Mormonism and the Virgin Birth of Jesus

This file is an adaptation of an email I received from a friend.

Introduction

It may come as a shock to Christians who read this page that the Mormons have a teaching, going back to the time of their second President, Brigham Young, stating that God the Father came down to earth and had sexual relations with the Virgin Mary. Many Mormons today tend to deny this was ever really an official teaching of their church, but the writings of Brigham Young, and others, refute this. How any Christian could envisage that such a teaching on the Holy and Immaculate Virgin Mother of God could even be proposed, let alone believed, indicates that Mormonism worships a different ‘God’ from the One True God of Christianity.

I have spoken to missionaries who have openly admitted to me that sexual intercourse between the Father and Mary was involved in the conception of Jesus. l was also given to understand that this is an official teaching of the Church. One missionary told me that even though Mary had sex with God the Father she was still a virgin after the event because she had sex with an immortal man rather than a mortal man. (So if you are knocked down by a train, are you not really dead, because the train is not mortal? Just wondering.)

I ask Mormon readers of this page to check out what Bruce R. McConkie wrote in Mormon Doctrine under ”ONLY BEGOTTEN SON”, (see pages 546-547).

Please see the following references from LDS sources as evidence that many General Authorities from the Church did indeed subscribe to this view.

 

• The Seer by Orson Pratt, pages 158-159;
• Family Home Evening Manual (1972) pages 125+126;
• Mormon Doctrine, pages 546-547 and 742; The Promised Messiah, pages 467-468;
• Doctrines of Salvation, Vol. 1:18-20; and
• The Journal of Discourses Vol. 1:50-51,238; 2:210; 4:218; 8:115,211; 11:268.

There is ample evidence to show that Brigham Young, the Second President of the LDS church, most certainly claimed he knew how the conception of Jesus occurred. ln the Journal of Discourses, Brigham Young made the following statements(emphasis mine):

 

• ” l believe the Father came down from heaven, as the Apostles said he did, and begat the Savior of the World; for He is the Only Begotten of the Father which could not have been if the Father did not actually beget him in person”. (Journal of Discourses Vol. 1 page 238 ) 
• ”When the time came that His first-born, the Savior, should come into the world and take a tabernacle, the Father came Himself and favoured that spirit with a tabernacle instead of letting any other man do it. The Savior was begotten by the Father of His spirit, by the same Being who is the Father of our spirits, and that is all the organic difference between Jesus Christ and you and me.” (Journal of Discourses Vol. 4 page 218 ) 
• ”The birth of the Savior was as natural as are the births of our children ; it was the result of natural action. He partook of flesh and blood–was begotten of his Father, as we were of our fathers” (Journal of Discourses Vol. 8 page 115) 
• …” The man Joseph, the husband of Mary, did not, that we know of, have more than one wife, but Mary the wife of Joseph had another husband. …..That very babe that was cradled in the manger, was begotten, not by Joseph, the husband of Mary, but by another Being. Do you inquire by whom? He was begotten by God our Heavenly Father.”(Journal of Discourses Vol. 11 page 268 )

In the above statements there can be absolutely no doubt that Brigham Young believed and taught that Heavenly Father came down from Heaven and appeared on earth with a body of flesh and bones and had sexual intercourse with Mary in order to produce the body of Jesus.
If Mormons reject these teachings as being part of their beliefs, a few other questions are in order:

 

 
• If you Mormons don’t believe this is what Brigham Young meant, what then did he exactly mean? Why did God have to come down from Heaven and begat the Savior in person? Wouldn’t you think that an all powerful God could begat the Savior without coming down from Heaven? 
• If God the Father did engage in sexual relations with Mary, why did Mary say ”l know not a man” (Luke 1:34)? Did Mary tell a lie? How could Mary have had sex with God when the scriptures declare that ”No one has ever seen God at any time” (John 1:18 ) and ”No -one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father” (John 6:46)? 
• lf God did have sex with Mary as Brigham Young taught, was Joseph aware of what happened? lf what Brigham Young taught actually took place, how could Mary be a virgin and how can the LDS Church claim to believe in the Virgin birth?

Conclusion

It should be clear at theis point that the early Mormons taught the truly shocking doctrine that God the Father (or at least, their ‘God the Father’) had sex with the Virgin Mary. Surely this is irrefutable proof that Mormons cannot be termed ‘Christians’ as they worship a different ‘God’ from Christians. It is not acceptable for Mormon missionaries to now state the doctrine was never taught, when it clearly was. It is time for Mormon misssionaries, and Mormons in general, to face up to the fact that here is one more doctrine that the Mormon religion is only too anxious to forget.