Colleen and Nikki talk about death and the Biblical teaching of the afterlife. Podcast was published January 22, 2020. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Nikki: Hi! And welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: And I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: We’re so glad you joined us for another episode. Today’s episode is kind of building on what we discussed last week.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: We talked about what it is to be born again and the nature of man, and this week we’re going to be talking about what happens when you die.
Colleen: That’s a big one.
Nikki: Yeah, and it naturally flows out of what we discussed last week. I’m really excited about this. You know, being in this area, I’ve had the opportunity to watch a lot of transitioning Adventists sit through the deconstruction of the false teaching of soul sleep, and that is one of my favorite studies to do, so I’m really excited we’re doing this today.
Colleen: I am too. It is one of the foundational twists that Adventists have that makes it hard for them to understand Scripture and to understand salvation.
Nikki: And it’s one of the biblical truths that brings so much hope and peace –
Colleen: It does.
Nikki: – and it’s why we don’t grieve like unbelievers do when we lose the people we love.
Colleen: Exactly! And Adventists will say that, that we don’t grieve as others do, but they do, they do.
Nikki: Um-hmm. So how did you think about the state of the dead as an Adventist, how did you understand it and how did you feel about it?
Colleen: I believed, as I had been taught, that the dead know nothing, that they go into the grave and that literally – and this is something that I think most Christians don’t fully understand about the Adventist belief, but literally, I believed that they ceased to exist except in the memory of God, that God would remember the personalities and the attributes, qualities, talents of each person, and then at the resurrection someday, when He called up the dead, He would put a new body together and kind of like download the data from each person into the new body, so that there was really no ontological connection between the person that died and the person that came up. In a sense, it was almost like a clone, and even though I was taught this was our great hope, that this was what kept us from grieving, from grieving and mourning like other people, I used to secretly think, “Well, I think I’d actually feel better if I thought Grandma was in heaven.”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But I knew that couldn’t be true because we didn’t have anything that would survive the body. Our spirit was our breath. It went to God. We went into the ground, and for an undetermined number of years – it could be, you know, a day or millions of years before the second coming. And I was taught that that meant it would to us seem as if no time had passed because we wouldn’t have any memory of that period of time, but the people left on earth knew we were gone, and in reality the thought of not existing and not knowing what would happen when I was finally called up, whether I’d be saved or lost, was a terrifying prospect.
Nikki: Um-hmm. Yeah, I’ve always had a hard time understanding how Adventists feel hope. I do know I’ve heard some people say, “Well, they’re not suffering anymore,” so okay, I’ll give them that, but –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: Yeah, as an Adventist I remember being rather jealous of the Christians –
Colleen: Me too!
Nikki: – for the hope and the joy that they had, the peace they had of believing that their loved one was with the Lord. I also at the same time kind of looked down my nose at them, you know –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – for not understanding it the way I did. But I want to ask you a question about what you said. So in our last episode, we talked about the fact that Adventists teach that humans have no spirits.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: What do they mean when they say “soul sleep.”
Colleen: That’s a good question. They use that phrase because Jesus called death a sleep.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: For example, Jairus’ daughter, the synagogue official whose daughter died and Jesus went and raised her from the dead. He said, “She’s not dead, she’s asleep.” And He even said that about Lazarus before raising him.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So they call it “soul sleep,” but the thing is that in Christianity there are some people who believe that a person’s spirit or soul does go to be with the Lord, but that it’s not conscious, but they don’t say it ceases to exist. So when Adventists say “soul sleep,” there are some Christians who hear that and think, “Well, I could say yes to that,” because they think that the spirit part of a person might be with Jesus but be unconscious until the resurrection. Adventists don’t mean that. They use a phrase that is deliberately deceptive to Christians, but what they really mean is the body is in the ground. They use the word “sleep” because they say the body will be resurrected, so it doesn’t mean it’s gone, but they don’t mean that a spirit or a soul literally sleeps. For them, that is literally gone.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And it’s a deceptive phrase that helps Christians not understand the depth of the heresy of their view of the nature of man.
Nikki: I know as an Adventist I didn’t understand that there was a concept of soul sleep in the Christian church, and I certainly didn’t think it was what I thought about death.
Colleen: Right. And I don’t know if most Christians would even use the term “soul sleep.” It’s just that when Adventists use it, a Christian understands it from a Christian perspective.
Nikki: I see.
Colleen: I don’t think it’s a teaching, literally. I think it’s a teaching of Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Nikki: Oh, yeah. Well, that explains why they both have art that depicts people climbing out of their grave at the second coming –
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: –usually in their Sabbath or Sunday best. Yeah.
Colleen: Um-hmm. It’s a horrifying thing, really, those pictures of the Second Coming with the creepy graves and people standing in them.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Still half in them.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: As you came out of Adventism, Nikki, and you were confronted with the idea that death might not be what you had been taught, how did you start to unpack that?
Nikki: Well, Scripture. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: I mean, sitting through Bible classes with people who understand my worldview – understood, sorry, my worldview was very helpful.
Colleen: Were there any passages that you can think of that were, like, initially really helpful?
Nikki: You know, the one that you even know as an Adventist, to be present – what is it?
Colleen: “Absent from the body” –
Nikki: “Present with the Lord.”
Colleen: – “is to be present with the Lord.” That’s 2 Corinthians 5.
Nikki: I had the Adventist ideas in my head: Well, that just – you know, that just means that’s what it seems like. Like you said, time passes, you’re not aware of it. It’s the blink of an eye. But because I had that in my head as an argument against being with the Lord, that was one of the first places I went to look in Scripture.
Colleen: That’s interesting.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: So you learned that passage as a proof that we were not with the Lord.
Nikki: I learned it from the context of “this is what you say to people” or “this is how you think about it when people tell you, ‘Well, what about this passage?'”
