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 14: “All Things New”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems With This Lesson:
- The lesson is written on the framework of EGW’s Great Controversy requiring a physicalist worldview.
- The lesson states that the eschatological prophecies in Isaiah were for Old Testament Israel had they obeyed.
- The lesson assumes that obedience to the law is the essence of purification for heaven.
This week’s lesson is heavily supported by Ellen White quotations. In fact, the Adventist view of heaven comes almost entirely from her and her interpretations. What Scripture says is re-defined by EGW, and Adventists carry a sentimental view of heaven that assumes a physical interaction with a physical god and sweet relationships with animals.
This lesson further dismisses the prophetic reality of Isaiah’s prophecies of the future by dismissing them as having become obsolete because of Israel’s failure to obey. For example, this quotation from Sunday’s lesson reveals this dismissive interpretation:
The book of Isaiah provides interesting glimpses of how the earth would have been if Israel as a nation had remained faithful to their covenant with God (Isa. 65:17–25; Isa. 66:22, 23; compare with Deuteronomy 28). The whole environment with its various expressions of life would have grown more and more toward God’s original plan; that is, before the entrance of sin.
However, that plan did not materialize as expected. Then a new plan was established, but now with the church, composed of Jews and Gentiles from all nations (Matt. 28:18–20, 1 Pet. 2:9). The prophecies of Isaiah, therefore, have to be reread from the perspective of the church (2 Pet. 3:13, Rev. 21:1–5).
Furthermore, the Teachers Comments more explicitly say this:
The crucial question is whether the above description of Isaiah 65:17–25 is a depiction of the eschatological new heavens and new earth. It becomes clear that Isaiah 65, 66 does not describe the eschatological picture as described in Revelation 21, 22, because death, sin, curse, marriage, and the birth of babies are included. To what situation or event, then, does Isaiah 65:17–25 refer?
Isaiah 65:17–25 paints the new conditions that will exist in Israel should the people of God live according to God’s Word. God’s miniature model of His kingdom would be manifested in Israel. Subsequently, the knowledge about the true God would grow, and the possibility of accepting the Messiah would expand. Jerusalem would become a megacapital city. Nations would stream to the temple of God to learn about the true living Lord in order to serve and worship Him (see, for example, Isa. 2:2–4, Isa. 56:3–8, Mic. 4:1–3). The “new heavens and a new earth” is a hyperbolic expression, which means, in its context, new conditions of life on earth and points to the restoration of Judah after returning from the Babylonian captivity. This expression describes the ideal conditions for God’s people in their land of that time. Isaiah 65 is a prepicture, foretaste, or type of the antitypical new heavens and new earth, certainly.
In other words, the quarterly denies the plain meanings of the words as they would have been understood by the first audience. To be sure, the Israelites would have thought of Isaiah’s words as referring to their return to the land after their captivity, but there is no suggestion in the passage that God was giving a CONDITIONAL prophecy. Isaiah 65 and 66 state that God will bring unheard-of blessings to Israel and that their Messiah would reign in the land.
The Adventist paradigm ignores the fact that these promises are not made with conditions but are statements of what God said He would do. Furthermore, the Adventist paradigm ignores the earthly millennial kingdom described in Revelation 20. Instead of assuming the words mean what they say, Adventists (as do some Christians as well) assume that Revelation 20 somehow refers to the church on earth and Jesus ruling from heaven.
The normal reading of the words, however, reveals that these prophecies are unconditional and earthly. The fact that we can’t explain all the details does not mean that we can dismiss the obvious meaning and reapply the prophecies to fit our understanding.
Salvation
Tuesday’s and Thursday’s lessons try to make a case for “the assurance of salvation” without dealing with the gospel. The author attempts to explain that one achieves the purity needed for heaven through obedience, and Thursday’s lesson states:
Thus, we can have the assurance of salvation if we have accepted Jesus, have surrendered to Him, and have claimed His promises, including those of a new life now in Him, and if we lean totally on His merits and nothing else. Abraham believed, and it was accounted to him as righteousness; it works the same with us.
This quotation is a word salad that doesn’t say anything real. Let’s take it apart.
First, Abraham IS our model of how one is saved: he believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness (see Genesis 15:6 and Romans 4). Adventism, however, teaches that believing God requires obedience to the law as a corollary to faith. They say a person is saved “by the merits of Christ”, but this idea is not fleshed out in most cases.
To an Adventist, this idea means that when people “accept Jesus” and believe He died for their sins, all their past sins at that point are forgiven. From then on, they believe they have to become more and more obedient and to depend more and more on the “merits of Christ”—His perfect example and perfect law-keeping—to help them obey. Thus, by prayer and dependence on the Holy Spirit, they can be “assured” of salvation as long as they are tapping into Christ’s merits and committing themselves to that law.
This idea is not the gospel.
Moreover, salvation is not about “obedience”. Salvation is about people who are dead in sin being made alive by trusting and believing in Jesus’ finished work and being sealed with the indwelling Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13,14). When a person has repented of his or her sin and trusted Jesus, that person is literally, spiritually born again and made alive.
Salvation is a matter of passing from death to life, not of becoming “obedient”. Here is what Jesus said:
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life (John 5:24).
