Nikki and Colleen talk about how Jesus’ birth has changed everything, from marriage to the value of women and the unborn, by defeating sin and Satan. Podcast was published December 25, 2019. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Colleen: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. This is Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: And Merry Christmas.
Nikki: Merry Christmas.
Colleen: It is Christmas morning, and here we are, talking about Jesus and His Mom and His great-aunt, Elizabeth.
Nikki: [Laughter.] And His cousin –
Colleen: John.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So before we get started, I just want to remind you that if you have questions or comments, you can write to us, email us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You may follow us on Instagram. You can follow us on Facebook. Please subscribe to our podcast and write a review and like us. If you want to donate to the show, you may also go online at proclamationmagazine.com and find the online donation button, and there will be a place where you can donate to Life Assurance Ministries, and that will help the podcast and all of the other things that we do here at Life Assurance, including Proclamation! and our weekly email. So Nikki, as we’re celebrating Christmas 2019 with a podcast for the first time in our history, what are some of the things leading up to Christmas that have stood out in your mind this year. I’ll just go first.
Nikki: Okay! [Laughter.]
Colleen: Because right before we sat down to do this podcast – and I confess, we didn’t record it today – we just went for a manicure to celebrate our Tracy’s impending birth of her second son, Micah.
Nikki: Which is so fun at Christmastime –
Colleen: It is amazing!
Nikki: – to be expecting a little baby boy.
Colleen: It’s amazing! It’s a fun thing.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So four of us went out and had – well, Tracy had a pedicure, but we had manicures, and I find that really particularly fun because I have to confess that as an Adventist I was always fascinated with stuff like that, but I was always kind of circulating in the crowd of Adventists that was trying to be professional, and there was a sort of overlying sense that I always had that a woman should be able to be as good as any man at whatever she did, and that didn’t necessarily include the feminine things like manicures. So when I got into the Christian community and saw strong, deep, articulate, kind Christian women who would actually do their nails and dress feminine, it was such a fun thing for me to discover, that this is our gift as women. [Laughter.] We can be feminine.
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: So here we are with our –
Nikki: – with our French tips.
Colleen: Yes! First time I’ve done that.
Nikki: And our amazing coffee.
Colleen: Hazelnut cream today.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: As we start to think about Christmas, what are some things about Christmas that you enjoy that you didn’t necessarily have as an Adventist? I know that leaving Adventism there is a lot of things that we lose, and there is a lot of things that we gain over time. What stands out in your mind about the new things that we do at Christmas.
Nikki: Certainly Christmas is far more worshipful than I remember it being for me as an Adventist.
Colleen: Me too.
Nikki: I mean that just goes without saying. It wasn’t until I became a Christian and I started joining your family for Christmas that I ever had pork roast. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] Isn’t that fun?
Nikki: That was really fun, yes.
Colleen: Oh, and I feel like I know what I’m doing, like I pretend to know what I’m doing when I go to Costco and ask the butcher if he has a small piece of pork roast if there isn’t one out in the cooler, and he’ll cut it for me.
Nikki: And you know, I feel like I have to say, because we’ve had some pushback from people who’ve written in –
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: – about us drinking coffee and putting bacon on the turkey, and that’s been hard for some people. I want to say, this isn’t something that we’ve done because we’re rebelling –
Colleen: Oh.
Nikki: – because, oh, we don’t have to keep those rules anymore. This is something that we’re enjoying in freedom because we’ve studied the Word, and we’ve come to see that Jesus declared all foods clean.
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: And we have, through prayer – at least I know for Richard and for me –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – there was a lot of prayer involved – overcome our aversions –
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: – that were given to us through false teaching and –
Colleen: It’s important that you point out that those aversions came from false teaching.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: They become almost hardwired into our personalities. And it is a spiritual issue to overcome them sometimes.
