Building on the Foundation

  In the Gospel of John, we discover the following detail during Jesus’ ministry: “Now it was the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem, and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple, in Solomon’s porch” (John 10:22-23). In Hebrew, “dedication” is hanukkah (Strong’s # H2598), which appears several times in the Old Testament. For instance, when Moses dedicated the altar in the tabernacle, the word used for that dedication was hanukkah (Num. 7:10, 11, 84, 88). Again, Solomon’s dedication of the altar in the temple was a hanukkah (2 Chron. 7:9). Both dedications lasted seven days as God commanded (Ex. 29:37). The New Testament, of course, was preserved in Greek rather than Hebrew. But among the Jews of Jesus’ day, this would have been called the Feast of Hanukkah, it was at the temple, and it was in winter. To this day, the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah is in winter. So what is Hanukkah? Where did it come from? It isn’t among God’s commanded Holy Days, but is it okay for us to cele...

  In recent blog posts, we’ve analyzed the mystery of lawlessness mentioned in 2 Thessalonians. The mystery of lawlessness describes human attempts to change or abolish God’s appointed times and laws. It describes a counterfeit gospel — the one preached by mainstream Christianity! As we’ve seen, mainstream Christianity is the spiritual descendant of pagan Israel and Samaria . It pays lip service to God the Father and Jesus Christ, but teaches men to disobey God’s Word. And, as we’ve also seen, it mixes paganism with God’s truth. At the end of this age, the mystery of lawlessness culminates with a man that the apostle Paul described as the “man of sin,” “son of perdition,” and “lawless one” (2 Thes. 2:3, 8). A man “who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God” (2 Thes. 2:4). A man elsewhere called the Beast or the Antichrist. This Antichrist, and the system he represents...