Building on the Foundation

There is often a question among Christians about which translation is best to use. The reason this is important is the truth, and what we consider the truth to be. A lot of translations are translated using the translator's idea of what a passage should say, rather than what is actually there. These are called thought-for-thought translations, and they are a tragedy because they change the word of God, either by adding to it or, in many cases, taking away from it. It's obvious why this is a terrible idea, yet some of these translations are quite popular among Christians, mostly because they’ve never looked into them. I myself would have recommended some of these poor translations just a few weeks ago, but I looked into it a little more, and it was shocking what I found.  Essentially all translations commonly used today are thought-for-thought translations, which presents a problem. Unless you have a good translation to compare it to, there is a good chance you will be misled by...

  From his own day to ours, the apostle Paul has been a lightning rod of controversy. Many folks wrongly claim that Paul taught against God’s law. Even some of those who rightfully uphold God’s law accept this foolish notion and declare that Paul was a false teacher whose writings shouldn’t be in the Bible. Even during his own lifetime, some falsely accused Paul of breaking God’s law and teaching others to do likewise (Acts 21:20-24). Peter defended Paul from such accusations, observing that some of Paul’s writings are “hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures” (2 Pet. 3:16). He then condemned “the error of unprincipled men” (2 Pet. 3:17; NASB). “Unprincipled” is Strong’s #G113, athesmos , which means “lawless.” Thayer’s Greek Lexicon adds that it describes “one who breaks through the restraints of law and gratifies his lusts.” So it wasn’t Paul who rejected God’s law, but rather those who twi...

  When conversing with folks who insist that God’s law is abolished, especially the parts like keeping the Sabbath or abstaining from pork, you’ll often hear something like this: “That was just for the Jews. Nobody else had to keep those old laws.” In essence, they assert that God has different standards at different times for different people. That He invented special laws for the Israelites and never expected anyone else to follow them. They might also dismiss these as “Mosaic laws,” as if they were the product of Moses’ imagination and not Divine instruction! But the truth is, we find these laws in the Bible long before Moses, long before Israel reached Mt. Sinai, and long before Israel even became a nation! When God gave Moses and the Israelites His laws at Mt. Sinai, they weren’t new laws. They were the same laws He established at Creation for all humanity! Israel, and most of the rest of mankind, had simply forgotten them. Consider, for example, God’s prohibition against idol...