Incarnatology: The Childbearing and Birthing Wisdom of Our Lord

Incarnatology

‘The Childbearing and Birthing Way of Faith in our Lord’

This document may be freely downloaded or printed, for your own personal and non-commercial use,

provided that it is not altered and proper citation of authorship is included.

[Preface] [That Holy Thing] [Conception] [The Journey to Aunt Elizabeth’s] [God’s Words] [James’ and Elizabeth’s Witness]

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already… (1 John 4:1-3 RSV)

Incarnatology is our witness that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; historically, in His very own human flesh, and personally, in the flesh of those impregnated with His life! “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God,” (Luke 1:35 KJV).

The Christian doctrine of the Incarnation is not only that ‘God was manifest in the flesh,’ but that the same thing will take place in anyone who receives the Holy Spirit: he receives from God a totally new heredity, the life of the Son of God, ‘until Christ be formed in you.’[1] ‘Jesus Christ has come in the flesh’ come, not only historically, but in my flesh.[2]

When appropriated personally, the verse, "Nevertheless [the sentence put upon women of pain in motherhood does not hinder their souls' salvation, and] they will be saved [eternally] if they continue in faith and love and holiness with self-control, [saved indeed] through the Childbearing or by the birth of the divine Child," (1 Timothy 2:15 AMP) describes the mysterious and wonderful spiritual pregnancy whereby Jesus is formed in our flesh. “What was true of the Virgin Mary in the historic introduction of God’s Son into this earth is true in every saint. The Son of God is born into me by the direct act of God…^{^[3]} The Virgin Mary is not only unique as the mother of our Lord, but she stands as the type of what we must expect if we are going to be those whom our Lord calls ‘My brother, and sister, and mother’ (Matt. xii. 50),”^{^[4]} writes Oswald Chambers.

This spiritual pregnancy process is "...the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now made manifest to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man mature in Christ," (Col 1:26-29 RSV). It is with this prayer that we invite you to read our expression of Jesus come… in the flesh.

[1] Chambers, O. 1996, c1947. Biblical Ethics. Marshall, Morgan & Scott: Hants UK

[2] Chambers, O. 1996, c1950. Conformed to His Image. Marshall, Morgan & Scott: London

^{^[3]}Chambers, O. 1993, c1935. My utmost for his highest : Selections for the year . Discovery House Publishers: Grand Rapids, MI

^{^[4]}Chambers, O. 1996, c1936. Christian disciplines : Containing the disciplines of Divine Guidance, Suffering, Peril, Prayer, Loneliness, Patience. Marshall, Morgan & Scott: London

My fancied ways why shouldst thou heed?
              Thou com'st down thine own secret stair;
              Com'st down to answer all my need,
              Yea, every bygone prayer!

In days gone by there was a man called the right Reverend James Alexander Kerr, a minister and pedagogue of the Presbyterian persuasion; and he had a wife Elizabeth of the same prejudice. They both thought they were Christians as they walked self-righteously in the commandments of Churchianity. However, they had neither the power nor the presence of the life of Jesus growing within their bodies. Both were advanced in years and unaware that the cause of their years of suffering was this spiritual barrenness.

Now James Alexander had been pastoring his Presbyterian people for forty-five long years, and it fell to him the duty each Saturday of praying for their needs, alone at the altar in the sanctuary of the old stone church. At the same time his people prayed out in the narthex. It was at the altar in the sanctuary that the Holy Spirit apprehended James Alexander and overshadowed his heart with an intensely felt spiritual impression. He was deeply disturbed and fear fell upon him. The Holy Spirit spoke to him saying, “Do not be afraid, James Alexander, I have heard your years of prayers and I have seen the desolation of your ignorance; and behold, I will heal you, your wife, and your Presbyterian people. Your problem is spiritual barrenness!

“Your wife Elizabeth will be the first of your people blessed to bear God’s promised Son. She will become ‘spiritually pregnant’ with His seed. The Holy Spirit will travail mightily within Elizabeth when her time of deliverance comes, when by her faith and obedience she will bring forth God’s son, incarnate in every cell of her bodily person. This process will deliver her out of the pious fraud of the religious slave woman and her brainchild...Churchianity. Elizabeth will no longer be barren and desolate. Her body will be spiritually fructified with the birth of God’s promised Son within her. She will be a freed woman, a daughter of the living God, fully surrendered to her spiritual inheritance as a mother of the seed of the resurrected Jesus …her Immanuel.... At the time of afterbirth, you will see that the old Elizabeth is crucified and the new Elizabeth is hid in Christ’s dying and rising within her. And you, James Alexander, shall observe the Holy Spirit of the resurrected Christ at work within your wife, and you will see Jesus being born and made manifest in her mortal flesh and you will call her living witness of it...Incarnatology.”

