The first nonparent to recognize Jesus as Messiah was a fetus
Queston: Who was the first person besides Jesus' parents, Joseph and Mary, to recognize Jesus as Messiah?
Answer: John the Baptist, when he was a fetus and Jesus was but an embryo.
The Gospel of Luke tells of a fasincating incident that occurred when John the Baptist was a 6-month-old fetus.
John's Aunt Mary came to visit John's expectant mother Elizabeth, her cousin. Mary was newly pregnant with Jesus. Luke 1:41 says when Mary greeted Elizabeth, John kicked. Elizabeth told Mary, "The instant I heard your voice, my baby moved in me for joy!"
Elizabeth prophesied, "You are the most blessed of all women, and blessed is the child that you will have. I feel blessed that the mother of my Lord is visiting me."
To read my archived Embryonic Jesus Story, go to WorldNetDaily.com.
19 comments:
Is it just possible that this story makes a different theological point, having to do with John the Baptist and the still-wide following he had at the time of the gospel's writing, and has absolutely nothing to do with the current pro-life v. pro-choice debate?
Jill,
And I say this as a religious person - you are getting wackier by the minute. While we can and should find meaning in all passages of the scriptures, not every tale of divinity was written to help you advance your tunnel-visioned crusade.
The more common reading of that passage is the joy of Elizabeth was so strong that it caused her own baby to stir, not that she picked up a telepathic signal from the movement within her.
Anon 9:224 is on to something. Contrary to the summary in the post, it is not the movement of the fetus but the hearing of Mary's greeting that leads to Elizabeth's praise. Here's how the Revised Standard Version puts that verse: "And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit," while the King James reads: "And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost:" More importantly, this passage of 1 Luke is about Mary and her reaction to the angel's visit. and the news that she is to bear a son. Twisting this into proof-text about abortion ignores the true theological significance that Luke is presenting.
Jill-
I did not post my reference to the first animal as sacrilege. I posted it to reference that a baby kicking is a common and natural occurence in pregnant women past a certain point of gestation.
Perhaps I chose the wrong activity but in my experience animals do little else besides eat and do the other bit.
However my analysis as I intended it was: Without written reference in a book which to some is believed as fact and to others believed as fiction, the significance of a fetus kicking in the womb while in the presence of another entity is fairly low to the point of being nil.
It won't matter to true believers but from a scientific perspective your question as to the first non-parent is indeterminate. Phenomena may have been observed but it is doubtful any real causal relationship could have been observed/deduced/etc.
-Anon Deleted
As much as the anti-abortion folks want this to mean that all fetuses are sentient persons because JTB is recorded as knowing Mary's words and leaps inside the womb, the logic is flawed at best. This is the story of a divine prophet whom God ordained before conception. Your “logic” supposes all of us are chosen before birth to be the divine prophet ordained by God to herald the arrival of Christ on earth. Otherwise this passage does not apply to all of us. Fetuses are known to move and kick as their nervous systems and muscles are under construction; only divinely-inspired babies understand the spoken words of Mary and leap in response.
It is wrong, and dare I say, un-Christian to take the verses we like and interpret them to support what we want to support. We cannot simply interpret those few verses from Psalms, Isaiah, and Luke as a reason to be against abortion. If interpreted in the sloppy manner demonstrated by anti-abortion Christians many versus easily lead us to argue that indeed God, at times, supports abortion:
"If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, however many they be, but his soul is not satisfied with good things, and he does not even have a proper burial, then I say, `Better the miscarriage than he, for it comes in futility and goes into obscurity; and its name is covered in obscurity. It never sees the sun and it never knows anything; it is better off than he.'"
Ecclesiastes 6:3-5
Better to not be born?
"Then I looked again at all the acts of oppression which were being done under the sun. And behold I saw the tears of the oppressed and that they had no one to comfort them; and on the side of their oppressors was power, but they had no one to comfort them. So I congratulated the dead who are already dead more than the living who are still living. But better off than both of them is the one who has never existed, who has never seen the evil activity that is done under the sun."
Ecclesiastes 4:1-3
And again? We're reading the words of the man to whom God gave the world's greatest wisdom.
"And if men struggle and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."
Exodus 21:22-25
You mean the fetus is not given the same consideration as the life of a mother?
