One of the profound concepts of Christian theology that Armstrongism tended to overlook, or even mock at times, is the concept of the incarnation, failing to realize that it was the divine response to a deep, universal human longing.
The Incarnation is the hypostatic union—the permanent, personal union of the divine nature and a human nature in the one person of Jesus Christ, "without confusion, without change, without division, without separation." Jesus is thus truly God and truly man, one person with two natures.
At its core is the idea of a mystical longing—the creature's ache for the Creator, the finite reaching toward the infinite, humanity's innate desire for the divine. This isn't merely a Christian concept but a transcendent reality evident across cultures, religions, and eras. Philosophers, poets, and mystics have described it as an inner restlessness, a sense that earthly joys, achievements, and relationships ultimately fall short, leaving the soul yearning for something more eternal and fulfilling.
St. Augustine of Hippo articulated this most famously in his Confessions:
You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
This restlessness arises because humans are created in God's image (imago Dei), imprinted with a capacity for the infinite that no finite thing can satisfy. It's a longing woven into our very being—a homesickness for the divine source from which we came.
For Christians, this universal ache finds its ultimate answer in the Incarnation: God becoming human in Jesus Christ. The baby in the manger is not just a sentimental image but the staggering fulfillment of that longing. The eternal Word "became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14), bridging the chasm between the infinite God and finite humanity. As theologians like Athanasius and Irenaeus emphasized, God took on our humanity to restore what was lost—to make us partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).
This is grace unimaginable: not a distant deity demanding we climb to the divine, but God descending to us in vulnerability and love. Born in a humble stable, among animals, to a young virgin and her faithful spouse, Jesus enters our world as one of us—experiencing hunger, joy, sorrow, and temptation—yet without sin. He does this, as the comment notes, "to show us how to love one another." The Incarnation reveals God's love as self-giving (kenosis, or emptying, as in Philippians 2:6-8), modeling perfect humility, compassion, and sacrifice. It teaches that true love isn't power imposed from above but presence shared in weakness.
The nativity scene powerfully symbolizes this. The shepherds—ordinary workers, many tiems the outcasts of society—represent humanity's humble longing answered first by angels' announcement of "good news of great joy." The Magi, wise seekers from afar, embody that cross-cultural yearning for truth, guided by a star to worship the King. Animals surround the manger, evoking Isaiah's peaceable kingdom where creation itself participates in redemption. Under a starry night, the infinite enters the finite, heaven touches earth.
In this child, the mystical longing is met with divine initiative. God doesn't wait for us to perfect our search; He comes to us, loves us into wholeness, and invites us to love as He loves. As we gaze on the manger today—especially on this Christmas Day—we're reminded that our restlessness has a resting place: in the God who became one of us.
35 comments:
I do not think very many Christian pastors actually believe in their own religion. It's just something they do to make easy money and offer people hope.
Please provide evidence that Sabbath Christians have ever mocked the Incarnation of Jesus Christ ?
"The Plain Truth About Christmas" by one Herbert Armstrong
Is you opinion based on actually knowing Christian pastors, 11:50? I don't believe it is fair to extrapolate what we know about Armstrongite hireling ministers across all of Christianity.
The term "mock" has been frequently used and abused to redefine certain activities. In its classic definition, I don't believe an Armstrongite would mock the incarnation of Jesus Christ. However, the impact of Jesus Christ has been diminished by HWA and his lackeys, and they have made statements to the effect that God was "rolling the dice" by making it possible for Jesus to sin, and that had He done so, humanity would have been lost.
1150, your hatred of Christianity is making you say illogical and ridiculous things.
Anonymous 1:44 wrote, “Please provide evidence that Sabbath Christians have ever mocked the Incarnation of Jesus Christ ?”
First, I am not sure what you mean by the term “Sabbath Christian” and how that is relevant to your viewpoint on this topic. My reaction is that you must be a Seventh Day Adventist. They are Christians but elect to use the seventh day as their day of worship. Armstrongists, on the other hand, are not Sabbath Christians. They are Sabbath Non-Christians because they believe that the observance of the physical seventh day is a requirement for salvation. The jury is out on what you are saying.
