Birth and Infancy of Jesus

122:2.1Je­sus’ life­work on Uran­tia was re­ally be­gun by John the Bap­tist. Zach­a­rias, John’s fa­ther, be­longed to the Jew­ish priest­hood, while his mother, Eliz­a­beth, was a mem­ber of the more pros­per­ous branch of the same large fam­ily group to which Mary the mother of Je­sus also be­longed. Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth, though they had been mar­ried many years, were child­less.

122:2.2It was late in the month of June, 8 B.C., about three months af­ter the mar­riage of Joseph and Mary, that Ga­briel ap­peared to Eliz­a­beth at noon­tide one day, just as he later made his pres­ence known to Mary. Said Ga­briel:

122:2.3“While your hus­band, Zach­a­rias, stands be­fore the al­tar in Je­ru­sa­lem, and while the as­sem­bled peo­ple pray for the com­ing of a de­liv­erer, I, Ga­briel, have come to an­nounce that you will shortly bear a son who shall be the fore­run­ner of this di­vine teacher, and you shall call your son John. He will grow up ded­i­cated to the Lord your God, and when he has come to full years, he will glad­den your heart be­cause he will turn many souls to God, and he will also pro­claim the com­ing of the soul-healer of your peo­ple and the spirit-lib­er­a­tor of all man­kind. Your kinswoman Mary shall be the mother of this child of prom­ise, and I will also ap­pear to her.”

122:2.4This vi­sion greatly fright­ened Eliz­a­beth. Af­ter Ga­briel’s de­par­ture she turned this ex­pe­ri­ence over in her mind, long pon­der­ing the say­ings of the ma­jes­tic vis­i­tor, but did not speak of the rev­e­la­tion to any­one save her hus­band un­til her sub­se­quent visit with Mary in early Febru­ary of the fol­low­ing year.

122:2.5For five months, how­ever, Eliz­a­beth with­held her se­cret even from her hus­band. Upon her dis­clo­sure of the story of Ga­briel’s visit, Zach­a­rias was very skep­ti­cal and for weeks doubted the en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence, only con­sent­ing half­heart­edly to be­lieve in Ga­briel’s visit to his wife when he could no longer ques­tion that she was ex­pec­tant with child. Zach­a­rias was very much per­plexed re­gard­ing the prospec­tive moth­er­hood of Eliz­a­beth, but he did not doubt the in­tegrity of his wife, not­with­stand­ing his own ad­vanced age. It was not un­til about six weeks be­fore John’s birth that Zach­a­rias, as the re­sult of an im­pres­sive dream, be­came fully con­vinced that Eliz­a­beth was to be­come the mother of a son of des­tiny, one who was to pre­pare the way for the com­ing of the Mes­siah.

122:2.6Ga­briel ap­peared to Mary about the mid­dle of Novem­ber, 8 B.C., while she was at work in her Naz­a­reth home. Later on, af­ter Mary knew with­out doubt that she was to be­come a mother, she per­suaded Joseph to let her jour­ney to the City of Ju­dah, four miles west of Je­ru­sa­lem, in the hills, to visit Eliz­a­beth. Ga­briel had in­formed each of these moth­ers-to-be of his ap­pear­ance to the other. Nat­u­rally they were anx­ious to get to­gether, com­pare ex­pe­ri­ences, and talk over the prob­a­ble fu­tures of their sons. Mary re­mained with her dis­tant cousin for three weeks. Eliz­a­beth did much to strengthen Mary’s faith in the vi­sion of Ga­briel, so that she re­turned home more fully ded­i­cated to the call to mother the child of des­tiny whom she was so soon to pre­sent to the world as a help­less babe, an av­er­age and nor­mal in­fant of the realm.

122:2.7John was born in the City of Ju­dah, March 25, 7 B.C. Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth re­joiced greatly in the re­al­iza­tion that a son had come to them as Ga­briel had prom­ised, and when on the eighth day they pre­sented the child for cir­cum­ci­sion, they for­mally chris­tened him John, as they had been di­rected afore­time. Al­ready had a nephew of Zach­a­rias de­parted for Naz­a­reth, car­ry­ing the mes­sage of Eliz­a­beth to Mary pro­claim­ing that a son had been born to her and that his name was to be John.

122:2.8From his ear­li­est in­fancy John was ju­di­ciously im­pressed by his par­ents with the idea that he was to grow up to be­come a spir­i­tual leader and re­li­gious teacher. And the soil of John’s heart was ever re­spon­sive to the sow­ing of such sug­ges­tive seeds. Even as a child he was found fre­quently at the tem­ple dur­ing the sea­sons of his fa­ther’s ser­vice, and he was tremen­dously im­pressed with the sig­nif­i­cance of all that he saw.