Did Job Vindicate God to Satan?
I have listened to a lot of the sessions from this year’s FAF Conference and have also listened to a lot of past years’ conference videos over the past month or so. I have found it very enlightening and have been trying to slowly sift through what I’ve been taught and what’s actually in the Bible. In the course of this experience, I have come upon a question that I thought you might be able to answer or help me with.
I agree with how the Great Controversy worldview is false overall. However, I struggle with how to interpret Job 1 and 2 now. As an Adventist that has always been a kind of microcosm of the Great Controversy in heaven and its relation to earth. I always saw it as Job vindicating God in obedience (and therefore what we should strive to do), but I’m not convinced that’s the correct understanding of these chapters.
It’s getting easier to read most passages for what they actually say, in context, but there are still some passages that I just can’t seem to understand without the Adventist worldview. And sorry if this question has already been addressed in a podcast/video previously—if so, you can just direct me to it!
Thank you for the work you do!
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Thank you for writing! No, we haven’t specifically addresses Job 1 and 2, but I can do that! In the big picture, Job is not vindicating God. In fact, God is not defending Himself to Satan. Satan enters with accusations, but the effect of Satan’s accusation is that God actually is revealing HIMSELF to Job.
In the first place, we learn that Satan can do absolutely NOTHING without God’s permission, and he can’t go one inch farther than God allows him to go. God is SOVEREIGN over Satan, and Satan is revealing his rebellious arrogance even while God draws boundaries around him that protect Job’s life and condition. God allows this discipline and testing in Job’s life, but He protects Job and ultimately blesses him for his trust in Him. At the same time, Satan has no access to Job that God doesn’t allow and oversee. Arrogant Satan cannot outmaneuver God.
As we read this story, we learn that from our human, earthly perspective, we may never know the dynamics behind the events of our lives. But we also learn that the people in the book of Job did not understand how God functions. Job’s comforters had very human-centered ideas of how God works and about how man had to function in order to please God. Even Job had limited ideas about his relationship with God. He DID trust God, but he also thought he understood that God rewards those who are loyal.
At the end of the book of Job, we learn the real insight and the real reason for Job’s suffering. God finally speaks—after the long speeches from the four comforters—each of whom, BTW, has increasingly deep understanding of God. But when God finally speaks, He challenges Job’s limited insight. He keeps asking him, “Where were you…?” “Do you know…?” “Is it by YOUR understanding that…?”
God uses the mysteries of creation and the cosmos to show Job that he had absolutely NO understanding of God’s power, wisdom, or interactions with His creatures. In fact, Job had no understanding of how God expected Job himself to respond to Him. Job thought he knew that he was righteous and obedient, but God revealed that Job’s definitions were limited. He had no idea of the trust and submission that was the true act of belief.
In chapter 42 we read the confession of righteous Job. He had been a “good man” and sincere in his respect and worship of God, but he had no idea of who God actually IS. Job says,
Then Job answered the LORD and said:
“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you make it known to me.’ I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes”(Job 42:1–6)
In other words, the righteous Job confesses that he had had NO understanding of God, and he repented in sackcloth and ashes for thinking he knew how God “worked”. He had spoken about God out of ignorance, thinking he understood God better than others. But God showed him that He, not Job’s own loyalty, was the cause of Job’s success, suffering, discipline, and restoration. Job wasn’t successful because he honored God; Job was the creature of the Creator, and the Creator chose to reveal His power in the life of the man who did honor Him. Job’s suffering, loss, and restoration was a demonstration of God’s power and God’s salvation of those who trust Him. Furthermore, God silenced Satan by showing His own power over Job.
God, not Job, revealed who God IS. Job didn’t vindicate God; God silenced the evil one and revealed Himself to the human who believed Him.
The end of the story is compelling; God gave Job twice the animals he lost in the devastations, and He gave him 10 more children. I used to think that he still lost his first 10 children—until I understood that no human ceases to exist upon death. Our identities go to God, as Paul explains in 2 Corinthians 5:1–9. Job, now with the Lord, does indeed have his 20 children. They did not cease to exist when they were destroyed in the storm.
