Colleen and Nikki continue a study of Ephesians. In this episode they discuss the Seal of God. Adventism says it’s the Sabbath—is that true? Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Colleen: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: We’ve been talking our way through Ephesians 1, and over the past two weeks we’ve looked at verses 1 through 12. We’ve studied the work of the Father in our salvation as He chooses us and predestines us to be adopted as His heirs. And we’ve looked at the work of the Son in uniting us in Himself to the Father. Today we are going to discuss verses 13 and 14, two verses which were game changers for me as I was coming out of Adventism, and we’re going to see the role of the Holy Spirit in our being born again and transferred from death to life. But first I want to remind you that if you want to contact us, if you have questions or comments, we welcome your emails at formeradventist@gmail.com. You can sign up for our weekly Proclamation! emails at proclamationmagazine.com, and you can donate to Life Assurance Ministries on the donate tab there. You can also find the past issues of Proclamation! magazine by going to the same address, and we would love for you to leave a 5-star review of the podcast wherever you listen to it. Your reviews really do help to spread the reach of our podcast, and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Now, last week we ended by speaking about verse 12, which says “…to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.” And we mentioned that while there are differences of opinion about how to understand the word “we” and who that represents, we believe that we can see Paul referring to the early believers, including both himself as a believing Jew and those who are in ministry with him, as well as the Gentile believers to whom he was writing. When we look to the next verse, though, we see Paul moving away from the first person, “we who were the first to hope in Christ,” to using the second person, “In Him, you also have believed.” It’s possible that Paul was comparing the believing Jews who were the first to be born again on the Day of Pentecost, as recorded in Acts 2, with the believing Gentiles, who also have believed. Believing Jews and Gentiles have received the new birth and adoption by the Father in exactly the same way, through faith in the Lord Jesus. Today we will look at what God does for all of us who believe, Jew and Gentile, in sealing us with the Holy Spirit to guarantee our eternal future and our inheritance. These opening verses of Ephesians reveal the mystery of the church, what it means to be chosen by God, justified and made alive by the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. The entire Trinity is at work to reconcile us who believe, whether Jew or Gentile, to God through Jesus’ substitutionary death and to seal us with the indwelling presence of God the Spirit, who guarantees – got that? It’s a guarantee – that we are eternally alive, eternally safe, and eternally heirs of God, and all for the praise of His glory. So, Nikki, as we start this passage of Ephesians 1, I just have to ask you, as an Adventist, what did you think it meant to be sealed with the Holy Spirit?
Nikki: Well, you know, I don’t think I was ever taught that we are sealed with the Holy Spirit, but I do remember when I was in about junior high I was reading Ephesians, and I bumped into this text. And I wondered how is it different to be sealed by the Holy Spirit and to be sealed by the Sabbath. It was confusing to me. I also thought that the seal of the Holy Spirit might be referring to the fact that He’s with us when we’re good, when we’re behaving, when we’re living according to God’s law.
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: But I obviously didn’t understand what “seal” meant because I believed that as soon as I misbehaved or I sinned, that I would grieve Him and that grief would cause Him to leave me, and so I didn’t have a concept that the Holy Spirit actually stuck around or had any role to play. Rather than being someone who was changing me, He was someone who was only with me when I was worthy of it. I just remember it being a confusing text, one I thought about frequently as I got older, and one that made a lot more sense when I started questioning Adventism.
Colleen: You know, I didn’t understand it either. I remember vividly, we had already begun attending a Christian church, we knew we had left Adventism, we firmly decided we were leaving, and I was talking with a former Adventist who had been out a little longer than I, and she said something to me about Ephesians 13 and 14 and how now we know what the seal of God really is, it’s not the Sabbath. [Laughter.] And I realized, kind of for the first time, that this was a huge shift in my understanding, and it just – I don’t even remember reading the passage as an Adventist, though I know I did. I didn’t know what it meant to be sealed by the Spirit. I also remember as an Adventist, before we had started actually studying and coming out, I had a friend I was talking with. Both of us were asking questions about Adventism and were trying to pursue what the Bible actually said, and we were bumping into things we didn’t understand, and I remember talking about the Holy Spirit with her, and she said to me one day, “You know, I’ve always thought of the indwelling Holy Spirit, or being sealed with the Holy Spirit, as sort of a positive demon possession, like if this happened to me, what would I do that I didn’t want to do?” And I realized I really resonated with that because I did used to worry that if I prayed for the Holy Spirit – and I thought, as an Adventist, that I had to plead with God for the Holy Spirit, because we were taught that we had to plead with God for the Latter Rain, whatever that was about – that I was afraid to do that because He might make me do something I really hated, like what if He made me go out on the street and be a street preacher and make a fool of myself?
