"No room at the inn" is V65.0Another article from the UCG cult on FR? A disclaimer is needed:
Founder: It was founded “by Bob Dick and David Hulme, in Arcadia, CA;”1 offshoot of Herbert W. Armstrong and was formed in May of 1995.
Headquarters: Milford, Ohio
Membership: unknown
Origins: The United Church of God is an offshoot of the Worldwide Church of God. They claim to trace their origins back to the “Church that Jesus founded in the early first century.”2 How this is done is not explained.
Practices: Worship on Saturday
Analysis: The United Church of God is a non-Christian cult that denies the Trinity, the true divinity of Christ, and requires both baptism and obedience to the commandments to be saved. It teaches that there is a “God family” of which we can become members through keeping the Law. Jesus is one of two divine beings, the Father being the other. The Holy Spirit is a force, a power, and is not the 3rd person of the Trinity, and it is received only through the laying on of hands by their church members. It also teaches that their members are obligated to keep the Sabbath and must observe seven festivals. They cannot eat unclean meat. This is a false religious system that teaches a false God, false Christ, and false gospel. Stay away from it.
Other Teachings:
They teach that the wicked, or unsaved, are not alive in hell but are annihilated. Baptism is by immersion. The Bible is inspired and inerrant. They are pre-millennial and maintain that Satan is a fallen, evil angel. Christians are not to go to war and should refuse being drafted.
Quotes
God: God consists of two different beings, Father and Son, in a ‘family.’
“...the one God is a family, presently consisting of God the Father and God the Son, Jesus Christ. And God is in the process of adding to the divine family multitudes of others - eventually all human beings who are willing and who faithfully choose to follow God’s way...the Father and Jesus Christ are both God...The real message in these pronouncements is that there is no other God apart from the true God’that is, outside the God family now consisting of two divine Beings, the Father and the Son. In short, the God family alone is God...the true God means the one God family to which others will yet be added.”3
Holy Spirit: The UCOG denies the personhood of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is God’s divine power. “...the Holy Spirit is the very nature, presence and expression of God’s power actively working in His servants...the very essence and life force through which the Father begets human beings as His spiritual children...The Holy Spirit is spoken of in many ways that demonstrate that it is not a divine person.”4
The Holy Spirit is received by the laying on of hands, after being water baptized by immersion.5
Jesus
“Jesus is one of two divine beings”6
Jesus is sinless, the creator of all humanity, who was raised from the dead, (physical resurrection is not explained).
Jesus will return
Law: “The Ten Commandments are the 10 points of God’s law of love. We believe that breaking any one point of the law brings upon a person the penalty of sin. We believe that this fundamental spiritual law reveals the only way to true life and the only possible way of happiness, peace and joy.”7
Man
Man is fallen but can become “partakers of the divine nature.” This means that they can be added to the God Family.
After death, you cease to exist but are resurrected for judgment. “The soul ( nephesh ) is not immortal, because it dies...what happens to the spiritual essence that separates man from animal? Does it continue as a conscious, immortal soul independent of the physical body? Certainly not!”8
“We believe that at the return of Jesus Christ a resurrection to spirit life will take place for all who have been God’s faithful servants.”9
Sabbath: Saturday, the seventh day of the week, is the proper day to worship God.
Salvation - Salvation is through Jesus only, but you must be baptized to be saved. Salvation can be lost.
You must acknowledge your sin, that your sin condemns you, and that you need forgiveness in Jesus. The person must repent and be baptized. You “...must forsake the sinful ways that brought the death penalty upon us and made Jesus’ sacrifice necessary in the first place. We must undergo a life-transforming change of heart and direction, a process the Bible calls repentance....When you are baptized, God forgives your past sins and clears your record...After our baptism, Christ’s ministers are to place their hands on us and pray for the gift of God’s Spirit for us. It is at this point that God gives His Spirit to a repentant, baptized person.”10
“After baptism and our receiving of God’s Spirit, we are justified. That is, we become righteous in God’s sight”11
“If we stumble and sin after baptism, we must ask God’s forgiveness and return to Him so that our state of forgiveness is not lost by our return to our old sinful way of life...If a Christian at some time during his life, after committing to serve God, turns away and renounces Jesus and God’s way in word or action, he will lose his salvation.”12
The saved don’t go to heaven but will live on earth with Jesus.
