What are these shadows about?
“Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.” ( Colossians 2:16-17 ) The closing verses of Colossians 2 contain a litany of holidays and regulations that were plaguing the newly formed New Testament church. Essentially, any other regulatory system is not a God-ordained means to evaluate spiritual purity. Dietary and man-made holidays can be carried out by a total unbeliever and can be easily faked. “For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost” ( Romans 14:17 ). Paul told the Galatians these things were “weak and beggarly elements” that enslaved them to the observations of “days, and months, and times, and years” ( Galatians 4:9-10 ). Even the Old Testament Law was merely a “shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things” ( Hebrews 10:1 ). Even more dangerous,...