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 Everlasting Gospel”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- Adventism takes the three angels of Revelation 14:6–10 out of context and reinterprets it to be their central identity and mission statement.
- The teachers’ comments articulate the basics of the gospel, but without addressing the underlying worldview of physicalism, spiritual death, and a fallible Jesus, their statement lacks power.
- The travesty of appropriating these messages for Adventists’ identity destroys their true message.
The lesson opens with one of the most honest admissions of the cultic nature of Adventist identity that I have seen in print:
For Seventh-day Adventists, the three angels’ messages in Revelation 14 are our Shema. They are our identifying statement of faith. They define who we are as a people and describe our mission to the world. In short, our unique prophetic identity is outlined in Revelation 14:6–12, and it is here that we find our passion to proclaim the gospel to the world.
In this short paragraph is the “shorthand” that hides the deepest cultic teachings of Adventism’s “sanctuary doctrine” and its demand for the keeping of the seventh day. Behind these words lie the fact that Ellen White promoted these three angels’ messages as the “gospel in verity” and established them as the summary statement of their purpose and mission.
Although they do not yet identify this belief, they—at EGW’s behest—teach that the first angel calls people to keep the Sabbath; the second angel calls people out of Babylon which they identify as Roman Catholicism and its “daughters”, the Sunday-keepers, and the third angel as announcing that those who do not leave Babylon, or “Sunday-worship”, will receive the mark of the beast.
A person reading this week’s lesson without understanding Adventism might find himself slightly confused but likely not alarmed. Mark Finley has used the most “gospel-sounding” language he could use, but if even the Adventists reading this lesson are alert, they will be confused. Moreover, this lesson does not reveal that Adventism sees “Sabbath keeping” in this first angel’s message.
Context, context, context
In context, these three angels follow John’s vision of the 144,000 Jewish evangelists who appear in heaven with Jesus after the appearance of the antichrist and the false prophet in Revelation 13. In the context of the book, the Jewish evangelists are in heaven after the beast from the sea (anticrhist) and the beast from the earth (false prophet) have done their cruel deeds and demanded that people worship the beast.
The evangelists are given a new song that no one else knows, and they sing as they follow the Lamb wherever He goes. The next scene shows “another angel” in verse 6—Adventism’s “first angel”. This angel flies through heaven as the earth is reeling with the oppressive control of antichrist and calls the nations to worship God and give Him glory. This angel has “an eternal gospel to preach to those who live on earth”, and there is no sense at all that anyone but this particular angel is tasked with this job to declare the gospel.
This angel also announces that the hour of God’s judgment has come—and the judgment the angel announces is NOT the investigative judgment. It is the judgment of the great day when the Lord Jesus will return with a double-edged sword in His mouth and kill His enemies (see Revelation 19). It is the judgment that precedes the millennial kingdom. There is NO HINT of the investigative judgment.
The next angel announces the fall of Babylon—an economic and even, perhaps, a religious system which has thrived on the business of the nations. In chapter 18 John will see and describe the mourning of the nations in the single day when Babylon is destroyed.
The third angel then announces the destruction of all those who receive the mark of the beast because they refuse to worship God and be saved. These will “be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever.”
Adventist theology is simply nowhere to be found in these messages, and for the Adventist organization to persist in applying EGW’s private interpretation to these angels, appropriating them for their own mission statement, is to seriously misuse Scripture and to put themselves at risk of receiving all the plagues listed in this book as Revelation 22:19 states.
Wrong worldview, wrong gospel
Adventism cannot properly teach or understand these angels’ messages nor any other part of Revelation as long as it refuses to embrace the biblical gospel of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection on the third day—all according to Scripture. As long as Adventism believes humans are nothing more than bodies that breath and have no immaterial spirit that is born dead in sin (Eph. 2:1-3) and needs to be made alive, they will not understand their need of the Jesus’ finished atonement or of how to receive it.
As long as Adventism does not embrace a fully divine, almighty Jesus who was unable to sin or fail and who never gave up even one attribute of deity, including His omnipresence, they have no gospel at all.
All they have is a method of behavior modification, of appealing to the “merits of Christ” (almost always undefined specifically) as their aid in overcoming sin. They keep the Sabbath and pray hard to keep the law, and this process of “building character” is their process of salvation.
This process is NOT THE GOSPEL, and this understanding is nowhere implied in the angels’ messages of Revelation 14.
The empty desperation of this lesson along with the entire model of the three angels’ definition of Adventism’s mission is overwhelmingly sad. Adventists who try to understand God’s will from reading these lessons will be left frustrated and empty, confused and even bored.
I challenge every reader of the Sabbath School lesson to read Romans 3 this week and learn what the gospel really is. Discover what Jesus actually did, and learn why God did not just destroy sinful man when He had every right to do so.
We are desperately depraved, wicked beyond our ability to pull ourselves out. The Father has to draw us out, and His word is the source of our living truth that reveals our true natures and the incredible gift of the Lord Jesus.
Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written,
“That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged.”
But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world? But if through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just.
What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:
“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
“Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips.”
“Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one—who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law. (ESV)sus’ death, burial, and resurrection to propitiate for our sins and to give us life (Romans 3).
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