This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
Lesson 8: “Choose Life”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- The great controversy worldview which makes salvation about choosing to keep the law and to be “good” in order to be saved
- Warping Scripture’s teaching about hell and predestination, assuming to tell Adventists what Christians believe but misrepresenting Christian doctrine
- Diminishing God’s sovereignty over life and death
This week’s lesson drives home the Adventist worldview that Adam plunged humanity into sin by making a wrong choice. It develops this theme by stressing that Moses told Israel they had freedom to choose life over death and told them keeping the law was not beyond their grasp. The author further stated that “God does not force them”.
Further, the lesson stresses, “And how good to know that even if someone makes the wrong choice, the result is death, eternal death, not eternal torment in a never-ending lake of fire” (Bible Study Guide, p. 104). The author also does that typical Adventist “thing” of informing Adventists what Christians believe—and getting it wrong. Here is what the lesson says in Friday’s lesson that many Christians believe about the biblical teaching of predestination:
Unlike a certain understanding of Christianity, in which, even before humans were born, God predestined some people not just to be lost but even to burn in hell forever, Scripture teaches that our own free choice of life or death, blessing or cursing, good or evil, determines which triad—life, good, blessing or death, evil, cursing—we will ultimately face.
Christianity does NOT teach that some people are created to be lost and to burn in hell! Christianity teaches what the Bible teaches: that God foreknows and chooses and predestines His own to be conformed to the image of His Son (Rom. 8:29, 30). Never does the Bible say that God creates some people to be lost and to suffer eternal torment. The problem with Adventism’s teaching is that it does not consider the whole counsel of God in Scripture.
I will quote below an excellent explanation of the Christian understanding of “predestination” from the GotQuestions.org site:
Double predestination is the belief that God creates some people whose purpose in existence is to be sent to hell. Is this concept biblical? Let us look at the question from the book of Romans, which has two predominant themes throughout. The first theme is the righteousness of God. It is the gospel message itself that reveals God’s righteousness (Romans 1:16-17). It is the truth contained within the gospel message that by faith declares a man righteous before God (Romans 4-5). It is the central figure of the gospel message—Jesus Christ—that enables a man to be righteous (Romans 6-7). It is the gospel message that shows man the way to live in a righteous manner (Romans 12).
Another theme found in the book of Romans is that of wrath. God’s wrath has been revealed—and is being revealed—against all sinful actions (Romans 1:18). Mankind knows about God, but rejects God in their thinking and in their actions (Romans 1:21-22). The wrath of God, therefore, is the giving over of man to live his life as he pleases (Romans 1:24, 26, 28), which apart from God leads to destruction (Romans 1:28-32). Man rejects the God of the universe, and God, in turn, forsakes man. Only a personal intervention from God can alter the destructive path on which man finds himself while he hardens himself in sin.
Now we read Romans 9:22, and it says, “What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction?” Many people think this verse teaches that God has made certain vessels for His wrath. But this is not the point of the verse. Reading above, mankind has already experienced God’s wrath. Mankind has fitted himself for destruction. It is God who endures these vessels—vessels who have prepared themselves for destruction because they would not leave their sin and turn to God.
Look at the next verse: Romans 9:23, “And he did so in order that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory.” Notice that God elects certain people beforehand for His glory. In other words, before the foundation of the world God chose certain people to be His children in order that He would be glorified (see Ephesians 1:4). It does not say that God chose people to damnation or predestined people to wrath. The Bible never speaks about a double predestination where God elects or predestinates some to hell, others to heaven. Those who are under God’s wrath are in that position because they have rejected God. Those that have the righteousness of God are in that position because God has chosen them to be His children (https://www.gotquestions.org/double-predestination.html).
This predestination conundrum is one of the most common doctrinal divisions. This is a subject where we have say we can’t explain how God works by creating a formula. Everything the Bible says is true, and we have to hold even apparently contradictory ideas in tension.
Some people say that the idea of “tension” is wrong, and others say that if God predestines and foreknows those who are His, then the logical corollary is that He predestines (implicitly) others to be lost.
In fact, the Bible doesn’t make this point. God has said that whosoever believes in the Son will not perish (Jn. 3:16). Joshua challenged Israel to choose whom they would serve (Josh. 24:15), and Peter says in 2 Peter 3:9 that God “is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
At the same time, Jesus said that
“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (Jn. 6:37).
“No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day” (Jn. 6:44).
Paul put it this way:
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified (Romans 8:28–30).
The Bible tells us that God has to draw us in order to come to Him because by nature we are utterly spiritually dead. The lesson completely misses this point. Because of Adventism’s belief that man is only physical with no immaterial spirit, they don’t see how Adam’s sin resulted in literal spiritual death that very day, and we inherit his death. They make Adam’s sin to be about choosing the wrong thing instead of refusing to trust and believe God’s word. Indeed, Adventism’s skewed soteriology grows out of its physicalism and its refusal to see human sin as fundamentally UNBELIEF instead of choosing the wrong things.
