Lesson 12: “Receiving An Unshakable Kingdom”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- The primary problem with this lesson is the author’s illegitimate association of texts and words to create the illusion that Hebrews teaches the investigative judgment.
- Daniel 7 with its prophecies of God’s destruction of kingdoms and Hebrews 12:18–29 are not describing the end of the investigative judgment as the lesson repeatedly insists.
- This lesson eviscerates the reality that believers never die and are with the Lord until He returns.
If one reads Hebrews 12:18–29 in context, the lesson’s direction and conclusion are nowhere to be found. This lesson is an example of Adventism’s appropriation of Hebrews to make a case for its heinous central pillar: the investigative judgment. Of all Adventist doctrines, this one is the only one which has no biblical support—yet Adventism attempts to create proof texts for it out of some of Scripture’s most hopeful and beautiful passages.
Instead of attacking each assumption in the lesson individually, I will quote below the passage of Hebrews used in this lesson and summarize the promises we see here.
For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.” Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.” 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.
See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:18–29).
This passage of Scripture contrasts Israel’s covenant made at Sinai with God and our covenant in Christ’s blood that allows us to come directly into His presence. Unlike Israel, we are not confronted with fire, smoke, gloom, darkness, whirlwind, and fear. Instead, we have no fear because we have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God!
Because of Jesus’ blood and His resurrection, we who have believed in the Lord Jesus have already received an unimaginable inheritance. We have come to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. We have come to myriads of angels (and notice is says we HAVE COME to the myriad of angels—this is in the present perfect tense and is not a metaphor). We have come to the “general assembly and church of the firstborn”—we are among those who have been born again by believing the gospel and are heirs with the actual Firstborn—our Lord Jesus! Moreover, we of the church of the firstborn are ALREADY—not just hopefully or conditionally—enrolled in heaven! Our names are already there!
Even more, we have already come to God—our true Father—who is the Judge of all! We have no fear as we face our God who has given us new life (Jn. 1:12; Eph. 1:13, 14) and adopted us as His own children and co-heirs with His Son (Rom. 8:14–17). He has already delivered His judgment of us when Jesus hung on the cross and took our sin. As Jesus experienced His Father’s wrath against our sin, God’s judgment condemned our sin, and the Son took our death, God’s judgment was satisfied. Jesus’ death paid IN FULL for our sin, and now we stand before the Father unafraid because we are forgiven. Jesus’ blood is sufficient for all of us who believe, and His judgment of sin has passed over us because we stand under the Son’s blood. Our position in Christ is the fulfillment of the Passover of Israel when the death angel spared all who were under the blood of the sacrificial lambs.
We, God’s children, stand before the Father IN CHRIST, and He sees His Son’s righteousness when He looks at us. We are justified and made perfect in the Son!
The lesson emphasizes that everyone stands before the Judge at the end of the investigative judgment, and it tries in a cognitively dissonant way to say that the Judge is not someone to fear as we wait to discover who is saved and who is not. This teaching is utter heresy!
The born-again KNOW they are saved in Jesus. The unbelieving, however, are still subject to judgment. Unless they place their faith and trust in Jesus, they will receive God’s wrath against their own sin.
Spirits of the Righteous Made Perfect
The lesson destroys the line that says we come to the “spirits of the righteous mad perfect”, trying to say to the Adventist audience that this is figurative speech for using a part of the human nature to stand for the whole person—that these are those who will be made perfect by the end.
In a biblical context, however, this verse means exactly what it says. It is not a figure of speech; it is a clear statement that the spirits—the immaterial parts—of righteous believers before the cross have also been brought into the presence of the Father. The righteous who, like Abel and Abraham, believed God and that belief was credited to them as righteousness, are now fully justified in the presence of the Father as are we who believe now. Jesus’ blood has now paid for them as well. Now they are not only credited with righteousness on the basis of their belief but are fully justified by Jesus’ blood! When we believe and are born again, our spirits come into the presence of God where all of those righteous spirits already are as they wait for their resurrections!