And James Alexander said to the Holy Spirit, “How should I know this? For I am an old minister and my religious training did not hold the type of learning this word embodies. And my dear wife, bless her ignorant soul, is a good woman but has no formal education which severely limits her ability to understand religious studies. She is advanced in years now and her memory frequently fails her.”

The Holy Spirit answered him; “James Alexander, Jesus sent me to impress this good news upon your heart and behold, because of your disbelief you will be dumbfounded, unable to speak of these things until the day that these things come to pass, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.”

James Alexander’s people were waiting for him in the narthex and they wondered at his delay in the sanctuary. And when he came out, he could not speak to them, and they perceived that he had been struck speechless by some vision in his time of prayer. James Alexander silently gestured as he passed through his people and went to his home.

After these days Elizabeth did spiritually conceive God’s promised Son…her wee Immanuel, the Resurrection and the Life… Her interior world was baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire! She was consumed with the Holy Spirit’s passionate love and devotion toward the indwelling embryonic life of her wee Immanuel, Jesus Christ. With thanksgiving she entered into her maternal confinement and dwelt within her prayer centre of Incarnatology, the ‘Holy of Holies’ in her interior world. There He loved her and His Love instructed her… and she loved Him and obeyed His instructions. Having taken up her abode there, in their love relationship, Elizabeth waited only upon Him. She became her indwelling Immanuel’s ‘lady in waiting’… In daily communion with His gestating life, and with the reading of the witness of Him in the scriptures, wee Immanuel grew! Empowered by this precious Life that she carried, Elizabeth was able to deny herself (her life as she knew it), and to pick up the cross of her ‘spiritual pregnancy’ and to follow Him. In this relinquished way of life, a life of deep humility, Elizabeth so decreased in self-importance that wee Immanuel was able to grow quickly and to increase in size within her. Increasingly, He became her all and all until he took up all of the room within her!

“Thus the Holy Spirit has done to me in the days when He intimately regarded my female design, to take away its reproach of spiritual barrenness before God, while regarding the need of my ignorance for an experiential feminine understanding of the bodily Redemption.”

In God’s time, He sent His Holy Spirit to Marah Shepherd. Now, Marah was a married, middle aged professing Christian woman living on the fringe of trendy evangelicalism with her Roman Catholic husband Joe. The Holy Spirit said,

His words perplexed her. She had never heard such a greeting. It was strangely filled with an intimate regard for the female person. It took her quite by surprise and she had to consider the nature of His greeting.

“Don’t be afraid, Marah, I am your Advocate and I have come to tell you that the Father’s gracious will has chosen your bodily life to be sacrificed in a ‘spiritual pregnancy’ with His promised Son, that He may be incarnate in you, brought forth into manifestation in your mortal flesh. In this, He calls you His obedient mother.” (“For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my…mother,” [Matt 12:50].)

“And this is the will of God…your sanctification...because God chose you from the beginning to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth,” [2 Thess. 2:13].

And Marah said, “I can scarcely understand the words that you speak! I am a lowly woman with little faculty to understand your words and no power to accomplish their meaning.”

“I will accomplish this within you. I am the promised Holy Spirit whom the resurrected Christ sends to baptize you into identification with Himself and all those who comprise His mother, His elect lady, His bride, His body, His new creation; the extension of His Incarnation on earth. I will overshadow you and you will become ‘spiritually pregnant’ with His life…

“I will form Him within you and He will progressively take possession of your bodily life for Himself as His mother and bride. You will become His fleshly house and you will derive your life directly from Him. He will be incarnate in you, manifest in your person’s every cell, because He is your Savior and Son, your promised Immanuel, the One whom God gives expressly to take on your human flesh in order to save your soul and redeem your bodily life. He who is called Holy will be for your body Holiness, “…for this is the will of God, your sanctification...” [1Thess. 4:3 RSV].