Colleen: Got it.
Nikki: It was an answer to it.
Colleen: I see. Okay.
Nikki: So yeah, kind of a defense of their belief. But it’s an incredible passage, and you know, we’re not taught to read around those little proof texts.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: And as soon as I did, it was very exciting.
Colleen: Do you think that maybe before we look at that passage we should look at our Adventist proof text that is like the bottom line, the Ecclesiastes 9:5 one?
Nikki: Yes, I think that’s important.
Colleen: “The living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything.” We all learned that; correct?
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: In school, in Sabbath school. The interesting thing about this verse is that the way we learned it in Adventism, it’s not even the whole verse. It’s a phrase, it’s a clause taken out of a bigger verse, and the context in which that was written is completely missing.
Nikki: Okay, so verse 5: “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten.”
Colleen: Well, we didn’t learn that whole verse, did we?
Nikki: No.
Colleen: We just learned, “For the living know that they will die, and the dead do not know anything.” But I don’t even know any Adventists who wouldn’t believe the second half of the verse, “Nor have they any longer a reward, for their memory is forgotten?” Adventists don’t believe that the dead people have no reward. They believe they do. They believe they go into the grave not knowing whether their reward is going to be heaven or destruction.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And as far as their memory being forgotten, I don’t think most Adventists would say that either. They remember their dead, and they have a hard time getting over the grief.
Nikki: And I think it’s really worth pointing out the book that we’re in.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: This is Ecclesiastes, this is poetry and wisdom.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: This is not where you go to anchor all of your doctrines.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: We were taught what happens when we die in the New Testament by God Himself.
Colleen: That’s right!
Nikki: And they go back to Ecclesiastes?
Colleen: I know.
Nikki: A verse pulled out of one spot?
Colleen: It’s a very bad hermeneutic.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: A proper biblical hermeneutic never bases doctrine except on didactic teaching passages that were meant to describe and explain doctrine. This is a poetry and wisdom book. This is never meant for doctrine. And the interesting thing about Ecclesiastes is that this entire book was written by Solomon to describe the life of an unbeliever who does not consider living for God. He describes the despair, he describes the view of one who is under the sun, on the earth, not taking into account the eternal things of God. And for an unbeliever on the earth, not considering God, life is despairing.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: And the thought of death is nihilistic. So this is taken out of a description of a particular negative worldview and used as core for Adventist doctrine. And it’s really pretty horrifying to me, especially when it didn’t even quote the whole verse, which seems to contradict the intuitive understanding even of Adventists.
Nikki: Help me out here if I’m wrong, but isn’t the context of this what humans understood at that time about death.
Colleen: Yes. Well, at least an unbeliever because I think even believers did believe that they had an eternal future with God.
Nikki: Well, it’s interesting that later in Ecclesiastes 12, in verse 7, it says, “The dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”
Colleen: Now, to us on this side of being born again, that is such an amazing text of hope.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: I think as an Adventist I would have said, “Well, sure, your breath goes to God.”
Nikki: Okay. So I have a question about that. Do they mean that it literally goes into the presence of God.
Colleen: I don’t know if they literally think that. I pictured it that way. God gave it, He breathed into Adam. When we die, it goes back to Him, whatever that means, but it was just air.
Nikki: Well, it’s just interesting to me because as an Adventist I understood that God was somewhere in the belt of Orion [laughter] –
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: – and oxygen and carbon dioxide, they don’t leave our atmosphere, so I’m not sure how this all holds together.
Colleen: [Laughter.] That is so interesting, Nikki. But, you know, I think it was metaphorical, like so much of Adventist explanations are.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: “It goes to God,” which means whatever. You stop breathing and He takes that back to Himself, whatever. It didn’t mean an essence of a person went to God –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – for us as Adventists. I’m still laughing about the belt of Orion [laughter]. That’s a different podcast.
Nikki: [Laughter.] Yes, it is.
Colleen: But that was totally the Adventist view.
Nikki: Yeah!
Colleen: We would go to God through the belt of Orion.
Nikki: Yeah. Yeah.
Colleen: And He would come back through it.
Nikki: Yeah. And it’s expanding. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] My, my. Our worldview was something, wasn’t it? As we started to unpack, I have to share that when I had a moment of clarity. As we were studying our way out, we had already realized that Adventism couldn’t have been biblical truth as we had been taught it. I had begun to understand the New Covenant, and I was reading a book years ago. I was just in the process – we were in the process of coming out, and I was reading a book written by a man who had conducted some evangelism, Christian evangelism, in I believe it was the Philippines back in the ’60s, and he was talking about what happened when pagans accepted the Lord and the Holy Spirit indwelt them and how they had to renounce the evil spirits that they had worshipped when they trusted Jesus and allowed His Spirit to come in. And as I was reading this, it suddenly hit me. It was like a flash of light, it was not literal, but it was like unbelievably clear. I suddenly realized that this whole spiritual battle between worshipping evil and trusting Jesus and being indwelt with the Holy Spirit was spiritual and real, and if it was happening in our spirits, as this man was describing it, that cannot be taking place in my lungs and nose. And I remember it was almost like a shock, a literal shock, and I thought, “The Holy Spirit does not indwell my respiratory system.”
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] And it was like everything looked different from that moment, and I realized all these passages in the Bible about the Spirit and about being born again and having a new spirit cannot be about the air in my lungs.
Nikki: Right. God does not testify by His Spirit to our breath.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: And you understand that you now have a living spirit, it totally opens up Scripture and helps you understand what happens when you die.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And there are so many wonderful teachings in the New Testament that are so clear.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: But I do want to say, one of the things that surprised me after I was born again and I understood all of this, I went back in, and I started reading through Genesis and Exodus and just going through some of those, you know, patriarchs and their stories –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and I noticed some things that I hadn’t as an Adventist. I noticed that when they would die, the Bible would say that – which one? I think it was Joseph – and he pulled in his legs and he was gathered to his people, and then a period of time goes by, and then he was buried.