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: I was just terrified that the Holy Spirit would make me do something I hated. I can tell you for sure I never foresaw that I might have to sit here and talk about Adventism and how it’s a false gospel. [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: So, yeah. I had no idea how to understand being sealed by the Holy Spirit as an Adventist.
Nikki: You know, it’s so interesting that you bring up the Latter Rain because my first time in a Sunday church – it was before I ever encountered this ministry or read anything other than Dale Ratzlaff’s book Truth Led Me Out, but I didn’t read anything that unfolded doctrine – we attended the local Christian church, and I met people who, I couldn’t have identified it at the time, but who were full of the Holy Spirit, and it was just different. I can’t even begin to try to describe what it was like. But I remember leaving there and filtering that through my Adventist concept of the world, and I thought, “Oh, no! The Latter Rain has come, and it’s passed over Adventism!”
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: “Because these people have joy, and they have something that the Adventists don’t have. We really are the church at Laodicea.” I knew that I had been lied to at that point because I had read Galatians, and it was obvious that the Adventists had put a lot of money into their Sabbath propaganda. So I knew I had been lied to, but I just thought, “They must really have it wrong.” I didn’t quite get it. So my concept of the Holy Spirit and the Latter Rain and all of that, it was just so confused. I didn’t understand that the Holy Spirit indwells believers and walks with us in ordinary life. And honestly, sometimes I think about that when people come to church who don’t yet know the gospel, who haven’t yet trusted the Lord, and I think of what they might be experiencing as they encounter the church gathered and the Holy Spirit’s presence there with us.
Colleen: I so relate to that. You know, just last weekend I met a young former Adventist who joined us for our outdoor service at Redeemer Fellowship, and when the service was over she said, “Oh! This is so different from an Adventist meeting! I really feel the Holy Spirit here! The people are happy, the people are friendly. There’s a whole different feeling.” And I remember experiencing that same thing when we first went to a Christian church. I was overwhelmed by what I knew was the presence of God. I knew it was the Holy Spirit, and I knew I had never experienced that inside an Adventist church. And I also remember one time years ago one of the pastoral staff saying to Richard and to me after church one Sunday, “There was a young girl here today who was an Adventist, and I found her outside during the service sitting on a bench out in the breezeway, outside the church, weeping.” And he said, “I sat down with her and asked her what was wrong, and she said, ‘I just can’t believe it! I was overwhelmed by the sense that the Holy Spirit was here. I’ve never experienced this before.'” It was so overwhelming, she actually walked out of the church and just wept outdoors.
Nikki: It’s so hard to describe this to people who have been believers their entire life. It kind of sounds wooey and wacky.
Colleen: I know. [Laughter.]
Nikki: And I can only hope that they can take us at our word because we’re not wooey and wacky people! [Laughter.]
Colleen: No, we’re not. [Laughter.]
Nikki: But that church – it was a large church, and the Former Adventist ministry was established there at the time, and a lot of former Adventists came through and came to faith there, and after my husband and I joined, we noticed – well, first of all, we noticed that we cried a lot more at church, but we also noticed that as new formers came through, tears were just a normal part of church, just the tears.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And so often what I would hear people say when they’d come and they’d say, “I can’t stop crying. I’m not a crier, I’ve never cried before. I don’t know why I just keep crying.” And the answer they would often get from formers who’d been out longer than them was, “It’s okay. It’s the Holy Spirit.” [Laughter.]
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: You’re feeling for the first time.
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: You know God, and He’s moving. And it’s that heart of flesh that we’ll talk about today too.
Colleen: Yes, it’s so true. I remember, in those early days going to a Christian church, coming home – number one, I remember crying during church, like you just described, without even knowing why, but being unable to stop the tears, but during the week, if I listened to Christian music, if I listened to praise and worship music, I would cry, and I remember the day I was just struggling with “Why am I crying? Is something wrong? Is there something I should be figuring out about myself?” And I was praying that the Lord would show me what I needed to know, and I realized all of a sudden that this was the Holy Spirit witnessing to me of the truth of Jesus through the words of the music, and at church through also the words of Scripture.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: This is the way the Lord helps us know that we’re experiencing reality because, like you said, we’re feeling for the first time, and the words of truth about Jesus are touching us in a deep way that they never did as Adventists. And what I think a lot of people, like you mentioned, who’ve been Christians all their lives, what they don’t understand is that when a group of people are together and each one is made alive in Christ and born again and filled with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God is present wherever that group is, and people who’ve been in a false church have never experienced that before. It’s a brand new experience, and it is palpable.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Very hard to explain because it’s intangible, but it is so real. It’s unforgettable and unmistakable.
