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 11: “The Seal of God and Mark of the Beast: Part 1”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- The Adventist end-time scenario is based on the straw-man argument that the great cosmic issue is negating the law of God: the Ten Commandments.
- The actual fact of personal loyalty to Jesus or to evil—belief or unbelief—is morphed into commandment-keeping or commandment-breaking.
- The seal of God is never identified as a day; it is identified as the Holy Spirit.
The Adventist great controversy worldview has created a straw-man argument: Satan is devoted to obliterating the law of God. Thus Adventism sees the last day tribulation as an attack on people who keep the seventh-day Sabbath instead of the “papal” first day of the week.
Scripture NEVER makes a sacred day the object of attack nor the proof of loyalty to God. The entire structure of the great controversy is false, and Adventists, steeped in a worldview that says God’s “law” (the Decalogue) is eternal, thus the saved MUST keep the seventh-day Sabbath. Any who does not will not be saved when Jesus returns.
It is likely that, as events in the world unfold and the trials of the time of trouble come to pass, Adventists will misidentify the antichrist as well as the seal of God. They will be so married to the idea that the final issue is Sabbath-keeping that they will miss the true evidence of tribulation and false worship. If Sabbath isn’t involved in the attack, they will miss identifying the evil of the antichrist.
What Was Happening to Jesus on the Cross?
In Monday’s lesson the author asks, “What did Jesus mean by asking God why He had forsaken Him, and how does this scene help us understand what it means to have ‘the faith of Jesus’?”
The day’s lesson proceeds to say that Jesus, “apparently forsaken by God”, had to depend upon his past relationship with His Father to carry Him through. It develops the argument that Jesus demonstrated deep, trusting faith that shows us how to have deep, trusting faith that will carry us through the time of trouble. In fact, the lesson claims, “the time for preparation is now. Every trial now, if endured in faith, can bear precious fruit in our lives.”
The lesson is suggesting that Jesus demonstrated by example how we are to live and endure the coming persecution for keeping the Sabbath. In fact, this lesson overtly states, “This ‘faith of Jesus’ is itself a gift we receive by faith and it will carry us through the crisis ahead. It is ‘the faith of Jesus’ dwelling in our hearts that enables us to worship Christ as supreme and steadfastly endure when Revelation’s mark of the beast is enforced.”
This entire argument is false.
First, Jesus was not just experiencing a representative example of suffering endured because of practice. As Jesus hung on the cross, He literally was experiencing hell. He was literally experiencing the separation from God that is the definition of the second death—the complete inability to have access to the Father because of the eternal chasm of sin.
Jesus did not sin—Jesus was never dead in sin, nor was He ever in danger of sinning because God cannot sin. To be sure, He was tempted—far more than any of us will ever be. He was tempted with temptations that surpassed anything we mortals will ever experience. Yet He had no sinful tendency in Himself. He took our imputed sin and went to the cross, not as an example, but as our Substitute. He literally was credited with ALL of our sins, and as He hung on the cross and the sun stopped shining, He experienced hell.
Jesus took our death—our separation from the Father—and physically died. When He rose on the third day, His resurrection demonstrated that His death was sufficient to pay for all our sin. When we trust Him, we pass from death to life. Death will never claim us eternally; we will never experience that separation from the Father because Jesus literally paid a sufficient price for our sins.
What Jesus experienced on the cross was not an exemplary death showing us how to suffer. Neither was His death a demonstration of the law’s permanence.
In fact, Ellen White wrote this in Counsels to Writer and Editors, p. 100 (emphasis mine):
Shall we not consider that Christ’s righteousness in His perfect obedience to His Father’s commandments was the cause of His crucifixion. By perfect obedience to the law of Jehovah we are to magnify the law and make it honorable. What mean these words placed before the people of God, who, against great obstacles, are trying to fight the good fight of faith, saying, “We will not bow the knee to Baal, or give glory or honor to any who do this”? Divine blessedness is pronounced upon those who keep the commandments, and a curse He declares against those who transgress His law…
It’s no wonder that Adventists have no true sense of Jesus’ suffering on the cross. His atonement is merely a messy component of the salvation package. Adventists do not see that Jesus literally experienced hell and died as a curse. They do not understand that His resurrection was the consequence of His being the sufficient, perfect sacrifice for all our sin as He had died for our imputed sin.
Jesus’ death was not about the law, and the law is not the object nor the point of our testing.
There is only ONE focal point in our future suffering or deliverance: Jesus HIMSELF.
Adventists argue that the Sabbath demonstrates that they love Jesus with loyal love. They say that being persecuted for a day is the way they show proper worship to God.
Yet this argument is based upon the idea that the central object of controversy is the LAW.
IT IS NOT!
The central point is Jesus. Evil desires to destroy humanity created in God’s image and exalt itself to oppose the Creator. It desires to make anything but Jesus the “thing” people will focus on because if they do, they will MISS that the real controversy is belief in Jesus or unbelief. If people believe the focal point will be Sabbath observance, they will utterly miss the real issue.
When the antichrist establishes the worship of the image to the beast, Adventists will not recognize it for what it is because it will not involve Sabbath-keeping vs. Sunday observance.
This lesson is simply the next installment of a series of lessons designed to lull Adventists into a sort-of glazed acceptance of the worldview they’ve heard since cradle roll. They never actually notice that the law—the Sabbath—is NEVER taught as the thing that ensures salvation.
Ellen White was completely wrong, and Adventist eschatology could not be farther from the biblical model.
Sabbath rest is made personal IN CHRIST. He is the reality of the shadows of Sabbath (Col 2:16, 17), and when we trust Him we enter our rest and cease working for salvation. Further, when we trust Jesus, He seals us with His Holy Spirit of promise who indwells us and never leaves (Eph. 1:13,14).
When we trust Jesus, we no longer worry about the time of trouble. We are not persecuted for the law or for the Sabbath. The issue is JESUS. The issue is life or death—do you believe and trust Jesus, admitting that you are a sinner in need of a rescue?
Adventism literally taught us wrong. It taught us a false gospel and a false Jesus who could have failed and sinned. The REAL Jesus could not have sinned nor failed. He was the only one qualified to take our sins and suffer God’s wrath against them, to die, and to break the curse of death because of His sufficient sacrifice.
Now, on this side of the cross, we have two options. We can either refuse to believe that Jesus substituted for us and paid for all our sin, or we can throw ourselves on His mercy.
If we hang onto our “right” to prove our loyalty by Sabbath keeping, we are not trusting Jesus alone. If we do not trust Him alone, we are not covered by His sacrifice.
In the final analysis, our sins can only be in one of two places: either they are on Christ through our trust and belief in Him, or they are on us.
Where are your sins? †
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