Lesson 2: “The Central Issue: Love or Selfishness?”
COLLEEN TINKER |
Problems with this lesson:
- This lesson assumes that by loving the community, “the church” will cooperate “with Christ in proving Satan’s charges wrong”.
- Jesus’ commands to love are presented as yielding answers to Satan’s accusations.
- The destruction of Jerusalem/the temple is presented as the shift from Israel to “New Israel” and to Christ’s ministry in heaven which will yield the end of the great controversy.
This week’s lesson, built on chapters one and two of The Great Controversy by EGW, attempts to establish “love” as the driving principle of the supposed cosmic conflict between Christ and Satan. The lesson pointed out a fact I had forgotten: The Great Controversy book begins with the destruction of Jerusalem. Ellen White then moves through the centuries of the age of the church, attempting to show that Satan has been at work trying to destroy God’s reputation while the true believers are working with Christ to vindicate Him.
In reality, Ellen’s account makes much of Satan, leaving Adventists believing that the focus of their spiritual lives is to expose Satan as a liar. While most Christians believe Satan is a defeated foe and that they are protected from his direct attacks because of Jesus’ shed blood and His resurrection, Adventists believe Satan lurks ready to beguile them and to thwart their attempts to please God.
For example, Saturday’s introductory lesson closes with this quotation:
In the destruction of Jerusalem, we discover a foreshadowing of Satan’s strategy both to deceive and destroy God’s people at the end time. Jesus’ instruction in Matthew 24 clearly outlines last-day events in the context of Jerusalem’s fall.
We will study Satan’s twofold strategy both to deceive and destroy God’s people. What the evil one fails to accomplish through persecution, he hopes to achieve through compromise. God is never caught by surprise, and even in the most challenging times He preserves His people.
Notice that the lesson declares that the goal of this week’s lesson is to have the readers STUDY Satan’s strategy to deceive and destroy them! In fact, Adventists believe the main point of their spiritual lives is to avoid being led astray by Satan directly. They believe that he specifically targets them because of their commitment to Adventism. The point of their Bible study, therefore, is not primarily to learn what God has done in Jesus but to study Satan and to thwart him.
Adventism is actually a religion focussed on defeating Satan rather than worshipping the Lord Jesus. In fact, Adventists do not believe that Satan is already defeated because of Jesus’ completed atonement. Instead, they believe the atonement is BEING completed in heaven, and their own obedience is what will finally rescue God’s reputation and reveal Satan’s deception.
Cooperating with Christ by Loving People
The thought questions at the ends of each day’s lesson reveal the paradigm in which Adventists understand these topics. For example, the questions at the ends of Tuesday, Wednesday’s, and Thursday’s lesson ask:
What can we learn from the early church that could help us, the end-time church?
What roles does the church have in cooperating with Christ in proving Satan’s charges wrong?
How do we learn to die to self so that we, too, can manifest this same selfless spirit [as the early Christians demonstrated in ministering during the great epidemic of AD 260]?
Author Mark Finley follows EGWs model in assuming the Adventist organization is the “end-time church” which has been raised up to restore Bible truths which had been lost to Christianity over the ages. While these “inside convictions” are not overtly expressed, they become obvious in the assumptions underlying the questions which the readers are supposed to discuss. In the preceding questions, for example, we see the unquestioned comparison of Adventism, the “end-time church” with the very earliest apostolic church.
This is a false comparison from the beginning because Adventism is not part of the body of Christ which is founded in apostolic doctrines. Adventism is a false church rooted in the Arian heresy and in an unscriptural view of inspiration which sees EGW as being inspired exactly as were the Bible writers. Adventists believe that the Bible, like EGW herself, has errors which they must edit and interpret. Thus they do not believe in biblical inerrancy but see Scripture as being as difficult and unreliable as is their own prophetess.
Further, the second question above assumes that they, “the church”, have a role in disproving Satan’s lies—and they do this by “cooperating with Christ”. The false assumption behind this question is that Satan has leveled cosmic charges against God’s character, and the universe is unsure whether or not Satan is correct. This assumption is false. The Bible records NO such accusation against God; this is an assumption from EGW. God’s character is not in question, and Jesus disarmed the deceiver by taking the death penalty for sin and breaking its curse on the third day. Satan’s weapon of the law’s demands is now fulfilled in the Lord Jesus; the deceiver can no longer accuse believers on the basis of disobedience to the law. His primary weapon has been removed!
Moreover, the true church doesn’t “cooperate with Christ” to expose Satan.
Moreover, the true church doesn’t “cooperate with Christ” to expose Satan. Rather, when a person believes in the Lord Jesus and His finished work, he or she is “hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3), and we are placed permanently “in Christ”. He seals us permanently with His Spirit, and we become His living agents in a dark world. He works in and through us; we are not here cooperating with a deity to rescue his reputation. Rather we bear His presence into the world. Satan tries to hide in the darkness, but the light of Christ reveals him. He may try to run, but he can’t hide. It is the Lord Jesus who reveals reality. We participate in His work; we aren’t cooperating with an agenda to win a non-existent great controversy.
