<TITLE>18. Par -</TITLE>L-25-2 What a reproach to Mary... (As we are closing.) What a reproach to Mary and Joseph for His Word. It's Christmas time. I was planning on holding just a little bit, but you'll hear much of it on radio, and among your pastors, and so forth. What a reproach for Mary and Joseph to hold to God's Word of promise. Remember now, and the scorn that lifted up a eyebrow when they seen little Mary go by, seen Joseph; "You're marrying a prostitute." See? And remember, brother, adultery was death in them days. "Now, you keep her from getting killed. She's to be mother by you." And... But remember, all the time God was dealing with them; and it was according to the Word, and they didn't know it. See?
"A virgin shall bear a child." Joseph knowed that. Mary knowed that, because after the Word was written, there was an Angel talking to them, vindicating, or manifesting the very Word that was written, that was going to happen. Why, don't dream now, think. The Holy Spirit come down to the earth. He never spoke to the whole congregation. He spoke to them.

L-25-4 Joseph looked, and before the Angel had visit him, he said, "Well now, I love her, but I'm a righteous man; I can't marry a woman like that."
And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, thou Son of David, don't fear to take unto thee, Mary, thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit." Oh, my, what a comfort. See?
And Mary on her road to the well, the little virgin about seventeen years old, eighteen, married to a man had been married before and had four children, an old man. And she was... She loved him, and she didn't know why. And he loved her, and he didn't know why. And here they was coming--going to the well to get some water. And all was studying upon the things that she... She was thinking of the Scriptures, no doubt; and then a Light flashed before her. When that Light flashed, there stood an Angel.

L-26-2 Wonder how little Mary felt? Did you ever think of that? I wonder if she felt as scared as I did yesterday. "Hail Mary." "Hail" means "stop." "Pay attention to what I'm going to tell you. Blessed art thou amongst the women, for you found favor with God, and you're going to bear a Child: knowing no man, but you're going to have a Child; and your cousin Elisabeth, being old too, she has conceived also and is going to bear a child, and these signs will be done."
She said, "How will these be? Know, seeing I know not a man."
He said, "The Holy Ghost is going to overshadow you. That holy Thing that'll be born of you will be called the Son of God."
Let the scoffers say what they want to. She knowed it. She knowed it would be, because God said so.

L-26-4 Now, how she must have felt that day of the dedication, or the coming for the circumcision of the Baby, when there she was walking up with this little Baby in her arms like that, and all the women keeping their distance, all with fine needle work to dedicate their babies and have them circumcised. And nearly all of them pulling a lamb, but she had two turtle doves, cleansing for her own purification. The little Baby, wrapped in swaddling cloth, made out of the yoke off of the back of an ox's neck. Yoke, the wrapping on the back of an ox... That was this swaddling cloth in the manger. They had nothing for Him. They was too poor. And here she stood.

L-26-5 No doubt, all of the women kept their distance from the little virgin. Said, "You see, she's got a illegitimate child." See how God makes things so radical looking. Oh, my. He just pulls the wool right over Satan's eyes. "How filthy, how dirty, adultery, that's what she is; she's an adulterous."
That didn't stop that beat in little Mary's heart. They kept their distance from Him; they're still doing the same thing. Call Him now a holy-roller, fanatic, or something. Mary knew Whose Baby that was. She just kept on just the same.


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