“And remember your Aunt Elizabeth? She is ‘spiritually pregnant’ in her old age and she is quite far along now. This is she who for years had suffered such shame and reproach before God because of her body’s spiritually barren condition… But now that she is ‘spiritually pregnant’, her body is burgeoning with the incarnate life of wee Immanuel, her Holiness. Everyone can tell that she is ‘spiritually pregnant’… For with God nothing shall be impossible!”

Marah, in complete surrender to her Lord’s will, replied, “I am your handmaiden Lord; I so desire to house your gestating life with my body. Let it be to me exactly as your Holy Spirit has spoken His promise for all persons. I present my body to you as a living sacrifice, to be used for the ‘spiritual pregnancy’ that is your Holy and acceptable will. And let this be my spiritual worship, my natural bodily life sacrificed for the incarnating of God’s Son/my Son. Let me be this new kind of creation in Christ Jesus, both the mother that bears and the spiritual child that is born of Him! In this way, together with all of the saints, I will prove what is the will of God for a restored and glorified humanity, what is the good, the acceptable and the perfect will of God.”

The Holy Spirit departed, leaving Marah to ponder their extraordinary encounter in her heart. She was still basking in the truth of being ineffably cherished and chosen by God for ‘His Child-bearing and Birthing Wisdom’, when a painful burning sensation sprang to life in the depths of her womb. The pain aborted her pondering prayer and directed her focus womb wards, where the physical manifestation of His presence was making itself known. It felt as though a live coal had been deeply imbedded there and was searing her womb’s lining in smoldering silence. The painful sensation dramatically increased in its intensity and suddenly the ‘smoldering coal’ burst into flames as it were, and her womb ‘came ablaze’ with ‘tongues as of fire’.. The revelation of what had just happened flooded through her female frame with greater import. “Oh my word,” she cried in an intense whisper… “I am spiritually pregnant, the Holy Spirit has gotten me God’s Son in my middle age and I’ve been begotten by my Son’s Holy Spirit...” Her womb had indeed conceived the life of wee Immanuel, who had branded His image on her feminine soul. She promptly realized that the fire in her womb had been given to serve her in much the same way as the burning bush of Horeb had been given to serve Moses. Her Lord and Son, God’s Son, Immanuel was immediately present to her in the flames. Trembling in the awe of the profound intimacy inherent in the relationship she had just conceived, Marah removed her shoes from off her feet for she knew she was standing on the Holy ground of her bodily Redemption. Baptized with the Holy Spirit and with His fire of love for Jesus her Immanuel, burning intensely in her womb, Marah obediently headed for the hills to see her Aunt Elizabeth.

Scurrying barefoot across the open field behind her house, Marah continued to feel the intense discomfort of her fiery womb. It was serving as a blessed reminder of the immediate and abiding presence there, of her Lord and her Son, God’s Son…wee Immanuel.

“Oh my word!” she exclaimed breathlessly, “What are my husband and family going to think of all this?”

“No,” she chided herself, “It’s not my word… its God’s Words in my flesh!” she blurted. The revelation of this living Truth suddenly gripped her feminine understanding again with an even greater import! Marah wept for joy saying, “Oh my God, my Savior, my Lord and my Son wee Immanuel, what an awesome maternal dilemma to find myself in...‘spiritually pregnant’ with Yourself...and at my age! Why, I’ve just left my husband, my home and my family to follow you without so much as leaving them a note to explain my whereabouts.”

“Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. Remember Lot's wife. Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.”

His Words…volunteered themselves to her from the depths of her fiery womb. They simply came to her, like a visiting memory from a vaguely familiar past. She immediately recognized them as God’s words exercising their own life within her. Marah’s infantile spiritual senses needed practice in order to hear and understand God’s voice. These senses were very immature and in critical need of a disciplined development. She stopped for a bit to kneel down and close her eyes in the hope she would hear His voice more clearly. When she was satisfied that she had indeed heard His Words aright, she thanked Him for their guidance and lifted her grateful eyes toward the hills. Seeing that they loomed close by, she rose hastily and resumed her journey. Her faith knew with its newly acquired ‘knower’ that God’s promised help was coming in this time of communion He had ordained for her Aunt Elizabeth and herself. Marah anticipated learning much about ‘spiritual pregnancy’ in this precious time God had ordained for the elder and the younger woman. Breathless, she finally arrived at the Kerr home. In joyful abandon she greeted her Aunt Elizabeth with a big hug and a holy kiss.

