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 9: “Mission To the Powerful”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- This lesson betrays Adventism’s infatuation with proselytizing rich and famous people and their specific attempts to make converts among them.
- The author again manipulates the readers by misinterpreting Scripture and pressuring readers to beguile powerful people into Adventism.
- The lesson portrays Jesus as our example of good evangelism instead of as God the Son revealing Himself as the Messiah.
The fact that the Sabbath School department felt the need to devote an entire week to evangelizing the rich and famous reveals that, just as they have devoted separate weeks to evangelizing the poor, the needy, and every category of people they see as distinct, they see the powerful people of society as being one strata of the culture that needs special attention.
This division of cultural categories as the lessons attempt to energize members and to teach them to hone in on demographically-specific proselytizing shows us that Adventism does not know the true gospel or understand Christian evangelism. Rather Adventism is selling a product: its worldview and loyalty to its culture. Of course, marketing a product requires strategies that appeal to target audiences, and Adventism sees itself as offering the right approach to life to all categories of people.
It’s hard to market the same product across the the demographic boundaries of world cultures—but Adventism is trying to do just that. They are not only a religion that grooms prospective members by meeting their felt needs for good health and belonging, but they are a religion that secretly desires the financial support of the wealthy and the publicity of having well-known, important members.
Christianity, in contrast, is not a product. It is not a worldview that must be sold. Christianity is entirely the message that the guilt and spiritual desperation that is the common lot of all humanity has an answer: the blood of Jesus shed on the cross.
Significantly, these lessons never focus on the cross. Instead, they focus on being attractive and “caring”, on getting the public to like and trust them, and then giving them the offering of becoming part of the Sabbath-keeping remnant, the religion that prides itself on having the truth (as overtly stated on page 114 in the thought question at the end of the day’s lesson).
This lesson even uses the story of Nicodemus to demonstrate how Jesus “witness[ed] to the learned”. Tuesday’s lesson includes this paragraph:
When Nicodemus came to Jesus, he tried to maintain the façade, the status quo. But God knew his heart. Similarly, God knows the hearts and needs of all the rich and powerful, whatever their background. Nicodemus came to Jesus because Jesus’ teachings had convicted him. His pride kept him from openly confessing Jesus Christ as Lord, but that night changed him forever. Even after his conviction that Jesus was sent of God, he still did not openly acknowledge that he was a follower of Jesus Christ.
Importantly, the author reveals his Adventist misunderstanding of this story. He states that “Jesus’ teachings had convicted him.” John 3:2, however, reveals that it was not Jesus’ teachings that convicted Nicodemus. He said,
“Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him” (John 3:2).
Notice that it was Jesus’ SIGNS, not His teachings, that were compelling. In John’s gospel we learn that Jesus’ signs were the miracles He did in order to demonstrate that He was, indeed, the Messiah. The Old Testament prophecies foretold the signs that the Messiah would do when He came; He would make the lame walk, make the dumb to speak and the deaf to hear; He would open blind eyes and raise the dead to life. He would do what only God could do: bring about the reversal of nature for the glory of God!
Nicodemus knew the Old Testament; he was in no doubt about the Source of Jesus’ power. He even said that he and his colleagues knew that no one could do the signs He did “unless God is with him”.
In the Old Testament God’s prophets did miracles, and Moses had told Israel that a prophet like him was coming to whom they would need to listen. That Prophet was the Lord Jesus. In fact, three chapters after the story of Nicodemus, we find Jesus feeding the 5,000 and see the Jews’ reaction to His “bread from heaven”. They recognized that he was the Prophet Moses had foretold, but most of them did not want to believe Him.
In John 3, as Jesus speaks to Nicodemus, we learn that a great many of Israel’s scholars and religious leaders understood that Jesus’ miracles were signs of who He was, but they were unwilling to believe the implications of His signs. Nicodemus sneaked under cover of night to talk to Jesus because he was convinced that Jesus had to be the One the prophecies foretold—and he had to learn a hard lesson.
Jesus proceeded to tell him what he should have already known on the basis of Ezekiel 36: even Israelites have to be born again, being given new hearts, new spirits, and the Spirit of God in them. The law and their Jewish heritage was not all that were required of them. They couldn’t receive God’s unconditional, eternal promises until they trusted God’s own provision for their redemption.
The lesson, however, uses the story of Nicodemus to impel Adventists to deliberately seek to influence the rich and famous to embrace Adventism.
It was not Jesus’ teachings that compelled Nicodemus, and it is not Adventist teachings that fulfill the needs of either the rich or the poor. It is the finished work of Jesus on the cross, where He took the sins of the world and suffered the wrath of God to pay the price for human sin, that people need. It is literally the blood of Jesus that people need, not medical advice, lifestyle change, and the Sabbath!
Predestined to Adoption
There are many more twisted details in this lesson that could be addressed, but one demands a comment.
In Sunday’s lesson the author writes this:
As Seventh-day Adventists, we believe in what is known as “unlimited atonement.” This means that, in contrast to some Christians, we believe that Christ’s death was for all humanity, not just a special group of those predestined by God for salvation. Because God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4, NKJV), Jesus offered Himself as a sacrifice “for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:2, NKJV). That’s why everyone was chosen “in Him before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4, NKJV), even if not everyone chooses Him in return. That’s why, too, we find accounts in the Bible of all sorts of people being reached for God.
Yes. The 1 Timothy quote and the 1 John quote in the above paragraph are true. Every single thing the Bible says is true, and where we cannot reconcile seemingly opposing statements, we have to hold those things in tension because from God’s perspective, they are not opposed. If we try to resolve the tension in Scripture, we alter the gospel.
The Ephesians quote above is quoted OUT of context, and the author has inserted an application that is not in the text. Here is the Ephesians 1:4 in context:
Blessed [be] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly [places] in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved (Eph. 1:3-6).
Importantly, this passage is not being written to the world at large; it is addressed specifically to BELIEVERS, to a church in which the members have trusted Jesus and have been born again. Paul is NOT saying “everyone” was chosen in Him before the creation of the world. He is telling these believers that God chose them—“us”, as Paul puts it, including himself among the believers—in Christ before the foundation of the world. Furthermore, He predestined “us” (again believers) to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ.
This is only one example of the way the author of these lessons uses Scripture illegitimately, yanking it out of context and assigning it a meaning it does not have.
We cannot explain the mystery (the unrevealed details) of God’s election and predestination of believers in Christ. We also cannot try to resolve the tension of election with the fact that Jesus desires all men to come to a knowledge of the truth. We have to believe both of these statements, knowing that both are true, and one without the other is untrue.
Adventism must support its doctrines by proof-texting out-of-context passages and making them say what they do not say.
In short, this lesson is one more egregious misuse of God’s word. The truth of the gospel, the reality of God’s sovereign, eternal love and of our own responsibility to make decisions that have eternal value are absolutely true.
The new birth changes us when we hear the gospel of our salvation and believe. We literally receive new hearts and new spirits, and we pass from death to life (Jn. 5:24).
Adventism decimates the incredible reality of God’s redemption, and this lesson is just one more reductionist attempt to guilt Adventists into recruiting converts as they try to sell the great controversy worldview.
I urge you, reader, to open God’s word and to read it in context, beginning with Galatians, and ask God to teach you what He wants you to know. †
- May 4–10, 2024 - May 2, 2024
- We Got Mail - May 2, 2024
- April 27–May 3, 2024 - April 25, 2024