Colleen: Isn’t that interesting? I think that was Jacob, but it was close.
Nikki: Okay.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: One of them.
Colleen: End of Genesis.
Nikki: And I think as an Adventist and I would read “and he was gathered to his people,” I would have just assumed he was buried, but I noticed there was a difference –
Colleen: Interesting.
Nikki: – between the moment when he was gathered to his people and the moment when they were taken away and buried.
Colleen: You know, I remember you saying something about that to me before, and it was interesting because I had never thought of that distinction. It is so profound.
Nikki: And you start seeing it kind of all over the Old Testament.
Colleen: Yes. Being “gathered to his people” really is a common thread through the deaths of kings and great men of Israel through the history of Israel, and I’d never thought of that as an Adventist.
Nikki: Uh-uh. And then one of the other Old Testament passages that was kind of a shock to me, even after I understood the way the New Testament taught all of this, I think I still – I don’t know, sometimes you can know the truth – when you’re transitioning out, you can know the truth in your head, but you still sort of are like you hope it’s true, you hope it’s true, and I was like that.
Colleen: Um-hmm. Oh, me too.
Nikki: So I bumped into Psalm 116:15, which is Old Testament, and it says, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” Well, according to my understanding in Adventism of what death was, how could a good God see that as precious?
Colleen: That’s a really important insight. It reminds me of a time when we were Adventists. We had not even begun to think of studying our way out, but somebody that I had known for several years that was really very important to me died, and I was pretty grief-stricken, and I remember talking to Richard about it and Richard saying to me, in an attempt to be comforting – and it did comfort me in my Adventist worldview, in a strange way – he said, “But just think, the person, this person, this friend of God, who God loved, is now in a place where God can’t talk to him either. He understands your sorrow too.” And I realized that was true Adventist belief. This friend had ceased to exist. God could not talk to him anymore. He just had a memory of him in His mind. And I realize how thoroughly that colored my view of reality and life and death and the future, and it makes me really angry now because it’s so blasphemous, that there’s anybody anywhere that God has no access to at any time.
Nikki: Um-hmm
Colleen: This is a sovereign God we’re talking about. But neither Richard nor I understood that.
Nikki: And this understanding is nowhere to be found in Scripture.
Colleen: Nowhere.
Nikki: It is not in there.
Colleen: No. And that is not precious to the Lord.
Nikki: No.
Colleen: The death of His saints is precious to the Lord. That’s because there’s something wonderful between them when they die.
Nikki: That text always makes me think of the stoning of Stephen.
Colleen: Oh, my goodness! That’s such a wonderful thing!
Nikki: It always connects me to that moment when he looked up and he saw the Son of Man standing to receive him.
Colleen: Yes. It’s at the end of Acts 7, when he’s just finished – he’s being stoned, he’s finished this sermon on the history of Israel and declares how they have rejected the Messiah, and the Jews are stoning him, and in Acts 7:54 it says, “Now when they [the Jews] heard this, they were cut to the quick, and they began gnashing their teeth at him.” They were angry as he was presenting the gospel to them, telling them the truth. “But being full of the Holy Spirit, he [Stephen] gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and he said, ‘Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’ But they cried out with a loud voice and covered their ears and rushed to him with one impulse.” And then it tells how they stoned him and he asked God not to hold the sin to their account, and I remember when I first heard Gary Inrig preach through this passage and explain that we serve a seated high priest. Hebrews is clear, Ephesians is clear, the New Testament is clear that Jesus is seated at the right hand of God, but when Stephen, the first martyr for Christ, was killed, God allowed him to see that Jesus stood up to welcome him home.
Nikki: And in that moment when he saw Him standing there, he said, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: He wanted to go home.
Colleen: Yes, he did. And he knew the Lord was receiving him.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: He knew his body was dying.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Well, shall we look at that 2 Corinthians passage?
Nikki: Yes.
Colleen: That’s so key, and it’s been so maligned by our Adventist teachers. And I don’t mean to blame individuals. It’s Adventist theology, it’s the prophet, Ellen, that made this necessary. It’s interesting too – Nikki, you were talking to me a little bit before we started recording for this podcast – why is soul sleep as Adventists teach it necessary for Adventist doctrine? I mean, there are probably several reasons, but what is one of the core reasons?
Nikki: The foundational doctrine of Adventism that holds the whole thing together, after they failed at the date-setting of the return of Christ, is the Investigative Judgment –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and you cannot have saints going to be with the Lord before the books are closed.
Colleen: Exactly. You have to have an empty heaven.
Nikki: So soul sleep protects their unique Adventist doctrine.
Colleen: Yes, that’s true. It’s like the fence around that one core heretical doctrine, and as long as that fence is intact, there’s nothing that can destroy the doctrine in the minds of the Adventists. They can argue about it, but they can’t really clearly say it’s not true. So, 2 Corinthians 5. We can’t read every passage that we’re talking about in great detail, but this one is so significant that I think we need to read 1 through 9.
Nikki: “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened – not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.”
Colleen: This is really an amazing passage, and if we look at it kind of just step-by-step, it completely unpacks our Adventist view of death. Why don’t we just talk this through, Nikki, as if we were talking to somebody who’s brand new?
Nikki: Sure.
Colleen: Okay. What does it say in the first three verses? What is the earthly tent that it’s talking about? And you know, all of you listening might just as well get your Bible and look at this because this passage has been misinterpreted to us so deeply that when you look at the words for what they say and read them with their normal meaning, it’s shocking.
