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 2: “The Fall”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- This lesson makes arguments to support its physical view of man, denying an immaterial human spirit and ignoring Adam and Eve’s spiritual death.
- The author inserts the investigative judgment into the story of the Fall and fails to explain God’s provision for Adam and Eve.
- The author never mentions EGWs statement that Eve wandered from Adam but includes EGWs non-biblical glorification of the serpent.
This lesson is evidence of Adventism’s deliberate suppression of some of EGWs most well-known unbiblical words about the fall, creating instead philosophical and theoretical explanations of the dynamics between Eve, the serpent, and Adam.
For example, Ellen White said this about her temptation:
Eve wandered away from the side of her husband, and was gazing with mingled curiosity and admiration upon the fruit of the forbidden tree. Satan, in the form of a serpent, conversed with Eve. The serpent had not the power of speech, but Satan used him as a medium. It was Satan that spoke, not the serpent. Eve was deceived, and thought it was the serpent. This serpent was a very beautiful creature with wings; and while flying through the air his appearance was very bright, resembling the color of burnished gold. He did not go upon the ground, but went from place to place through the air, and ate fruit like man (3SG 39.2).
The above scenario has been written into Adventist children’s books such as Arthur Maxwell’s Bible Stories. It has been taught to Adventists since the beginning of the religion, and this detail, that Eve supposedly wandered away from Adam thus making herself vulnerable to temptation, has formed the basis of the Adventist understanding of sin for over a century and a half.
To my surprise, the lesson makes no mention of this staple of Adventist teaching about the fall—and I confess to wondering if the fact that former Adventists have been pointing out this error is at least part of the reason this lesson ignores it.
The Bible states explicitly that Eve gave some of the fruit “to her husband with her, and he ate” (Gen. 3:6). She did not wander away from him. Adam was with her, watching her be beguiled by the serpent and falling prey to his deception and he didn’t step up and defend her! Genesis 2:16, 17 reveal that God gave Adam the instructions about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil before Eve was created. Adam was responsible for Eve, and he failed to protect her.
Yet this lesson ignores the significance of this biblical revelation. It not only does not mention EGW’s egregious error, but it does not discuss the significance that Adam was with her and refused to protect.
It does, however, include Ellen’s fanciful description of the serpent which appears nowhere in Scripture. In Sunday’s lesson the author quotes Patriarchs and Prophets p. 53 and gives us Ellen’s description of the serpent (notably borrowed from her earlier work quoted above):
In order to accomplish his work unperceived, Satan chose to employ as his medium the serpent—a disguise well adapted for his purpose of deception. The serpent was then one of the wisest and most beautiful creatures on the earth. It had wings, and while flying through the air presented an appearance of dazzling brightness, having the color and brilliancy of burnished gold.
In Monday’s lesson the author tells us what he believes Satan’s convincing arguments were: “immortality and being like God”. The lesson goes on to compare Eve’s being beguiled into wanting to be immortal and wanting to be like God with “ancient Egyptian and Greek religions”. He then concludes, “The desire for immortality, which they believed was a divine attribute, obliged these people to seek divine status, as well, in order (they hoped) to acquire immortality. Surreptitiously, this way of thinking infiltrated Jewish-Christian cultures and has given birth to the belief in the immortality of the soul, which exists even today in many churches.”
Do you see what he did there? He changed the actual story of Eve’s sin and made an application that introduced Adventist physicalism! He arrogantly comments that Eve’s true temptation was to be immortal—and thus was introduced the belief of the immortality of the soul which, he says, INFILTRATED Jewish-Christian culture!
The author has just dismissed the biblical teaching that when believers die, they are “absent from the body and present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:1–9). By redefining the reality of what occurred in this account, the lesson lays the foundation for the rest of the quarter by ignoring that God said that if they ate the fruit, they would die that day. They have eclipsed the spiritual death that entered the human race that very day and have created an apologetic for scorning the biblical truth about the nature of man!
They use the idea of “immortality” to to mock the biblical teaching that the human spirit survives the body. Yet Christians do not teach that man is immortal. Only God is immortal! Adventism, however, defines death as ceasing to exist instead of having a literal spirit that is disconnected from God’s life, a spirit that must be born of God for the person to have eternal life!
Hiding or Spiritually Dead?