Finally, that third question above asks how the Adventist reader can learn “to die to self” so they, too, can live self-sacrificing lives to show the world they have truth. The reality is that no one can learn to live that way. Altruism will never change the world although, by the grace of God, it may relieve suffering temporarily.
The only way to “learn” to die to self is to understand what Jesus has done through His shed blood. It is to trust ourselves and our sin to Him and throw ourselves on the mercy of God expressed at the cross. It is only by believing and trusting that the Lord Jesus has done everything necessary for all our sins—past, present, and future—and giving up our efforts to show God we deserve to be saved that we find peace. We die to self when we admit our sin and trust in Jesus alone—no acts of obedience contribute to our salvation. Jesus alone saves us.
From Jerusalem to the Heavenly Sanctuary
Finally, the Teachers Comments steer the focus of this lesson from the destruction of Jerusalem to the “heavenly sanctuary”. Once again Gheorghe Razmerita from the Adventist seminary in the Philippines has told the teachers how to help their Adventist students understand that attention shifted from the temple in Jerusalem to the antitypical heavenly sanctuary where Jesus is supposedly now carrying out His work of intercession and investigation.
For example, this is part of his explanation found on pages 29, 30 in the Teachers Quarterly:
[W]hen the second temple was destroyed, in a.d. 70, Christians did not lose hope. On the contrary, they understood that the earthly sanctuary fulfilled its mission of pointing to Jesus, to His sacrifice, and to His ministry of salvation in the real heavenly sanctuary above. Type met antitype; symbol met reality. After Jesus’ incarnation, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension, the great controversy now was focused on the heavenly sanctuary. The Epistle to the Hebrews discusses extensively the meaning of these changes. Thus, Matthew 24 and the destruction of the second temple, the Epistle to the Hebrews and its focus on the heavenly sanctuary are extremely important to the Adventist understanding of the great controversy and to the entirety of Adventist theology in general.
It was precisely this complex understanding of the destruction of the temple that inspired the apostolic and post-apostolic Christians during the first several centuries, and the writings of Ellen White in the nineteenth century, with an understanding of the church’s identity and mission. Having survived the destruction of the temple, the apostolic Christians shifted their focus from the temple to the heavenly sanctuary.
This explanation hangs on the EGW-established teaching that there is a literal, physical sanctuary in heaven where Jesus is currently applying His blood to confessed sins of believers as they pray for forgiveness. Especially horrifying is Adventism’s use of the book of Hebrews to “prove” their “sanctuary service”, investigative judgment doctrine. In context, Hebrews destroys this ongoing heavenly atonement.
Yet this author claims that Hebrews is “extremely important” to the great controversy specifically and Adventist theology in general! This is biblical appropriation! It is misusing God’s word, using it out of context to deceive the members into a false gospel!
In reality, when Jesus died and the curtain in the temple ripped open, making the Most Holy Place accessible to all people on the basis of Jesus’ blood alone, the purpose of the temple was finished. Jesus had fulfilled all the shadows of the law (see Hebrews 10:1), and He Himself replaced every physical shadow that the earthly temple represented.
In fact, Jerusalem’s destruction was God’s eternal plan. Jews and gentiles who trusted Jesus were supposed to leave the temple and Judaism and follow Jesus where there was NO visible religion except the sharing of the Lord’s Supper! Jerusalem was not destroyed primarily because of Israel’s apostasy but because Judaism was fulfilled, and now true worship is of Jesus ALONE. Here is what Hebrews 13:9–14 says:
Do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings; for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, through which those who were so occupied were not benefited. We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no authority to eat. For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest [as an offering] for sin, are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate. So, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach. For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking [the one] to come.—(Hebrews 13:9-14 LSB)
God made certain that the post-cross world was a GENTILE world, not a Jewish one. The church is not the “new Israel” but a completely new creation made alive through faith in the Lord Jesus by the grace of God who sent the only One who could fulfill the shadows of the law and the temple and usher in the new covenant in His blood.
The law which dictated all the temple services was fulfilled in the Lord Jesus. Now those who believe and trust in Him alone are reconciled directly to God, sealed with His Spirit, and eternally secure. Their ultimate resurrection and eternity with Christ are guaranteed!
The Adventist “heavenly sanctuary” service is an invention of Ellen White, and the great controversy is a great deception. Jesus has already disarmed Satan, and his destruction is already assured. The book of Hebrews is not a book establishing Adventist doctrine but the book which, perhaps more completely than any other, dismantles the deception of the great controversy and plants us in the finished work of Jesus alone.
If you are unsure what to believe—if you feel bound by the law, by Sabbath, by the “what if” of wondering about the investigative judgment—I challenge you to read the book of Hebrews from start to finish. Ask the Lord to show you what He wants you to understand, and let the word of God—not EGW or the Sabbath School lesson—teach you what is true.
Jesus alone is all we need. Believe Him today. He will free you from the confusion of Adventist doctrine. †
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.
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