“He surely has gone to heaven; he was such a good man!”  We hear such talk at funeral wakes.  We hear it as people pay tribute to a loved one who had done a lot of good and is now lying cold in a casket.  “He must be looking from up there over us his surviving loved ones, pleased with the honor we are giving him right now.”

Does a dead person still somehow see and hear and feel or otherwise sense what’s going on in the world he has left behind at death?  What about stories about the “ghost” of a dead person visiting the living who survive him?  Are these stories for real?  When a “bad” man dies, does he — or his soul — go down at once to some fiery place called “hell?”

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For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height — to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with the fullness of God.  (Ephesians 3:14-19, NKJV.)

Almost everywhere we hear people talking and preaching about “the love of Jesus.”  Mass media preachers and door-to-door evangelists assure their audiences or “prospects” for “salvation” that “Jesus loves you.”  Invariably they would break out into a spiel about how Jesus died for sinners, how His shed blood cleanses us from our guilty past and evil consciences — about how God’s grace and mercy through Christ covers all our sins, and we are freed from the consequence of sin: death in the “lake of fire.”  We are assured of everlasting life.

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The Lion Handbook’s The History of Christianity (Oxford, England, etc.: Lion Publishing, first edition, 1977, reprinted 1994, page 672), in the section titled “The Next Chapter of History,” begins:

The crucible of history in the last decade of the twentieth century [now the 21st century] takes on a new dimension. For beyond the history of nations and their citizens, it will now have to embrace a history of the created order itself. Have destructive processes been set in train which means that its fate is already sealed? Is there time left for vital change? Can a new sense of responsibility for nature save not only threatened species, and threatened landscapes, but life itself? And where lies the salvation of individual men and women in all this? [Emphasis mine.]

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There are many who believe and preach that Christians should only love God and not fear Him.  To prove their point, they would refer to 1 John 4:18, where it says, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment.  But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.”

There, they say, it is clear that if we love God, we wouldn’t fear Him, because if we fear Him, our love for Him is not perfect.

How do we explain this particular scripture, which seems to contradict other scriptures that, clearly, exhort us to fear God?

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Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day [the day of Christ’s bodily return to earth], “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?'”And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness” (Matthew 7:21-23, NKJV).

Those are chilling words which Jesus Christ will say to certain people at His return! If you truly believe in Jesus as your Lord, you will want to make sure you won’t hear Him, at that time, telling you, “I never knew you; depart from Me…”

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In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, we discussed the history and traditions of the Jews regarding God’s weekly Sabbath and the first four of God’s feasts. [See: God’s Feasts and the Jews — Part 1 and God’s Feasts and the Jews — Part 2.] We pointed out how the Jews have unwittingly fulfilled or missed out on certain steps in God’s plan of saving all of mankind. In this third and last part of the series, we will discuss how the Jews have observed the last three of God’s feasts: the Day of Atonement, the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Last Great Day.

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In Part 1 of this series [see: God’s Feasts and the Jews – Part 1], we discussed briefly the command of God to observe His weekly Sabbath and His feasts (Leviticus 23) and how His people — the nation Israel — kept these feasts at the start. Then we saw how the kingdom of Israel split during the reign of King Rehoboam, and how the southern Kingdom of Judah continued to observe these feasts, while the northern Kingdom of Israel (under its first king Jeroboam) forsook these feasts and established festivals which he “devised in his own heart.”

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When the word or name “Jew” is mentioned, many people would associate it with a race of people who are distinguished for their observance of the seventh-day Sabbath and the Feasts listed in Leviticus 23. Besides these, the Jews are also known for their traditional national holidays (most notably Purim and Hanukkah) and their strict adherence to the dietary law in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 — even going beyond that by observing more rigorous kosher laws —  and many, many other traditions. Of course, Jews are very much in the news today because of the worsening fight between “Israelis” and neighboring Arabs. [See: God’s Kingdom and Israel. It will explain why the Jews’ claiming their nation to be Israel is a Biblical error.]

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In many evangelical circles, it is the generally accepted belief that Jesus came to oppose or put an end to Moses — to that body of writings called the “Law of Moses” or the “Mosaic Law.”  That law consists of what the Jews call the Torah — the first five books of the Old Testament (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy).  In a word, the belief is that Moses and Jesus are contraries — opposites — even at odds with each other.

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