Building on the Foundation

  You’ve undoubtedly noticed that the apostle Paul is one of the most commonly misunderstood writers in the Bible. As the apostle Peter commented, 15 …our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, 16 as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures. 17 You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand, beware lest you also fall from your own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked. (2 Pet. 3:15-17.) One of the foulest perversions of Paul’s writings, of course, is the demonic lie that he taught against God’s law — as if he subscribed to the “ mystery of lawlessness ” (2 Thes. 2:7) that he himself condemned! We’ve addressed this matter on this blog many times . But sometimes other passages are misunderstood and taken out of context as well. We must be caref...

 It may be shocking to some, but the writers here on this blog do not always agree with one another on everything. On this particular occasion, we have decided to publish two posts expressing two different opinions about Thanksgiving Day. Should God's people celebrate the American Thanksgiving holiday? Is it okay to do so? Here's a post by Kyle Bacher expressing one viewpoint: Is Thanksgiving a Pagan Holiday? And here's a post by Brett Gray expressing another viewpoint: Should Christians Celebrate Thanksgiving? We hope that these posts will be educational and thought-provoking for all who read them. And if you have any additional thoughts, feel free to weigh in!

We write about a lot of different topics on this blog, and one of the most popular topics we've covered has been God's Holy Days versus the world's pagan holidays. If you're a long-time follower of the blog you've probably realized that we've covered all the holidays by this point (If you aren't, I'll link to the rest of those posts at the end). Well, almost all of them. There is one we haven't talked about, and, as I'm sure you can guess from the title, that one is Thanksgiving.  The question we want to look at today is whether or not it is okay for a Christian to keep Thanksgiving, or if, like the other holidays, it is simply a thin Christian veneer over a very evil and pagan holiday. Obviously, every day is a day of giving thanks to God for what He has done for us, but is declaring one day of the year as a special day to pause and come together with your family mean you don't give thanks the other days? No! It would be ludicrous to assume ...

  The title of this commentary poses a question uniquely for American readers, for Thanksgiving would appear to be a uniquely American holiday. Yet we may also observe that, as a harvest festival, it has parallels throughout the world, for nearly every nation, culture, and religion on earth celebrates harvest festivals. Almighty God, too, has His harvest festivals: the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. The Feast of Unleavened Bread marks the beginning of the barley harvest, as we’ve seen previously , and the Feast of Pentecost is “the firstfruits of wheat harvest” (Ex. 34:22). The Feast of Tabernacles, on the other hand, marks the end of harvesting: “Also on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the fruit of the land, you shall keep the feast of the LORD for seven days” (Lev. 23:39). For this reason, the Feast of Tabernacles is also described as “the Feast of Ingathering at the end [lit. “turning”] of the y...