Nikki: They do, and everybody takes that into themselves differently.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: There are people who hear the teachings, and they’re not bothered by them, and they still want to go and have meat and enjoy it, and that’s not an issue for them. For some of us, it really gets in there deep, and it’s something you have to unpack. So to be able to, at the same time that you’re celebrating Christ and that you’re enjoying your freedom in Christ, to also be able to enjoy the food that He’s given us to eat –
Colleen: That’s so true.
Nikki: – and know that there’s not – there’s no sin involved in this. It creates a joy that I don’t want it to come across as flaunting or bragging.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: It really is a joy from the freedom.
Colleen: It is.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: It is. And to think that I can love Jesus, worship Him, honor His birth, and eat pork stuffed with fruit –
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: – is just – it’s something – it’s a freedom that I never imagined I would have, and it’s a gift from Him.
Nikki: Um-hmm. What are some of the things you enjoy now?
Colleen: Well, I do enjoy finding online recipes and cooking good pork roast [laughter].
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: Because I certainly didn’t grow up knowing how to do that.
Nikki: You are brave in the kitchen.
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: And good.
Colleen: Well, it’s fun. It’s kind of a creative experiment. Another thing that I have grown to love is our annual White Elephant Gift Exchange.
Nikki: Oh, yeah.
Colleen: We pull our family and some of our FAF members together, and we have gifts that circulate back and forth over the years.
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: It has become something that people plan for all year, so it’s a lot of fun. That’s how we end the day.
Nikki: I just have to say, I think one of the funniest gifts that’s come out of that was – I don’t remember who brought it, but it was a beer stein from Andrews University.
Colleen: [Laughter.] Yes!
Nikki: It was really funny to me. [Laughter.]
Colleen: That was hilarious! [Laughter.] That was right up there, maybe even surpassed, the Squatty Potty that showed up one year. [Laughter.]
Nikki: Yeah. [Laughter.]
Colleen: So we do have some fun on Christmas. But as we think about Christmas, one of the things that has just surfaced in my mind over the last probably five years or so has been the amazingness of the story of Elizabeth and Mary and what happened there.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I remember when this first hit me. Richard and I have a habit of – we started it actually 11 years ago when our church had a Bible reading program to go through the Bible in one year. We started reading the Bible together, reading through the Bible in a reading plan every year, and we don’t quite get through the whole thing in a year, but we still use a reading plan, and we go through it systematically, so we’ve read through the Bible several times together now in the last 11 years, and each time there are details that stick and a big picture that comes into focus more, and about five years ago we were reading Luke 1. I read the story with Richard of Elizabeth becoming pregnant, and then, in the same chapter, of Gabriel visiting Mary and her accepting this unheard of assignment to bear the Son of God, and I thought, “There is more here than meets the eye. There’s something here that we have to think about.” So over the past five years, it’s kind of percolated in my head a bit, and I actually wrote an article for Proclamation! about it a few months later.
Nikki: Yes.
Colleen: So we’re going to think about some of the things about that story. I know, Nikki, that you’ve been talking to me about it too and have been reading it. What has stood out to you about this story?
Nikki: You know, I don’t think I’d ever given this story a lot of thought before, and I remember when you wrote that. If anyone wants to look for it, it’s in the Winter 2014 issue of Proclamation! It was so sweet to me to see the connection that Mary and Elizabeth had. Mary, this 12-, 13-, 14-year-old girl –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – going to see her cousin in her first trimester. Her cousin is so much older than her. Just the way that they connect as soon as they meet, as soon as she comes and greets Elizabeth, the words out of her mouth, and Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit, and John recognizes the presence of God in the womb –
Colleen: Yes! Yes.
Nikki: – and responds, and they worship together. And then to find out that she stayed with her for three months.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And to think about the kind of time they must have had together reflecting on the babies that were in them.
Colleen: I know.
Nikki: And who they were bringing into the world and what would happen, and I don’t know, the relationship.