Nikki: And every time you back up a little bit, it just fills out the context.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: To answer your question, I actually want to back up really quickly to chapter 4, verse 16, “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.”
Colleen: There you go!
Nikki: So when we’re talking about a tent, we’re talking about our outer self. We’re talking about our body.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It is our earthly home.
Colleen: Absolutely. And doesn’t verse 2 describe what we go through? “In this house,” this outer body we have, “we groan.”
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: “We long to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling.”
Nikki: Yes, I’m understanding that better and better. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] Yeah, that knee surgery did not fix all the groaning. Then verse 3 is interesting, “Inasmuch as we, having put it,” meaning the heavenly dwelling, “on will not be found naked.” Well, if we are our bodies and the essence of us is inseparable from the body, as Adventism says – it says we are an indivisible unit of body plus spirit, or soul, body plus soul they would say, body and soul, indivisible, so that if the body dies, the soul dies. But this says that something about us can put on a different body, a different dwelling.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And if we’re indivisible, that can’t be true.
Nikki: Right. And when would we do it if we’re sleeping in a grave or in Orion?
Colleen: Well, exactly. In Orion [laughter], yeah, exactly!
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: I could make jokes, but you know, the interesting thing is that when Adventists talk about the resurrection, they don’t talk about us putting on new bodies. They talk about a new body being made and God giving that body the essence of us. That’s not like we’re putting on something new.
Nikki: Yeah, that’s not biblical language at all.
Colleen: Not at all. So then, in verse 4, while we’re in this tent – which is, of course, what?
Nikki: Our body.
Colleen: Yeah. – we groan, being burdened because – and here is really interesting, I mean, I think everybody who faces death faces this – we don’t want to be unclothed –
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: – but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. So what’s mortal?
Nikki: Our body.
Colleen: Our body’s mortal. Now, if we’re believers, what has happened to our spirit?
Nikki: We’ve been given eternal life. We’ve come to life, and if grammar matters at all when you read Scripture –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – it’s present tense, we have eternal life now.
Colleen: Yes. And John 4:25 says we have passed out of death into life.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So if our spirits are alive, if the essence of us is alive, then the mortal part of us is the body. You know, it’s interesting that even Jesus, who was born spiritually alive, He came in the likeness of sinful flesh, which means He came in a mortal body.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: He had to go through the separation of body and spirit just like we do. And He was given a resurrection body.
Nikki: Can I just say something?
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It’s probably very obvious to everybody, but it was helpful to me when I was discussing this early on with someone and they said – it might have even been at one of our conferences, but they said, “We have eternal life, and by definition, ‘eternal’ does not stop and start again, it is constant.”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: So once you have it, it does not stop.
Colleen: That’s a really important point. It’s not a hope, a metaphor and a promise, “Oh, you have it. By and by you’ll come back.” No. You have it, and it can’t be taken away because it’s eternal.
Nikki: And it’s not “you will have it,” it’s “you have it.”
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: Verse 4 here is saying, we don’t want to be unclothed, but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life, and I have always found that such an amazing figure of speech because in literature, English literature, whatever literature you read, is filled with descriptions of death that swallow up life. It’s described as the great maw, the great yawning chasm, the great mouth that just everything comes into it, sooner or later all life is absorbed into the great maw of death sooner or later. This is the inverse of that. Life swallows up mortality, which is so cool!
Nikki: Um-hmm. [Laughter.]
Colleen: And then we learn in verse 5 that God prepared us for this purpose, He prepared us to be clothed with the heavenly dwelling and then gave us the Spirit as a pledge. So when we’re born again, the indwelling Spirit is our absolute guarantee that we have eternal life and that we will have an eternal body one day.
Nikki: And that’s the chain in Romans 8.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: Those whom He called He justified, and those whom He justified He – does He jump right to glorified? There’s a long list.
Colleen: Yes, but He does, and glorified is said as having already been accomplished.
Nikki: Um-hmm. Um-hmm. It’s a done deal.
Colleen: It’s a done deal.
Nikki: And if you listened last week, then this might remind you of Ephesians 1:13 and 14. If you didn’t, go and read that.
Colleen: Yes. Being sealed with the Holy Spirit, who is a guarantee. And then we come to the end of this passage, “Therefore being always of good courage and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord.” Well, Adventism does not adequately explain that. What is it actually saying? I mean, look at the words and read the words for what they say. We, the essence of who we are, our personality, our identity, we are in one of two places here if we’re believers. We are at home in the body, and if we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. Now, that isn’t meaning that we don’t have the Holy Spirit indwelling us, but it means that we are not actually physically eternally in the presence of Him. He is in our presence, He is here with us, but we are stuck on earth if we’re in the body.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But if we’re not in the body, then it says in verse 8, we would rather be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. And it doesn’t explain what that looks like. We’re not told how that looks, but we know that when we die and we trust Jesus, who we are, the essence of us, and I believe this is conscious – and we’ll see why in the next verse – we are with the Lord and we know it.
Nikki: And you know what else? It says up here that we walk by faith and not by sight. So when we’re away from the Lord we walk by faith and not by sight. When we’re at home with the Lord – Stephen saw Him.
Colleen: He saw Him.
Nikki: At the Mount of Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah, they were spirits, there were no resurrected bodies yet. Christ had not resurrected.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: You know, they saw Him, they spoke with Him, they encouraged Him.
Colleen: Yes. Absolutely. And we’re going to talk about Moses a little bit more in a minute.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But it’s so interesting because in verse 8, “We are of good courage, prefer to be absent from the body and to be present or at home with the Lord,” and Adventists will say that’s just “It’s as if we leave our body and the next thing we know we see Jesus.” That is not what it says. In reality, the Adventist view means that nothing exists of us between the death of our body and the resurrection, and that can be a day or thousands of years, and that’s not what it says.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: There is an us that’s either in the body or with the Lord, and whatever it is, we can know that when we’re dead and we’re with the Lord, we’re not embodied spirits wandering through the universe or playing harps on clouds.