With that said, I looked up the term “incarnation” in one of the Armstrongist archives and it is used almost exclusively to refer to paganism. Lots of Alexander Hislop. Armstrongists do not believe in the doctrine of incarnation. The doctrine states that Jesus was fully God and fully man. Armstrongists believe that Jesus was fully man – God transformed into a fleshly man. So, if you put “word became flesh” into the archive search engine you will get hits that are not pagan in reference. It is apparent that Armstrongists deride and ridicule the idea of the incarnation by casting it as a pagan concept with pagan connections.
The Armstrongist concept of “God made flesh” is wrong because it denies the Deity of Christ. Jesus underwent Kenosis and emptied himself of his full powers temporarily but he remained God and in scripture is referred to as God when he was in the flesh. Doubting Thomas referred to Jesus as “ho theos” – Greek wording reserved for the God and does not refer to someone who is just God-like.
This doctrine is extensively treated in systematic theologies and there is no reason to re-litigate it here.
Scout
Please provide evidence for Jesus Christ being disrespected in such manner as "rolling the dice".
I agree 11:50. This is a major problem in these days, not the 1960s, 1980s but now on 2000's.
It is widely recognised in the Sunday Christian world as an epidemic, but i am convinced it's an EPIDEMIC also in the COG world. It's called an epidemic of faithless, faith-lost and non believing Pastors, Pastors wives and Ministry. It is affecting Ministry far more than members. The cold fact it's been absolute ignored by all COG's is an indication of the seriousness and cold reality believers face.
Can you imagine the church decades ago ignoring this epidemic existence? Or any of the decent Pastors of the past ? I doubt it.
Many face the very real problem that some who preach, teach and have influence over their church life, do not have faith or have lost faith and do not believe, and are a danger to themselves let alone others.
We live in an evil world and many ministry have made themselves agents of the devil, to do harm to the belivers of Christianity in all it's forms and think they do God a service.
I won't forget these insulting words "Scout".
Who died and declared you fit to judge others and gave you ownership of decreeing 'yay' or 'nay' on whom can qualify as a Christian? But of course that's a dead giveaway on how you behave in church 'naying' and 'yaying' members. So somewhat of an own goal comment.
Which part, the SDA label or the "Sabbath Non Christians" one?
The Plain Truth about Xmas mocks Xmas not the incarnation. HWA, love him or hate him, taught the incarnation was a real thing.
Religion is a lot like politics. Do politicians believe what they say? They have their own agenda and they dare not tell people what they really think or they would never get voted in. And the scholars in any church are usually far more "liberal" (non-literalist) than the people that sit in the pews and listen to the preachers. This has been the case for a few hundred years now.
What Scout says HWA taught is not the way I understood it when under HWA. It strikes me as a strawman argument.
If I think Judaism is a false religion, does that make me an anti-semite?
I love how Armstrongites think by using Xmas they can insult the day or those that keep it, but the X has always symbolized Christ and Christmas.
You must have read the old PT article "Is Judaism the Law of Moses?" back in the 1960s.
I have a couple of comments. I have been down this path before.
1. I am amazed that a theological argument can be regarded as an "insult." It is not an insult. It is your opportunity to defend your beliefs, if your beliefs are defensible. I think responding as if it were an insult is just a dodge to avoid facing the issue.
2. I am amazed that there are people who claim they were in the WCG but do not believe that the seventh day sabbath was a requirement for salvation in Armstrongist theology. Where could they have been? Under a rock?
Please read "Is Obedience to God Required for Salvation?" by Rod Meredith. To my knowledge the theology in this article has never been cancelled. You will find that not only are the Ten Commandments, including the seventh day Sabbath, required for salvation, so are the civil laws, statutes and judgements. You can find the article in online archives of WCG material.
Scout
It is pointless to argue with someone who is committed to misunderstanding you.
Deliberately misunderstanding what people comment to use adversely is another major clue. It has roots in hatred and disrespect.
Xmas is an abbreviation word widely used throughout the western world in many ways, including retail store promotions, various product promotion also in film and television programming. It is used on cards and wrapping paper and clothing and all kinds of merchandise. It has been used for many decades.
Nowhere is it regarded or upheld as an insult EXCEPT in your mind. It was not invented by Herbert Armstrong and is not the only word used to describe the Christmas season.
Read this, read that, you dwell amongst old Plain Truth's haunting a past that doesn't exist anymore, to argue people to death over this article or that, written by long deceased men or their ghost writers, in a past time. What joy! How inspiring !