Adventism reads Job through fallen human lenses. To Adventism, the Bible is about man. They are inside-out and upside-down. The Bible is actually about GOD. God is sovereign, and it reveals how our sovereign Creator reveals Himself to us through the ages. Job is a book about God’s sovereign control over evil and over humanity. God saves repentant humanity—and Job repented at the end of the book. He wasn’t intrinsically good—he believed God when God revealed Himself. Job was looking downward instead of up to God as he pondered his suffering. God showed Job that he had no idea of how powerful He was nor of the reasons why God does what He does. Job had to trust this God who was too big to understand!
When Job repented of thinking he understood the sovereign God, God revealed His mercy and restored him and blessed him.
This is not a story about Satan. Satan is a minor character in the story, and we are not told Satan’s story. (Only EGW thought she knew Satan’s story.) Satan triggered the original conversation, but the revelation was for Job and for us. Satan disappears from the story, and no one and no thing vindicated God to him. Satan is an evil creature who has no authority to question God or to demand an answer. God is sovereign over all creation, and Satan is just a tiny speck of creation gone rogue. God is absolutely in control of him. He can only do what God allows him to do. Moreover, his doom is CERTAIN. The cross guarantees his end.
The Trinity Is Catholic
I accidentally came across your title when searching for something else.
I am here to tell you that it is a mistake for you to get onto the Wretched radio program to literally blaspheme God. [You may listen to the audio file of Todd Friel’s interview with Colleen Tinker about Adventism here.]
Who is the author of the 10 Commandments? The Seventh-day Adventists did not write them nor did the Jews. They were written with the finger of God. (Finger is not to be understood literally but figuratively since God is spiritual.)
Now, I do not agree with nor believe the Trinitarian doctrine since it violates God’s first commandment. The original pioneers of the Adventist church did not, either. They gave the best explanation that they knew for their time. But that does not give the leaders today the right to change to the Catholic three-in-one God. This change in belief is the apostasy we knew would come and is the evidence that the Adventist church has gone wrong. I have written to the leaders to warn them to change their belief back, and they finally agreed to consider my request after several attempts. It has been sent to the research department to examine and hopefully one day to restore the anti-trinitarian doctrine, since the pioneers rejected the Trinity as a wrong doctrine.
Yes, there are several doctrines I don’t agree with in the Adventist church, but it is the church closest to what God set up. We in our time should help build up God’s church instead of tearing it down like you did.
Many people like myself do use the King James Version and not the one by Jack Blanco. You stated to Wretched that Adventism uses Blanco’s Bible which is wrong—very wrong.
If you do not repent of blaspheming God, you will live a miserable life. I pray for you my sister.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: I realize that your anti-trinitarian belief reflects that of the Adventist founders, and I also realize that there is a growing anti-trinitarian movement among many Seventh-day Adventists.
Nevertheless, the Bible reveals that God is One, and that there are three person within the Trinity who share substance: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Our Lord Jesus, in His incarnation, revealed this truth most clearly, yet it is revealed throughout the Bible.
While Adventism claims to be trinitarian today, in fact it is not. Rick Barker’s commentaries on the Adventists’ 28 Fundamental Beliefs explore the ways the Adventist doctrine is not trinitarian but is actually tritheistic. (His articles on the persons of the Trinity can be accessed here. You may also listen to the Former Adventist Podcast address the 28 Fundamental Beliefs here.)
I also learned that Adventism was the church that was “closest to the truth”, the most biblical of the churches. I have since learned that the real church of which Jesus said the gates of hell would not prevail against it is comprised of every person since Pentecost who has repented of his sin and depravity and believed in the finished atonement of the Lord Jesus and of His resurrection, breaking the curse of death. This one true church is not defined by a denomination, but its members are united by being spiritually alive, already ushered into eternal life through faith and trust in our Savior and Substitute.
