Nikki and Colleen share their former belief in progressive revelation and the way that this teaching is used to obscure mistakes and contradictions. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Nikki: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: And I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: We’re so glad you’ve joined us for another episode of our Ephesians study. Today we will begin chapter 3 of Ephesians, but before we get started, let me remind me that if you have questions or comments for us, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You can visit proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly emails, with links to new online articles and other ministry news. You can also find a place there to donate, if you’d like to come alongside Life Assurance Ministries with your financial support. Don’t forget to like and follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Last, don’t forget to sign up to attend the 2021 online Former Adventist Fellowship Conference taking place on February 12 through 14. You can register by writing to formeradventist@gmail.com, and be sure to include your mailing address in that email. The conference is free, but donations to help offset the cost to the ministry are always welcome. Our guest speaker this year is apologist and pastor Phil Johnson. Phil is the Executive Director of Grace to You Ministries, and back in the fall of 2019 Colleen and I had the opportunity to record a podcast with Phil Johnson at the Truth Matters Conference. We encourage you to go back and listen to Episode 17 to hear that. Phil is well acquainted with Seventh-day Adventism and has done a great deal more research since the time of that recording. We do hope you’ll join us this year. You won’t want to miss it. So, Colleen, in the passage we cover today, Paul makes mention of truths that had been kept secret in times past but that had now been revealed. As I read this, I couldn’t help but think of my former understanding of progressive revelation. As an Adventist, what did you think progressive revelation was? How would you have defined it?
Colleen: I was taught that progressive revelation – I was taught it in the context of Ellen White. And I was taught that Ellen White, for example, being a prophet of God, had incomplete understandings in her early years, so she wrote things that she later discovered as she grew, she later discovered were perhaps incorrect, and she course corrected as time passed and she became more spiritually mature and grew in her understandings. My understanding of progressive revelation as an Adventist was basically a person who claimed to speak for God could begin with completely wrong ideas, explain them as being the truth and even say that they had come from God, but that that was all a result of her or his incomplete understanding because this all involved what I understood revelation to be. I was told that Ellen White was inspired like the Bible writers were inspired, and the way Adventists understand that is God gave prophets ideas, but they were allowed to interpret those ideas based on their own cultural, personal, and spiritual milieu. As a prophet grew, she might become more sophisticated or he might become more knowledgeable, and what began as being an idea from God could change and morph into a completely new idea as they course corrected with maturity. That sounds confusing, doesn’t it? [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.] Well, it sounds like a great theory if you’re having to come up with excuses for a false prophet.
Colleen: And it was kind of closely related to the idea of present truth –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – as an Adventist. And I think one of the best explanations of progressive revelation/present truth was after I left Adventism I was having a conversation with my in-laws, and I happened to mention, in a conversation about the health message, that Jesus Himself ate fish, so how could we say that vegetarianism was the goal. And I remember my mother-in-law saying, “Well, of course Jesus ate fish. The health message hadn’t been given yet.” Now, from a Christian perspective that was just horrifying heresy.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Jesus is God. [Laughter.] Nobody had to give Him the health message. But from an Adventist perspective, it made complete, logical sense. It’s progressive revelation –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – and we hadn’t been given the health message yet. What about you?
Nikki: I think I thought of it in terms of our Adventist history. I understood God to be working from heaven, empowering humanity to do His will, and sort of pivoting, you know, course correcting, and so because of that, He was working with us, and here we had the reformers, who did good work, but they didn’t do enough.
Colleen: [Laughter.] Yes!
Nikki: And along come the Adventists, and now there’s a pivot that needs to take place, and God needs to bring the people back into this special information that had been lost somewhere in history, and He chooses Ellen White, and He sends spirit guides, and He gives her this new information, and she’s tasked with starting this movement that is going to then educate the whole world on what they need to do to be saved –
Colleen: [Laughter.] Ah, yes.
Nikki: – Sabbathkeeping; right?
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: Which, of course, rolls into all the health message and all the other stuff that’s unique to Adventism. It was truth that was needed, but I didn’t have the idea that God had known ahead of time that it would be needed, that Sabbathkeeping would be lost, that He would need to course correct this. I didn’t have an understanding of Him sovereignly controlling and working in human history. So because of that, there was this sense of present truth. Now, I can’t tell you I know for sure this is how it was taught in Adventism, but this is how I had absorbed all of these peculiar phrases we had. Truth would change for every day and every moment. I heard a lot of progressive Adventists use this idea, present truth or progressive changing truth that’s pivoting and moving with human history, to explain away some of Ellen White’s weird teachings and sayings. They would say, “Well, that was present truth for her day, but we have new truth for our day.” So this progressive revelation was very much connected to whatever we were doing down here. We kind of drove the ship.