You think people in 2025 should be held accountable. But we are not. You despise us using the word Christian, so it shall be used all the more.
You fail to see you've made yourself a post-organisation person. Is God's Holy Spirit to be found in musty old magazines? Does despising others calling themselves Christian make you a better person ? I doubt it.
I recall a superdeacon who decided one day not everyone in church was allowed to sing hymns. I was one of the unfortunate ones. Not allowed. Perhaps the Pastor or wife had decreed it. Perhaps not.
He verbally bullied and tried to humiliate in a vain attempt to keep the outcasts quiet. Lo and behold he attempted to keep it going at the Feast of Tabernacles.
But God heard peoples prayers and the Superdeacon who became so big in his own eyes to petty decree who was allowed to sing hymns or not, disappeared. Just like that, he was gone.
So be careful who you declare not allowed to call themselves Christian. For God hears peoples prayers. Be careful how you treat others.
Has it ever occurred to you that those of us who were perceptive realized in 1975 that it was a scam and left, so the old stuff is the only thing we have on which to draw as we attempt to help the slow ones? More folks finally got it in 1995, and walked away.
I thought we were angry back then, but boy howdy, your comment is chock full of anger. No worries. That is the normal human reaction to a scam. We understand. There are some New Years resolutions you may want to consider though.
The old PT article has nothing to do with it. Nothing. Why is everything on here turned into "you must be thinking like a Armstrongite". It's dumb.
hey, 9:46, I believe you found a way to get past CAPTCHA. Please provide evidence that you are not a bot.
The world is FULL of lies. Why should orthodox Christianity be any different? It is very naive and irresponsible to let your guard down.
Not only is the Sabbath a requirement in the Bible for salvation, so is Thou Shall not Murder. God is harsh I guess. I guess we should get rid of all the law, not just the Sabbath.
C.S. Lewis wrote of a longing for the divine. The term in German for this is Sehnsucht. Lewis believed Sehnsucht was joy. He felt that if we longed for a life that this world cannot provide that it is evidence that we were created for another, better world. A world than transcends our own. I agree with him in this. The reference here to restlessness is just a variety of this same idea.
I have experienced moments of profound longing for a life that is transcendent in some way, coupled with a joy that God has provided a solution for this. Non-believers might describe this as nothing more than secretions from the pineal gland, but I don’t think so. It is too complex intellectually to be the mere chemical reaction to an endocrine hormone. Nor is this phenomenon explainable by evolution. Believing that there must be another better world somehow and some way has no survivalist value. It might even be a distraction from the imperative job of survival here and now.
I believe God has created us to respond to these profound longings even though we cannot give certain voice to them. Through a glass darkly.
Scout
Strange take on loving thy neighbor as thyself, but pop off.
Who's angry ? Strawman argument. You mistake determination for anger. Many who claim to have left never did. Lying abounds even on these so called 'truth blogs'.
Armstrongism has a very problematic history. It would be intellectually dishonest, let alone unethical, to simply disregard that history, ignore it, or sweep it under the rug. You need to know where it came from in order to understand it as it exists today, so that you can make informed decisions about committing to it, walking away from it, or ignoring it.
There are people who hate. Some of them are the people amongst us who suffered the greatest losses to the authoritarianism which HWA supported by the worst type of fear, fear for your eternal life. Most of us do not hate. We just don't want to see our fellow human beings manipulated, robbed, and spiritually raped. We'd like to see them remain as members of the families from which they came, and to excell in their lives and careers without being co-opted and enslaved. That is love, not hatred. You are attacking one of the most tactful participants here, one whose responses are always carefully metered, simply because he has a knack for presenting inconvenient truths about Armstrongism. Please consider that as you continue in the discussions!
All in the physical realm is a mixture of good and evil. Another version of yin and yang. No group is an exception to this. It is up to the individual to discern and navigate. HWA and his church were not the miraculous exception to this that they wanted us to believe they were. As we used to say in Spokesmens' Club warm up, "Moses supposes amiss......"
Your flippant and fallacious comment is not representative of the consensus of thought of our blog community, 5:30.
I think it was Bart Ehrman who said orthodoxy became the majority view after it opponents were ruthlessly suppressed.
"Blog community" now. Add the word two-faced.
Nah. That was Bart Simpson!
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