Nikki: You know, it reminds me of the song that was written by former Adventist Sharon Lee, where she describes coming out of a dark cave, you know, being blind, and spending her whole life in this cave trying to see with her hands, and she describes coming out, and the light pours through, and suddenly she sees all these colors. It’s so much like that when you have a heart that responds to God. It’s like seeing colors for the first time. You’re feeling things for the first time. You’re alive.
Colleen: And it doesn’t happen until you’ve been born again by believing in Jesus.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It’s a completely new reality. So, Nikki, why don’t we read these two verses and then talk our way through them? We’re also going to compare what these verses say with a few of the passages from Ellen White that taught us complete falsehood about the seal of God and the Holy Spirit. So, would you read 13 and 14?
Nikki: “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation – having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.”
Colleen: I love these two verses. So, Nikki, as we read 13, “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation…” Would you talk us through that a little bit? There’s a sequence here that Paul is describing, and there’s something very specific. He’s not just opening up this experience of being sealed with the Holy Spirit to just anybody. There’s a very specific group of people he’s talking to. How is he describing that? What is this message of truth? What is the gospel of our salvation?
Nikki: So I find it interesting that this verse begins with “In Him.” “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth…” I heard the gospel. I read the Bible. But there was a moment that God had foreordained when I was going to hear it, and He was going to open my eyes, and I know that was in Him. That was His work. I see this as the called, those who are called. We talked about this earlier in Ephesians, that He foreknew us, and He predestined us, and so those whom He predestined, when He brings them to a place where they’re able to hear the gospel, this is what’s happening. And the fact that it says “the message of truth,” that’s something that we could easily read over. But it’s come to mean so much more to me after leaving a false message.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: Because we can sincerely believe a false message. That is not going to cause any of what Paul writes about in Acts to happen. The message of truth is very, very important. Galatians chapter 1 is one that we all love; right?
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It’s a big one for us former Adventists. He says in verse 6, “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel.”
Colleen: Oh, that’s so important.
Nikki: So, following a different gospel is equivalent to deserting Christ. That’s an important point. When we have a false gospel, we have now deserted the true Christ of the gospel. We can’t come up with another message that’s more palatable and believe that we are still placing our faith in the Christ who saves.
Colleen: That’s so true.
Nikki: In verse 7 he says, “…which is really not another [gospel]; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.” So these people are believing a distorted gospel. So now we’re not talking about just a really wacky idea. I remember as an Adventist I thought, “Well, you know, those Mormons” –
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: – “they obviously come from a cult.”
Colleen: I did too.
Nikki: “Their story’s really far out there; right? Ours is rooted in Scripture.” That’s what I thought. But a distortion starts with something that looks normal and real, and then it twists and alters and tweaks it, and now suddenly we have something else. And believing that distortion is equivalent with deserting Christ. So this message of truth, it’s put here for a reason. These words were divinely chosen by God. They were put here for a reason. And he says in verse 8 – and I just want to point this out, just to emphasize how Adventism fits so well with this. He says, “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!” So an angel from heaven means that Ellen G. White’s prophecies don’t give her authority because she said someone from heaven gave them to her. In 2 Corinthians 11, we’re told that Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light, and so it’s not surprising that his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. So you can have a distorted gospel that is allegedly given by angels from people who look as if they’re righteous, and here again we’re still talking about deserting Christ for this. There’s no room here for, “If you sincerely believe it, you know, God will hear your heart.” And even earlier in that same chapter, Paul talks about people willingly, beautifully, being willing to believe in another Jesus, in another story, another gospel, another reality, and receive another spirit. We know from these passages that Satan pedals a different gospel. He disguises himself as an angel of light, and people are deceived by this. But the gospel, the message of truth, the gospel of our salvation, this is the gospel of Jesus Christ, which was entrusted to the apostles to spread, and Paul was given the task, as we saw earlier in the chapter, of unfolding this mystery of God’s will to the church. We talked about hermeneutics, and we talked about considering other letters that the authors have written from, and Paul writes from Corinthians, and he tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:1-5 very clearly what the gospel is. I never, as an Adventist, knew that there was a place I could go to that would clarify the gospel.
Colleen: Yeah, I didn’t either.
Nikki: If I was asked what the gospel was, I usually had to sit there and think for a while because I had multiple things come to mind, and they were all Adventist related.
