Building on the Foundation

  A few days ago, I came across an article entitled “The First Wave-Sheaf Offering” in the United Church of God newspaper, the United News . Or rather, it was brought to my attention. You can find this article on pp. 6-7 of the latest issue, the May-June 2025 issue. The article begins by analyzing Joshua 5 and asserts that Israel offered a wave sheaf on “the day after the Passover” (Josh. 5:11) before eating the produce of the land — an assertion I agree with. It then continues, based on this passage, to try to establish when we should begin our count to Pentecost. But unfortunately, the article makes several inaccurate and unproven claims, some of which beg for a response. Now, the purpose here isn’t to examine the article as a whole or even to prove when we ought to keep Pentecost, but merely to address two or three specific claims. Let’s give our attention in particular to the section “Timing of the Offering.” Here in this section, we read, It helps to more directly consider the...

In recent years, some people have questioned the Bible’s completeness. They claim the modern English Bible of 66 books is incomplete, and that it ought to contain many other books as well, such as the book of Enoch, the book of Jasher, the book of Jubilees, and even other gospels and epistles in the New Testament. They assert that human beings, of their own accord and without God’s direction, chose to slash and burn those other books out of the Bible. In this post, I won’t argue about the truth of the Bible itself or any of its 66 books. Any discussion of that is a topic for another day. Today, I’m going to assume you already know and accept that the Bible is God’s inspired Word, and work from there. When wondering whether books of inspired Scripture have been slashed and burned out of the Bible, let’s ask ourselves this: Would God allow puny humans to thwart His purpose? To mutilate His inspired Word and chop vital sections out of it? Let’s consider that God used the Jews, often uncon...