Adventism is merely an organization, a religion, that organized around the spurious doctrine of the investigative judgment and an anti-trinitarian belief in a god who is physical and who is not the God revealed in Scripture. Adventism, in fact, is not part of the church founded by the Lord Jesus’ blood of the new covenant. It is a spiritual counterfeit founded in the ancient heresies of Arianism, Ebionism, and anti-trinitarianism.
I urge you to get a notebook and spend some time copying the book of John, a few verses at a time, into the notebook, asking the Lord to show you what He knows He wants you to understand from His Word.
Scared of My Husband’s Reaction
I’m so so grateful for the work you are doing with your podcast. God is using you to teach me the true gospel message, and it is so beautiful!
I have only just begun this journey of learning about the false teachings of the Adventist church, and I have so much learning still to do. A little background about myself: I’m 30 years old, married for 4 years. I was raised Adventist with a more conservative father…My mom is much more outspoken, and I feel she is the one who really nurtured us kids spiritually while raising us. She rejects EGW but never took it far enough to leave the church—I believe out of respect for my dad. EGW was never read in my home, but I had a general understanding of her role in our church.
Then, in high school, I went to a conservative Adventist boarding school and started to get a little more comfortable with the idea of Ellen White, because, of course, she is taught there more than the Bible. I still never felt comfortable accepting her has a prophet, though, and never felt the need to read her books or writings. I went to a conservative Adventist university for college, and that’s where I met my husband. He is a very conservative Adventist…
Since being married, and especially during the pandemic, I became more and more interested in understanding what was happening in our world. I started studying and listening to more sermons and really started to understand the Adventist message a bit more and accepted it as the truth.
That being said, I’ve struggled with doubt continually. A few months ago, we watched the Netflix series about the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, and it absolutely shook my world. The main thing was the lack of outside information. There was no way for these people to ever compare and contrast what they were told with any other thoughts or ideas, and that scared me! That is my life as an Adventist in my Adventist marriage.
We host a Bible Study at our home… and in preparation, I like to listen to a sermon about the passage we will be studying to get me thinking and maybe find some insights to share. I will often listen to Alistair Begg…If ever my husband hears me listening to a preacher who is not Adventist, he is upset and tells me I’m being brainwashed…
I tell you all this because I need help navigating this path ahead of me. I know enough truth now that I cannot, with good conscience, stay in the Adventist church, but I absolutely love and respect my husband; he truly is my best friend, and I’ve learned so much from him. It is so difficult for me to know how/when to approach him about this because I know it will break his heart. I cannot imagine anything that would hurt him more.
The other thing that complicates this even more is that we have been wanting to start a family…Now I’m afraid if I tell him I want to leave the church, he will not want to have children because of our differences…
My prayer is that God will put a desire in him to seek the truth and that he will find the same peace in the knowledge of the true gospel that I have found. I just wish we could go on this journey together. I’m worried the more I study without him, the harder it will be for us to move forward together, and I hate to be secretive with him. It’s not like me.
I’m here to ask for advice on how to approach my husband in the most respectful and honest way. What to ask, what to tell, how to invite him to join me on this journey. I just don’t know what to do. And I’m honestly so scared of what his reaction will be.
I started reading Galatians tonight as Colleen has mentioned several times, and “Wow”, is all I can say!
—VIA EMAIL
Response: I’m so thankful that the podcast is helpful to you and is helping you understand the true gospel of the real Jesus! In spite of all the tumult and changes in relational dynamics around you, Jesus IS enough. He will never drop you, and you will never lose the new life you receive from Him when you trust Him alone. He will open doors for you—one at a time and almost never in advance of the exact point where you are standing—but He gives you the insight and courage to walk through each door He opens. He will hold you each step of the way, and He will not trick you. You can trust Him, and He really IS sovereign. He has called you to this very moment, and He is working in your husband’s life as well. His power is made perfect in weakness, and His grace is sufficient for you ( 2 Cor. 12: 7–10).