Colleen: Right, including Sabbath.
Nikki: Yes! A very big, important part of it, actually. But Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:1-5, “Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, and then to the twelve.” This right here is the gospel. This is the message of truth. And I want to emphasize that it says, “according to the Scriptures.” So just because Adventists say, “Jesus came, died, was buried, and rose again,” doesn’t mean that they have the gospel because their story is not according to the Scriptures, it’s according to Ellen White’s interpretation and the Great Controversy.
Colleen: Absolutely right. When we have heard, when we’ve listened to this message of truth, this very pure, simple gospel of Jesus’ life, death, burial, and resurrection on the third day according to Scripture, when we have believed, that is the gospel of our salvation, and when we have believed that, Paul tells us here in verse 13, we are sealed in Him, and that’s again that phrase “in Him,” in Jesus, we are sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise. Now, that was just meaningless to me, except as a theory, as an Adventist. But I wanted to look at a few places where we know that the Holy Spirit was promised so that when we see what Paul is saying here, it’s not just a new idea that’s come out of nowhere. The very first place that I know clearly the Holy Spirit is promised comes from that little known (to Adventists) prophetic book of Ezekiel. Do have that, Nikki? Ezekiel 36:26 and 27.
Nikki: It says, “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will be careful to observe my ordinances.”
Colleen: I think that’s so amazing because this verse in Ezekiel, which I knew nothing of as an Adventist, promises that at some point God is going to give His people a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone. In other words, He’s going to take away the hard hearts of unbelief. He’s going to put a new spirit in us. Now, Adventists say we don’t have a spirit, that we’re just bodies with a mind that perceives things. But even in the Old Testament we’re told we do have spirits, and the Lord is going to put a new spirit within us when we believe. And in Ephesians, as we’re going to find out in Ephesians 2, it’s very clear that we’re born with living, breathing bodies but with some part of us, our spirit, which is dead in sin and must be made alive, and that’s what Ezekiel is prophesying here. But he doesn’t only say that. He says that God will put His Spirit within us. That’s the indwelling Holy Spirit that Paul is here saying happens when people believe. Jesus Himself promised this Holy Spirit to the believers. In John 7:37-39, we find Jesus in Jerusalem on the last great day of the feast. “Jesus stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”‘ Now this He said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” John is very clearly telling us that Jesus is promising that the Holy Spirit will be sent. Nikki, you had another verse out of John where Jesus promised the Holy Spirit.
Nikki: Yes, this was in His conversation with the disciples right before He went to the cross. In John 14:16 and 17, He says, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.”
Colleen: Isn’t that amazing? I mean, He’s clearly saying that His disciples already knew the Spirit because He was with them, but the time was coming when He would be in them. I did not understand what that meant as an Adventist.
Nikki: [Laughter.] No. And then again, right before He ascended to the Father, He said not to leave Jerusalem, and He says, but wait for what the Father has promised, “Which, He said, you heard of from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
Colleen: And He’s reassuring them again.
Nikki: He is, and He’s telling them this is a promise from the Father. I can’t help but see the whole Trinity here because we have the promise from the Father, and we are in Christ while we’re sealed with the Holy Spirit, and Christ Himself is in the Father.
Colleen: It’s an inseparable union when we are in Christ. Now, I find it interesting also that in John 16, which is still part of the long passage in John that Jesus spoke to His disciples right before going to the cross, Jesus explained a little bit more about the work of the Spirit who was going to come and indwell them after He was glorified. I find this to be such an interesting passage because what we hear from Adventists so often is, “Well, if you say Jesus fulfilled the law and sin is the transgression of the law and the law was given to reveal sin, then how on earth is sin revealed if there’s no law anymore?” And I want to say, number one, the Law of Moses is part of God’s eternal word, it is there as an identifier of the Lord Jesus, who fulfilled it, of the way God formed Israel, of His living metaphor of salvation, which He gave to Israel. There are so many functions that the law has in a historical and a promissory way. But here’s what Jesus said the Holy Spirit would do. This is John 16:7-11: “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you. And when He comes, He will convict the world” – notice that? Not believers, but the world – “concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.” It’s so interesting to me that Jesus describes the identity of sin, of righteousness, and judgment here, and it’s not the way I was taught to think of them as an Adventist. You were pointing out to me, Nikki, how impacting this was to you. What is Jesus saying sin is in this passage?
Nikki: Very clearly, He’s saying sin is unbelief.
