A God Is Born

A God is born--how glorious is the day; how wondrous are the works which the great Creator hath wrought among us!

A God is born--angels attend; divine proclamations go forth like rolling claps of heavenly thunder; and celestial choirs sing praises to his blessed name.

A God is born--and the word is carried to the edges of eternity, that all men on all the worlds of his creating may now know that there is One who can work out the infinite and eternal atonement; there is One who can now bring to pass immortality and eternal life for all the works which his hands have made.

Well might we ask: ... Who is he? What is the source from whence he sprang, and who are the parents who gave him life? How can a tabernacle of clay be created for the great Creator?

We answer: He is the Firstborn of the Father, the noblest and greatest spirit being of all the endless host that bear the image of the divine Elohim. He is our Elder Brother, and like us needed to gain a mortal body, to die and to rise again in glorious immortality--all to fill the full measure of his creation.

He is the Lord Jehovah who dwelt among us as the Lord Jesus. He is the Eternal One, the Great I AM ... The Only Begotten, the Only Begotten in the flesh, the only person ever born of mortal woman who had an immortal Father!

The Immortal God was his Father, and the mortal Mary was his mother. And it was in consequence of this birth--a birth in which mortality and immortality joined hands--that he was able to perform his atoning mission and put into operation the great and eternal plan of redemption...

The scriptures say only that Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem... When they arrived all of the rooms were filled... And we cannot think other than that there was a divine providence in this. The great God, the Father of us all, intended that his Only Begotten Son should be born in the lowest of circumstances and subject to the most demeaning of surroundings.

There amid the lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep; there where the calm of the night was filled with the sounds of braying asses and yelping dogs; there where the stench of urine and the stink of dung fouled the nostrils of delicate souls--there in a stable the Son of God was born. There the King of Heaven was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger... His birth, demeaning and low and seemingly insignificant, was but a harbinger of his death. He was born in a stable and he died on a cross...

We testify that God was born some two thousands years ago and that if we follow the course he charted for us and for all men, we will have peace and joy in this life and be inheritors of eternal life in the world to come.

By Bruce R. McConkie

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