by John Frazier and Marty Smithhart

When we think of fasting, we think of religion, sacrifice and self-denial. When we do a religious act, the most important thing is truth, followed by sincerity. Are we acting for ourselves, for others, or truly for God? This is the problem when fasting is performed to fulfill an institutional requirement. It takes deep soul-searching to make sure that obedience is deep, honest devotion, not surface, hypocritical piety. There is no benefit for anybody in hypocritical religion. And it is not necessary for others to know if the fasting is truly just between us and God.    

Part a) by Scott Cherry

by Eric Anderson

After Jesus was baptized he went into the wilderness and fasted for 40 days.  This was the kind of fasting where he ate no food at all the whole time.  He only drank water.  If a human body has water, it can live for weeks on its fat reserves, but eventually these also run out and starvation hunger begins.  This happened to Jesus as he fasted for forty days, and while he was fasting, the devil came to tempt him.  Each test was like the temptations that we face—and that Eve faced—but each temptation was made much worse.  Something very significant happened while Jesus was fasting.  But to understand why it is so significant, we need to go back to something that happened with Adam and Eve.

by Jim Walker

Ramadan is the Islamic commemoration of the first revelation to Muhammad. On day 7 (May 22) I wrote about Muhammad’s experience during his first revelation and I questioned who was actually behind it.  Now, I am challenging the accuracy of that first revelation.  Since the root of Ramadan is Muhammad’s first revelation it is logical to take a deeper look at the actual revelation.

by Rev. Joe Donahue–

In the authentic Injeel that we still possess today there are many full-length sermons by Jesus. Only the One Bible contains them. One of them is called the "Sermon on the Mount" that spans three whole chapters in the gospel of Matthew (5, 6 and 7), and all versions contain it. In this sermon Jesus covered multiple themes and topics that all seem to address the nature of true righteousness. One of them was fasting, on which Jesus said something that comes across as utterly presumptuous (he did that more than once). What did he say? He said simply – “When you fast....”