Colleen: We were taught sin is breaking the law, sin is not keeping the Sabbath, sin is forgetting to confess your sins, sin is all the things that we do that break the law, but this passage is defining our underlying, natural identity of sin and death. It’s unbelief, and that’s what the Spirit is convicting the world of, and righteousness. He’s convicting the world of righteousness, and the righteousness is defined as Jesus Himself. Jesus went to the Father, and we don’t see Him now because He is righteous. He offered the perfect, sufficient sacrifice. He broke the curse of death because He was the only righteous man ever to live, and righteousness is found in Jesus. And concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. So, that means Satan himself is under judgment, and we who are in unbelief are under the rulership of the judged ruler of the world. This is all about our belief or unbelief in the Lord Jesus, and that is what the Holy Spirit convicts people of.
Nikki: This is the righteousness of God revealed apart from the law. This is Christ. This is the empty tomb: “Because I go to the Father.”
Colleen: That’s so true, Nikki. And in Acts 2, on the Day of Pentecost, Peter identified the most amazing thing that had ever happened to a group of people. As he was preaching about Jesus, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and in Acts 2:29-33 it says, “Brothers” – this is Peter speaking – “I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that He would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that He was not abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.” So when Paul says in Ephesians 1:13 that those who hear the gospel of their salvation and believe are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, we see that there is a wealth of promises from both the Old and the New Testaments, from the lips of Jesus, God the Son Himself, that this is the promise of God, and this is the natural thing that happens to believers. It’s not like Adventism says, that we pray and plead and beg the Lord to send us the latter rain. No! We receive all of God when we believe. We don’t wait for a second blessing. We don’t wait for more of Him. He fills us with Himself. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit is a person. Jesus spoke of Him as a person. As He said in John 16, “But if I go, I will send Him to you. And when He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” We do not refer to a power or a force as “he.” Jesus Himself gave us the personal pronoun in reference to the Holy Spirit. The original Adventist belief was antitrinitarian and did not believe the Holy Spirit was a person. Ellen White, James White wrote of Him as a force, a power. He’s not a force or a power. He is a person of the Trinity, equal in substance, in attributes with the Father and the Son, inseparable from the Father and the Son, and yet a different person. It’s a mystery we can’t explain, but Jesus said He would come, Jesus said He would never leave us and that He would seal us. So when we are sealed with the Holy Spirit, we receive God Himself, and we cannot expect to look for more of Him. Now, as we grow in Christ, the indwelling Holy Spirit sanctifies us, convicts us of our sin and weakness, convicts us of the word of God and how to apply it to our lives, and as we do this, we submit and surrender more and more of ourselves to Him. We experience Him in deeper and deeper places of ourselves, but we don’t get more of Him. We don’t go to services and pray for the Holy Spirit or beg for His gifts. He gives us His gifts. He gives us His work, as we’ll see as we work through Ephesians. God gives us Himself, and that’s a gift He doesn’t take back when we believe in the Son.
Nikki: And I’d like to say something here about that word “believed,” because as an Adventist, I tried to believe. I treated it almost like if I wish hard enough, and that word for belief, the Greek word for it, means to entrust, and it has the meaning of having been persuaded. This is not a hope or a desire or a Christmas kind of belief, you know, “I believe in Santa.” God has revealed Himself to us, and when we see that and He convicts us of that reality, we trust our lives to Him. We put the entire weight of our life at the foot of the cross. I’ve heard people say, “Yeah, well, you know, I don’t really understand the Sabbath thing so I believe the gospel, but just to be safe, I’m going to hang on to the Sabbath.” Well, that “just to be safe” is because we were so manipulated and so lied to as Adventists, we were taught that if we ever gave up the Sabbath, we would be lost, we would not be saved.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: And so if you’re holding onto that Sabbath just in case, that means you’re holding on to something else that just might save you. That’s not putting your full trust on the gospel, the message of truth, the gospel of Christ, and allowing Him to be your Savior. That word “belief,” we just read right past it, and we can impose our cultural understanding of it, but there’s meaning in the inspired original language that means entrust and to be persuaded.
Colleen: And it’s necessary to understand that in order to understand how we can be sealed by the Holy Spirit. Now, that’s a whole other subject we have to unpack because of our Adventist heritage. Before we launch into a discussion of what we as Adventists learned the seal of God was, I just want to ask: What does a seal do? What is a seal?
Nikki: According to Strong’s, the Greek word there signifies ownership, and the full security carried by the backing of the owner. Sealing in the ancient world served as a legal signature, which guaranteed the promise of what was sealed, and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary says that a seal is something that confirms, ratifies, or makes secure. The Holy Spirit Himself is our guarantee. He’s our guarantor. He is going to take care of us. This is our assurance.