Colleen: I agree. It has seemed so astonishing and merciful to me that the Lord had these two women who, in that society, were at opposite ends of life.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Mary was actually only engaged to Joseph. Elizabeth was an older woman who was barren and had suffered the feeling of disgrace of being without child. God gave both of them miraculous births, which would be hard to understand or to accept for most people, but they both did.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And then He gave them each other. He told Mary, “Your cousin Elizabeth is also with child,” and she went to see her. And I thought, “Think about it, Mary and her family. How would her family have understood this birth?” Now, she probably did have believing parents who trusted God. She probably came from a family that was truly committed to God and believed the Scriptures.
Nikki: Well, she knew the Scriptures.
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: Someone must have taught her.
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So I’m pretty sure her parents probably were in the mood to believe that this could be the fulfillment of prophecy, but how could they possibly deal with the public and this unexpected, apparently illegitimate birth?
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Their reputations, the whispering of the neighbors, not just about Mary, but about them. Here is another woman that God gave young Mary to talk to. The two of them could understand each other and could have a relationship of support for each other because they were both marveling over a miracle of God inside their bodies, and it wasn’t just them. They each had a life that was not possible without the intervention of God.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: A life growing in them.
Nikki: And they were family, so they knew the same people who were having this struggle –
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: – and they could support each other through that.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And I just wish I could listen to the dialogue, you know. Maybe Elizabeth spoke with Mary’s mother.
Colleen: Who knows?
Nikki: It’s incredible that God allowed that to happen in this one family.
Colleen: It is. I agree. It’s quite amazing. I have thought sometimes about the implications that John the Baptist was related to Jesus.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It’s an interesting thing that God did. He’s given Mary an older woman who can support her, talk to her, who will experience her birth of her child before Mary. It’s a sweet thing that the Lord did. But as you said, Nikki, one of the things that has struck me as one of the most amazing parts of this story is that the angel Gabriel had told Zechariah that John the Baptist would be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb. That’s in the very first part of Luke 1. It’s in Luke 1:14 and 15. “The angel said, ‘You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his [John the Baptist’s] birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and he will drink no wine or liquor, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother’s womb.'” That’s an amazing thing. When you realize that the Bible is very clear, the New Testament is very clear that we are born spiritually dead –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – and have to be brought to life, that God brought John the Baptist to life with the Holy Spirit in his mother’s womb. He was born again before he was born.
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: When Mary, who was in her first trimester, not visibly pregnant yet, walked into the house, Elizabeth recognized her, and John, the fetus, the baby unborn, filled with the Holy Spirit, leaped for joy because of the presence of his own Savior in utero, in a first trimester, when He walked into the room inside Mary. Can there be any doubt that God sees, knows, and values the unborn as truly fully human. They are fully human.
Nikki: And while Mary was in her first trimester, Elizabeth called Him her Lord.
Colleen: Yes. Yes! And said, “How can it be that the mother of my Lord would visit me?” She knew that she was in the presence of God, even though God the Son was an unborn baby in His mother. There’s so much about this story that is revolutionary to me from the past of my thinking of the physical-ness of life. As an Adventist, I didn’t understand that we had spirits, I thought we were just bodies, and I’ll be honest, as an Adventist I couldn’t see the problem with abortion. Now, theoretically, yes. And I remember as a young woman thinking, “You know, I can’t see how abortion could be a horrible thing to do if you have a difficult pregnancy because, after all, the fetus wouldn’t be viable until the very end.” I might have said, “No, we wouldn’t want to do a late-term abortion if the fetus could be viable outside the womb. That might be stretching it.” But I couldn’t see the problem with an early abortion, but when I look at this story, I see the problem.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And I realize now that our identities are not our physical bodies. Our physical bodies are part of our humanness, but our true identities are the spirits within us that are in the image of God, and that is there from conception. Those unborn babies were real people, and John was one of the first witnesses to the Deity of our Lord Jesus, when he leaped in his mother’s womb.