We believe what Scripture says: God has to draw us in order to seek Him. By nature humans are dead spiritually and, according to Romans 1:18-21, they suppress the knowledge of God by their own wickedness. This wickedness is the fruit of their spiritual death—yet God reveals Himself to everyone through what has been made. In fact, Romans 1:18-21 says all men are without excuse because what can be known about God has been revealed! Yet people suppress this knowledge by their wickedness, their natural depravity which doesn’t want to satisfy anything except itself.
People are lost eternally because they refuse to believe—and concurrently, those who believe are those whom God draws and they see reality—and they are eternally foreknown and chosen in Christ.
Can I explain how this works?
No!
Do I believe what Scripture says?
Yes. I cannot add more than the Bible says, nor can I alter God’s revealed truth. Yet the Sabbath School lesson misrepresents what Christians teach about predestination, and they make a cartoon out of one of Scripture’s most amazing revelations: God’s sovereignty and His eternal love for His people.
From God’s perspective outside of time, these things do not seem to contradict. We, however, are merely three dimensional, time-bound creatures, and we cannot see all of reality. God gives us glimpses of it, and we are honor-bound not to distort His word by adding our own formula to explain what happens.
In the same way, Adventism slanders Christian doctrine by misrepresenting what we believe about God’s sovereign love and revelation of Himself.
The Idol Of Free Will
This lesson camps on one of Adventism’s idols. Ironically, the lesson attempts to say that by choosing to obey, people can avoid developing idols. The context for this idea, however, is the great controversy worldview. When Adventists talk about choosing life, choosing obedience, they are talking about the Ten Commandments, and they are implying their fundamental belief: the Ten are eternal, and Lucifer sinned in heaven by breaking their principles.
In creating this creature-centered worldview, Adventism has developed powerful if invisible-to-them idols. They have created an eternal idol out of the law which literally had a beginning and an end (Gal. 3:17-20). Even more, Adventism has created an idol of Sabbath. Sabbath to Adventism is the SIGN of the SEAL of God. Specifically, EGW says that Sabbath IS the seal of God!
By replacing the Holy Spirit with the Sabbath, Adventism has created an idol to which they are bound with cords they cannot break. Even when they logically think about it, they cannot let go of the Sabbath as something eternal that God wants his people to keep.
Hand-in-hand with their idolatry of Sabbath is Adventism’s idolatry of their own free will. This lesson emphasizes that God gave everyone free will to CHOOSE LIFE. It makes the point that Adam was asked to make a choice, and he chose wrong. Everyone from Adam on has been asked to choose LIFE or DEATH.
They utterly miss that Jesus Himself told us how we are to be saved. Our salvation has nothing whatsoever to do with the law (Rom. 3:20-21). Rather, it is entirely dependent upon BELIEF in the Son (Jn. 6:29; 5:24; Acts 16:31). We are condemned when we are born (Jn. 3:18, Eph. 1:1–3) because we are spiritually dead. We pass from death to life and OUT of condemnation when we BELIEVE (Jn. 3:18; 5:24).
What we need is not the mustered-up strength to choose the right thing, the conviction that we have to be good and obey. What we need is to be made ALIVE!
Those who BELIEVE are made alive by God at the moment of belief. He gives us a new heart, a new spirit, and He puts His Spirit in us! (See Eph. 1:13-14; Ez. 36:25-26). We do need life—but life does not come by deciding to do specific things. LIFE comes by BELIEVING God, as Abraham did!
Romans 4 tells us that Abraham had absolutely NO evidence that God’s promises to him would or could come true. Yet Abraham BELIEVED God, and that belief was credited to him as righteousness. That believing God is what saves us. That belief is what causes us to pass from death to life, and that life is eternal.
When we believe in Jesus’ finished work, we receive eternal life right then (Jn. 11:25–26), and we will NEVER die. And NEVER means—NEVER. We will not cease breathing and lie in the gourd, nonexistent until a distant resurrection. No! When we believe, we pass from death to life, and when we die, our true self leaves our mortal tent (which does go back to dust), but our spirit is instantly present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:1–9).
Adventism’s worldview based on the heretical great controversy model gives Adventists the inability to see what Scripture actually says. It makes it impossible for them to grasp that biblical truth can’t be “formulated”, and they rationalize that they have a right to explain how and what Christians “think” and believe when, in reality, they have no understanding of Christian belief at all.
Their worldview is warped and false, and they are unable to hold biblical truth in tension. They are unable to accept the plain words of Scripture.
When this lesson tells its readers to “Choose Life”, it is asking them to keep the law. When Christians tell people to “choose life”, we are asking them to believe the Lord Jesus and to trust His completed atonement and propitiation for our sins.
The difference between the two is vast, and they never meet because they represent two realities: truth and deception. Life is inseparable from truth, and death is inseparable from deception. We only find the life of truth when we are willing to submit our preconceptions to God’s word and to allow Him to reveal Himself to us.
As long as we hold onto our logical analysis of the Bible without allowing the Bible to inform our minds, we are lost in our own depraved perceptions. But when we trust God and believe that He cannot lie and will not trick us, we can submit to His word—and we will find LIFE. †
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