Colleen: Yeah. That’s such as interesting thing. In this passage, Ephesians 3:1-13, we have a most interesting insight into Paul’s perception of God’s call on his life, and more than any other passage that I’m aware of, he goes into detail to explain the unique nature of his ministry and of his apostleship. I love this passage. So before we talk about it further, Nikki, do you mind reading it for us, please?
Nikki: “For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles – if indeed you have heard of the administration of God’s grace which was given to me for you; that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before briefly. By referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to mankind, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit; to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel, of which I was made a minister, according to the gift of God’s grace which was given to me according to the working of His power. To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ, and to enlighten all people as to what the plan of the mystery is which for ages has been hidden in God, who created all things; so that the multifaceted wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him. Therefore I ask you not to become discouraged about my tribulations in your behalf, since they are your glory.”
Colleen: It’s so wonderful to think that Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, was specifically tasked with this New Covenant commission. So in verse 1, when he starts out “For this reason,” what’s the reason to which he’s referring?
Nikki: Well, he’s just talked to us about the fact that we were raised to life with Christ and that we were created new in Him and that Christ Himself is our peace because He broke down the barrier between us and God and Jews and Gentiles, making one new man in Himself.
Colleen: Because of that, Paul starts out and appears to be leading straight into what we’re going to find in verse 14, one of the most beautiful prayers in the New Testament. But it’s almost as if he gets sidetracked. He says, “For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of your Gentiles,” and suddenly there’s a parenthetical section where he explains his ministry to the Gentiles before he continues with his prayer. But I think it’s so interesting, in verse 1, where the thing that distracts him is saying “for the sake of you Gentiles,” and he suddenly realizes, not everybody may be fully aware of the way God called him to minister to the Gentiles.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: When you look at it, Nikki, and you see verse 1 leading into verse 2, “if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace which was given to me for you,” what is Paul saying in that section?
Nikki: Well, he’s referencing the stewardship that God called him to. He was to be head of this great task of unfolding the mystery to the church. I find it interesting that there’s a sense that they may not have heard, because remember, Ephesus was the church hub, but there were new believers constantly coming in at this point.
Colleen: Right! And we also know that some of the new believers first heard the gospel not from Paul himself but from some of his protégés, like Epaphras had taught the Colossians. It’s interesting to me in this verse 2 that Paul equates the stewardship that God gave him to explain this mystery he’s going to tell us about. He calls that “God’s grace.”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: We think about God’s grace as being His unmerited favor, the “God’s riches at Christ’s expense,” which has enfolded us into the eternal purposes of God when we trust Christ, but Paul is here saying that his ministry is part of that grace, and sometimes I tend to think of my work, or the ministry or the work God gives me, as sometimes just plain difficult, and I don’t always think of it as grace, and there’s no one who suffered more than Paul in the history of the church. But he called this ministry “God’s grace to him,” which I find both compelling and kind of moving.
Nikki: Yeah. And he writes that while he’s on house arrest.
Colleen: He’s in prison. Yeah. So then we move on to the next part of the explanation that he’s going to give in verse 3, where he says, “…this grace that was given me for you; that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote to you in brief.” What does he mean? What is a mystery here?
Nikki: The mystery is the inclusion of the Gentiles. It’s the church; it’s the mystery of the church.
Colleen: Isn’t that interesting?
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I remember really vividly years ago sitting in women’s Bible study, and Elizabeth was teaching, and she had something up on the platform that she’d covered with a giant scarf, and she said, “In the Bible, a mystery is not a surprise or something unknown. It’s simply something that hasn’t yet been revealed,” and she reached over to this object on the stage, and she pulled the scarf off so we could all see it, and she said, “This is an illustration of a biblical mystery that’s being revealed. The time comes when God pulls off the thing that is keeping it from being clearly seen, and it’s now on display for everyone to see.” And that’s what God had asked Paul to do, to take off that scarf and to explain to everyone the mystery of Jesus’ work on the cross and what that meant for the Gentiles being included in the people of God.
Nikki: And Paul was taught by revelation too. He was taught by Christ Himself. He gives an account of the moment when he met Christ on the road to Damascus, when he’s speaking before Agrippa in Acts 26, and he says – well, he’s quoting Jesus here in verse 15 – “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But get up and stand on your feet; for this purpose I have appeared to you, to appoint you as a servant and a witness not only to the things in which you have seen me, but also the things in which I will appear to you, rescuing you from the Jewish people and from the Gentiles, to whom I am sending you, to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in me.” And then when he writes to the church at Galatia, he says that the gospel that was preached by him was not of human invention. He says, “For I neither received it from man nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ,” and he goes on to say that he had been set apart from his mother’s womb and called by Christ to do this great work.