Nikki: It’s amazing. I love one of the things you said in that article. You said that when she became pregnant – an impossible development without God’s provision – she never thought of her baby as mere potential.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: They had a full picture of Him, not just as a person, but as her Lord, and you know, one of the things that struck me this year in particular when I looked at this story –
Colleen: Uh-huh?
Nikki: – is quoted, “Why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to see me?” And at the end of that, she says, “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It’s interesting. She’s calling God “The Lord,” and she’s calling the baby in Mary’s womb her Lord.
Colleen: That’s true. Elizabeth recognized that.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: You know, that’s another part of this story that really amazed me when I stopped to think about what really happened. God knew that the story of the virgin birth would be impossible for the normal, average, natural person to believe. How could you believe that a baby would be born who is God in the flesh? That’s not a natural thing to believe. He knew there would be questions and doubts all through the millennia, and God provided eyewitnesses, firsthand witnesses of the Deity of Jesus before He was born, and He did it by using two women and an unborn baby. Now, in the first century in Judaism, women were not considered viable witnesses in a court of law.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Their word was not believed. They were considered unable to function fully as a human in all legal senses. They were not believed as witnesses in court. And here God chooses Elizabeth, the wife of a priest who was basically unknown, as the first speaking witness of the presence of Jesus in her home when Mary walked in. So she was an eyewitness, and the unborn John witnessed to the Deity of Christ. God provided, in His eternal Word, the witness of a woman and an unborn baby to confirm to all of us for all time that this was truly a miracle, this was His doing, and this was God.
Nikki: Isn’t it interesting too that, not only does He confirm this to a woman and to an unborn baby, but then He gives the details of this to a Gentile –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – to write it in the gospels.
Colleen: Isn’t that so cool? I love that.
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: Luke is the only writer in the New Testament – I think probably in the whole Bible – who was a Gentile. All the others were Jews.
Nikki: That’s incredible.
Colleen: And Luke the physician is the one to whom God gave these details, and he is the only one who recorded this part of the story.
Nikki: The shepherds were the ones who had the announcement from the angels. This whole story is just filled with God interrupting the hierarchy within humanity –
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: – to glorify Himself.
Colleen: [Laughter.] It’s so amazing. Sometimes I think, “I’m so thankful to be a Gentile who’s been grafted into God’s purposes.
Nikki: [Laughter.] Yeah.
Colleen: And to see in the New Testament the way God confirms His intention, His eternal intention, to bring the Gentiles to Himself by even including a Gentile gospel writer.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: He wrote two books. Out of the whole New Testament we have a Gentile who wrote Luke and the book of Acts.
Nikki: And you know, the other thing that Mary and Elizabeth both do is they affirm the authority of Scripture. This story – I keep coming back to that this Christmas as I think about this. This story is such a huge witness of the authority and reliability of Scripture. Mary’s song, Zechariah’s song, Elizabeth’s song, it is all rooted in Old Testament Scripture that they had in their minds, in their hearts, and when they were filled with the Holy Spirit, He illuminated all of that for them.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And told them what was going on.
Colleen: Yes. He did not leave them confused. He didn’t let them know how the endgame might end up.
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: But He let them know each step of the way that this was Him and that He was in charge and they could trust Him, and He was fulfilling the words that they already knew, that the prophets had spoken. It amazes me too, when I think about Mary, who was just a teenager likely, being visited by Gabriel, being told that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and she would bear a son, who would be God, who would be man. How does that work? We are not told. We only know that God did it, and He gave us witnesses that it was so. And she believed Him and said, “Let it be to me as you have said.”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I wonder, I’ve often wondered if I would have been able to have the faith to believe and to submit to that sort of thing like she did, but He gave her confirmation through Himself, through Elizabeth, through the unborn John, and then ultimately even through Joseph’s dreams and Joseph taking her to be his wife and protecting her and the baby.
