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 7: “The Unified Body of Christ”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- The author does not understand the impact of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling believers but admonished readers to do “unity-building virtues”.
- The author understands “one body” as a poetic description of everyone working together as the Adventist “godhead” does; he does not understand God is ONE.
- The author defends God’s spiritual gifts as manifested in EGW’s prophetic gift, describing her as God’s gift to them as promised by His giving spiritual gifts to the church.
The Adventist physicalism is on display in this lesson. The miracle of the body of Christ, the church, being a new creation birthed by the Spirit and empowered by the indwelling Spirit of God is diminished because of Adventism’s disbelief in an immaterial spirit.
The Teachers Comments even state this:
When Paul mentions in Ephesians 1:22 that the church is the body of Christ, he does not mean that the church itself is divine or supernatural. In the economy of the plan of salvation, it was God who was incarnated, and not humans who were divinized. The church is the body of Christ in the sense that it is the new, saved humanity represented and accomplished by, and in, Christ’s incarnation. It is the new humanity created, saved, and ruled by Christ, its Creator, Savior, and Lord. Thus, the church is not an emanation from the divine; rather, the church is God’s people—the people who were created by God and now have been restored by Him back into His kingdom. It is in this sense that the church is the “fullness of Him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23, NKJV).
To be sure, the church is not “divinized”. Yet our being parts of the Body of Christ is not merely a metaphor designed to get us to work together. We are literally placed IN CHRIST when we believe. We are baptized by the Holy Spirit and made alive with Jesus’ own resurrection life, and we are eternally connected to Him by His indwelling Spirit. Nothing, not even death, can separate us from Him and His love. He is our head and we are His body—a fact, not a mere metaphor—and we live by His life and move by His Spirit prompting us and teaching us to submit to Scripture and apply it to our lives.
Jesus said to Nicodemus, “That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (Jn. 3:6). We have to believe these words to mean what they say. We have spirits that are born dead in sin (Eph. 2:1–3), and when we trust Jesus we are literally born again of God (Jn. 1:12). We are not merely metaphor-ized into a “body” but literally given Jesus’ resurrection life and placed in Him.
We are His body because we are born of God. The lesson utterly misses this reality.
Instead, the lesson bypasses the impact of our true identity as Christ’s body and His Spirit-filled believers and focuses, in Sunday’s lesson, on the readers “exhibition unity-building virtues” and appeals to Ephesians 4:1–3 as the support for this command. Here is what the passage says:
Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph 4:1-3).
This verse follows the in-depth teaching of the new covenant which Paul gives in the first three chapters. In context there is no doubt about the foundation of these words. Those who have believed and have been sealed by the Holy Spirit are being built into a temple of the Holy Spirit, and reminding them to live in peace and humility is the natural command for those who are alive in Christ. We still have our mortal flesh drawing us to gratify our sinful impulses, but we now have Jesus’ own life and presence in us. We can be reminded to lean on Him, to let Him fight for us, and we can be reminded to let go of our natural impulses and allow our Savior to be our strength and defender.
We do not keep the peace by exhibiting behaviors. We live in the reality of being part of the body by trusting our Head and submitting our fleshly impulses to Him. The lesson takes exactly a backwards approach—and they can’t help themselves because they do not have the foundational understanding of the nature of man or of the nature of the new birth.
Godhead Confusion
Even further, the author appeals to the Adventist “godhead” to describe the way Adventists are supposed to function in order to manifest the “body of Christ”. To the author (as it is to Adventists in general and as it was to me as an Adventist), being part of the “body of Christ” is just a metaphor to show me how I’m supposed to treat those in the church around me. Yet they can’t do anything more than this since they don’t understand that God is ONE. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share SUBSTANCE, and Adventism will not admit this fact. They see the Trinity as the “godhead”, three “co-eternal persons” who share a name, a purpose, a will—but NOT substance. In fact, they represent their godhead as a “winning team” of three who work together for our good.