Colleen: That is so amazing. Now, of course, all the apostles had this same message of Jesus, but God appointed Paul, through the risen Christ, in a very special way to explain this New Covenant. It’s so interesting to think too that Paul, as he says of himself in Philippians, was a Jew of Jews, a Hebrew of Hebrews. He was such a dedicated Jew. He was so dedicated to the Jews that he was killing the church and persecuting them, and this is the man God chose to explain how the New Covenant worked. I was thinking, when I was just thinking what that must have meant to Paul, that God revealed this mystery of what Jesus’ blood did, how it propitiated for sin, how it broke down the dividing wall, as we learned in the last chapter, and I was thinking, you know, no wonder so many Adventists have trouble with Paul.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: He was literally tasked with explaining the necessity of the blood of Jesus, the personal application of the blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of our sin, and explaining our own relationship to God through Christ’s blood. Adventism as a whole will say Jesus needed to die and that He died for sins, but Adventists tend – and I’m saying this based on my own experience and just having been an Adventist who sat in so many Sabbath school classes and had Adventists around me – Adventists don’t always want to be beholden to God for a blood sacrifice, especially among progressive Adventists. They kind of want to walk into the kingdom without having to humiliate themselves in front of a cross. They just – they want the cross to be something like a cosmic event, like a meteor hitting the earth that will make an impact, but it’s not necessarily personal, it will just affect them kind of vicariously. So many Adventists don’t want to be in debt to Jesus for His sacrifice, and they just want to be Israel, kind of like magically chosen by God by divine fiat and accepted as His people because they’re keeping the law.
So it’s just an interesting thing to me to see him saying this was God’s grace to him to explain this mystery. And right from the get-go I think, you know, no wonder I didn’t understand Paul as an Adventist.
Nikki: Yeah, what Paul teaches didn’t fit our Adventist paradigm. It didn’t work with our Adventist gospel. You know, what I didn’t notice until preparing for this podcast was that when Ananias went to Paul at his conversion, one of the things he told him was that God had appointed Paul to see the righteous one and to hear a message from His mouth. And then he, you know, of course, told him that he would be a witness, and Ananias was to show him everything that he would suffer for God. But the fact that Ananias told him he would hear from the mouth of Christ, Paul was taught by Christ Himself. He took what he was taught by God, and he brought it, like you said, not only to the Gentiles, but before the Jews, who were still going, “Wait. The Gentiles received the Holy Spirit” –
Colleen: Right. [Laughter.]
Nikki: – “without joining the” – [laughter] you know, they were still trying to figure that out.
Colleen: That’s true. In fact, it’s interesting here that this mystery that Paul is explaining was not only a mystery to him, not only a mystery to the Jews, but it kind of remains to some extent a mystery even today. There has always been some confusion, at least historically in the church there has remained some confusion about who the church is. Paul is telling us that the Lord Jesus is revealing to him the mystery of Christ and the inclusion of the Gentiles, and this is something that happened because of Jesus. There are Christians – and they really are Christians who believe in Jesus and believe in salvation by faith through grace alone – but they will still think that Israel was the Old Testament church. Some of them even think that the church actually began with Adam, or some will say with Abraham, the father of faith, but Paul is telling us here something quite different, and if we really take his words seriously and believe they mean what they say, we have to see that the church is something new that started after Jesus’ death and resurrection. So it was an unpopular message, and he was explaining things. They had been foretold in the Old Testament. They had not been realized until Jesus rose and sent the Holy Spirit and the church was formed. So this is really new information that’s expanding on the prophecies that Israel had had.
Nikki: Well, and that’s such an important point. It was rooted in Scripture. It was rooted in those prophecies, so it had already been foretold, and that just does not work with my Adventist understanding of progressive truth that’s constantly shifting and new, depending on what’s going on. True, honest progressive truth is truth that’s rooted in the Old Testament and fleshed out in the New.