Nikki: You know, it’s an amazing story, but it’s also a picture of the Christian life that we live now.
Colleen: It is.
Nikki: Our pastor preached about this just this last Sunday. I decided in Sunday school our memory verse would be what you just quoted, that it would be Luke 1:38, where it says, “And Mary said, ‘Behold I am a servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.'”
Colleen: Wow.
Nikki: Because so much of our life is a walk of obedience, without knowing how the story’s going to unfold.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: And we have the certainty that He is going to walk with us through all of it. Mary did not know that there would come a day when she would be at the foot of the cross –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – watching her Son hand her care over to John.
Colleen: That’s right. Another John.
Nikki: Another John, yeah.
Colleen: Not John the Baptist.
Nikki: No, a different John.
Colleen: John the Apostle.
Nikki: Yeah. She didn’t know how this was going to unfold.
Colleen: She didn’t.
Nikki: I think she got her first clue when she met – was it Anna or Simeon who told her?
Colleen: That was Simeon, the old man at the temple to whom God had said he would see the Consolation of Israel before he died. And when Joseph and Mary brought Jesus on the 8th day to be circumcised, because He was born a Jew, under the Law, Simeon took this little baby into his arms and said the most remarkable thing. This is found in Luke 2 beginning with 29. “‘Now Lord, You are releasing Your bondservant to depart in peace, according to Your word; For my eyes have seen Your salvation, which You have prepared in the presence of all the peoples, a Light of revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel,’ and the father and mother were amazed at the things which were being said about Him. And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary His mother, ‘Behold this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed – and a sword will pierce even your own soul – to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.'” Now, this was the first mention of the inclusion of the Gentiles in the New Testament.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: He told Mary that a sword would pierce her heart, but he didn’t tell her how.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: But Mary listened to this and stored it up in her heart, and I’m sure she thought of that as the years went on and she saw her son enter ministry and then ultimately be persecuted and crucified.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It’s hard to imagine the pain she experienced at the foot of the cross as she watched Him die later. But in the meantime, she knew that this baby was from God, and Joseph believed it as well.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: One of the things I’ve been thinking recently, as I’ve thought about Joseph and Mary and Joseph’s response to the angel in his dreams that he received, was that even though the New Covenant hadn’t yet been inaugurated, the way God functioned with Joseph and Mary really was an illustration to us of the kind of thing that marriage is supposed to be, as He describes it through Paul in Ephesians 5, that the husband is to love the wife as Christ loved the church. And Joseph, about whom we know almost nothing, spent those years, those first years of his marriage to Mary, believing God, protecting her, protecting the child, picking them up, moving them to Egypt and back and protecting them from being killed. It was truly a sacrificial love that he had for them in obedience to God. It’s an interesting thing to realize that God was giving us a model of that sacrificial love that is the way husbands are supposed to love their wives, and she, submitting to Joseph and moving with him –
Nikki: Incredible.
Colleen: – is the way we are to respond to our husbands as well.
Nikki: Wow. That’s amazing. That’s a future podcast. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] Okay!
Nikki: I mean, really, for me I had to relearn family roles when I left Adventism.
Colleen: Oh, I did too.
Nikki: I had to learn what is it that God has called the husband to, and what has He called the wife to, and I think I always had them in a bit of a – there was a pecking order.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And I felt a little bit offended by things, but the truth is, the biblical role God gave us is not a place of dishonor.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: It’s actually a beautiful place.
Colleen: And it’s a New Covenant role that’s not so described in the Old Testament.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: This is a New Covenant role. And we’re filled with the Holy Spirit and born again just as much as the men, but we have a role to play. But it’s not a role that has a gag order on it.
Nikki: Right. I used to think that the Bible basically told women to, you know, “Sit down and shut up.” [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] Yeah. “Go cook the roast beef.”
