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...

 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...