Colleen: That’s a really good point. As an Adventist, thinking of myself as I did, that I was part of “spiritual Israel,” this whole thing of the church being something new was really a completely moot point to me. I knew that the church was started at Pentecost – Adventism had taught me that – but I didn’t understand that that was actually like a new creation, that being born again and sealed with the Holy Spirit was something that was not from the Old Testament. No! I thought I was spiritual Israel because I had the law, and if I kept the law, then I was pleasing God, and that this fact is what made me part of “the church” today. I did not understand there was such a distinction between Old Testament believers and New Testament believers. Belief is the same. We are always, forever saved by faith and trust in what God says and does. That’s never changed. But the reality of how that looks has changed. So when Paul talks about revealing a mystery, this is something that Israel had been told would happen, in veiled terms, in prophetic terms, but it’s now being revealed in real time. It was a new message. In verse 5, he’s even very specific in saying, this mystery was not known in other generations as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit. So even here Paul is saying that this mystery of the people of God, who are the church, was revealed in prophetic terms, but the apostles and prophets of the New Testament are the ones to whom God has revealed this in more clear terms in the Spirit, and the Spirit was not given as a permanent indwelling person in believers until Pentecost. So he’s clearly identifying this as a New Covenant phenomenon. Nikki, you were talking to me about some of the ways we were confused about this as Adventists. I’d like you to talk a little about that.
Nikki: Yeah, and I want to emphasize first what you said about the fact that this was revealed now, to us, and in 1 Peter 1:12 Peter writes, “It was revealed to them” – these Old Testament prophets – “that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which now have been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven – things into which angels long to look.” So even the Old Testament prophets understood that they were giving truth for a future generation of people, and the reason I want to emphasize that is because, as I was thinking about this kind of progressive revelation or present truth, sort of the Adventist interpretations of those words, I wondered what Adventist writers have said about this. And I went online to look up some quotes, just to see if I could find anybody that supported my perspective, because you know, even though I didn’t read Ellen White, I got a lot of Adventist teaching in my head, and I still marvel at how it got there. I don’t know. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] I know.
Nikki: So it’s helpful to read some of this stuff. Okay, so one of the first quotes is written by someone named Robert Olson in his book 101 Questions on the Sanctuary and on Ellen White.
Colleen: He was a director of the White Estate for many years.
Nikki: Okay. Okay, so the thing that stood out to me is really kind of at the end of the quote, but just to give it a little context, I’ll back up, and he says, “The full meaning of her first vision was now plain. Those who saw the light of the first and second angels’ messages and rejected that light were left in darkness. But those who did not see the light had not the guilt of its rejection,” and he’s quoting from Selected Message there. And he says, “The phrase, ‘all the wicked world which God had rejected’ referred only to those who had rejected the light. Progressive revelation on God’s part had been accompanied by progressive understanding on Ellen White’s part.”
Colleen: Oh, my goodness.
Nikki: So this kind of begins the message that Herbert Douglass unfolds better in his book, Messenger of the Lord. He said, “Ellen White clearly taught that God leads His people along as fast as they are able to receive further truth.”
Colleen: Oh, my.
Nikki: “The history of Israel is a splendid example of how He works with people where they are, not where they will be in the future.” And he says, “The prophets were also part of this divine plan to unfold truth as fast as people are ready for it. Some call this process progressive truth.” So then he goes on and he talks about the fact that people understand truth only in as much as they are mature and ready for it, and he talks about how this was true of Ellen White, how she spent her life learning and growing, and it’s used kind of as an excuse for some of her – some of the things that she said early on and then later corrected, and he quotes her in 19 – she writes this in 1906. She says, “For 60 years I have been in communication with heavenly messengers, and I have been constantly learning in reference to divine things.” And so he points out that she was constantly learning from these heavenly messengers, and so of course her message will be different later.
Colleen: Yes! And notice their plural messengers!
Nikki: Uh-huh. [Laughter.]
Colleen: Oh, my goodness. She gives herself away!
Nikki: She does! And remember the New Covenant promise was that God Himself would teach us, but she’s learning from heavenly messengers. So then he begins to call this the “growth principle,” and he says, “Consequently, letting the growth principle inform our study of Ellen White or the Bible, we should expect deepening insights as she conveys God’s message to others. We can see the growth of her ability to convey deeper insights, especially when we compare her earliest descriptions of the origin of the Great Controversy in heaven” – for those who have never been Adventist, that’s her pre-Creation history –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – “with that in Patriarchs and Prophets,” another one of her books later on. So he says, “Thus when readers sense a broader perspective in Patriarchs and Prophets, 1890, than is found in Spiritual Gifts, 1858, they are recognizing” – this part [Laughter] – “they are recognizing the hermeneutical rule” –
Colleen: Oh!
Nikki: – “that a prophet will grow as anyone else in spiritual perception.”
Colleen: Oh, my goodness.
Nikki: “This increase in spiritual perception will help the prophet to state more clearly the message that God wants conveyed. This is the principle that best describes the experience of Jesus on earth.”
Colleen: Oh, no.
