Building on the Foundation

  Among those of us who keep God’s Sabbath and Holy Days as He commanded, most also understand that these days picture God’s plan of salvation. The apostle Paul told us plainly that God’s Sabbaths — the weekly Sabbath and His seven annual Sabbaths — “are a shadow of things to come” (Col. 2:17). What are these things to come? God’s Kingdom; His eternal Sabbath rest. The Book of Hebrews devotes several verses to the correlation between the Sabbath and God’s Kingdom. We’re told that the seventh-day Sabbath pictures God’s rest (Heb. 4:4), but also that we have not yet entered into that rest: “Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest” (Heb. 4:1, 11). The weekly Sabbath pictures God’s Kingdom. The seven annual Holy Days picture the path to get there. The straight and narrow path to eternal life. As we’ve seen previously , the apostle Peter laid out the first three st...

Guest post by Richard Gray The wedding had been planned in intricate detail, and no expense was spared. And now the great day of the wedding had arrived. The music was playing, and now the beautiful bride was being escorted up the aisle to the waiting groom. The groom stepped forward to take her hand, but instead of escorting her up to stand before the one who was going to perform the ceremony, they turned and went back the same way the bride had come. The guests were stunned! The one who was going to perform the ceremony was flabbergasted! What was going on? If you were at that wedding you would probably be stunned as well. But that is the scenario that the churches of God teach concerning the Day of Trumpets. On the Day of Trumpets “…the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive  and  remain shall be caught up together with them in the cl...

Hebrews 11, "the faith chapter," reminds us about some of the many faithful acts done by our forefathers in the Old Testament. It also, in league with other Scriptures, reminds us again that the righteous do not go to heaven when they die, but are asleep in their graves awaiting the resurrection. At the end of Heb. 11, in verses 39-40, we are told, "And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us." The promise and being made perfect are linked together: the promise of perfection. What is this promise of perfection? Heb. 5:9 tells us: "And having been perfected, He [Jesus] became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him." It's the promise of salvation, of eternal life, to all who choose to obey God and walk in His ways! If the faithful from past generations do not inherit eternal life apart from us, then ...

  Welcome To The Fight!!! You did it! You made the decision to be baptized! You rejected the magic of Satan and accepted God’s Holy Spirit. Something doesn’t feel right, though. This whole following God thing is harder than you thought it would be. Satan has been attacking you constantly, whether you realize it or not. He doesn’t handle rejection very well, and like a jealous ex, he desperately wants you to take him back. Now comes the bewildering part. You chose to follow God and dedicate your life to Him, but now what? Where do you go from here? It’s easy to become complacent and feel like we have achieved everything we needed to do with baptism. We get bogged down by the world's cares and begin to lose sight of the passion for God that made us choose Him in the first place. We lose sight of our mission. Post-baptism bogging down is extremely common, not just post-baptism, but at every stage of our walk with God. It’s easy to lose sight of our mission in the whirlwind that life i...