At a time when the world, even the christian world, seem confused about what is literal and true and what is figurative and false, it is warming and wonderful to be assured that the Restoration of the Gospel, lost to the world since the first century, teaches that the birth of Jesus Christ is a fact of history, that it took place in real time and real space. Indeed, the holy birth is a central part of HisStory as well as of human history.

The restored gospel shows us that Jesus was born probably in the Spring, at Passover time, some 2009 years ago. The exact date is not so important as the exact doctrine of His birth. The event is a fact of history, not because we all agree it is (some disagree), but because it fullfils a vital need made necessary by another event of history in a Garden some 4000 years earlier.

Jesus was born as the Son of God in order to pay for all the effects of the Fall of Adam, another literal event that happened on a certain day at a certain time in a certain place. The revelations of the Restoration confirm and expand on this knowledge and belief. The Fall was not a myth invented to explain primitive tales. Adam was not a mythical figure. He was the father of the human race of mankind, and Eve his wife, the mother of all living.

The Christmas story begins in Genesis 3:15, where we find a prophetic reference to the Virgin Birth. Joseph Smith rendered a plainer translation of this verse, which happens to accord with the original Hebrew:

The Lord, speaking to the serpent (Satan) says: "And I will put enmity [hostility, animosity, hatred] between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it [Joseph renders "it" as "he", we'll see why in a moment] shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."

Did you ever stop to consider that in all the families of the earth since the beginning of time that there is only One who can rightly be termed "the seed of the woman"? (Genesis 3:15; but see also Moses 4:21, which is the Prophet's rendering of this verse). All the rest of us are the seed of man and woman. Jesus alone is "the seed of woman", and is the seed or Child of Mary. The only Man involved is God the Father, Elohim, the Man of Holiness (see Moses 7:35), the literal Father of the body of Jesus, and thus a separate and distinct Being from Jesus, as the boy Joseph witnessed in the Sacred Grove when all these truths, long lost to the world despite the Bible's evidences, began to be restored. Jesus is not, cannot be, His own father, as the christian doctrine of the Trinity falsely asserts. Thus we see why Jesus is referred to often in the Four Gospels as "son of man." That word "man" should rightly be capitalized to "Man", for Jesus is the Son of Man of Holiness, even of God the Father, literally and in actuality.

Back to our verse from Genesis. . . . Satan is told there by the Lord that he will have limited ability to irritate, to pester, to cause a nuisance to the seed of the woman (Jesus), to "bruise His heel," but that Jesus will have the ultimate victory and will bruise (the Hebrew word means crush or grind or defeat) Satan's head. This part of the gospel story uses symbolism and figurative language but it is describing real events that really happened. The best place to learn of these interpretations and insights is in the Book of Mormon.

Why was a savior, or redeemer so necessary, and so vital to the human family? Because of the Fall. The Fall was downward but forward. It was deliberate and purposeful. It was planned and essential to the growth, development, schooling, and salvation of all who come into mortality, born into the human family of Adam and Eve. It took One who was not dominated by that fall to save the whole human race. The Fall is passed down to Adam and Eve's posterity through the blood. "Dam" (pronounced dawm) is the Hebrew word for blood, and A-dam means to show blood, or first blood. Jesus inherited blood through his mortal mother Mary, but He also inherited life and power over the Fall from His Father, the Man of Holiness. It was necessary for it to be so, and this true doctrine answers all the mysteries and objections of the whole story.

So we see why Christmas was necessary. . . .

The foundation doctrine of the whole plan of redemption and salvation and happiness is the one we have discussed here. It is the doctrine of Divine Sonship. Out of this doctrine grows even the mighty Atonement itself, the central doctrine of the plan.

Now we know these things because of the Restoration of the gospel through the Prophet Joseph Smith, and through the Book of Mormon. These truths are basic to knowing who we are as a people, to what we represent, to what we know, and to the reason we do extensive missionary work throughout the earth: "How great the importance to make these things known unto the inhabitants of the earth, that they may know" who Jesus is and why He is so necessary in the human story. The word "plan" is not to be found in the Bible, so the christian world has lost this truth and has no idea that there is a plan. But it is repeated over and over again in the Book of Mormon, and that is where we go to learn the exact points of doctrine of the plan.

Jesus is not optional, He is crucial. We must not be neutral, or ignorant on these points of doctrine. They, along with the literal Resurrection of the Lord Jesus, form the rock basis of our testimonies and of our identity as a people. And they open up the Christmas story to us like never before. Thus we see the Reason for the Season.

The Sabbath ought to be a day to ponder on these things, to prepare our minds for the sacrament that fuses by ordinance and by covenant these things into "the souls of all those who partake of it", and, at this time of year, to prepare our minds for Christmas. Hence, this Sabbathought. We sing, "The hopes and fears / Of all the years / Are met in thee tonight", O little town of Bethlehem, in the birth of the Christ Child. What hopes? What fears? We have started to consider the answers in this introduction. More later.

As Tiny Tim said, "God bless us, every one!"

Steve