Nikki: “Luke described His growth and maturing ability to share spiritual things with others, ‘And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men,'” Luke 2:52. This was all pulled from a much longer passage from the book, and I don’t have time to read all of it. He essentially wrote that God only gives information that we’re ready to have.
Colleen: This is heresy, Nikki.
Nikki: It is! And it’s completely redefining what it is to be a prophet. He talked about this as if Ellen White did the best she could with her decreased education and her limited abilities, and then she grew. But look, in Ephesians chapter 6, in verse 19, Paul says, “Pray in my behalf, that speech may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel.” He knew God would give him words to speak.
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: He didn’t say, “Pray that I will grow in my ability to understand what this is that He’s trying to tell me so that I can clarify it to you.” He prayed for words from God. And that 1 Peter passage that I mentioned before sharing these quotes, it was revealed to them that they were not prophesying for that day but for a future people. It was not about the fact that those people weren’t ready yet. It wasn’t that they weren’t spiritually mature enough to handle this. We know from other parts of Scripture that it was in the fullness of time that God sent His Son. All of this was predetermined. God is in control of human history. This Adventist picture of progressive revelation – it’s like you said as we were preparing for this podcast, they’re confusing sanctification with progressive revelation. It’s really strange.
Colleen: It is strange. You know, I will never forget reading the chapter in Dale’s old book, Sabbath in Crisis, before it was revised to Sabbath in Christ. He had a whole chapter in there on progressive revelation. Now, I was still Adventist, but I knew things were wrong, and that chapter, I’ll never forget the impact it had on me. He said, “Progressive revelation is not something that can begin black and end white. If it’s revelation from God, it cannot begin in a lie and end in truth. That is not progressive revelation. Progressive revelation begins in truth and ends in truth.” It’s a term that’s commonly used in Christianity to explain the progress of God’s revealing who He is, who Jesus is, and how He saves us through the course of history in the Bible. Nothing about the Old Testament is untrue, but as we move through time, as God reveals Himself through Jesus, as He forms the church, we get progressively more revelation. It’s like that mystery that Paul’s explaining, where the scarf comes off of what’s already there, that’s already been hinted at. But Ellen White just simply changed her tune from beginning to end. The people that manage her reputation have called it “progressive revelation.” She has course corrected by copying pretty good material from some pretty good Christian authors as she got older.
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: So she sounded more orthodox. That is not progressive revelation. That’s covering her tail by stealing other people’s work.
Nikki: And blaming God for getting that date wrong. Didn’t she say that He put His hand over the mistake on the chart?
Colleen: Yes, in William Miller’s prophecy, so that people would get ready. Argh. A God who will trick His people for an ulterior motive? No! No! That is not revelation. In verse 6, Paul continues explaining this job of his to reveal the mystery, and he’s explaining the mystery as being specifically that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. We looked at that quite extensively as we walked through chapter 2 and how Jesus on the cross took the curse of the law, took our sin into Himself, and broke down the barrier of the law that divided Jews and Gentiles. Paul is here saying that this is a brand new reality, that Gentiles would be fellow heirs and members and partakers. This is Paul, the Jew, who has met the risen Christ who is speaking. Paul, the Jew, who had formerly killed believing Jews who had been born again, but he now sees that they’re part of the Body of Christ, and now he’s saying Gentiles, who had been strangers from Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, now, because of Jesus, would no longer be secondary members, proselytized members of the Body of Christ. They were equal and mutual with believing Jews. They would be united. They would be reconciled to God exactly as the believing Jews would be, and they would come into sort of an organic unity with the Jews and on an equal footing. This was brand new to the Jews. This was brand new information. So although the salvation of the Gentiles was definitely prophesied in the Old Testament, the reality of their mutuality and their equality was just unexpected. This is the reality that needed explanation, and God gave Paul the job of explaining it. And it had to be a thankless job in many ways. It’s kind of no wonder the Jews in every town hated him. He not only threatened their religion by preaching Christ, but his preaching put them and the Gentiles on an equal footing. They were equally depraved, equally in need of saving, equally indebted to the blood of Jesus. And in verse 7, he goes on to say this message of the New Covenant is the message of which he was made a minister, “according to the gift of God’s grace which was given to me according to the working of His power.” So Paul was specifically called and gifted to teach this mystery of the Gentiles being included with the Jews in one new Body. It was his job to teach how the New Covenant operated. I had never understood that as an Adventist. Of course, I didn’t understand the New Covenant was something really different, either.
