now is something like the Garden of Eden. It’s a place between two worlds. It’s a realm between two realms. It is neither realm. The spiritual realm is in her, and the physical realm is in her, and at least one of them is growing daily. Perhaps the other is full-grown; I don’t know. We’ll come to that in a minute.

Well, you’ve heard the children’s story. Joseph gets a little donkey; Mary gets on it, and they leave Nazareth for a long journey to Bethlehem. There’s no room in the inn. They go into a little cave or barn, and there they wait for the child to be born. Meanwhile, heavenly places have gone berserk. For one thing, God has disappeared. God is no longer in heavenly places. Well, that may not be true. Maybe He is. Maybe the entire realm…don’t laugh…maybe the entire realm is found right there inside a woman. I don’t know. I have no idea.

All I know is that it’s big, and right now it’s full of activity because they know the most portentous thing that will ever happen is about to happen. God will undergo the greatest single change He will ever experience: God is about to come forward in human form. He is about to make a true entrance into the physical realm. He will now be part of the physical realm’s lineage and experience, and He will bring all of His past eternal experience into that physical experience. He is coming forward now to add the human experience to that, and the two will come together to be richer than either. Now the angels are all excited, and they’re getting ready. 10,000 times 10,000 of them. They’re so excited; they’re a lot more excited than you are.