Colleen: Absolutely. And when I think about “seal,” there are different ways that the word “seal” can be applied. As you said, it’s a mark of ownership, of security, of guarantee. It’s an authentication, an authentication that we are authentic, that we are real, that we are who God says we are. It’s also interesting when I think about the word “seal,” I grew up with a Mom who canned vegetables and fruits every year because my gardener Dad had a huge garden. So there was always that hot water bath in the summer, canning the peaches and the beans and the tomatoes, and when my mother would take the jars out of the hot water bath and set them out on the cupboard, we waited to hear the “ping” that meant that the seal on top of the jar had sealed. As it cooled off, the lid tightened and made a little pinging sound, and we knew the jar had sealed. Now, it’s important for a jar to seal because the seal kept contamination out of the fruit. It kept air from entering, and it kept it fresh, if you can call cooked vegetables and fruits fresh. But it kept it from spoiling, and it also is something that determines something irrevocably and indisputably. When we see a seal, we know what’s behind that seal. So when Paul uses the word we’re sealed by the Holy Spirit, there’s so much this word implies. We are God’s when we believe Jesus. We are safe. His Spirit in us protects us from defilement; it protects us from deception and from the false gospels, like you were reading about from Galatians, Nikki. It doesn’t mean we won’t be tempted, it doesn’t mean we might not be confused, but when we trust God and trust His word, His Spirit brings us back to truth and keeps us safe and ultimately delivers us from permanent spoilage, if you want to say that. He authenticates us, keeps us, preserves us, and marks us as His, and I also think the sealing accompanies our new birth. In this verse it says, “Having believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise.” In words, on paper, it looks like a sequence. But in the actual fact of reality, it’s simultaneous. When we believe, we are sealed. And this is something that cannot be undone if it is real. And when this happens, we become alive. We become alive, as it says in Ephesians 2, with Christ and seated in heavenly places. And in the spiritual realm, this is something that can be seen. In our fallen world, we don’t see the new birth happen, but I believe that our enemy of souls can look at us and knows from looking at us that we are sealed with the Holy Spirit, and we have the life of Christ in us. We have God Himself in us, and it’s visible.
Nikki: You know, it’s interesting, the seal of ownership, the seal, this mark of God on us, it takes me back to verse 7 that says that we have redemption through His blood. He redeemed us. He purchased us. He owns us. We belong to Him.
Colleen: Can I just say this is so different from having believed as an Adventist that the Sabbath was the seal of God.
Nikki: [Laughter.] Yes, you can say that.
Colleen: It’s really upsetting to me now when I think about how deeply this was engrained. Even Adventists who say, “Oh, no, no. The Sabbath isn’t the seal of God. It’s just the sign of the seal. The Holy Spirit is the seal, but the Sabbath is the sign.” That is such a falseness. That’s such an unbiblical concept. The subject of Adventism’s Fundamental Belief #18, the one who speaks with prophetic authority, who actually defines the interpretation of Scripture for Adventists because her commentary has given them their worldview, she is the one who says that the Sabbath is the seal of God. In the Great Controversy on page 640, she says this: “The enemies of God’s law, from the ministers down to the least among them, have a new conception of truth and duty. Too late they see that the Sabbath of the fourth commandment is the seal of the living God. Too late they see the true nature of their spurious sabbath and the sandy foundation upon which they have been building. They find they have been fighting against God.” And then she goes on and says, and she’s speaking of Christian pastors, Christians in the Time of Trouble, as she envisioned it. She says, “The voice of God is heard from heaven declaring the day and hour of Jesus’ coming and delivering the everlasting covenant to His people. Like peals of loudest thunder His words roll through the earth. The Israel of God” – meaning the Adventists who keep Sabbath – “The Israel of God stands listening, their eyes fixed upward. Their countenances are lighted up with His glory and shine as did the face of Moses when He came down Mt. Sinai. The wicked cannot look upon them. And when the blessing is pronounced on those who have honored God by keeping His Sabbath holy, there is a mighty shout of victory.” That makes me so angry now. This is not biblical. This is completely a false gospel. The Sabbath is not the seal of God. The Sabbath is not the mark of those who are being saved. What matters is belief in the finished work of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit Himself is our seal.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: She also says, on page 605 of the Great Controversy, “The Sabbath will be the great test of loyalty. It is the point of truth especially controverted. When the final test shall be brought to bear upon man, then the line of distinction will be drawn between those who serve God and those who serve Him not. While the observance of the false sabbath” – and of course, we know that means Sunday – “in compliance with the law of the state, contrary to the fourth commandment, will be an avowal of allegiance to a power that is in opposition to God, the keeping of the true Sabbath in obedience to God’s law, is an evidence of loyalty to the Creator. While one class, by accepting the sign of submission to earthly powers, receive the Mark of the Beast, the other, choosing the token of allegiance to divine authority, receive the seal of God.” Every word of this is made up and is a doctrine of demons. This is not what Scripture teaches us.