Nikki: This is kind of a wonderful explanation of what we just learned in Ephesians 2, that while Paul was dead in sin – he was on his way to persecute the church. He was not earning points with God. He was persecuting. I mean, Jesus said, “Why are you persecuting me?” So while he was dead in sin, God raised him together with Christ and then created him new in Him and gave him work to do, to give this gospel to the Gentiles. This is a beautiful display of what he’s just told us He does for each of us.
Colleen: You know, you were talking to me some before we did the podcast, Nikki, about how you understood Paul’s talking about being the very least of all the saints. Could you talk about that, in verse 8?
Nikki: Yeah. Well, it made me think of 1 Corinthians 15:9, where he says, “For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” He carried that grief with him, that he had once persecuted this church that he loved so much now and gave his life to serve. I can’t imagine what it was like for him to carry that with him.
Colleen: I know. He had killed the members of the Body of which he was now a member, and I think his grief had to be overwhelming. And apparently, from the way he wrote throughout the epistles, he never got over the fact that he had done that but that God had forgiven him through Jesus and had called him to this. It’s interesting that he understood that God’s grace to him was to carry responsibility and a heavy burden. He had to share this gospel of the Lord Jesus, and it was a responsibility that put him at odds with everybody. It put him at odds with Judaism, and it put him in a position of foolishness towards the Gentiles. But to those whom the Father called, his words were life and hope. It’s interesting that we could almost separate it out into three distinct groups: The Jews, the Gentiles who didn’t believe, and those who were being called. Those are the ones, both Jew and Gentile, who heard and found hope and life through his words. But from his Jewish background, the Gentiles were secondary people. From a Jewish perspective, they were the afterthought of God, and yet now, in Christ, and in Paul’s ministry, God had made them Paul’s foremost object of concern and attention. He was called to preach to these unwashed Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. He took it very seriously. He never got over the mystery and the responsibility and the grace of God in calling him to do this, for which he felt he was the least qualified. But you know, it’s interesting, isn’t it, that what qualifies us to do what God asks us to do is not our own experience. We’re qualified by the Lord Jesus when He calls us.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And it’s also – I have to admit that as I was thinking about this, it made me think about – we’ve talked about this before also, Nikki – that as a former Adventist, there are sometimes when I even have a little bit of a sense of being a “second-class citizen” among Christians, who are not used to being around people who have come out of cults.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Because we kind of have an intensity and a concern for parsing out what is true and for our family. We have concerns that people who’ve been evangelical Christians all their lives don’t completely understand sometimes.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I think about sometimes the ways conversations have gone down over the last two decades of my life where, you know, to many Christians, Adventism looks pretty mainstream at first. So if I come along as a former Adventist, it sometimes just seems odd to them, and I feel a little marginalized because I feel like Adventism isn’t mainstream. I feel like Christians need to understand Adventism, and sometimes I know I’ve been perceived as someone who has an axe to grind. I’ve been told that. [Laughter.] Not always by Christians, but sometimes by Adventists too. Sometimes I just feel like I’m an annoying person who is persistent in reminding Christians that they can’t take Adventists for granted. Their much loved and very good Adventist dentists and physical therapists and such are really wonderful people, but you can’t just think of them as believers. And sometimes we formers remind Christians that Adventists are people who need the gospel, and Christians have to see them that way, and sometimes it’s uncomfortable to remind a Christian that an Adventist needs the gospel. And I just think about Paul. He’s addressing the uncomfortable Gentiles, the second-class citizens from his former worldview, and he’s sharing with them the unsearchable riches of Christ, and he’s also having to tell the Jews that this was always God’s plan. It was a very unpopular job, I think.
Nikki: Yeah, and there’s a lot of opportunity for distraction when you’re looking at everybody’s perceptions and perspectives of the work that you’ve been given to do. It could really cripple a person and keep them from doing those works God prepared in advance for them to walk in.
Colleen: Yeah, if we get our measure of success or validity from the fellow Christians or even unbelievers around us, we will be sidetracked.
Nikki: And I would even say or our own internal shame, whatever shape that is, wherever that comes from, because, you know, you had Paul, who was rejected by his people, who was mocked by the wise Gentiles, unbelieving Gentiles, and then he had his own internal shame for having persecuted the church.
Colleen: That’s so true.
Nikki: But he kept his eye on the work God gave him to do. He was so faithful. They’d beat him down, and he’d get up and walk into the next synagogue, because of Christ –
Colleen: Because of Christ.
Nikki: – his identity, his core.