Nikki: Yeah. You know, unless you were really progressive, and then, you know, you could find a way to give women a pulpit. It’s clear from this story that these women, they knew Scripture.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And they had obviously had men in their lives who valued them enough to teach them Scripture.
Colleen: Yes! And Mary’s Magnificat, which is in Luke 1:46-56, is a remarkable song that she, obviously under the influence of the Holy Spirit, spoke forth when Elizabeth recognized her unborn baby as the Lord, and it’s very similar to the song Hannah was praying and singing when she went to the temple and Eli the priest found her there and told her she would have a son, and she broke forth with a magnificat that’s very similar to Mary’s.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Now, there was something about this that particularly struck you, Nikki. I think it was – can you talk about it. It was, I believe –
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: Go ahead.
Nikki: It’s where she says – she’s speaking of God, and she says, “He has scattered those who were proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones and has exalted those who were humble.” It was just one of those moments, you know, when you’re reading Scripture and some little thing in your mind from Adventism just gets sort of shattered.
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: I remember reading that and thinking, “Well, there’s a sovereign God –
Colleen: Yes. [Laughter.]
Nikki: – so much for the gentleman, that’s not very gentlemanly to take anyone off their throne.” [Laughter.]
Colleen: That’s a good point. I was actively taught that: “God is a gentleman. He will not go where He’s not invited.” Excuse me? I don’t think Mary even invited Him to come and announce that she would have a baby.
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: So God is sovereign.
Nikki: He is sovereign. He’s in control. He is in control of what happens here.
Colleen: You know, related to that too – God being in control – one of the things that had happened way back at the beginning was with Eve. She had been the first one to be deceived. Well, she was the one to be deceived.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Adam sinned with his eyes wide open. But she was the one who listened to and argued with, or discussed with, the snake the Word of God, took the fruit, ate it, and then gave it to her husband, and God told her that she would experience certain curses, curses in relationship to her husband, curses in relationship to childbearing, but then He said, “Your Seed will crush the head of the serpent.” Now, that’s an interesting thing for God to say to Eve because we don’t generally think of women as having seed. That’s a male term.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But “your Seed,” the Seed of the woman, “will crush the head of the serpent.” And here hundreds – thousands of years later is this young Jewish girl to whom God is announcing that the Seed of the woman is coming through her. She is going to bear the child who will crush the head of the serpent. What an amazing thing. There is so much that God did to redeem the role of women. Jewish women were provided for in ways the pagans weren’t. In the Law, God did allow Moses to assign inheritances for daughters of men who did not have sons. That was not done in that time in history. Women didn’t have inheritances, but God did allow for that, so He did provide for women in unusual ways, but women were not considered equal with men. And through the birth of Jesus, God began undoing the social constraints that held women in a place of inequality.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: He began to redeem them. Think about it: Of course, all people born come through a woman, that’s always been true, but the Son of God came through a woman and crushed the head of the serpent, and we know from Colossians 2:14 that when Jesus hung on the cross He disarmed Satan and the authorities and rulers of the air, completely disarming their power. Even though we still see him at work, he is now a disarmed foe, and that was through Mary’s child. And not only that, but He gave these women His own revelation of Himself. He gave them words to speak that are included in the eternal Word of God.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So God does not consider women to be inferior. We have different roles than men, but we’re not inferior, and He gave us a redeemed position in His Kingdom, in the New Covenant.
Nikki: And He revealed to these women, He revealed His Deity.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: I mean, through the virgin conception –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – but even through the interaction between Mary and Elizabeth and John and Jesus –
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: – His Deity was clear, and we see that in the way Elizabeth responds and calls Him her Lord.
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: There’s no question in Scripture that Jesus was God the Son.
Colleen: Fully God, all the attributes of God.
Nikki: It just makes me think back to our last podcast about the Christmas carols and the intentional work of the Adventists –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – at least the ones who were part of the hymnal, to scrub that.
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: I know that that’s because we have these Arian roots inside of Adventism.