“God will offer salvation all who have lived, including those of non-Christian religions, in a time described in Revelation 22: 5, 11-13 . This is a period known as the Great White Throne Judgment when God will offer salvation, through Christ, to those denied such opportunity in their life.”13
“We believe God’s purpose for mankind is to prepare those whom He calls, and who elect through a life of overcoming sin, developing righteous character and growing in grace and knowledge, to possess God’s Kingdom and become kings and priests reigning with Christ at His return.”14
“Such individuals are justified, pardoned from the penalty of sin and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, which literally abides within them and supplies the divine love that alone can fulfill the law and produce righteousness.”15
Footnotes at link:
"No room at the inn" is V65.0IF there was to have been guest room as the article states, maybe they were turned away because villagers and family members believed that Joseph and Mary had lived in sin and had created a child out of wedlock. It may explain rudeness and non-welcoming attitudes. Also, with the Romans staying in and occupying the village, customs may have had to change, albeit temporarily.
I’ve read, who knows where, that the inn was more like a hostel and the couple may not have wanted to have their child born in the open with people of all ages and sexes looking on.
I don’t hold much stock in anything Herbert W. Armstrong’s group says, though.
Don’t relly care in this instance whether it was a hotel room or a guest room, it has the same result.
It’s always nice to be as accurate as possible, but in my humble opinion, this distinction doen’t mean a whit.
He was born in a manger reflects His humble beginnings, regardless the reason for it to have happened that way.
And the point is ....................?
They didn't have any of these around back then
Of course the inn was booked up. You know how hard it is to find a hotel room for Christmas?
Great article! Thanks for sharing!
I too......have always felt (since the birth was during Sukkot) that He was probably born in a sukkah and since the early translators were not too familiar with Hebrew terminology....they thought "food shelf" (all sukkahs have them) meant "manger". This would be more understandable to 16th century English readers than a sukkah "food shelf".
Acts 17:11shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
If the word actually means guest room instead of inn it makes sense.
A stupid article that adds nothing and quibbles over semantics.
There is not better - nor appropriate - place for the “Lamb of God” to be born than in a lamb’s manger.
unless either Mary or Joseph narrated the story of what happened to the evangalists, how would they have known anything about the birth of Christ??????
That and terms like it are laced thru out all the narrative...
If that which you claim is accurate, there is nothing that stands out about the birth of Jesus...It wasn't remarkable at all...It's not even worth mentioning in the scriptures...
One of the signs that the shepherds were given to find Jesus, if they hadn't noticed the neon sign was that he was lying in a manger...So we know regardless of your story that a newborn baby lying in a manger was very remarkable...
And God found it necessary for us to know that the guestroom of the relative of Joseph was full so they put Mary in the main bedroom??? C'mon...you can do better than that...
I don't buy your story...Laying in a manger and being wrapped in swaddling clothes with eye witnesses were the signs given to the World that Jesus was the fulfillment of the OT prophecies...
If Jesus was born in a house full of people, there would have been no need for outside witnesses...In fact, who would believe such a common occurrance???
'Jesus was born in a crowded house in the suburbs of Bethlehem...Therefore, believe'...Ya, right...
What is all the hoopla about whether there was no room in an Inn or no guest room at another place? How does it change the story? Why do so many Christians go off on so many tangents about things that have absolutely nothing to do with carrying the Word?
Jewish shepherds at the time of Christ were not able to leave their sheep in order to participate in obligatory pilgrimages to the temple in Jerusalem, besides being too poor to afford the required sacrifices.
Because they didn’t fulfill these requirements, they were rejected by the Jewish people.
They lived in the country with their sheep, sheltering at night in caves and sleeping at the entrance so as to guard the sheep from predators or thieves. (Thus Jesus describes himself as “the sheepgate”.)
It is highly unlikely that a respectable Jew would have accepted these shepherds into his home to see the newborn Jesus, so, if the shepherds visited, it was unlikely that Christ was sheltered in a home.
From the beginning the Word Incarnate was rejected by his own people and he extended hospitality to the outcasts.