Colleen: And then there is verse 9, which has been a very important verse to me for the past several years, and I think it’s because I realize this is the verse that convinces me that Paul’s job was very specific, very unique, and my old Adventist milieu that said, “Paul is just hard to understand,” I realize now why Adventists think Paul is so hard to understand. It’s because he had a very clear message. He had to explain the administration of the New Covenant. Verse 9 says – it’s continuing his sentence that it had been given to him to preach to the Gentiles and “to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things.” He was tasked with the job of explaining how the New Covenant works. No wonder Adventists don’t particularly like Paul or understand him. Now, it’s interesting that you had a quote from Herbert Douglass earlier, Nikki, because I have this book that I bought a few years ago by the same Herbert Douglass. This book is called The Heartbeat of Adventism. It’s a whole compilation of Ellen White quotes which he has organized, Herbert Douglass has organized, to show that the Great Controversy theme and the writings of Ellen White is the way Adventists understand the world and the Bible. And in this book I found an amazing quote from Ellen White that completely explains to me how the Adventist gospel and the Adventist view of the cross is different from Christianity’s. This is a quote from the Signs of the Times, written by Ellen White in July of 1899. This is what she says. “It was in order that the heavenly universe might see the conditions of the covenant of redemption” – now, right there, Nikki, the “covenant of redemption”? Now, Paul in Ephesians 3 is explaining the mystery of the New Covenant, that Gentiles are included through the blood of Christ and that Jews and Gentiles are one in Christ, but she uses this phrase, “the covenant of redemption.” “It was in order that the heavenly universe might see the conditions of the covenant of redemption that Christ bore the penalty in behalf of the human race. The throne of justice must be eternally and forever made secure.” How does anyone make the throne of God secure? Who is threatening the throne of God? There was never any threat to the throne of God. She goes on, “Even though the race be wiped out and another creation populate the earth.” There was never any doubt about humanity being wiped out or being replaced! She completely misses the fact that Jesus became a human to identify with us, to shed human blood for human sin, to propitiate for human sin and to reconcile us to God. Well, she goes on, “By the sacrifice Christ was about to make, all doubts would be forever settled, and the human race would be saved if they would return to their allegiance. Christ alone could restore honor to God’s government. The cross of Calvary would be looked upon by the unfallen worlds, by the heavenly universe, by Satanic agencies, by the fallen race, and every mouth would be stopped. In making His infinite sacrifice, Christ would exalt and honor the law. He would make known the exalted character of God’s government, which could not in any way be changed to meet man in his sinful condition.” I realized when I read this quote that in no sense does Ellen White’s version of the atonement actually deal with us primarily. It was primarily, from her perspective, about justifying God –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – justifying the law. We were secondary. He could have wiped us out!
Nikki: There was no propitiation there. There’s no atonement for sin. There’s no reconciling us to God.
Colleen: Not at all.
Nikki: It’s all science fiction.
Colleen: [Laughter.] Yes. Like you said, Star Wars. We need that theme coming in behind us.
Nikki: Yes. [Laughter.]
Colleen: This is not what Jesus did. This Jesus died on the cross for us so that we may be saved, as she says in other places, but it’s not to propitiate. It was so that we could see He kept the law. He did this death to show us, “Yes, yes, yes, I’ll pay for the sin, but you now have to get right with God and return to allegiance. You have to keep the law.” So in a very real sense, His death was an act of shaming and guilting us into obedience. We were so bad He had to come and show us how bad we were. He died so we don’t have to die, but now we can feel guilty because He died, and we’d better get busy and be obedient.
Nikki: And for the sake of those who don’t have an Adventist background, that obedience is to the Ten Commandments, which she says was eternal, it was in heaven before God created the earth. And that’s why Sabbathkeeping is so primary to the Adventists.
Colleen: This is a completely false Jesus. This is a completely made up covenant of redemption. This is not redemption. This is a giant act of punitive discipline and shame. You know what it reminds me of? I know somebody who grew up in a very observant Adventist home, and he said that whenever he was bad enough to be spanked, which I guess was quite often as a youngster, his mother would take a leather belt, and she would say, “Now, this is going to hurt me as much as it hurts you.” And then she would lash him with the belt and then turn the belt back and lash herself on the back. For every lash on her child, she would lash herself on the back, so this child grew up knowing that every time he was bad enough to deserve to be punished by his mother, she had to punish herself too so that she would let him know that his offense hurt her as much as it hurt him. So the guilt was there. There was no paying for his own sin. His mother also had to pay for the sin, and he just was compounded in guilt and shame because his offense caused his mother to have to be punished as well. That’s what the Adventist Jesus did.