Ellen White called them the “Three Worthies of Heaven” and the “Heavenly Trio”. This designation is heresy. The Trinity is a mystery, not a puzzle we can solve. God is ONE, and He is expressed in three distinct persons who share substance. Every single nuance of God’s attributes is shared exactly among them. They are not different in their natures.
Without understanding this fact, they cannot properly speak of the church. The nature of the church is utterly foreign to them—but this fact is not surprising since Adventism is not a church. They teach a false gospel and have a false, fallible Jesus—and their claim to be a church is just one of their slick deceptions.
So, they guilt their readers with reminders to behave in a way that they will help unify this group of deceived unbelievers who worship a fallible Jesus on a day that God does not require we keep.
Spiritual Gift of EGW?
Another foundational deception is the lesson’s confusing but seamless argument that EGW’s “prophetic gift” is simply the outworking of God’s promise to send prophets as part of the foundation of the church.
They ignore Hebrews 1:1, 2 which says:
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world (Heb. 1:1-2).
Instead of acknowledging that the gift of prophecy (understood as delivering new information about God and salvation, not merely the speaking forth for God in exhortation and encouragement as 1 Corinthians 14 describes New Testament prophetic gifts), they force EGW, like a puzzle piece that doesn’t fit, into God’s promise to give the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Here is what Wednesday’s lesson says:
Christ gives these gifts to accomplish important work: “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12, ESV) and “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13, ESV).
This last point was of special importance to early Adventists, who were reflecting on the spiritual gifts of Ellen G. White. Does the Bible validate the functioning of the gift of prophecy in the church only during the time of the apostles? Or does the gift continue until the return of Christ? The early Adventists found their answer in Ephesians 4:13 and shared it through a story about the captain of a ship who was bound to follow the instructions provided for a voyage. As the ship neared port, the captain found that the instructions informed him that a pilot would come on board to help guide the vessel. To remain true to the original instructions, he must allow the pilot to board and obey the further guidance offered. “Who now heed that original book of directions? Those who reject the pilot, or those who receive him, as that book instructs them? Judge ye.”—Uriah Smith, “Do We Discard the Bible by Endorsing the Visions?” Review and Herald, January 13, 1863, p. 52.
Please notice what Uriah Smith is saying here: he is, as the editor of the Review and Herald, the official magazine of the Seventh-day Adventist organization, that Ellen White is the pilot that the Bible said would come. They are to follow HER directions if they want to be true to the Bible. This argument is devious and deadly—but Smith’s attitude embedded EGW deeply into the Adventist worldview and ethos. They cannot dismiss her or clearly acknowledge her heretical writings because they believe God foretold her coming. If they dismiss her, they leave God’s direction!
In summary, Adventism is built upon a foundation of heresy and false teachings. Most individual Adventists don’t analyze the foundation of their faith; they focus instead on how they live, on what they believe and do, on how they fit in with their communities and with evangelicalism.
Yet the foundation is what determines the nature and identity of Adventism. By understanding Scripture through the lens of EGWs commentary, they have developed a false Bible and have a false gospel and a false Jesus.
They have an authority who was actually a false prophet. Yet Adventism uses Scripture to assure themselves that they are “right” and “true”. They do this by taking Scripture out of context and by applying it to an understanding of reality based upon the pious deception of a false prophet used by her entrepreneur husband to create a movement that gave them power, influence, and income.
I entreat the reader to ask the Lord to teach you what is true and real. Ask Him to reveal truth to you, to show you who Jesus really is and what He did. Ask Him to reveal to you your own need and nature and to grant you faith to believe in Him alone.
It is frightening to question everything you believed, but Jesus is eternal, sovereign, and real, and in Him we find the answer to all our confusion and resolution for all our cognitive dissonance.
The REAL Jesus is not the Jesus of EGW or Adventism. The real Jesus will rescue you and redeem all the anxious past that you could not resolve.
Trust Him. †
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