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: Can you talk a little bit about that?
Colleen: Absolutely. The founders of Adventism were Arian. Now, what is Arian? Arian is the belief that way back before creation, God created or somehow brought into existence Jesus, that He was not eternal with the Father. Many Arians will say He was God’s first creation. In some way, they deny that He is eternal almighty God, sharing substance with the Father. They say He came later, He was God’s first creation, or He was God’s first production, if you will. From the beginning, the founders of Adventism did not believe in the classic Christian Trinity, and they did not believe in the eternal Deity, the eternal nature of God the Son as being equal to God the Father.
Nikki: And this really plays well with Ellen’s story about Jesus being elevated to Sonship –
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: – and creating that jealousy between Jesus and Satan and the war in heaven. That all works if you have Jesus being brought forth at some point in time.
Colleen: Exactly! How could Lucifer have ever thought that the honor should have gone to him instead of Jesus? He knew that Jesus was the Creator. The real Lucifer knew Jesus created him. He was in no doubt as to who Jesus was, but Ellen said that he felt the honor should have gone to him. The implication is that Jesus and Lucifer were somehow on an equal playing field, and God chose Jesus, to exalt Him. That is heresy.
Nikki: And it’s a heresy that Ellen White held onto. I mean, some people say, well, there were some people who were Arian. No, these were important people in Adventist history. This is the prophetess –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and this is J.N. Andrews, who died an Arian.
Colleen: And let us say again that Andrews University, where the Adventist seminary is housed, is named for an antitrinitarian who never repented, who believed that Jesus was not eternally equal to the Father.
Nikki: And this isn’t something that they, you know, share. I never learned this growing up. I never learned this in Sabbath school or –
Colleen: No!
Nikki: – in the academy, and it’s not something that the Adventist church owns up to and repents of.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: It’s just kind of quiet, and we were at Andrews University last fall –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – for the Michigan conference, and I remember seeing a statue of him there, and I thought, “Man, they are giving great honor” –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – “to a man who denied the Deity of Christ.
Colleen: That’s correct.
Nikki: It was horrifying. He was right outside their church, his statue.
Colleen: And their seminary is named for a nontrinitarian who did not believe in the eternal nature of Christ. It’s shocking and revealing.
Nikki: How did we end up with Arianism? Where did it come from?
Colleen: Well, that is a good question. The Arian heresy is very old. It was something the early church grappled with. It was promoted especially by an early church – well, I don’t want to say “father,” but a well-known early Christian whose name was Arius, fourth century.
Nikki: Okay.
Colleen: And Arius promulgated the idea that Jesus was not eternal, that He had been created by the Father, this whole same belief that Adventism has picked up.
Nikki: Didn’t he do this through song?
Colleen: He did. He created a song that taught that, because he knew that people would remember the doctrine if they had it in music, and interestingly, there was a particular church father, and I will call him a father –
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: – who opposed him, whose name was Athanasius, and he came up with a song to counter Arius’ song. It’s a song we still sing, the Gloria Patri.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,
And to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be:
World without end.
He came up with the song to counter the Arian heresy, but there’s a wonderful story about Arius at the Council of Nicaea when it was decided that his belief was heresy. There was an early church father who was named Nicholas, which I think many of you will recognize today on Christmas Day. He is the man who became known as Saint Nicholas. Now, Nicholas was a bishop in the town of Myra, and Nicholas, interestingly enough, had been an active Christian who had been like an apologist for Christianity in an area where it was not popular to be a Christian, and he had been imprisoned for his beliefs and for his outspokenness.
Nikki: Hmm.
Colleen: I love that about St. Nick. He was an apologist! [Laughter.]
Nikki: Our patron saint, you might say. [Laughter.]