Nikki: You will find no support for this in Scripture anywhere.
Colleen: Not at all. Moreover, not only is the Sabbath not the seal of God, but God Himself in the person of the Holy Spirit is the seal. Not only that, the seal never leaves us. We believed that the Holy Spirit would leave. We believed that the Holy Spirit would go in and out if we sinned, and Ellen White also said that during the Time of Trouble, those who had perfectly kept the law and had perfected their characters would have to stand, as she said, in that fearful time, “after the close of Jesus’ mediation, the saints were living in the sight of a Holy God without an intercessor. Every case was decided, every jewel numbered. Jesus tarried a moment in the outer apartment of the heavenly sanctuary, and the sins which had been confessed while He was in the Most Holy Place, were placed upon Satan, the originator of sin, who must suffer their punishment.” Do you see how twisted and demonic the Adventist belief is?
Nikki: It’s really bad.
Colleen: Satan never carries the sins of the saved. The saved never stand without an intercessor. The Holy Spirit never leaves us. Jesus never leaves us. The Father never leaves us. We were taught the most dreadful, fearful doctrine, and it’s false! There are just two more quotes I have to read because if anybody listening wonders where we got this great fear of leaving the Sabbath, I have to tell you that even if you’ve never read Ellen White, this fear was embedded in us with our mother’s milk as Adventists, because we believed the Sabbath was eternal and was the mark of those who honored God. Here’s one from Counsels to the Church, page 333, “Not all who profess to keep the Sabbath will be sealed. There are many, even among those who teach the truth to others, who will not receive the seal of God in their foreheads. They had the light of truth, they knew their Master’s will, they understood every point of our faith, but they had not corresponding works. Those who were so familiar with prophecy and the treasures of divine wisdom should have acted their faith. They should have commanded their households after them, that by a well-ordered family they might present to the world the influence of the truth upon the human heart.” And once again I say, this is another place where Adventists get the idea that they will lose their salvation if their children are not Adventists. She ties everything together, every work of an Adventist, every Adventist salvation is threatened by any lack of perfection, any negligence of work or witnessing. She threatens their salvation. And one more quote from the same section of Counsels to the Church. This is from page 334, “Not one of us will ever receive the seal of God while our characters have one spot or stain upon them. It is left with us to remedy the defects in our characters, to cleanse the soul temple of every defilement. Then the Latter Rain will fall upon us, as the early rain fell upon the disciples on the Day of Pentecost.” She has completely muddled the teaching of the seal of God. It is not the Sabbath, it is not the Latter Rain. The Holy Spirit does not come to us based on whether or not our children are all believers, whether or not we have done good works. This seal of God, according to Scripture, is based entirely upon our belief in Jesus, and when we believe, we are born again, and He indwells us.
Nikki: And it is always to the praise of His glory. It’s not our merit. Now, I know that letting go of the Sabbath is one of the hardest things for Adventists to do, and I’m not even sure that we always know why because a lot of us, especially the younger Adventists, have never read Ellen White. But that fear is absolutely there. I had a friend of mine tell me once, “I know that Adventism is wrong, but I could never leave the Sabbath.” They don’t recognize the idolatry of the Sabbath, which is why you can’t have it as a spare tire doctrine. It’s not a “just in case.” We Adventists, or we who were Adventists, must repent for it. Let me read to you something I found written by Ellen White, where she explains what happens to those who leave the Sabbath. This is taken from Experiences and Views. “Then I was shown a company who were howling in agony. On their garments was written in large characters, ‘Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.’ I asked who this company were. The angel said, ‘These are they who have once kept the Sabbath and have given it up.’ I heard them cry with a loud voice, ‘We have believed in Thy coming and taught it with energy.’ And while they were speaking, their eyes would fall upon their garments and see the writing, and they would wail aloud. I saw that they had drunk of the deep waters and fouled the residue with their feet, trodden the Sabbath underfoot, and that is why they were weighed in the balance and found wanting.”
Colleen: Oh, my goodness.
