My answer to a feast-keeping friend

"Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years."

My friend sent me a presentation that said Paul was referring to the pagan holidays in the above verse. My answer is the following:

I read much of the first attachment on the pagan feast days. But what kept ringing in my ears was Paul's rhetorical question, "O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you...?"

"O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?" 

But he had already answered his question in the case he was building in the previous chapter. It was "false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage." And he mentioned circumcision in that same context.

No doubt many if not all the Galatian believers were gentiles and involved  in paganism. But the issue was about Jewish sympathizers who came from James trying to use an association with him to buttress their agenda for foisting salvation by circumcision upon the gentile churches. They would always show up right after Paul left for the next town.

So Paul's reasoning with the Galatians was from scripture that justification could come only as it had with previously Abraham, by faith alone without the works of the law. Then he appealed to the Spirit that reconciled them to God, 

"Where is then the blessedness ye spake of? for I bear you record, that, if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me.

Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?

They zealously affect you, but not well; yea, they would exclude you, that ye might affect them." (Gal. 4:15-17).

Instead of a greater experience than God filling them with the powers of the world to come, they got roped into an earthbound gift from Judaism.

This is what I see is the context of 

"But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?

Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.

I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain."

Sincerely your brother,

David