In Leviticus 27:6 a monetary value was placed on children, but not until they reached one month old (any younger had no value). Likewise, in Numbers 3:15 a census was commanded, but the Jews were told only to count those one month old and above - anything less, particularly a fetus, was not counted as a human person. In Ezekiel 37:8-10 we watch as God re-animates dead bones into living soldiers, but the passage makes the interesting note that they were not alive as persons until their first breath
I will not be so foolish as to misinterpret these and several other passages as proof that God supports abortion; however, there is no biblical mandate for your viewpoint.
Jesus spoke of many things, curiously he never mentioned abortion or homosexuality, the twin battle flags of our current Christian Crusade. Do you think he forgot to mention them? He seemed to cover all the other major points.
Perhaps, the real Christian thing to think about as we celebrate the birth of Christ would be to consider that as we all go through life we get from the bible the various messages as we interpret them, they are our personal religious beliefs and should remain as such. And, perhaps if we focused less attention on "interpreting" the bible to fit out beliefs and more on the issues that increase abortions in this country, poverty and violence against women, perhaps we would accomplish what should be our goal: To keep abortions safe and rare.
Jill,
I think this goes to show that Christmas really isn't that big a religious holdiay and is more meant to be a family celebration than any really sacred time (which shows that all the dopes complaining about a war on Christmas are all much ado about nothing and all a bunch of huey). I've always thought that the Annunciation on March 25 (when Christ was conceived) should be celebrated by Christians as a much more sacred holiday than the minor Christmas, which really is just as extention of the old pagan solstice celebration.
I know that us Greek Orthodox make a big deal out of the Annunciation, and Catholics do to a lesser extent, but Protestants really don't pay that much attention to it. It seems kind of weird, because the conception of Christ is much more significant and miraculous than the birth of Christ.
Embryonic Jesus: GREAT band name.
You are hopeless. You site the translations you choose and fault those that don't fit your anti-choice screed. You say you interpret the bible correctly,and those who interpret it differntly, even those who have not read it with the childlike wonder you have, must all be wrong. You live in a sad little world where you twist words that were meant to unite people to further divide them. You censor people with different points of view, but would be the first to claim oppression of Christians if anyone treated you the way you treat them.
How sad for you when you finally realize that your life's work to divide and marginalize people based on your warped view of religion is so counter to what Jesus taught.
Re: 8.
That's the problem. You anti- abortion, one-issue nuts think you know what Jesus thought. Never mind the hundreds of different intreptations that are based on the hundreds of different translations of the bible, never mind that by virtue of how you act you are the antithesis of how a Christian should act.
Through many years of volunteering to escort scared, victimized young women past the throngs of "good Christians" such as yourslf who find pleasure in calling someone a "baby killer" during what is one of the toughest decisions they will ever make, I've learned two things for sure:
1. Judge not lest ye be judged does not apply to the Christofacist right these days.
2. The Christofacist right are the first one's to haul their daughters to the clinic in the dark of night.
I have nothing wrong with one-issue pro-Life people. I respect them because they believe that life begins at conception and therefore, unless the mother's life is in danger, it should be afforded the same protection against killing as any other human being. What makes me angry is when the pro-Life people claim that issues such as abstinence only sex ed and gay marriage are somehow part of the pro-Life message, which they are clearly not. It's a shame that so many of the most vocal pro-Life people are also so anti-Liberty when it comes to consenting adults having whatever sex they want to have and using contraception, and are also bigoted when it comes to butting into gay people's lives (not to mention that there are the Intelligent Design in public school kooks who also seem to come from the pro-Life camps). There are some pro-Life commentators who are also pro-Liberty, pro-Science, and pro-Contraception education (Andrew Sullivan being one) but too many of the more vocal pro-Life people are unfortunately anti-Liberty, which is a shame.
Anon 5:59
You're right, and that's kind of the point. Andrew Sullivan is hardly a one-issue, blind to reality zealot like our author.
People of intelligence can disagree on any number of issues, the problem is that too many of them seem to think they can channel God.
Jill must be taking a break. I wonder how many of these posts will be deleted when she comes back. She's got the quickest hand on the delete hammer I've seen yet.