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: What we know is that we’re spirits with the Lord.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And we know that when we believe Him, we’re seated with Him in heavenly places already. The essence of our position in the Lord doesn’t change when we’re dead. But we lose this mortal tent, which keeps us from seeing Him fully.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But then, look at verse 9, and this is the thing that was like the clincher for me. Therefore, we have as our ambition, whether at home or absent – now, he’s just developed this argument. If we are at home, where are we?
Nikki: In our body.
Colleen: On the earth. If we’re absent, where are we?
Nikki: We’re with the Lord.
Colleen: So whichever way we are, whichever place we are, we make it our ambition to be pleasing to Him. The Adventist view of death does not allow anybody to be pleasing to the Lord during death, and it’s not something we have an ambition to do.
Nikki: No, we know not anything.
Colleen: Exactly! [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: Yeah, this was a big deal for me when I first started unpacking these verses. Can I just say, though, just because I remember my old triggers?
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: With verse 10 –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – talking about how we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. We’ll have to do an episode sometime on the Bema Seat and all of that.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And you did talk a little bit about it last week, but it says that we’ll receive what is due for what we’ve done, whether good or evil, but I just want to point out, the Greek word there for “evil” is “phaulos,” and it actually means worthless.
Colleen: Interesting.
Nikki: That’s not the Adventist judgment that we’re all so afraid of –
Colleen: No.
Nikki: – you know, with the recording angels and all that.
Colleen: That’s true. Because he is writing this to believers
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Yeah. That’s a good point. I just want to say that my Dad died in 2001. We were very freshly out. We’d been out, you know, like a little over 2 years, and when he died I had come to believe that absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. My Dad was a believer. He had fully understood what was wrong with Adventism, had renounced it, and had become a Christian. He had totally trusted Jesus. I knew he was saved. As I sat there in the room where he had died and his body was there, before the mortuary came, I had a huge crisis of faith. And it surprised me. And I wrestled, actually for hours, and I’m looking at that clearly lifeless body and thinking, “Well, what makes me so sure he’s somewhere? What proof do I have that whoever he is is somewhere else and not just gone?” It was a while before I was able to resolve that. I remember driving home and walking up to the house and thinking, “I have really two choices: I can either entertain this doubt and believe what I’ve always believed for over 40 years and stay in that worldview or I can look at the words of Scripture and take them literally and believe that they tell me the truth, even though I have no emotional affirmation that they’re true. It’s purely what am I going to trust? Am I going to trust what I’ve been taught or am I going to trust what the Word of God says?”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And I had no emotional authority for that, just here are your choices, objective, and I had to look at them and say which one is the most trustworthy? And I decided I had no choice but to trust Scripture.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And it was only after doing that that this issue resolved for me. And I didn’t know it needed to be resolved. I thought I’d figured it out, but the death of my Dad was when I realized God’s Word can’t fail, and I have to trust it. What I’ve been taught can fail. What I’ve been taught by a religion I left. It was a very big deal, and this passage was key for me because I had to believe the words.
Nikki: And that’s why it’s so important in the life after Adventism, well, for anyone, but I’m speaking specifically to, you know, the formers. We have to get really clear on the trustworthiness of Scripture –
Colleen: I agree.
Nikki: – in this walk of faith. We have to understand that it is the supreme authority –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – because if we don’t submit in every way to the Words of Scripture, we will get pulled by every kind of false teaching out there that calls itself Christian.
Colleen: That’s true. Absolutely true. There was one companion passage with this that I found very comforting and helpful, and it’s in Philippians 1. It’s interesting to me too that Philippians is one of Paul’s later – one of his later epistles, when he’d suffered a lot. He wrote this as he was suffering. It was one of his prison epistles. He was in prison. And it’s Philippians 1:21-24.
Nikki: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall I choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.”
Colleen: What is Paul saying about himself here?
Nikki: He would rather be with Christ, he would rather depart and be with Christ, but he knows that if he stays, he will be useful to the church.
Colleen: Isn’t that interesting? And he’s suffering when he writes this. He’d like to be free from his mortal tent. He’d like to go to the Lord.
Nikki: It’s very clear that he understands that he will be with the Lord before the rest of the church.
Colleen: Good point!
Nikki: Because he’s saying that if he stays, he will be with them, it would be to their benefit, but if he goes, they wouldn’t have him.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: Well, according to Adventist teaching, if Paul’s there, they’re all there because Jesus came back for the second coming and so they’re all there.
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: They don’t get there before then. But it’s very clear here in this passage that when you die you’re with the Lord.
Colleen: Yes. And he knew that, although he loved the church and it would be more useful for them for him to stay, if he really had only himself to think about, he would prefer to leave the body and be with the Lord, and it says that is very much better. It’s hard for us to imagine because all we see is here, and we don’t like the thought of going through that separation of body and spirit.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It’s clear that it’s better when you’re a believer. Nikki, you’ve made a really interesting connection between Jesus’ words to Martha in John 11 and His words to the thief on the cross in Luke 23. Would you talk to us about that?
Nikki: Yeah. So in John 11, we have the death of Lazarus, and Jesus and Martha meet, and He tells her, “Your brother will rise again.” And this is in verse 23. He says, “‘Your brother will rise again.’ And Martha said to Him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?’ And she said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.'” That’s profound teaching.
Colleen: Oh, my, yes.
Nikki: And that’s the first time, at least that I can recall, that that’s been taught –
Colleen: Right. Right.