Tuesday’s lesson emphasizes Adam and Eve’s hiding from God after eating the fruit. The first sentence of the lesson says, “After they sinned, Adam and Eve felt naked because they lost their garments of glory, which reflected God’s presence (see Ps. 8:5, compare with Ps. 104:1, 2).”
Again, deceptively, the author does not tell us what EGW actually said about Adam and Eve’s garments of light:
Adam and Eve both ate of the fruit, and obtained a knowledge, which, had they obeyed God, they would never have had—an experience in disobedience and disloyalty to God, the knowledge that they were naked. The garments of innocence, the presence of light which surrounded them, a covering from God, had departed. They supplied the place of the heavenly garments by sowing together fig leaves for aprons (12LtMs, Ms 145, 1897, Par 3).
The Bible never implies that Adam and Eve were clothed in light! Their nakedness was not a loss of a covering that hid them. This is what Genesis 3:7 says:
Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.
Prior to their sin, “the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (Gen. 2:25). Ellen White couldn’t deal with the biblical account that God had created Adam and Eve sinless and innocent. Their nakedness was not a source of shame; they had no guile. Their sin opened their eyes, and they suddenly knew they were guilty. They knew shame—they had DIED as God had said they would! They couldn’t live with themselves exposed to each other. They hurried to cover themselves—and then they tried to hide from God!
God knew they had died spiritually. Yet He came after them and called them. Adam and Eve demonstrated their spiritual death immediately; they both refused to own their own sin but blamed. Eve blamed the serpent; Adam blamed both Eve AND God: “The woman who you gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate” (v. 12).
The lesson turns this part of the story into a moral lesson asking the reader, “Why is it so easy for us to fall into the same trap?”
The issue is not that people have to strengthen their will power and refuse to blame. The issue is that Adam and Eve DIED spiritually. They by nature, now, tried to offload their guilt and justify themselves. Yet they couldn’t. They were guilty, and God did not let them off the hook.
The lesson also significantly ignores the fact that God took responsibility for their shame and guilt and provided them coverings. He replaced their own cobbled efforts to cover their shame with fig leaves by giving them more enduring garments of animal skins—an evidence that God had to have killed an animal in order to cover Adam and Eve. Adventism (and certainly not EGW) never stresses the importance of this act of God. HE covered their sin—and He killed the first animals for the sake of covering human sin.
Another appalling point that occurs in Tuesday’s lesson is this description of God’s asking Adam and Eve where they were:
In fact, the whole scenario reflects the idea of the investigative judgment, which begins with the judge, who interrogates the culprit (Gen. 3:9) in order to prepare him for the sentence (Gen. 3:14–19). But He does it also to prompt repentance, which will ultimately lead to salvation (Gen. 3:15). This is a motif seen all through the Bible.
God’s coming for Adam and Eve bears no resemblance whatsoever to the invented doctrine of the investigative judgment! Instead, it shows us that God took responsibility for His creation’s helplessness. He came for them; He covered them; He brought them to face their sin and to show them that He held each of them responsible for their own sins.
Consequences
As the lesson superficially deals with God’s judgment on Adam, Eve, and the serpent, they author misses the point. While the lesson states the essence of God’s pronouncements, it develops these ideas superficially.
God cursed the serpent—the only participant He actually cursed. He pronounced its eventual death sentence at the hand of Eve’s seed—One would descend from Eve who would destroy the evil that deceived her.
God sentenced Eve to suffering in childbirth and to a strained relationship with her husband who would rule over her. God sentenced Adam to hard labor—but interestingly, instead of cursing Adam He cursed the ground: the substance from which Adam was made, and his labor would be unremittingly difficult because the cursed earth would not easily produce food for them.
The lesson then makes this startling declaration:
It is significant that against this hopeless prospect of death Adam turns, then, to the woman, where he sees the hope of life through her giving birth (Gen. 3:20). That is, even amid the sentence of death, he sees the hope of life.
Genesis 3:20 is not about Adam looking to Eve to produce the antidote to his death sentence! Genesis 3: 20 says this:
Now the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.
This verse lets us know that Adam named his wife based on God’s promise: the one who was deceived would be the one through whom the spiritually living would come. The Lord Jesus would eventually come as the son of Eve—the son of the woman—and the son of God. Jesus was not the son of an earthly father, but He was the son of an earthly mother.
