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 8: “Seeing the invisible”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
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Adventist physicalism distorts the biblical revelation of spiritual death, spiritual life, resurrection, and the work of the Holy Spirit.
Monday’s lesson reveals Adventism’s lack of understanding of what it means to be “in Christ”, or born again. On page 100 is this statement:
When our request is “in the name of Jesus,” we can be certain that the whole machinery of heaven is at work on our behalf. We may not see the angels working all around us. But they are—sent from the throne of heaven in the name of Jesus, to fulfill our requests.
This paragraph reveals Adventism’s misunderstanding that Jesus’ words, “If you ask anything in My name, I will do it” (Jn. 14:14) means something existentially real. It does not mean tacking a phrase onto our prayers. Our words do not make our prayers “in Jesus’ name”. Our words do not constitute a formula for getting our answers. Those words of Jesus occur in a context:
Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you (John 14:8–17).
Jesus was telling his disciples, on the eve of His death, that He would be going to the Father, but He would be giving them the Holy Spirit. He even explained that while they knew the Holy Spirit because “He abides with you”, they really didn’t understand what receiving the Holy Spirit would be like after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension, because then He “will be in you”.
Jesus was telling His disciples that the day would soon come when they would do even greater works than He did, that they would ask anything in His name, and I would do it.
When the Holy Spirit would come and indwell His followers, they would experience what Paul would later describe as being “in Christ”. Receiving the Holy Spirit was not just a promise of extra power; it was a promise that God Himself would dwell in them. He would give them new life and new birth, and the Holy Spirit would be the seal that would guarantee their eternal future.
When they would be filled with the Holy Spirit, the reality which Paul explained would be theirs:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:17–21).
They would literally be God’s mouthpieces in the world. They would be Christ’s ambassadors, appealing to the world on behalf of the Father that people would BELIEVE and be reconciled to God. Furthermore, just as Christ was made sin for us, we who believe would BECOME the righteousness of God IN CHRIST!
The context of Jesus’ promise was that when we as believers who have been born again would ask anything of God in Jesus’ name, that reality means that as people made spiritually alive, sealed with the indwelling Holy Spirit, we are IN CHRIST, and we are now able to ask God for His intervention for the sake of reconciling the world to God. It means that NOW we can ask Him to reveal Himself, to give us His words and wisdom, that He will cause dead hearts to hear the gospel of their salvation and LIVE!
We do even greater works than Jesus did because when we carry God’s words of Christ’s finished work into the world, we are bringing literal LIFE to them. When they believe through God’s intervention, we see literal new eternal life come into being in them!
This spiritual rebirth is greater than the miracles Jesus did because now that His death, burial, and resurrection are completed, when people believe in Him they literally are born again, brought from death to life (Jn. 5:24), sealed with God Himself (Eph. 1:13,14), and they are transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the Beloved Son (Col 1:13).
We literally do greater works than Jesus did through the indwelling Spirit and the finished work of Jesus because now people are literally born again! Their dead spirits are made alive, and they are eternally secure!
Re-Created vs Resurrected
The Teachers Commentary revealed one of the most indicting comments underlying Adventist theology. In fact, this quote reveals the dirty secret underlying the Adventist worldview and its works-dependent salvation.
Adventism teaches that man has no immaterial part of himself that survives death. It teaches that when Adam sinned, he “began to die” but denies that, as God said, he died that very day that he ate (Gen. 2:17).
Furthermore, Adventism teaches that man does not HAVE a soul but IS a soul, that when a baby is born, a soul comes into existence. It denies that a baby HAS a soul before it breathes, and they teach that when a person dies, his soul dies and ceases to exist. The spirit of man, they explain, is merely breath and functions like an electrical switch on an electric appliance. When the switch is on, the appliance operates. When the switch is off, the appliance ceases to operate. (See Seventh-day Adventists Believe, chapter 7.)
This physical view of the nature of man changes the biblical definitions of death, sin, salvation, and the nature of Christ. It makes death only physical; it denies Ephesians 2:1–3 and Romans 3:9–15 which explain that we all are born dead in sin, “by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). Instead, they explain that we “inherit” Adam’s sinful nature—that we inherit “propensities to sin” from our parents and their parents before them.
In other words, sin is essentially a genetic problem. Thus we have to overcome sin through teaching our flesh not to sin, and Adventism attempts to explain this process by saying we make us of the “righteousness of Christ” to overcome our sin. In other words, if we pray enough and depend on the power of the Holy Spirit enough, we can muster up the ability to refuse to sin. We can learn, increasingly, to keep the law perfectly.