When Elizabeth heard Marah’s voice, the Life leaped within her and she was filled with the Holy Spirit! She greeted Marah in a warm full throated voice saying,

“Blessed are you Marah, with all of the saints, God’s believing woman. How blessed is the fruit of the womb of your soul....wee Immanuel. And what is this privilege granted me that a mother of my Lord should come to me? For as soon as I heard your voice, the Life, leaped for joy within my body and I was filled with the Holy Spirit bearing witness to the very same Life gestating in yours. How blessed are we to be chosen of God to be in an identical ‘spiritually pregnant’ condition. How blessed are we to be in communion with wee Immanuel’s great host of witnesses to the indwelling Way, Truth and Life that marks His corporately sanctified mother and ‘spiritually pregnant’ bride. How blessed is the fruit, wee Immanuel, that our mortal flesh commonly bears! Welcome to God’s way of the ‘Childbearing and Birthing Wisdom’, Marah. Welcome to the New Jerusalem, to communion with Jesus and his saints, to the new creation in Christ Jesus, to the place of union and communion with God and each other. Welcome to “.....the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now made manifest to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory... Him we proclaim, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man mature in Christ,” (Col 1:26-29 RSV)…”

Then the Life leapt for joy within Marah, and she was likewise filled with the Holy Spirit of witness saying;

and graciously blesses her to become ‘spiritually pregnant’ with His seed…

He graciously blesses her to live in identification with her bridegroom, Jesus,

prefigure this miracle of regeneration; this common ‘spiritual pregnancy’

And His mercy rests on His humble ‘lady-in-waiting’, His woman, His bride;

The ones whose faith has received, conceived, and is being regenerated by Him

And Marah’s ‘spiritually pregnant’ condition was fully recognized by the elder woman, Elizabeth, through the inner witness of their precious Immanuel’s blood, water and Spirit… Marah humbly took her place as a warmly welcomed mother, daughter, sister, friend and bride of the incarnate life of the resurrected Jesus; God’s promised way of the ‘Childbearing and Birthing Way of Faith in our Lord’.... Together, in the joy of their Lord, they celebrated their common bodily inheritance of wee Immanuel, God’s “…Christ in you, the hope of glory…”; and Marah remained with Elizabeth for three months to learn all she could about ‘spiritual pregnancy’ from the Holy Spirit’s witness in the elder woman God had lead her to.

After these times, Marah departed, and the time came for Elizabeth to be fully delivered, and she travailed with the Holy Spirit to complete the manifestation of the mature life of Immanuel within her mortal flesh… The church elders heard that the Lord had shown this great mercy to Elizabeth; that her Immanuel, Jesus Christ, was manifest in her, and that she had been transformed by carrying a ‘spiritual pregnancy’ with His Life and that she now bore a strong family likeness to Him. Because they had no experiential understanding of the workings of this incredibly transforming process, they came to inquire of her what the Lord had done for her.

They were astonished by the quiet Power, Presence and Authority of a Love in the profound wisdom and knowledge that Elizabeth spoke forth to them. They had never heard anyone witness with this kind of wisdom and knowledge. They searched their brains for a name they could call it that would be applicable! Struggling to find one, they soon began to argue amongst themselves. One would have called her particular school of wisdom and knowledge a ‘theology’ after her husband’s fine reputation as a wise and learned theologian. Another wanted to call it a ‘spirituo-biology’ because it was, after all, about some kind of spiritual pregnancy. Another concluded it was a ‘psychology’ bordering on a ‘soteriology’ with a hint of ‘pneumatology’ thrown into the mix. And so they argued, back and forth, until every name of every ‘ology’ under the sun had been considered and judged as unsatisfactory.

Suddenly, Elizabeth said boldly, “None of those; Its name is ... Incarnatology!"

And they retorted angrily to her, "No one has heard of a study with such a name! That word isn’t even in the dictionary! It will be suspect! Why, it could be the illegitimate daughter of the mystery schools of the occult wisdom infiltrating the church!”

And they made frantic signs to James Alexander, to see what he would have it called.

And he asked for a piece of paper and a pen, and wrote, “My wife’s witness is called... Incarnatology.”

