Shawn Ryan

They're questioning things.

They're doubting things.

Lord, I pray you use our conversation to point them toward you.

In Jesus' name.

In Jesus' name.

We knew it 700 years before it happened.

The prophet Isaiah, in Isaiah 7, verse 14, foretold that the Messiah would be born of a virgin.

Now, that gets a little controversial, because skeptics will say sometimes, well, wait a minute.

The word Alma in the Greek that's used there

doesn't always necessarily mean virgin.

If they meant to use virgin, they would use the word batula, which is another Hebrew word.

And so was he really talking about a virgin birth of the Messiah?

Well, the answer is there was no single word in ancient Hebrew that always meant virgin.

They didn't have a word in their vocabulary.

The word that's used, alma, means young maiden.

And a young maiden was presumed to be a virgin in those days.

The other word that people want them to use, betula, actually is used sometimes of widows who were not virgins.

So they did use the correct word.

A young maiden, a virgin, is to give birth.

In fact, before Jesus was even born, when the scholars translated the Hebrew scriptures into the Greek,