Nikki: These people are refused salvation, rejected by her God, because they’d “trodden the Sabbath underfoot.” That’s why. They were weighed and found wanting. We are weighed before we’re saved. We are found wanting before we’re saved. We are dead. John 3 says that those who believe are saved, but those who don’t believe, they’re condemned already. We were born that way, and we’ll see that in the next chapter. This section of Ephesians tells us that when we hear the message of truth and believe, we’re sealed with this Holy Spirit, with the Holy Spirit, and this is to the praise of God’s glory.
Colleen: It’s not related to Sabbath. It’s horrifying to me what an idol the Sabbath was to me as an Adventist. I had to actually trample on the Sabbath when I realized that Jesus had done everything necessary for my salvation. Not every Christian has to view the Sabbath as I did as a former Adventist. I had to actually do the laundry and trample on the Sabbath in order to place my actions firmly where my convictions lay. The Sabbath was an idol. It carried my God along. I had to let it go. It was the golden calf that made me believe I had the true understanding of God. No. Jesus is the one who reveals the Father. Jesus is God. Jesus is who saves me. I have to let all those things go that were part of my false religion.
Nikki: Isn’t it interesting, Colleen, that they told us that God was more present on the Sabbath, which was their seal, but Scripture tells us that the seal is the presence of God Himself forever.
Colleen: Wow. You’re right! It’s blasphemy what they taught us about the Sabbath. So we come to verse 14, where Paul completes his thought, and after saying, “We who have believed were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise,” and then he says, “who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession,” again, “to the praise of His glory.” This is telling us that the Holy Spirit, God Himself, is a pledge, a guarantee. I love what one of the people who attends our weekly Former Adventist Fellowship on Friday night says, “The Greek underlying that word ‘pledge’ is the same word used for engagement ring.” The Holy Spirit is the pledge, the promise, the guarantee, that everything about our salvation and our eternal future is certain. He lives in us to make that clear. So what is that inheritance of ours, Nikki?
Nikki: It’s everything that belongs to salvation. It’s a new life. It’s the church, the saints. It’s being a co-heir with Christ. It’s being adopted and born again into this family. It’s coming to Mt. Zion.
Colleen: That’s right. That’s so true. You know, Romans 8:14-17 is one of my favorite passages because it clarifies so much to me, both about the nature of man and having a spirit and in the nature of the promise of God, that we are His children. It says, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” This is referring to those who are sealed with the Holy Spirit. “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.” And it was such a wonderful thing to realize that this inheritance that we have is not only the promise that we’ll go to heaven when He comes by and by but that our spirits are alive with Him. We’re already seated with Him in heavenly places, as we find in chapter 2. The Holy Spirit, who is our seal, confirms that to us, teaches us to call Almighty God “Father.” The Holy Spirit also confirms to us that we will be resurrected. We will have new resurrection bodies. And finally, we learn in Revelation 19 the final consummation of this promise of eternity. John was given a vision in which he describes the marriage supper of the Lamb, and he says this in Revelation 19:6-9, “Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give Him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His bride’ – that’s we who have been sealed by the Holy Spirit – ‘His bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure’ – for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, ‘Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’ And he said to me, ‘These are the true words of God.'” Our new birth is confirmed by the indwelling Holy Spirit, who guarantees our eternal inheritance and the consummation of our being the bride of Christ in the marriage supper of the Lamb. Adventism’s Sabbath as the seal, or the sign of the seal, is blasphemy. God alone is His own seal, and His indwelling both gives us our new identity as His children, as well as confirming it both to us and to all the spiritual realm. And if you haven’t trusted Jesus, if you haven’t admitted that you’re dead in your sins and you need a Savior, we ask you to consider seriously what Paul is saying here. Jesus offers you salvation. He has come to open a new and living way to the Father, and He will seal you with the Holy Spirit of promise when you trust Him completely. He won’t leave you wondering, like we wondered as Adventists, “Will I be saved? I hope I’m saved.” He will confirm your eternal salvation when you’ve trusted the finished work of Jesus. So we just want to remind you that you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. Please follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and don’t forget to give us a 5-star review wherever you listen to podcasts. We thank you for sticking with us as we’ve gone through another section of Ephesians 1. We hope that these amazing words of Paul are as revolutionary to you as they have been to us, and we look forward to going through some more verses with you next week.
Nikki: We’ll see you next time.
- Inspecting Adventism’s Beliefs—God the Holy Spirit | 114 - October 17, 2022
- Inspecting Adventism’s Beliefs—Unity in the Body of Christ | 113 - October 17, 2022
- Inspecting Adventism’s Beliefs—The Remnant and Its Mission | 112 - September 7, 2022