Colleen: Exactly! [Laughter.] He was present at the Council of Nicaea, where they were deciding that the true belief about Jesus was that He was eternal God, same substance as the Father, and Arius was present there, and Saint – well, he wasn’t called Saint Nicholas yet, but –
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: – but Nicholas saw Arius and was so angry at Arius’ blasphemy against the Lord Jesus that he ran up to him – and this is a matter of historical record – he ran up to him and punched him in the face. Well, it landed him in prison again, and he ultimately did confess and repent for the violence against Arius.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But the Council of Nicaea did declare that Arius was teaching heresy. Saint Nicholas, or Nicholas, was released from prison, and one of the reasons he has now become known as the patron saint that is connected with Christmas is that he was a very generous man. He would send supplies and gifts to the people in the area, not only in the town of Myra where he lived, but farther away. He would even pack boats and send them out to people and cities and areas where there was not enough to eat and drink, and he would provide for these people, and he was such a beloved leader that he became ultimately known as Saint Nick because of his kindness and generosity. I just love that this man who has become the saint of Christmas Day, Saint Nick, was first of all an apologist for true Christianity and the Deity of Christ, and out of that belief in the Lord flowed the generosity that gave him the undying memory of a saintly man.
Nikki: And you know, we know that there is nothing new under the sun.
Colleen: True.
Nikki: Adventism definitely has its connections, its roots within Arianism, and Ellen White said – I remember reading this as I was leaving Adventism – she said, “The man Christ Jesus was not the Lord God Almighty.”
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: You can find that online. I remember reading that, and then I was looking at some of her other letters that she wrote to people while she was traveling. I remember reading that God does not love naughty children, He cannot love naughty children. And to read these things, these statements that are just kind of flippant, that she’s just throwing out there, and she is completely slandering God.
Colleen: Yes, she is.
Nikki: She is destroying the nature of Christ –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and slandering the character of God.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: This is serious.
Colleen: And it’s why Christmas didn’t mean to me, as an Adventist, what it means to me now.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It’s partly why the stories of Elizabeth and Mary were kind of lost to me.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: They were just part of the sweetness.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But this is not just a sweet story. This is a singularity. God entered time in the body of a tiny human baby who gestated just as a human baby always does, for nine months in His mother’s womb, and was born as a human baby. God allowed Mary and Elizabeth and the unborn John to be the first witnesses of His Deity and to put that witness into His eternal Word. We have their witness.
Nikki: And you know, I always heard in Adventism that you know God through the 10 Commandments, it’s the transcript of His character. But we know Him through Jesus.
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: And just looking at this Christmas story, we see that He was fully God, that He was fully man, that He was compassionate. Just looking at these pages of Scripture begins to reveal to us who God is.
Colleen: Yes. And He didn’t come to exonerate the Law or to show us how to keep it. He came to fulfill it. He was the One the Law foreshadowed.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: His righteousness was the righteousness the Law foreshadowed. Romans 3:21. He came as a sinless man who was always fully God with all His God power, God in the flesh, to live a sinless life, to obey the Father, and to be obedient onto death, and He died on the cross, He was buried, He was raised on the third day, all according to Scripture. Mary watched this happen. She was there when He died, and she was there when He rose. And she knew. And like Mary, we can know because God has revealed it to us.
Nikki: So wherever you’re spending Christmas today, we’d like to encourage you to just find a time to get away and read Luke chapters 1 and 2. Reflect on the different ways that God reveals Himself to us in the pages of Scripture, and consider His compassion and the ways that He touches the lives of all of these unlikely witnesses, Zechariah and Elizabeth and Joseph and Mary and the shepherds and Simeon and Anna, and just take a moment to thank God for what He did for us.
Colleen: How He’s revealed Himself through His Son, and we can be reconciled to Him through the blood of Jesus. And that is what Christmas is about. We’d like to end this podcast by inviting you to just listen to “O Holy Night” and reflect on what God has done for you through Jesus. And Merry Christmas, Nikki.
Nikki: Merry Christmas, Colleen. †
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