Obedience, once a person has been made spiritually alive, is not to the law; it is to the Lord Jesus. The New Testament is full of commands for believers with warnings for those who continue to define themselves by persistent sin. Such a person may not have been truly born again and must deal with the Lord Jesus.
Obedience as a believer is sanctification, but it is not law-focussed. It is characterized by trust and submission to the Lord Jesus and to His Word. It is far more demanding than the terms of the law. The law was completely fulfilled in Jesus; He is the Living Law who lives within us and teaches us to submit to His word and to apply it to our lives.
For a more thorough discussion of what it means to be saved, I encourage you to read this article:
What Jesus Did
Finally, in Friday’s lesson, the author quotes Ellen White from The Great Controversy:
“The cross of Christ will be the science and the song of the redeemed through all eternity. In Christ glorified they will behold Christ crucified. Never will it be forgotten that He whose power created and upheld the unnumbered worlds through the vast realms of space, the Beloved of God, the Majesty of heaven, He whom cherub and shining seraph delighted to adore—humbled Himself to uplift fallen man; that He bore the guilt and shame of sin, and the hiding of His Father’s face, till the woes of a lost world broke His heart and crushed out His life on Calvary’s cross. That the Maker of all worlds, the Arbiter of all destinies, should lay aside His glory and humiliate Himself from love to man will ever excite the wonder and adoration of the universe” (Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 651).
This quote helps me understand why I never realized as an Adventist what Jesus really experienced on the cross. Here EGW states that Jesus experienced “the hiding of His Father’s face”. She further states that “the words of a lost world broke His heart and crushed out His life on Calvary’s cross.”
No!
Scripture tells us that Jesus “became sin for us”—He didn’t just hang there and experience the weight of the world, so to speak. He didn’t feel oppressed by the world’s sin and darkness. He took the IMPUTED—credited to His account—sin of us all and became the thing God hated. He became the things that caused God to separate from humanity and which caused our spiritual death.
Jesus didn’t just go to the cross and suffer, martyr-like, and bear lots of pain instead of us.
No! He literally became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Furthermore, He didn’t just experience the Father hiding His face from Him, like a passive-aggressive borderline parent.
What Jesus experienced as He hung on the cross was the wrath of God against sin. He bore in His body the FULL wrath of a holy God against our sin—the sin which Jesus BECAME.
Jesus had to be human in order to die the sufficient sacrifice for us, and He had to take our sin into His sinless self and experience the full extent of Gods WRATH against sin.
As Jesus hung on the cross, He experienced HELL. He didn’t just feel abandoned; He experienced the full cup of God’s wrath.
Ellen speaks so insipidly about Jesus, His humiliation and selflessness and humility and suffering, but she never explains what Jesus actually DID, nor does she ever tell her followers what they must do in order to be saved.
The way any of us is saved is to BELIEVE in the Lord Jesus and entrust our hopeless sin to Him. We submit to Him and trust and believe, and He then indwells us and teaches us to love Him and to obey HIM.
The law has served its purpose. It increased sin and caused Israel to know that they could NOT please God. We do not go back to the law once we trust Jesus; to do so is to go away from Jesus and to pick up our own effort to be worthy.
Our true worth is in Christ. Our identity in the Lord Jesus is the only identity a person can have when he or she is born again.
The new heaven and the new earth will be real physical places because Jesus said they would be created by God. But the Father does not have a body; “God is spirit,” Jesus told the woman at the well (Jn 4:24).
We will physically spend eternity with our Lord Jesus as we share our new, glorified bodies together and worship the One who became sin for us.
If anyone doubts that there will yet be an earthly fulfillment of God’s kingdom promises, read Revelation 20. God cannot lie, and His word will come true. †
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This is a very good response to the lesson that was presented this week. What also captured my attention, indeed surprised me to say the least, was this section found in Wednesday’s study:
‘There are moments when, with a broken heart, we may even wonder if life is worth living. Regardless of our sorrows, however, God is always eager to wipe away from our cheeks as many tears as possible. But some of our heaviest tears will continue streaming down until that glorious day when death, sorrow, and crying will cease to exist (Rev. 21:1-5).’
When I read this passage I wondered what image of God does this portray? Is God truly able to provide solace and comfort now, in the midst of trials ands hardships we experience?. I noted that the passage states, God is eager to wipe away from our cheeks as many tears as possible.
For me, however, God is not just eagter-0 He does wipe away the tears and He is able to -provide the comfort and solace we need. Merely stating that God is eager to wipe away from our cheeks as many tears as possible, does not portray God positively. It points to a God who is in essence unable to comfort, since He according to the lesson is ‘eager’. Then the reference to as many tears as possible somehow limits God’s potential or ability .If God can only do that, then He is not omnipotent. He can only provide limited power, limited solace and comfort up to a certain degree?
What kind of God is that?
If some of our heaviest tears will continue streaming down until Jesus comes again, then the God portrayed in the Bible is not able to comfort us adequately. I would think that the heavier our tears, the more comfort God bestows on us, all designed to make us trust Him more inspite of our tears and the way we feel.
This author of this lesson needs to portray God as He is, omnipotent, not limited in any degree.
Thanks
Andrew L.