Building on the Foundation

  Do you, as a Christian, consider God to be the ultimate authority? Do you consider the Bible to be His written Word and therefore, likewise, the ultimate authority? Does your church? Does your church base all its doctrines, to the best of its knowledge, on God’s Word? Or does it instead follow the traditions of men? Worse yet, does it follow pagan traditions masquerading as Christian ones? God’s Word says, “Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it” (Deut. 12:32). Jesus Christ spoke to the religious leaders of His day, quoting Isaiah the prophet, “In vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (Mat. 15:9). Has very much changed from that day to this? Given the differing doctrines and the many disagreements among the churches out there in this world, it logically follows that they can’t all be right. Most of them must be “teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” This shouldn’t surprise anyone, fo...

  Would it surprise you to know that the world has not always followed a seven-day week? That past civilizations often had no knowledge of the seven-day week we know today? Afterall, the seven-day week comes from God’s Word, and they didn’t have God’s Word. Let’s start from the beginning. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Creation took six days. Then, in Gen. 2:1-3, we find this: “Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” In the beginning, God established a seven-day week: six days for work, the seventh day for rest. He blessed and sanctified the seventh day, that is, He made it holy. As Ex. 20:11 reminds us, “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the eart...