Nikki: Well, and all of that was to uphold the Ten Commandments, and when she says the law, the Ten Commandments. But everything we’ve read in Colossians and Ephesians, He disarmed the devil. He disarmed the ruler of this world at the cross. He created a new man in Himself at the cross. He gave us life, and she doesn’t mention that once when she writes about the cross. She elevates the Ten Commandments.
Colleen: Which is our curse –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – and the schoolmaster that was to lead us to Christ. She leads us right away from Jesus by using Jesus Himself to lead us away from Himself. It’s unbelievably twisted. It’s diabolical. Well, Paul finishes this parenthetical explanation of his ministry by talking a little bit more about this manifold wisdom. In verse 10 he says he’s been given this job so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. Isn’t this an amazing passage? He’s saying that the church, that we who are united through His blood in Him, with the Holy Spirit sealing us, we who have the life of Christ, we are the Body that God has chosen to teach the angels, all the universe, of the mystery and power and wisdom of God. Now, this is the wisdom of the almighty, eternal, invisible God, who was represented to us fully in the person of Jesus, and as we know Jesus, as we love God and are known by Him, we, as the church, united in Christ, are displaying to the universe the mystery and the wisdom of God Himself. I don’t even know how to talk about that, but it’s bigger than I can fathom, and it’s amazing He’s chosen us for this job.
Nikki: And it’s absolutely not us showing the universe that God is fair and just, and it’s okay, you don’t need to put Him on trial.
Colleen: Absolutely! We’re not justifying God.
Nikki: No.
Colleen: We’re putting Him on display, His grace, His mercy, His goodness, His kindness, His wisdom. It’s really amazing to me that He shows off what He is in what He has done in us, and it’s not something that is about us. We are here because of Him, and that’s the message we’re delivering to the universe.
Nikki: And we see in verse 11, this was not Plan B. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord. This was not a pivot. This was predestined, predetermined. And in Christ we have this boldness now and confident access through faith to God, to our Father.
Colleen: Isn’t that amazing? The New Covenant is completely new. It’s hard to even know how to talk about it because so much of it is spiritual, and it’s something that you know is true when you’re born again and you see the words in Scripture explaining this reality, but it’s hard to talk about it to somebody who hasn’t experienced it. This is real. Our job is now to boldly and confidently approach God, through Jesus, as our Father, who knows our needs, who knows what our fears are, who knows what our doubts are, and we can trust Him, and in doing that, we’re showing the universe His wisdom in sending Christ to identify with us and to make us His Body.
Nikki: You know, I know what you mean, Colleen, that it’s difficult to try to explain this to people who haven’t been born again, and I want to say to our Adventist listeners who aren’t sure, really, how to understand us as we talk. I want to say that it really is simple enough that all you have to do is believe the words that are in front of you. Read the words and believe what they say, and it will become clear as you pray and ask the Lord to reveal this truth to you. You can know this, you can understand this by the power of God. You don’t have to have a Ph.D. or go to the right seminary or have the right breeding, as I thought in Adventism, you just have to be willing to believe what the word says, and He will unfold this to you. And read it over and over and over. Don’t stop.
Colleen: Because it doesn’t get old, and there’s always new depth. And God never tricks us, like we were taught He would.
Nikki: Um-um.
Colleen: He really keeps His promises. And Paul finally ends by saying to the Ephesians, “I ask you not to lose heart at my tribulations on your behalf, for they are your glory.” And you know, Nikki, I do understand what he means. When God calls us to Himself, He gives us His work to do, and there are always tribulations associated with that.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But they’re for the glory of God and the glory of those He is calling to Himself. They’re for the glory of all of us in the Body, who share this mystery and who share the work of God that He gives us to do through His Spirit. If you have not experienced this mystery, of being made alive in Christ, of casting your burdens and your sins and your fears and your sense of needing to protect yourself, at the foot of the cross and saying, “Lord Jesus, thank you, I accept your payment of blood on behalf of my sin,” if you haven’t experience that, we ask you to do it. It is a mystery and a reality that is beyond anything else you’ll ever experience, and knowing God really is the greatest thing.
Nikki: So if you have questions or comments for us, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You can visit proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly emails, with links to new online articles and other ministry news, and you can find a place there to donate if you’d like to come alongside Life Assurance Ministries with your financial support. Don’t forget to like and follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Don’t forget to sign up to attend the 2021 online Former Adventist Fellowship Conference taking place on February 12 through 14. You can register by writing to formeradventist@gmail.com, and be sure to include your mailing address in that email. And we’d also like to remind you to go and listen to episode 17 of the Former Adventist podcast to hear Colleen and I interview Phil Johnson at the last Truth Matters Conference in 2019, and we’ll see you next week as we look closer at Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3.
Colleen: See you then.
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