Some minister preaches and feels, “Oh, I cannot prevail on men to hear, to repent, to serve God.” But your failure was not in the pulpit but in the secret closet before you entered the pulpit. If you had first prevailed with God, you could prevail with men. - John R. Rice [Genesis, pg. 455]
Prayer is asking; the answer to prayer is receiving. - John R. Rice
I am glad the time is near for Christmas. I will talk to you today about the virgin birth of Christ, one of the great doctrines of the Bible. It is essential to the deity of Christ. And one who does not believe in the virgin birth is really doubting the actual deity of Christ and the inspiration of the Bible and is not a good Christian. - John R. Rice [Christmas Now and All the Year, pg. 3]
The Virgin Birth Is Taught in Jeremiah 31:22
God said to Eve in the Garden of Eden that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. Why didn't He say the seed of mankind or of man and woman? No, the Seed of a woman is a subtle hint that the Saviour would be from a woman but not with a human father.
In Jeremiah 31:22 God says:
"How long wilt thou go about, O thou backsliding daughter? for the LORD hath created a new thing in the earth, A woman shall compass a man."
That is, without an ordinary conception by a man and woman, but "a woman shall compass a man." - John R. Rice [Christmas Now and All the Year, pg. 3-4]
I ought to say this. Was Mary a perpetual virgin? Our Catholic friends say so and they mean well, but the Bible says nothing like that. The Bible says Joseph took her to be his wife and " knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son." That clearly means he did know her as a wife after Jesus was born. And besides, why should God call her Joseph's wife if she never was really his wife?
Matthew 13 says that Mary and the brothers of Jesus were there and they are named. One was Simeon, one was Judas or Juda who wrote the book of Jude, one was James who wrote the book of James.
Back in Psalm 69, foretelling how Judas Iscariot would go away and how people would turn against the Lord Jesus, we read, "I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children' [vs. 8]. So there is evidently the virgin birth, but not that Mary was a perpetual virgin. She was a good woman but not sinless. She was not conceived miraculously herself, but was a normal, good, Christian woman, greatly favored in that she got to be the mother of the Lord Jesus. - John R. Rice [Christmas Now and All the Year, pg. 6]
Christ is God. Jesus said, "I and my Father are one." In John, chapter 5, the Jews set out to kill Him because He broke the Sabbath and because He claimed to be equal with God. They said that is blasphemy. He did claim to be equal with God. He did say, "I and my Father are one." He did say, "The Father hath committed all judgment unto the Son." He did openly claim that every prayer of his was answered. He said, "Father, I knew that thou hearest me always." He said, "...even as the Father said unto me, so I speak." Jesus claimed to be equal with God. Not only that, He is coexistent with God, that is, He lived as long as God, and He is eternal like God the Father. - John R. Rice [Christmas Now and All the Year, pg. 6-7]
Christ is the Creator. So the 1st chapter of John says, "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. . . . The same was in the beginning with God." Colossians also says that He is the Creator of all things. "For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him" (Col. 1:16). Jesus is the Creator of all things. - John R. Rice [Christmas Now and All the Year, pg. 7]
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