Honestly, there's little point in arguing here. She'll just declare you offensive or out of bounds or heresy or sacriledge or ... With a closed mind like that, it's hardly worth reading what she puts up.
anon 7:10
Yeah, there really is no point, but it is kind of fun to see how long it takes for the good Christian to show just how inclusive and open minded (read: Christianlike) she is.
Four quick points:
1. That's quite enough pro-life Christian-baiting by people afraid to post under their own names. If you have something substantive to say, then say it; otherwise, leave the argument to serious commenters.
2. Stop for a minute and ask yourself what you would prefer that she--and the sizable percentage of the state's population that agree with her--do with respect to the abortion controversy. Pro-lifers honestly believe that abortion is the violent and brutal taking of an innocent human life; can you blame them for being "single-issue" voters or for speaking their minds? Would you want to live in society with people who honestly believe that babies are being torn apart but are unwilling to even lift a voice in protest? Would you want to raise your children among people who knowingly tolerate what they think is the killing of children? I wouldn't.
Whether abortion is murder or a liberating medical procedure is based on religious (or quasi-religious) presuppositions. The diversity of religious opinions on this question is constitutionally protected and is a fact that is not going away.
There are heroes and villains on both sides of this question (in fact, frequently played by the same people), and the sooner we can all get past the name-calling and get to work figuring out how we can address the concerns of both sides the sooner each side's villains will be reduced to irrelevance.
3. Given that fact (and my own fear that any point-for-point answer would fall well short of the ideals of Christian charity), Anonymous 5:39pm is spared the deserved rebuttal.
I would ask, though, whether the argument based on "the hundreds of different intreptations [sic] that are based on the hundreds of different translations of the bible" is based on hyperbole or on actual observation.
4. Ms. Stanek has taken an admirable step by bringing the theological arguments undergirding her public reasons into the realm of discussion. Far from being threatened by the use of these private reasons, the openness and genuineness of political society is enhanced and made more secure when people are willing to show their cards and approach the negotiating table honestly rather than disingenuously.
That level of openness from the pro-choice side of the aisle would do much to bring us closer to a just and amicable settlement to this unpleasant issue.
The task facing us is one requiring the creativity and resolve of mature citizens. Those who are more interested in name-calling and cheap shots can find any number of other ambulances to chase. The stakes here, however, are far too high for that.
- JCE
eastvolds
People don't post under their own names for any number of reasons, especially when addressing the self-proclaimed thought police. I'm sure we'd all love to hear your defense of the people who take it upon themselves to terrorize young women who have made the decision to excercise their reproductive freedoms.
Anyone who has studied scripture, anyone who is intellectually honest about it at least, should be able to concede that it's foolish to suggest that every verse cited in the original post isn't open to a wide range of interpretations. Interpretations that are only complicated by the various translations of the bible, but of course it's so much easier for you to attempt to dismiss that as hyperbole rather than address a fact you can't refute. Therein lies most of the problem. Ms. Stanek cherry picks the verses and translations that suit her position and ignores those that don't.
This is too important an issue to let the intellectually dishonest claim some kind of moral superiority regarding what is, in the end, a painful, personal decision.
It would be great if everyone identified themselves with a screen name on this site. The problem is that individual posters are allowed to delete comments they don't like. I don't blame those who post anonomously. They may do so in fear of having all of their comments deleted if they use an identity.
If Jill wants to post her extreme vies here she should have a thick enough skin to allow comments she doesn't like or finds offensive to her religious beliefs(remember Jill, we aren't all religious or of the same religion)to remain on the site.
The rule here is that the Illinoize authors are free to do what they want. They can post whatever stories they want, and they can delete any comments they want.
Commenters are free to complain, of course, but I doubt it will do any good. Perhaps if they stop personally attacking the posters and focus on the topic at hand instead, then they wouldn't be deleted. Get the hint?
Merry Holidays!
Wasn't it Reagan that said " I noticed that all those who favor abortion. have already been born."?
I agree that a debate on abortion is good (this is what I believe was so wrong about Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court just cut off the debates that should have been going on in state legislatures), but come on Jill, you've been as inflamatory at times as some of the bad posters (especially when you said Blago actually supported shielding child rapists, which you know was not his intent).
I respect you for going out and expressing your opinion, but as a Pro-Lifer myself, let me just say that you don't speak for me and please don't act like you speak for the entire pro-Life movement.
Post a Comment