Birth and Infancy of Jesus

122:3.1One evening about sun­down, be­fore Joseph had re­turned home, Ga­briel ap­peared to Mary by the side of a low stone ta­ble and, af­ter she had re­cov­ered her com­po­sure, said: “I come at the bid­ding of one who is my Mas­ter and whom you shall love and nur­ture. To you, Mary, I bring glad tid­ings when I an­nounce that the con­cep­tion within you is or­dained by heaven, and that in due time you will be­come the mother of a son; you shall call him Joshua, and he shall in­au­gu­rate the king­dom of heaven on earth and among men. Speak not of this mat­ter save to Joseph and to Eliz­a­beth, your kinswoman, to whom I have also ap­peared, and who shall pres­ently also bear a son, whose name shall be John, and who will pre­pare the way for the mes­sage of de­liv­er­ance which your son shall pro­claim to men with great power and deep con­vic­tion. And doubt not my word, Mary, for this home has been cho­sen as the mor­tal habi­tat of the child of des­tiny. My bene­dic­tion rests upon you, the power of the Most Highs will strengthen you, and the Lord of all the earth shall over­shadow you.”

122:3.2Mary pon­dered this vis­i­ta­tion se­cretly in her heart for many weeks un­til of a cer­tainty she knew she was with child, be­fore she dared to dis­close these un­usual events to her hus­band. When Joseph heard all about this, al­though he had great con­fi­dence in Mary, he was much trou­bled and could not sleep for many nights. At first Joseph had doubts about the Ga­briel vis­i­ta­tion. Then when he be­came well-nigh per­suaded that Mary had re­ally heard the voice and be­held the form of the di­vine mes­sen­ger, he was torn in mind as he pon­dered how such things could be. How could the off­spring of hu­man be­ings be a child of di­vine des­tiny? Never could Joseph rec­on­cile these con­flict­ing ideas un­til, af­ter sev­eral weeks of thought, both he and Mary reached the con­clu­sion that they had been cho­sen to be­come the par­ents of the Mes­siah, though it had hardly been the Jew­ish con­cept that the ex­pected de­liv­erer was to be of di­vine na­ture. Upon ar­riv­ing at this mo­men­tous con­clu­sion, Mary has­tened to de­part for a visit with Eliz­a­beth.

122:3.3Upon her re­turn, Mary went to visit her par­ents, Joachim and Han­nah. Her two broth­ers and two sis­ters, as well as her par­ents, were al­ways very skep­ti­cal about the di­vine mis­sion of Je­sus, though, of course, at this time they knew noth­ing of the Ga­briel vis­i­ta­tion. But Mary did con­fide to her sis­ter Sa­lome that she thought her son was des­tined to be­come a great teacher.

122:3.4Ga­briel’s an­nounce­ment to Mary was made the day fol­low­ing the con­cep­tion of Je­sus and was the only event of super­nat­u­ral oc­cur­rence con­nected with her en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence of car­ry­ing and bear­ing the child of prom­ise.