Finally, we learn that we come to Jesus—the one whose sacrifice opened the door for us to approach the Father. He is the mediator of the new covenant! His sprinkled blood speaks of forgiveness and reconciliation. Abel’s blood cried out for justice and punishment; Jesus’ blood answers the cry of Abel’s blood with the propitiation of our sin and with the gift of forgiveness and justice.
The chapter endues with a warning that anyone reading this who hasn’t fully trusted Jesus do so now. If we refuse Jesus, our final end will be even worse than that of those who refused Him when He warned them through the earthly shadows of Israel’s law. Our Lord Jesus warns us from heaven—a statement summarizing the reality that Jesus came and shed His blood and broke death for us and is now at the Father’s right hand because He has finished His work of propitiation and reconciliation! If we refuse Him, how dreadful will be our destiny.
The author goes on to remind his readers that God will come and will finally destroy the heavens and the earth as He has said He will. Everything created will be shaken, verse 27 says—only “those things which cannot be shaken may remain.”
Believers who have been made spiritually alive by the resurrection life of Jesus will remain. Our life is ETERNAL because it is the actual life of God! Our mortal bodies, the earth bound to decay (Rom. 8:18–25), even the heavens will be shaken and destroyed as God will usher in the eternal heavens and earth! We, however, who have received the eternal life of Jesus—the life that could not die as He lay in the tomb as His body died—will not be shaken!
Our future does not hang on an invented and terrifying investigative judgment that still goes on to determine who has confessed all sins and who has perfectly kept the law and has had the character of Christ perfectly reproduced in them! This doctrine is blasphemy against the finished work of our Lord Jesus!
Furthermore, the Adventist investigative judgment ends with Jesus placing the sins of the saved on the scapegoat SATAN!! NO!!!
Jesus is our Scapegoat, and He has already carried our sins outside the camp, far from us, and we are asked to follow Him outside that familiar camp of the law as the author of Hebrews says in chapter 13:7–14.
Hebrews 12 ends with the assurance that we receive a “kingdom which cannot be shaken”. Again, this promise is in PRESENT tense, not future, and not “maybe”. We who believe receive this kingdom as a certainty, and it is ours when we believe. We receive it with the Lord Jesus.
Consequently, we are to offer sacrifices of praise to God. We ARE SAVED! We are forgiven! We are justified and reconciled to the Father because we are IN Christ! Thus, our praise to God is our acceptable service to Him. The lesson nudges readers to understand their “acceptable service” as good deeds, AKA law-and-Sabbath-keeping. While these things are not stated in the lesson, they are strongly implied, and since the Teachers Comments are dedicate to explaining how to teach the investigative judgment from Hebrews 12, we can deduce that the “acceptable service” does include the Sabbath because, according to EGW (who has the last word in this lesson in her Great Controversy quote which comprises Friday’s lesson), the Sabbath is the mark of those who are saved at the end of the investigative judgment.
In context, however, the author reminds us to praise God with reverence and awe because He Is a consuming fire. Our true Father into whose presence we have come by the blood of His Son is the judge of all—and we are SAFE in the Son. Our praise is deep and grateful and acceptable to God. We praise Him because we know and love God. We are not in danger of experiencing the eternal fire of our consuming God because our Lord Jesus has experienced that in our place!
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Because of Jesus’ FINISHED work, we can KNOW that there is no investigative judgment! We are already placed in Christ, justified, and have become in Him the actual righteousness of God.
This reality seems like “too much”. How can we claim to know we are saved from God’s fire? How can we know that we are, in Christ, God’s righteousness?
We can know it because we trust what His word tells us. The words mean what they say, and the context reveals this truth. Adventism is a deceptive heresy, and Hebrews does not teach that we still face judgment. If we believe, we have passed out of judgment and are hidden in Christ. Our sacrifice of praise is acceptable to God along with our reverence and awe. We do not deserve to be justified—but we receive this grace because our triune God saved us in Jesus.
This lesson is unconscionable. Jesus lives, and the blood of His eternal covenant forever places us in Him as God’s own adopted, born-again children!
Praise God, praise God, praise God, Who saved my soul
Praise God, praise God, praise God from Whom all blessings flow!
—The New Doxology
- April 27–May 3, 2024 - April 25, 2024
- We Got Mail - April 25, 2024
- April 20–26, 2024 - April 18, 2024