Nikki: – you know, in His ministry. Here we have her responding to Him, saying that her brother will rise again with what she believes and what she understands: “Yes, I know he will in the last day. He will be resurrected in the last day.” It’s similar to the conversation that He had with the thief on the cross, in that the thief says to Him, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” So there again, his perspective about wanting to be remembered, wanting to have life, to be resurrected, is related to when Jesus comes back.
Colleen: Right. And to a resurrection later.
Nikki: Yeah. And Jesus’ response to him was, “Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
Colleen: And it needs to be said, Adventism taught us that this was mistranslated. That’s egregious. It’s unbelievable to me.
Nikki: Yes.
Colleen: They said the translators put the comma in the wrong place. “Truly, truly I say unto you today that you will be with me in paradise.” That’s not what it says. It says, “Truly I say to you, today you will be with me.” And the Greek cannot be read to mean, “I’m telling you this today: Sometime in the future you’ll be with me.” It doesn’t mean that.
Nikki: No, and if you just look at patterns. Even just reading it in English without the Greek, if you look at patterns, you don’t see anywhere else – I looked, you don’t see anywhere else –
Colleen: No.
Nikki: – where He says, “Truly, truly I say to you today” and then said something.
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: He says “truly, truly.” There’s emphasis there.
Colleen: That’s repeated several times.
Nikki: But the statement happens after the last “truly.” [Laughter.] Always.
Colleen: [Laughter.] Always.
Nikki: In every other, you know, account of that.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: I remember, after leaving Adventism, always going to that to say, “Look, it’s today, it’s today.” But again, it’s a correction of a misunderstanding.
Colleen: Yes. Yes.
Nikki: They had a misunderstanding about life and what happens after you die, and in both cases He corrects them.
Colleen: And He lets them know that after death you will still be alive if you believe in Him. And it’s interesting that there is a confirmation of this correction in 2 Timothy. 2 Timothy 1:8-10, and Paul is writing here. He says, “Therefore don’t be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me His prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purposes and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity, but now has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” This business of living even after we die was brought to life through Jesus Christ and the gospel. That’s why it wasn’t explained in the Old Testament. Jesus hadn’t fulfilled the Law, become the curse, died our death, and as He is going to the cross, as He is hanging on the cross, He reveals to Martha and to a thief, again two very unlikely witnesses of truth.
Nikki: And this is why a random verse out of Ecclesiastes does not correct the Son of God, who tells us what really happens.
Colleen: Exactly. That thief was with Jesus that day, and Jesus told Martha the truth: Even if they die, they will live.
Nikki: And then He proved that He had the power of life over death by resurrecting Lazarus.
Colleen: That’s correct. Another Adventist proof text we just need to mention is the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man. This is found in Luke 16:19-31, and I think we all know the story because we were all taught to say, “Oh, that’s just a parable.” But there’s a rich man who lived in finery and wealth, and there was a beggar outside his gate who begged crumbs from him every day, and one day the poor man, whose name was Lazarus, died. And he was carried away, it says in verse 22, by the angels to Abraham’s bosom, and the rich man also died and was buried. Interesting way they’re treated differently in the account.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And Jesus Himself is telling the story. This is not somebody out there telling a fable, this is Jesus saying this. And then He goes on to say, “In Hades the rich man lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried out and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame.'” And then Abraham says, “Child, remember during your life you received good things and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony. And besides this” – and this is also very interesting – “between us” – between the bosom of Abraham and Hades and torment – “between us and you there is a great chasm fixed, so that those who wish to come over from here to you will not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us. And he [the rich man] said, ‘I beg you, father, that you send him to my father’s house – for I have five brothers – in order that he may warn them, so they will not also come to this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ But he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!’ And he said, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.'” This story is rich in so many ways.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: Primarily, perhaps, is Jesus’ statement that the unbelieving Jews, if they don’t believe what Moses and the Prophets actually said, there’s no hope of them attaining eternal life because Moses and the Prophets spoke of Jesus.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And He’s saying, even if someone rises from the dead – and who was about the rise from the dead? Jesus.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That won’t convince them. But I remember early in our time with FAF, we were discussing the state of the dead one Friday night, and we invited our pastor, Gary Inrig, to come and teach us, and he was using texts and the Scriptures and explaining what the Bible teaches about death, and he used this story, and all of us in the circle around the room kind of stiffened, and somebody said, “But that’s just a parable.” Were you taught that, Nikki? That’s just a parable.
Nikki: Yeah, that’s how I thought about it.
Colleen: Yeah. It was kind of like folklore that the Jews knew, and Jesus used this folklore to make a point about people who love wealth versus people who are not being cared for and, you know, that your wealth gets you nowhere. I mean, that’s how I was taught this story.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And I still remember the look on Gary’s face when we said that, and we looked at him kind of like accusing and unbelieving and, like, no.
Nikki: Like, you’ve got to do better than that, Gary. [Laughter.]
Colleen: And when somebody said, “That’s just a parable,” he had a look of true confusion on his face for a moment, and he caught himself, and then he said, “But this is the Lord Jesus talking, and the Lord Jesus would not use an untruth to teach a truth.” And I realized at that moment that I actually had believed God would use an untruth to teach a truth if He thought He needed to.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Because Ellen White said that back in the day, when William Miller made his first prophecy and it was wrong, that God held His hand over the mistake so people would get ready.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I believed that God would let us believe something was untrue if it would serve His purposes, and I walked out of that meeting reeling, realizing I had believed God could trick us to get us to do His will.
Nikki: I sure believed that. I thought it was our job to read between the lines.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: I mean, this whole business of Sabbath being the seal of God and the last-time message for a remnant people, that’s not in Scripture. That was a reading between the lines.
