Building on the Foundation

  After the death of Moses, the Israelites crossed over the Jordan River and entered the Promised Land. God told Joshua, Moses’ successor, “Moses My servant is dead. Now therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them — the children of Israel” (Josh. 1:2). On the appointed day, God stopped the Jordan River for the Israelites, much as He’d parted the Red Sea for their fathers, and the people crossed the Jordan on dry ground (Josh. 3-4). After crossing, they camped near Jericho, the first city they encountered in the Promised Land. Now, the Canaanites who dwelt in this land were exceedingly wicked and sinful in the sight of God, committing all manner of sexual abominations (Lev. 18:3-28) and even burning their children in the fire as sacrifices to pagan deities (Deut. 12:31). So God commanded the Israelites to annihilate every city they came to; to kill every Canaanite man, woman, and child; and to destroy every vestige of pagan w...

  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...