We can, according to Adventist theology, become more and more “like Christ”, reflecting His character more and more, by following His example of perfect law keeping, His example of long hours spent in prayer, and His example of never complaining or sinning in His attitudes.
This theology, that a person “accepts Jesus” and then makes use of the power and example of Jesus to overcome sinful desires and practices and thus hopefully attain to eternal life because of his or her commitment to doing good and being obedient, leaves Adventists in a despair of uncertainty.
This Adventist picture of salvation depends upon their commitment and expertise in imitating Jesus and incorporating the law into their lives. It denies that trusting Jesus’ finished work of atonement literally changes their identities and gives them new life.
Adventism tries to say the Holy Spirit gives them power to be good. Yet Romans 5 and 8 describes the new birth as receiving the resurrection life of Jesus, literally, that makes us spiritually alive!
Furthermore, the Adventist physicalism denies that any part of man survives the death of the body. It insists that when people die, they die like animals. They go into the ground, their “breath” goes to God, and the resurrection is—WHAT??
The Bible teaches that when we die, “we” go to be with the Lord. If we are believers, we are “absent from the body” and “at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8). Furthermore, whether we are absent or at home, “we have as our ambition…to be pleasing to Him” (2 Cor. 5:9).
This condition of being present with the Lord while absent from the body is not a metaphor. It is real, and in this condition we PLEASE THE LORD!
Adventism, however, teaches that this idea is a heresy. They teach it is untrue, and they teach that the resurrection, unlike what 1 Corinthians 15 describes, is literally God’s creation of a new body, not a resurrection of an existing person.
This week’s Sabbath School lesson confirms this view:
God’s promise of our resurrection is the best way to explain God’s permission for His people to suffer and die. The apostle Paul affirms that “this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (2 Cor. 1:9, NIV). God “can afford,” so to speak, to allow His people or children to suffer and die because He created them, and therefore, He can re-create or resurrect them. Indeed, it would be noble enough for those who put their trust in God to die for Him and His cause, even without any possibility of resurrection. But such an outcome, ultimately, would deprive God of His status and power as One who can create life out of nothing, thereby rendering Him another powerless, selfish entity in the universe. The people on His side would have died for nothing, because in the end they would not have proved anything about the claims of God. But because God has the proven power of resurrection, He can allow His people to die.
This quote literally admits that Adventism teaches that the resurrection is actually a re-creation. No part of man survives the death of his body, but God, according to them, retains the memory of the person in His mind and essentially downloads the personality of the departed into the newly created body.
The Bible teaches, on the contrary, that man’s spirit goes to God—a sentient spirit that knows and pleases God. Jesus, in fact, said this very thing happened to Him:
Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last (Luke 23:46).
Jesus gave His spirit into the Father’s care, and three days later, He arose! His body was new, but His spirit entered His new body, just as Paul describes our resurrections in 1 Thessalonians 414–16:
For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.
God brings WITH JESUS those who have fallen asleep in Him, and then the dead in Christ arise. Their spirits come back with Jesus where they have been resting safely since their death, and they reunite with their physical bodies which are now made new!
Adventism tips its hand visibly in this Sabbath School lesson. Jesus’ resurrection was NOT a re-creation, and our resurrections will not be, either. We do not cease to exist when we die—nor do the spirits of the wicked. Peter tell us what God does with the spirits of those who die in their sins:
…then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment (2 Peter 2:9).
The nature of their punishment is not explained, but punishment implies consciousness. Non-existence is not “punishment”. The wicked are resurrected for judgment, and the righteous are resurrected for life (Jn. 5:25–29).
I appeal to the reader: the truth about human nature is clearly revealed in Scripture. The nature of death is described, and Jesus demonstrated our own futures as He died, was buried, and rose again. His death and resurrection reveal the nature of ours as well, and Paul explains the details more fully.
Adventism hides the powerful reality of our natural depravity and our new birth through trusting the finished work of the Lord Jesus’ death for our sin, burial, and resurrection according to Scripture (1 Cor. 15:3,4). Thus in its Sabbath School lessons it distorts the powerful reality of who we are when we are in Christ and of what we have in Christ.
Unbelievers who have not been born again do not have the life and power and commands Jesus gives His true body, the church—those who have been transferred into the kingdom of the Beloved Son!
Our obedience does not help recommend us for salvation. Jesus alone does that, and He gives our REAL spirits new life when we believe in Him. He gives us a new identity, and we are never again the same. †
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