The elders were shocked, for James Alexander did not write the name of any of the studies in his most learned education, but rather wrote the name the Holy Spirit had given him to call it. In his obedience, God delivered him from his dumbfoundedness and he blurted out in tear-filled release, “My dear elders, my wife’s witness, Incarnatology, expresses God’s ‘Childbearing and Birthing Wisdom’; the biblical mystery spoken to in the words “…Christ in you the hope of glory…”

His words pierced the elder’s hearts. The fear of God and the conviction of the Holy Spirit fell upon them and they didn’t know what had hit them! Dispersing immediately, they frantically talked about all these things throughout the hill country. All who heard them laid it up in their hearts, saying, ‘What then will this witness do? It must be from the devil!’ The people were afraid of the maternal inspiration of the Holy Ghost. The maternal Inspiration was with James Alexander and Elizabeth’s witness of the ‘Childbearing and Birthing Way of Faith in our Lord’ and in obedience to the Inspirer, they were unbudgeable in calling their witness... Incarnatology.

Now when James Alexander believed the Holy Ghost, he found himself in the identical ‘spiritually pregnant’ condition as his wife. He was no longer spiritually barren, but fructified by the indwelling, gestating life of his Lord... His highly educated intellect had previously learned all about Jesus, but he had had no real relationship, no real living relational contact with Him as a mother of wee Immanuel, Son of God/Son of humanity.. Thus his conscience was seared and his heart hardened with learned knowledge. His potential for regeneration, the incarnating of Jesus Christ within himself had been carnally imprisoned. It was that his learned knowledge had deceived him into believing that he was in a right relationship with God, when in truth it was blocking, quenching and grieving His Holy Spirit. In fact, what he had been in relationship with was his own ideas about Jesus… They were the progeny of his very own thinking, his very own illegitimate daughter…Churchianity.

But now he was filled with his indwelling Lord, his Immanuel. He was so filled with His living testimony, the Holy Spirit of prophecy, that inspired words of love and truth spontaneously welled up from the depths of his heart and in a river of living water, they poured forth to glorify God and bless others, saying;

We are part of this fleshly house, His body, His bride; the extension of His historical Incarnation

who remembered His holy covenant of pregnancy given to humankind in Eve… that human flesh is the mother that brings forth the Redeemer.

Through Mary’s pregnancy with Jesus, our Father has provided us with the human conception and birth of our precious Redeemer in history clothed in His own mortal flesh. Through her pregnancy, He has also prophetically provided us with the type and transparency to His spiritual conception and birth in us, whereby His seed clothes itself with our mortal flesh and causes us to be begotten of God.

Because our understanding of regeneration bears on the biblical feminine, or the “Childbearing and Birthing Wisdom of our God”, He leads us down the biblical path of humanly impossible miraculous pregnancies, promised in Eve and begun in Abraham and Sarah. Here He reveals that these pregnancies not only prefigure Mary’s pregnancy with Jesus and His birth in history, but also prefigure our ‘spiritual pregnancy’ with wee Immanuel, that causes our regeneration…personally.

we can walk in the way of the indwelling Atonement, immersed in His ‘Childbearing and Birthing Wisdom’ we walk in intimate communion with Him,

the countenance of wee Immanuel’s holiness, humility, love, and wisdom in each other’s faces.

The word Incarnatology embodies our experiential study, our living witness

of all we see, hear, and know of Him and His purpose for coming in the flesh, that is…coming in His own flesh historically… and coming in our flesh… personally/corporately.

He has made us one with the witness of his saints in scripture and one with the witness of all the members of his extended Incarnation throughout the centuries of the development of the One great spiritual pregnancy they carry.

The life of Jesus Christ, incarnate in James Alexander and Elizabeth, waxed strong. In the unity of the Holy Spirit, their life and lips are truly discipling others and unceasingly glorifying the power and presence of His Holiness enfleshed by them all.

And lo, I tell you God’s mysterious promise to them, “Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you....” By the Holy Spirit, their faith-filled witness is well pleasing to God.... He is gracing them through it, to become the spiritual parents of a brand new,

James Alexander and Elizabeth's story is complete.... But what about Marah Shepherd and her husband, Joe? Keep an eye on our “Resources” page. Their witness is in the process of being completed and will be posted there at a later date. In the meantime, we offer you some…

1. Do I identify with any of the characters in the story? If yes, which ones do I identify with and why?

2. What kinds of questions are awakened by the reading of this story so far?

4. Did I recognize biblical concepts that I already knew and that were perhaps wearing new clothes?

We would be delighted to hear how you’ve managed with this resource! If you need some help or have questions you’d like to ask, feel free to e-mail us. We really do want to hear how you are making out with our material and are happy to reply to you.