You can know that the Lord Jesus has brought all of these doubts and insights into your life in His time because He is calling you out of the darkness of a dangerous (but often beautiful on the surface) spiritual counterfeit, and He is calling you to Himself, to truth and reality and peace with God. He is replacing your doubt with truth in Himself, and you can trust Him. Your experience is not random; He is at work.
As for how to talk to your husband: I can’t give you the words or the content, but I have a suggestion. Would he be willing to simply read the Bible with you each day? Would he be willing to sit with you and read without outside commentary, just reading one chapter at a time, in context, starting with the first chapter of an epistle, and reading a portion of it (or all of it, if you want) and then talking about what you read? Adventism did not teach any of us to study the Bible contextually. Further, it did not teach us to trust the words. But if you read it with him, just read it as you would read any normal book: in context. The words mean what the words say—use normal rules of grammar and vocabulary. Don’t try to impose interpretations on the words; the original audience did not have interpretations applied to those letters originally.
Think about the first audience: the books cannot mean something different than they meant to the first audience. Furthermore, do not begin by asking, “What does this mean to me?” Begin reading by observing, by understanding what the words ACTUALLY mean and taking the words at face value.
Application to ourselves is the LAST thing to do. After understanding what a passage is saying to the original audience, after determining what the author actually said and believing that the words and verb tenses mean exactly what they say, the last thing to do is to apply that meaning to ourselves. Application may differ a bit from the original, but the meaning will be the same…
I urge you to read 1 Corinthians 7, especially verses 10–17, to understand how Paul wrote to people who had become believers but had unbelieving spouses. I also urge you to read 1 Peter 3:1–7. Ultimately, as you interact with your husband and hopefully as you read Scripture, you will tell him of your newfound understanding of the Word and of the finished work of the Lord Jesus. The gospel is the key to being rid of Adventism! But your husband will have to have his eyes opened by the Lord. Your consistency to love him for God and to entrust him to God will lower the anxiety and urgency in your interactions, and it will leave room for the Lord to deal with Bryant’s questions and doubts without having to “fight” your emotions.
I cannot guarantee that your husband will see what you see. God knows. But I am certain of this: none of these dynamics is a surprise to God. He has brought you to the place, and He is using you in your husband’s life. You can know that his “outcome” may not be what you hope, but you can also know that it just may take time. Perhaps the hardest thing you will have to do is to trust God with your husband. The Lord will hold your heart, and He will deal with your husband. Ask the Lord to take your fear and anxiety and to show you how to walk in truth and reality without giving way to anxiety and fear. Ask Him to deal with your husband and to give you the strength to respect your husband while concurrently being obedient to the Lord. The day may come when you have to stop going to the SDA church with your husband. That is not disrespect; when that “door” opens and the Lord beckons you through it, He will give you strength to walk, and He will deal with your husband as well. You are not being a disloyal wife when you walk in obedience to Christ. At the same time, we are asked to respect our husband and and not try to accomplish the work only God can do.
Ask the Lord to show you how to love your husband for God and to walk in trust and hope.
Finally, put the question of children in the Lord’s hands as well. He knows what you need and when you need it. He really may be granting you some time to settle your personal spiritual lives before bringing a child into the world. A child born into a home where one parent is Adventist and the other is not is a field of division. The Adventist nearly Always becomes more and more insistent that the child be raised Adventist. It is an expectation Adventists have, and they will not compromise. Couples who are divided suddenly find themselves in bitter conflict as the children become the objects of “power grabs” that are driven from the Adventist side by inarticulate but powerful dark spiritual forces. God may well be sparing you at this time. Just ask Him to make you able to trust His will, and place your future children into His hands. He alone knows how to help you walk fully into the freedom of His finished work and to keep you and the children from being embroiled in constant conflict.
I pray the lord will give you peace and hope and wisdom and that He will ope your husband’s heart tot he truth.
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