That Holy Thing

by Henry M. Morris, Ph.D.

“And the angel answered and said unto her, 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).

This revelation of the Angel Gabriel to Mary refers, of course, to the miraculous conception of the incarnate God in the virgin’s womb. It is noteworthy that the developing baby was called “that holy thing.” The birth of Jesus had to be a perfectly normal, human birth with His infant form being carried in the womb through full term from conception to birth, for “in all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren” (Hebrews 2:17).

This suggests that every other growing embryo could also be called a “holy thing” (actually, the Greek simply says “holy”). John the Baptist, in fact, was said to be “filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb” (Luke 1:15).

In any case, there can be no doubt that the growing body of Jesus in Mary’s womb was (apart from innate sin) truly human from the moment of conception, and this must therefore be true of every human embryo. The modern abortionist’s idea that the fetus only becomes “human” after the first trimester, or even later, is based on the infamous “recapitulation theory” of 19th century evolutionists who taught that the embryo “recapitulated” the evolutionary history of an animal ancestry. This bizarre and long-discredited notion is still offered as a “proof” of evolution and as the pseudo-scientific rationale for abortion—its advocates claiming that the fetus progresses through invertebrate, fish, reptile, and monkey stages before evolving into a human being. No knowledgeable embryologist teaches such a thing today, of course. Abortionism is not only contrary to Scripture and the purposes of God, but unscientific, as well. HMM