This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
Lesson 2: “The Crucibles That Come”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- The Adventist worldview that says salvation is a process of committing to obedience and pleasing God shapes the lesson’s view of suffering.
- The author doesn’t understand the new birth and the security of the believer who still has a law of sin in his members as per Romans 7.
- The lesson see the cycles of sin and of suffering the wrath of God in Romans 1 as applying even to “Christians”.
This lesson portrays all forms of suffering—including the consequences of sin—as being a crucible in which God is perfecting a person so he will be able to be ready for Jesus to come. It opens with reference to Peter’s encouragement to believers that their suffering—which in context refers to suffering for the sake of the gospel—is a normal part of Christian life.
Adventism doesn’t understand this phenomenon. Adventists expect suffering when they protect the seventh-day Sabbath in the face of public scorn, or when non-Adventists misunderstand or criticize their beliefs. For Adventists, persecution is being given a hard time—even to the point of death—for their loyalty to the Sabbath and to their Adventist beliefs.
They do not understand that true Christianity is defined by trusting in Jesus’ finished work alone, and this sort of singular, saving faith results in being born again and sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise (Eph. 1:13, 14). Being born again is simultaneous with being transferred out of the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the Beloved Son (Col 1:13), and this kingdom change, this totally new identity of being born of God, results in those who retain their faith in a false gospel to become hostile to them.
Galatians 4 says that the children of the slave woman have always persecuted the children of promise. When we receive our new birth and the life of Jesus when we trust Him, our old friends who still reverence the law as the proof of their worthiness of salvation become hostile. This reaction is not premeditated; it is natural. Our new birth is a witness against their unbelief.
For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these thing (2 Corinthians 2:15–16)?
The Crucible of Food
The lesson strays even further into the Adventist worldview when it brings up the idea that one of the crucibles of the godly is the sin of “breaking God’s health laws”. On page 21 the lesson says this:
We have been considering the consequences of breaking God’s moral laws. But what about breaking God’s health laws? Our bodies are God’s home. If we abuse our bodies by failing to eat healthfully or to exercise, or if we regularly overwork, this also is sin against God. And this has consequences that can create the conditions of a crucible.
In this small paragraph we see the complete embryo of Adventist health anxiety and disordered eating. The Bible tells us that God has given us ALL foods to eat (Gen. 9:3), and Jesus declared all foods clean (Mark 7:19). Paul tells us that we are to receive ALL foods with gratitude, and we are not refuse anything offered to us (1 Tim. 4:1–6). In fact, to refuse certain foods on spiritual grounds is a doctrine of demons!
Adventism teaches its members to feel guilty about foods and lifestyle, about sleep and exercise, about everything related to how we eat and live. This focus on foods causing illness is the sin again which Paul warned in 1 Timothy 4:1–5:
Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer (1 Timothy 4:1–5).
There is nothing (besides the Sabbath) about which Adventists feel as defensive as their vegetarianism and their analysis of their food. This lifelong focus on food creates guilt and anxiety in its members, and disordered each and outright eating disorders are common among Adventists. These anxiety disorders are programmed by the religion. They do anything but brings its members freedom in Christ!
The Crucible of Sin
In Wednesday’s and Thursday’s lessons, the author cannot differentiate the differences between a born-again Christian and a person who is trying to be worthy, Of course, this lack of differentiation is because Adventism doesn’t know the difference!
The lesson says this on page 22:
God’s refining and testing involved drastic action. There are perhaps three reasons why refining and testing may feel like a crucible. First, we experience pain as God allows circumstances to bring our sin to our attention. A little earlier, Jeremiah unhappily writes, “ ‘The bellows blow fiercely to burn away the lead with fire, but the refining goes on in vain; the wicked are not purged out’ ” (Jer. 6:29, NIV). Thus, sometimes drastic action is needed in order to get our attention. Second, we experience anguish as we feel sorrow for the sin we now see clearly. Third, we experience frustration as we try to live differently. It can be quite uncomfortable and difficult to keep choosing to give up the things that have been so much a part of us.
In fact, true believers are no longer slaves to sin. Because we have new life—the resurrection life of Jesus which brings us to life eternally—bringing our naturally dead spirits to life, our eternity is assured. Although we still have a law of sin in the flesh (Rom. 7), we are no longer essentially SINNERS. We are credited with Jesus’ own personal righteousness (Phil. 3:9).
The lesson, however, does not understand this reality and presents the ongoing frustration of trying to overcome sin as a struggle that even causes despair and fear of the loss of salvation! The effects of sin as described in Jeremiah and Romans 1 are not the “place” where believers live. Rather, those passages describe the unregenerate who do not trust God’s provision in Christ!
Summary
All in all, this lesson misunderstands the biblical teaching of suffering for Jesus. A Christian who is born again will, indeed, suffer loss and persecution and opposition as we live for Jesus and His gospel. That suffering, however, is not the suffering of a natural person who is dead in sin.
Adventism sees no difference between the types of suffering one of its members endures and the suffering of a non-born again person. In this, at least, the lesson is accurate. Adventism does not produce true believers because it does not teach the biblical, infallible, omnipresent Jesus nor His completed atonement. Rather it produces law-bound non-born-again people who live under the curse of the law. No matter how hard they try to obey it and to root out their sin, they will fail—because sin cannot be rooted out apart from a new life and a new identity in Christ.
This lesson drives home the despair of Adventism—its hopeless insistence that we commit to obeying the law and overcoming sin.
We cannot obey the law nor overcome sin. We can only kneel at the foot of the cross and admit we are hopeless sinners who need a Savior. We can only trust Jesus’ death for our sin according to Scripture, His burial, and His resurrection on the third day according to Scripture (1 Cor. 15:3,4). When a person—any person—any Adventist—truly trusts in Jesus and His finished work ALONE, giving up all their own efforts to keep a day and to eat right, throwing themselves on His mercy, THEN they are born again and sealed with the Holy Spirit!
The reality of being a true child of God made eternally secure by Jesus’ completed work is the only way to understand the biblical teaching of suffering for the sake of Christ.
Yes, we will lose things we love; we will have to leave situations and even people who are committed to a false gospel and who refuse to allow us to have normal conversations with them.
The gospel divides; the Lord Jesus is a sword that separates the closest family ties. Yet Jesus gives us more than we lose: a hundred-fold in this life—with persecutions!
The Adventist view of the “crucibles” of life is a works-driven worldview. We cannot commend ourselves to God even by doing good things. We have to let go of all we think we know and embrace the Lord Jesus alone, allowing Him to open our eyes and to teach us to apply His word to our lives. †
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