“My poor child, you didn’t have to keep the Sabbath anymore. Why, you’ve carried a burden which I had come to ease! You made it difficult not only for yourself; you hindered others from accepting My gospel because your Sabbath-keeping was a stumbling block to them.”

That’s how, more or less, some would imagine Jesus Christ, on Judgment Day, as saying to His follower who insists on keeping the seventh-day Sabbath, now that Jesus has already, supposedly, “fulfilled” it by being our “Sabbath” — our rest. 

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Most people who have read the Christian Bible believe that “the Feasts” mentioned in Leviticus 23 are the feasts of — and for — the Jews and the Israelites. These people consider these feasts  a part of obsolete rules meant only for Israelites but not for Gentile converts to the faith of Jesus of Nazareth. The seventh-day Sabbath and the annual Sabbaths or holy days, listed in this chapter of Leviticus, are summarily classed as “ceremonial” and are tossed out the window, as have been circumcision and the sacrificial system of Israel. [See: Freed From Bondage.]

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Many Bible students have looked at the apostle Paul’s statement in 2 Corinthians 3:17 (“…where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty“) and have taken this to mean liberty from having to obey God’s law — particularly the commandments, statutes and judgments which God gave to Israel through Moses.  “Free from the law!” (Romans 8:2), exult many who profess belief in Christ, thinking that they have been freed from these requirements.  But the sad reality — when we come to understand The Whole Counsel of God — is that these students have so concluded without really understanding what Paul meant by the “law” which Christians are freed from.

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Among the doctrines of the Christian faith, one of “the most puzzling and least understood” is said to be the doctrine of predestination — and understandably so. Over the decades people have debated, often heatedly, issues involved in this doctrine.The doctrine has polarized those who, on the one hand, smugly believe they have been “predestined” by God for salvation while others [“Tough luck, man!”] have been “predestined” to damnation, and those who, on the other hand, cannot believe in a God who seems incomprehensibly capricious and arbitrary, showing “favoritism.”

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Today almost a third of the world’s population professes belief in Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord. How sure are these people — and those who watch their lives from different religious angles — that Jesus is indeed their Lord? If you say you are a Christian, how sure are you that Jesus is really and truly your Lord? Only a few questions are as important to your salvation as this one!

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“Impairment of the ability to read, often as the result of genetic defect or brain injury,” thus Webster’s New World Dictionary defines “dyslexia.”

Dyslexic or dyslectic persons often misread words by interchanging letters or combinations of letters — or even whole words and phrases. Thus, for example, such a person might read “not” as “ton” (or vice-versa), “hobo” as “boho,” etc. Or this one-liner by Stewart Francis: “I read that ten out of two people are dyslexic.”

When it comes to spiritual matters, there is also impairment in man’s ability to read the Word of God, the Holy Bible. That is, with man’s natural reason alone, man often misreads God’s Word. The irony is that most people read books on such matters as the sciences and are generally agreed about what the books mean. But not so with God’s Word. It seems like some spiritual “genetic defect” or “brain injury” has been passed on to all mankind from our first parents, Adam and Eve. [See: “Your Eyes Will Be Opened!”]

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Long, long before Jesus warned that false prophets would arise during our time (Matthew 24:11, 24) — and long, long before the apostle Peter warned about the same threat to true Christian believers (2 Peter 2:1-2) — there had been many false prophets in Israel (and in the world, for that matter).

“But there were false prophets also among the people [the ancient nation of Israel] even as there will be false teachers among you [God’s Church], who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber” (2 Peter 2:1-5, NKJV throughout, unless otherwise stated).

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“No walls, no ceiling…,” cried a plaintive 1970s song. It expressed a longing for freedom from restrictions and inhibitions that many in our modern world feel hemmed in by. Indeed, the words “liberty” and “liberation” have been used to explain some definition of “freedom” which people want, or which Jesus Christ is supposed to have brought to sinners. “Limitless” or “unlimited,” a word bandied about by mobile phone service providers and by some restaurants, expresses the idea. So does the wish or boast: “without borders” or “beyond borders.”

The question is: Is there never a place for walls and ceilings – for limits or borders — in our lives? What is God’s Word on this?

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Some years ago an urgent Internet message was forwarded to me separately by two persons via e-mail. The message carried a warning about the alarming teachings being actively promoted by a popular female TV host.

One such alarming doctrine is that there is no such thing as “sin.” That means that whatever one does is OK — even if it hurts oneself or others; one doesn’t need to feel guilty about it.

And, since there is no such thing as sin, there is no need to repent. Nor is there anymore a need for a Savior to forgive us of sin because sin, according to this belief, does not exist anyway.

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