Colleen: Exactly. So for Jesus to use this story, we have to know that He is telling us something true about death.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: People are not gone, and they’re not unconscious, and they’re not unable to know what’s real. The rich man knew he was in torment. Lazarus was being comforted in the bosom of Abraham. And the full reality of being with the Lord was not yet revealed because Jesus hadn’t risen from the grave, but this was still something true about believers and unbelievers. With that being said, people often say, “Well, then, what does happen to the unbelievers when they die?” And there’s a text that we need to look at. It’s not completely explained in total clarity, but there is the story we just read, and there’s this passage in 2 Peter, 2 Peter 2:9. 2 Peter really didn’t make much sense to me as an Adventist. I don’t remember looking at it much. There was so much in it that was confusing. It makes more sense to me now. But in 2 Peter 2, Peter is actually writing about the rise of false prophets and how they behave and what their eternal consequence will be, and he’s warning the young, believing, scattered Jews who have become Christians, he’s warning them against false teachers, and this is a very, very long sentence, and we won’t read all the verses because the sentence is so long, but he’s going through things that people know. He’s going through the ancient world, Noah, and how he preached about the flood before it came. He’s talking about the condemnation of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and how they are pre-figuring the eternal destruction, the eternal torment, the eternal fire that will burn the unbelievers. He talks about Lot being rescued from the condemned cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and then he comes to verse 9, and he says – he’s preceding all this “if Noah did this, if God rescued righteous Lot,” in verse 9, “then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation,” which is a great relief, He holds us, “and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment.” Now, that’s an amazing sentence to somebody with an Adventist background.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: Because punishment involves suffering; it doesn’t involve unconsciousness. So to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment says when the unrighteous die, God does take their spirits.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: They go to God, and He keeps them where He knows He needs to keep them, under punishment, for the judgment at His return.
Nikki: Yeah. And in Adventism, the death of a human, it’s an equal playing field.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: Whether you are saved or lost, no one knows, you’re just there waiting to find out. This is very clear, that God knows who’s His, who isn’t, at death.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And He has different places for them.
Colleen: Yes. And that did not fit the Great Controversy Investigative Judgment paradigm.
Nikki: No.
Colleen: So Adventism had to deconstruct that and tell us it was false.
Nikki: You know, Jesus said, “It is finished,” and Adventism says, “No, it’s not done yet.”
Colleen: That’s so true.
Nikki: One of the proof texts that I remember getting a lot in Adventism for the state of the dead was in 1 Thessalonians.
Colleen: Oh, yes.
Nikki: And it’s really kind of – it’s almost like using Hebrews 3 and 4 to say that we’re still supposed to keep weekly Sabbaths. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] That is so true.
Nikki: Because as soon as you start really studying the passage, you see that it’s actually saying the opposite of what we were taught.
Colleen: Yes. 1 Thessalonians. Take us through it, Nikki. It’s in 4. I think there might even be something in 3 that helped you see.
Nikki: So in 1 Thessalonians 4 we read, starting in verse 13, about the coming of the Lord, and it says, “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep.” Okay, well let me read on first. “For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.” So in Adventism they really camped very heavy on, you know, “the dead in Christ will rise first.”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: So obviously they were in the ground. No. That’s a twisting of the passage. Their bodies were –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – but they were with the Lord. We see here in verse 14 that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep. And if you think that I’m twisting that, turn over to chapter 3 and look, beginning in verse 12. It’s a – I’ll begin in verse 11. “Now may our God and Father Himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints.”
Colleen: I always thought the saints were angels.
Nikki: Yeah, but we just read in Psalm 116 that precious in the sight of the Lord –
Colleen: – is the death –
Colleen and Nikki: – of His saints!
Nikki: Angels don’t die.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: The saints are those who are in Christ.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And we see very clearly here Jesus returns with –
Colleen and Nikki: – all the saints.
Colleen: It’s amazing!
Nikki: It’s really amazing. Yeah, this was a big one for me. This was a lot of fun to see.
Colleen: It was for me too. This is – you can’t have the Adventist soul sleep and this passage both.
Nikki: And I do have a note here, and I can’t say for sure that it’s from Gary, but a lot of my notes in my Bible are.
Colleen: Yes, uh-huh.
Nikki: So where it says here in 13, “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep,” my note says that the word in Greek is closely related to the word “cemetery,” and it was a word that speaks about the physical reality. This was not about the soul.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: This is not teaching soul sleep.
Colleen: No! It’s teaching the body is in the ground.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But it’s not the essence of us.
Nikki: No. So we see that the saints are alive in Christ.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And they’re with Him. They’re living. I remember in Matthew when the Pharisees came, and of course, they were trying to trick Jesus again.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: In chapter 22 in verse 31, He’s answering a question they have about the resurrection of the dead, is how they put it. And Jesus said, “As for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.”
Colleen: That’s amazing.
Nikki: Yeah, it’s very clear that He is saying that these men are still living.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And we get that picture in Hebrews 12 as well.
Colleen: Oh, I love this passage.
Nikki: Yes. This is talking about – well, first of all, whoever it is that wrote Hebrews is writing to believers, and he is saying, beginning in verse 22, “But you have come” – not will come – “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”
Colleen: That’s amazing.
Nikki: So when we’re in Christ, we’re now a part of this, of the city of the living God and the assembly of the firstborn, that’s the church –
Colleen: That’s the church.
Nikki: – and the spirits of the righteous made perfect.
Colleen: That’s all the righteous who have been made perfect in Christ, dead and alive, if we want to say that, physically dead and alive.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: I remember realizing, there’s just no two ways to read that.
Nikki: No.
Colleen: When we believe Jesus, we are brought into that company.
Nikki: Yeah, and you were talking a little bit ago, before we started the podcast, about the great cloud of witnesses.