Adam’s naming of Eve was a sign of the reality that God had revealed as He delivered His judgments. Adam was not turning to his wife to provide his rescue; he was trusting God who had rescued them already and had promised His own provision for their eternal rescue! Adam was acknowledging God, not turning to his wife where he saw the hope of life. Eve had no hope of life in herself. Only God gave them the hope of life, and both of them trusted God’s promise.
Probation
The week’s lesson ends with another of Ellen White’s egregious quotes:
When God created Eve, He designed that she should possess neither inferiority nor superiority to the man, but that in all things she should be his equal. The holy pair were to have no interest independent of each other; and yet each had an individuality in thinking and acting. But after Eve’s sin, as she was first in the transgression, the Lord told her that Adam should rule over her. She was to be in subjection to her husband, and this was a part of the curse. In many cases the curse has made the lot of woman very grievous and her life a burden. The superiority which God has given man he has abused in many respects by exercising arbitrary power. Infinite wisdom devised the plan of redemption, which places the race on a second probation by giving them another trial (Testimonies for the Church, vol. 3, p. 484).
Ellen has here stated that Adam’s ruling over Eve was “part of the curse”. Yet even the lesson has made the point that God did not curse Eve nor Adam. Yes, He delivered the consequence of their spiritual death, but that was not called a curse. Rather, the curse of sin is DEATH. They had already received the curse! They died spiritually, and ultimately they died physically as well. Their difficult consequences were the results of their spiritual death, not their “curse”.
As Adventists we learned that God’s judgments in Eden were curses. We missed the fact that Adam and Eve received the curse the moment they ate: they died!
Furthermore, Ellen declares that the human race was place on a “second probation”! In other words, Adam and Eve had been on probation prior to eating the fruit; when they ate and sinned, God provided yet another probation: a second one into which He placed all humanity.
This is utterly false! The Bible never says humans are EVER on probation! God is not watching us to see what we will do before He decides if we are worthy of salvation! He is to waiting for us to do the right things. Rather, He is asking us to BELIEVE Him!
In fact, Eve’s sin was not primarily what the lesson describes: a desire to be immortal and to be like God. No! Her sin was refusing to believe God!
She knew what God had commanded, yet she allowed herself to be drawn into a discussion of God’s word with a serpent, of all things! Instead of trusting Him and believing, holding fast to His command and refusing to be diverted by the silver tongue of a deceiver, she allowed herself to be distracted and deceived. By contrast, Adam sinned with his eyes wide open. He KNEW, and he stood there with Eve and let her take that fruit—and then took it himself!
The issue in the garden was unbelief in God’s own word! God did not have them on probation, nor did He place them on probation. No! He allowed them to die the moment they ate, and He explained to them the consequences of their sin while also promising He would provide their way of escape. He covered them; He mitigated their shame, and He let them know He had not rejected them or their descendants. He took responsibility for His own creation, and He established that the rest of human history would be shaped by God’s own sovereign will overseeing the events of the world. He, not the serpent, not Adam and Eve, was in charge of reality, and He let them know that He was still their God and would bring justice into the mess they had created. Their eternal future rested on their trust in His word and provision.
EGW taught us a false view of the fall and a false view of God’s provision for our sin. This lesson suppresses some of her false statements but substitutes biblical truth with philosophical moralisms.
Here’s a suggestion: get a notebook and copy Genesis 1 through 3. Ask God to show you what He wants you to know, and thank Him for providing for all of us from the very beginning. Our God is sovereign, and Satan is not at war with Him. He is a defeated foe, and God has us! †
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This post was amazing! I’m a 16 year old Seventh-Day Adventist who is truing to come closer to Christ and I’ve been researching and using the Bible to debunk many of Ellen White’s claims from racist ones to even dangerous ones as well! I am afraid to hear what the church will think or say if I say anything against it. Please pray for me for God to give me wisdom and strength. Will surely introduce some of these points and comments on the upcoming Sabbath school at church. May God be with you all and please take care! Blessings! 🙂
Joshua, I’m praying now for the Lord to give you His wisdom and discernment. He will lead you and will not drop you! We take the arrows for the sake of Christ, and He Himself holds us.