Reading the Christmas story

Since the time I was a young man, each year I have followed my own little personal Christmas tradition–I read the chapters on the Christmas story in the book JESUS THE CHRIST by James E. Talmage. Chapters 7 and 8 tell about the events of Christ’s birth. But many years ago, I sensed that to read the full story of Christmas I had to also include chapters 2-6, which provide the background for his birth as the babe in Bethlehem and why his birth is so important. Reviewing these chapters each year has helped to fill me with awe, gratitude, and joy for the blessing of Christmas.

Highlights:
● We lived with God as spirits prior to our coming to earth as mortals.
● In the premortal world God our Heavenly Father presented a plan for our growth and happiness (the Great Plan of Salvation/Redemption), in which we would come to this earth to receive a body and be tested.
● One of the spirits, Lucifer, rebelled and presented an alternative plan which would deprive us of our free agency, but was rejected.
● Jehovah, the most intelligent of God’s spirit children, the Creator of this world under the Father, and member of the Godhead, was chosen and foreordained to be the Savior of mankind.
● The chosen plan anticipated that all who came to this earth would be subject to physical and spiritual death, and of themselves could not overcome these problems.
● The Savior would fulfill the plan by overcoming physical death (the resurrection) and spiritual death (the atonement).
● To do this, he would need to take upon himself an earthly body (be born as a baby with a mortal mother but with God as his father), live a perfect life, fulfill the demands of justice by suffering vicariously for all of our sins, and die an innocent man and take up his body again to break the bands of physical death.
● All of the prophets prior to his birth prophesied of his coming.
● The gospel, when preached and administered in all the ages of the world, relied on his atonement to cleanse from sin individuals who would accept him through faith, repentance, and baptism, so we could once again be with God.
● The situation in the land of Jerusalem was ripe for the Savior’s coming to fulfill his sacred mission.
● There was great joy in heaven that his birth began the consummation of the Great Plan.
(Pages from my mother's copy of JESUS THE CHRIST)