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 3: “The Birdcage”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problem with this lesson:
- The author frames his lessons on personal suffering through the lens of the “great controversy”
- The author condemns the pope’s changing the words of the Lord’s Prayer, thus altering Scripture
This week’s study is another set of moral lessons designed to imprint the great controversy paradigm on Adventist brains. The Teachers Comments on page 39 set the stage with this paragraph:
Yes, God saves us by His grace. Yes, He justifies us by the substitutional sacrifice of Jesus Christ and by our acceptance of that sacrifice by faith. But God’s grace is not a cheap fix, stopping at the declarative level. His grace is educational and transformative. Life and salvation are not theoretical experiences. We grow only when we actually experience His unconditional love for us, when we commit to loving Him back unreservedly, and to living with Him and permitting Him to live in us. And, as both we and God are involved in a cosmic conflict, we commit to take God’s side and to promote His kingdom in response to His rescuing us from the kingdom of sin and Satan. This way, God becomes the Lord of hosts, the One leading us in this experience, the One leading us to grow, to be transformed.
The author admits that God leads us into trials when He wants to teach us things including obedience and resistance to sin. The trials, he states, are the means of our growth and transformation.
Notice, however, what the writer says in the quote above: “both we and God are involved in a cosmic conflict, we commit to take God’s side and to promote His kingdom in response to His rescuing us from the kingdom of sin and Satan. This way, God becomes the Lord of hosts, the One leading us in this experience, the One leading us to grow, to be transformed.”
First, neither we nor God are involved in a “cosmic conflict”. Oh, to be sure, Satan is prowling about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour (1 Pet. 5:8), but he is not in an unresolved conflict with God. First, he is under no such illusion. He KNOWS Jesus is His creator, and he knows Jesus defeated him on the cross and when He broke death from the inside-out.
Colossians 2:13–15 says this:
And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. (ESV)
The battle is done. Satan lost utterly; Jesus humiliated and disarmed him, removing his weapon of the law and exposing him as the father of lies.
Second, we are not involved in a great controversy with God against Satan. We do not “take God’s side” and thus “promote His kingdom in response to His rescuing us from the kingdom of sin and Satan.”
No! Jesus did ALL the work of delivering us from the curse of the law and from the deception of Satan. We do not help Him win over Satan. We do not vindicate the law. Jesus rescued us entirely. We do not help vindicate God the universe, nor do we promote His kingdom. Jesus does ALL the work! We trust the Creator who defeated sin and death. Satan is condemned and defeated by Jesus finished atonement, and we are born again and adopted by the Father when we trust our Savior and Redeemer. We are made citizens of heaven, and Satan is condemned to eternal condemnation. There is no great controversy!
Third, God does not become the Lord of hosts as a consequence of our committing to take His side against Satan and to promote God’s kingdom! This assertion is blasphemous. God IS the Lord of hosts, the One who predestines and chooses and foreknows and calls us, who gives us the gift of faith, and who transfers us out of the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the Beloved Son. God does not gain authority or trust or recognition or reputation as a result of our trust. On the contrary, He brings us into HIS story; He does not come into ours and manipulate it.
Changing Scripture
It is both humorous and horrifying that the Teachers Comments devote about two-and-a-half pages to explaining that the pope changed the wording of the Lord’s Prayer and then discusses the dangers of altering God’s word. The comments state:
In May–June of 2019, Pope Francis sparked a controversy by officially endorsing a change in the Lord’s Prayer. Instead of “lead us not into temptation,” the new Roman Catholic version of the Lord’s Prayer would read “do not let us fall into temptation”…
“But changing the text of the Lord’s Prayer is not justifiable. Numerous other biblical phrases, much as this one, pose difficulties. The principles of biblical hermeneutics and the history of theology teach us that we must try to understand the text and its message rather than to change the biblical text or its translation to help resolve its mysteries in a way that a certain culture or person feels is more appropriate…
“Thus, the proposal to change the wording of the Lord’s Prayer is not only unjustifiable and unbiblical but also superficial, rendering an impoverished theological and pastoral content. Such revision also is dangerous for another reason: it sets yet another precedent for changing the Word of God because of human and cultural impulse. Changing the wording in question in the Lord’s Prayer will involve changing many other biblical texts and concepts. It is imperative to leave the text as it is and seek to understand it rather than to change it simply because it does not fit a particular theology or practical concern.”
My response to the idea of changing any part of the Bible is this: we dare not tamper with God’s word. In fact, I agree with the statement about that it is imperative that we leave the text as it is and seek to understand it rather than to change it!
However, I find this argument disingenuous and hypocritical. It seems to be a focus of attention as yet another means of “proving” that the pope will be the antichrist, as EGW says he would be. The reason I find this argument to be so irritating and fascinating is simply this: Adventism argues that the biblical text is wrong as it is translated.
Look at the following passage:
One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:39–43).
Adventists argue that when Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise,” the translators got the comma wrong. They INSIST that the verse really says, “Truly, I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise”.
Adventists INSIST that there was no punctuation in the Greek, and the translators simply inserted the paragraph where THEY thought it fit rather than reading what Jesus actually said.
Yet in Greek, the meaning of this verse is clear; Jesus told the thief that he would be with Him in Paradise “Today”—that very day when they hung there talking.
Adventism says neither Jesus nor the thief went to Paradise that day because they went to the grave. Adventism denies that humans have a literal, immaterial spirit that survives the death of the body and goes to be with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:1–9). Thus they have to move that comma to support their heretical doctrine of “soul sleep” which really denies that any conscious part of the person remains after he breathes his last.
For the lesson to criticize Pope Francis for changing the wording of that one phrase in the Lord’s Payer yet to insist that the translation of Jesus’ last words is wrong is ultimately hypocritical and blasphemous.
This lesson criticizes the Catholics for the very thing that they themselves do—and the textual altering that Adventism does has deceived millions of Adventists and kept them from seeing the reality of Jesus.
When Jesus said He would be with the thief that day in Paradise, He meant what He said. As the lesson says about the Catholic alteration of the Lord’s Prayer, we cannot change the meaning of the words OR of the translation. The irony of Adventism accusing the pope of the very thing they themselves do is complete. They are guilty of the very thing they accuse the Catholics of doing! †
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