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Hebrew always [195 times] indicates a human, not Deity-Lord). That lord of David, also to be
David's descendant, would be exalted to the stupendous dignity of sitting at the right hand of his
Father, Yahweh, pending the Son's final conquest of the world. In that position at the right hand of
God he would be a priest to intercede for those who recognized him as the Lord Messiah (Psalm
110:4). A whole New Testament book, Hebrews, is devoted to a commentary on Psalm 110:1-4,
and Psalm 110:1, 4 are alluded to in the New Testament more frequently than any other Old Testa-
ment verse (some 35 times).

The facts above should convince the open-minded that the celebrated Son-of-God-to-be
was to be born at a moment of future history. It would make a considerable nonsense of the whole
account to maintain that that Son was already alive! The whole point about the distinguished Mes-
sianic Son is that the faithful among the Jews were waiting for him to be born -- from a descen-
dant of David. Genesis 49:10, Isaiah 7; 53:1-12 and Malachi 4:2 were additional promises of the
Savior who did not yet exist but who would appear on the human scene in due course.

At the appointed time, after a marvelous appearance of Gabriel to Mary, the Son of God
came into existence. He was produced, put on the human scene, just as Genesis 3:15, Deuteronomy
18:15-18 and II Samuel 7 had guaranteed. God's promises do not fail and their terms are straight-
forward, delightfully free from the frightening complexity that some theological schemes managed
to foist up on them in post-biblical times.

Gabriel's commentary on the arrival of the promised Son of God is as lucid as it is concise
(angels do not suffer from the verbosity of many of us!). Luke 1:35: "The holy spirit will come
upon you, Mary, and for that reason precisely (dio kai) the holy one to be begotten will be the
Son of God" ("be called the Son of God" is the equivalent of "be the Son of God" -- cp. Matthew
5:9 with Luke 6:5).

All this exactly as we should expect if we have been reading the Old Testament promises
carefully. Finally, at a precise moment of human history, the Son of God has come into being, con-
ceived and begotten (see Matthew 1:20: "begotten") as the action of the Father. You will have to
check the original Greek for the word here. It points to the activity of the Father as the one beget-
ting, generating the Son in the womb of Mary. Just as He created Adam as the Son of God (Luke
3:38), so He now by divine fiat brings into being the Second Adam, the Son of God.

It should not be difficult to see how far all this is from the traditional dogma that the Son
never had a beginning. Psalm 2:7 is a telling verse. It speaks of a definite time when God begat,
generated, brought into being the Son. It is a desperate business trying to argue that the words "To-
day, I have become your Father; today I have generated you, given you being" mean in fact nothing
of the sort! Amazing as it may seem, the councils of "the Church" achieved just such an astonishing
tour de force. Augustine and earlier church fathers, steeped in the dogmas and creeds of their in-
herited tradition, and under the influence of an irrational element from neo-Platonism, declared that
"today" really means "in eternity." If you are blinking at this last statement, please proceed to a
good theological dictionary and check the facts. Again, the precious words of Scripture basing the
origin of the Son squarely in time, were dissolved into nothing with the acid of Gnostic Platonism.
"Today," it was taught, really means "in eternity." The trick was done. With this misuse of lan-
guage Jesus, the unique Son begotten in Mary under the power of the Father's spirit, was turned

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