Colleen: Yes! That’s Hebrews 12:1, right after the entire discussion of the people of faith from the Old Testament. And it says, “Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” And I remember hearing Gary Inrig teach about this passage and saying that the image here is of a stand, a stadium, where people are watching a race being run. And the cloud of witnesses are watching this happen. Now, this is not speaking of people who don’t exist.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: This is saying the church is alive, and we who are on earth are no more alive than those who are in heaven, and those who are in heaven somehow know us because we are all in the Lord.
Nikki: And I have this, you know, this Adventist tape in my head that says, “So wait a minute, are you saying that when Great Aunt Jean died, now she’s been following me around and watching me sin, or is, you know, my mother who’s passed away now my guardian angel?” That’s not what we’re saying.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: It’s not what the Bible teaches.
Colleen: No. No communication between the dead and the living. They’re not up there weeping because we’re sinning.
Nikki: They’re busy worshipping the Lord.
Colleen: Exactly. There’s one more thing we have to mention before we stop this podcast. It’s that whole teaching about Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration.
Nikki: Oh, yeah.
Colleen: We were taught that Moses couldn’t have shown up there if he hadn’t been resurrected because, of course, the dead don’t exist.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Elijah could be there because he was taken alive by chariot to heaven, but Moses died, it was clear he died, and the proof text for that, according to Adventism, was the 9th verse of Jude, and this is what it says: “But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you!'” Now, just looking at that verse, is there anything in there that suggests Moses was raised from the dead?
Nikki: No.
Colleen: No. However, Ellen White said it did. And she said – this is one of the Adventist proof texts that Jesus is Michael the archangel. And I have to unpack that too, in order to make this verse make sense.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: Let’s begin with the Michael proclamation. Michael the archangel – now, Jude is quoting from another work that was extant in the time during – that was well known to the early Christians, but whatever this is originally written in, this is part of God’s inspired Word, and we have to know that it’s telling the truth. Whatever it is, we don’t understand the story except what’s said here. But Michael the archangel was disputing with the devil. Now, the devil was an angel, a fallen angel, but Michael the archangel, according to Daniel, is one of God’s mighty angels, who is the prince of Daniel’s people, the Jews, and we won’t get more into that, but if you want to read something interesting about Michael the archangel, read Daniel 10. But Michael the archangel was disputing with the devil, arguing about the body of Moses. Now, we’re not told why, but do angels have the power to resurrect?
Nikki: No.
Colleen: No. So there’s nothing here suggesting that Moses is being raised from the dead. There’s just no suggestion of that. But furthermore, Michael can’t be Jesus for several reasons, one of which is he’s called the archangel, and Jesus is never called the archangel. He is called God and the Son of God.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: The second thing is that this Michael is disputing with the devil. Now Ellen White has made a whole religion about the Great Controversy between Christ and Satan, but the Bible doesn’t teach that.
Nikki: Uh-uh.
Colleen: Satan is a fallen angel, a created being. Jesus is his Creator. There’s no dispute between them. Next, Michael, it says, did not dare pronounce against Satan a railing judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you.” When Jesus was alive on earth in the body, did He rebuke Satan?
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: Directly.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: He rebuked Satan directly in the wilderness when He was tempted. He rebuked Satan directly when He cast out the legion of demons from the demoniacs at the Gadarenes. He rebuked Satan over and over, and He defeated him on the cross. Colossians 2:14, He disarmed Satan. He rebuked Satan directly, and Michael the archangel did not dare rebuke Satan, but deferred to the Lord. Jesus is the Lord. Jesus took that name on Himself. He used the same name, “the Lord,” the personal name of God, YAHWAH, for Himself. That’s part of the reason the Jews were so angry at Him. He was calling Himself God. So for Ellen White to say that this verse is teaching that Michael is Jesus is blasphemy. And to teach that this verse is saying that Moses was resurrected is also blasphemy. He’s not resurrected here. God does not need people to be alive in mortal flesh in order to be seen. Angels can take forms, if they need to, to do God’s will. There’s nothing that can stop an Almighty God from doing whatever He needs to do, and the three disciples who were with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration saw Jesus with Moses and Elijah for a very specific purpose. It was a visual representation of the Old Covenant, which was about the pass away, Moses, the Law, and Elijah, the prophets, would be fulfilled in Jesus, and Jesus alone would be the one they were to listen to. Moses was not resurrected. There is no hint of that, and he couldn’t have been resurrected because Jesus is the first fruits from the dead.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: He’s the first one to come forth from the grave, to break its power, and to have a glorified body, and we are told that we, like Him, will rise from death when He returns, but no one can rise from death with glorified bodies before Jesus. This has been an intense study, I know, with a lot of texts, but I want to just close by saying this: If you haven’t trusted Jesus and His finished work, His shed blood, which He shed as a propitiation for your personal sin, there is nothing else that can bring you into the safety and the sureness of knowing that you have eternal life. It is through the blood of Jesus and His destruction of death that we have life, and if you trust Him and believe that He has paid the price for your sin, satisfied the demands of God against sin, and risen from the dead, if you trust Him as your Savior and Lord, you will pass at that moment from death to life, and you will know it, and you will never die.
Nikki: Thank you, Colleen. So many of you have been writing, and we so appreciate it. In fact, the last two podcasts have come out of figuring out how we can start to help you guys with some of your questions. Understanding the new birth, understanding what the Lord did, and understanding the ramifications of it is central to understanding all the rest. And so I hope that you’ve taken notes. I’m glad that you joined us, and if you have any questions about what we’ve talked about or even just ideas for future podcasts, more questions you’d like us to consider discussing, email us at formeradventist@gmail.com. Also, if you would like to sign up for our weekly emails or print magazine, you can do that at our website, proclamationmagazine.com, and there’s still time to sign up for the conference. We really hope to see you there, so you can do that at that website as well. Also, we’d like to remind you that you can follow us on Instagram or Facebook, and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. And we look forward to joining you again next week. †
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