Lesson 5: “Faith Against All Odds”
COLLEEN TINKER |
Problems With This Lesson:
- This lesson shows where Adventists get the idea that every promise in Scripture is for everyone.
- The Teachers Comments discuss how to be on God’s side in the great controversy; the cross is not mentioned.
- The lesson emphasizes Adventism’s adherence to sola Scriptura but leaves out the verses emphasizing Christ’s propitiation from the context of Romans 3.
This week’s lesson is based on chapters 7–11 of The Great Controversy. The background for this lesson is again the EGW renderings of the Reformation and the Reformers, and the major emphasis is basing one’s life on Scripture alone.
The premise sounds good on the surface, but again, the invisible veil of Ellen White lies over the writers and the Adventist readers; if one doesn’t know Adventism’s dependence on EGW, it would be hard to find the problems in much of this lesson. Yet the Adventist commitment to tearing down the Catholic tradition of interpreting Scripture by the authority of the magisterium becomes increasingly obvious.
At the same time, the Adventist blindness to what the Bible REALLY says, to their use of Scripture out of context, is hidden within the text.
Is This Promise for Me?
Author Mark Finley uses a quotation from Ellen White’s The Ministry of Healing, p. 122, in Sunday’s lesson. He leads into it by asserting that the Reformers considered the Bible to be “the foundation…and the essence of their teaching.” He says, “They treasured every word.”
After leading with this establishment of the Reformers’ complete confidence in Scripture, Finley quotes this from EGW:
“So with all the promises of God’s word. In them He is speaking to us individually, speaking as directly as if we could listen to His voice. It is in these promises that Christ communicates to us His grace and power. They are leaves from that tree which is ‘for the healing of the nations.’ Revelation 22:2. Received, assimilated, they are to be the strength of the character, the inspiration and sustenance of the life. Nothing else can have such healing power. Nothing besides can impart the courage and faith which give vital energy to the whole being.”—Ellen G. White,—The Ministry of Healing, p. 122.
This quote answered a question I have had for years: where did my mother find the authority to tell me, as a junior high girl, that every promise God made to anybody in the Bible would apply to me as well? If He said something to one person, He said it to anyone else who needed the promise. I could simply “Ask, believe, and claim” any promise God made!
In fact, this idea was appropriated by the late Glenn Coon who, in the sixties and seventies, used to give talks to Adventist audiences from his book, “The ABCs of Prayer”. Ask God, believe you will receive it, and claim the promise, he assured thousands of Adventists.
In fact, he used a horrifying example of this ABC concept when he said that if a man was having trouble with lusting after a woman who was not his wife, he simply had to claim God’s statement to Satan as a promise the man could claim: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman…” (Genesis 3:15).
The man was supposed to ask God to put enmity into his heart toward the forbidden woman. Then the man was to believe that God would give it, and then claim the promise and act on it.
I have no idea how many men claimed this promise for themselves or how that might have worked out for them, but I know that even as a twelve-year-old I had trouble understanding how God’s promises to just anyone in the Bible were automatically for me if I wanted them.
Now I see that this idea came from the prophet herself!
I want to scream: “Context, everyone!”
We can’t read God’s promises and yank them out of context and claim them for ourselves if we think we need them. God’s word must always be read in context, understanding first of all what the passage would have meant to the first audience.
For example, when God says, “and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their evil ways, then I will listen from heaven, I will forgive their sin, and I will heal their land,”—(2 Chronicles 7:14 LSB), we cannot automatically apply that promise to our own nation. God made that promise to Israel with whom he was in a covenant relationship: if they obeyed, He would bless them; if they disobeyed, they would suffer consequences including droughts and sickness and exile.
We cannot claim Mosaic covenant promises for our modern nations because we are not in national covenants with God. Believers, however, have new covenant promises that God will provide for them all that they need if they seek His kingdom first (Mt. 6). But we cannot claim out-of-context promises for ourselves. We have to understand context; we cannot appropriate things for ourselves that God did not promise to us in our context.
He has definitely made promises to His people, but we have to know that we are His, that we are true believers, and then we can claim His promises to us in the context of a believer.
Sola Scriptura?
This lesson, however, demonstrates again that Adventism proof-texts Scripture even while claiming that all of Scripture must be believed, and Scripture must be all we believe.
Ironically, the Teachers Comments say this on page 68:
The sola scriptura principle is directly and inseparably related to the establishment of another principle, sola gratia/sola fide. When Martin Luther read the Bible without the filter of tradition, he discovered in it the true character of God and His true way of salvation. In Scripture, the Protestants discovered the central message that God wanted to communicate to humanity in the midst of the great controversy: our God is a God of love and righteousness, not a tyrant. Even when we rebelled against Him, He died in our place. He offered us the gift of His righteousness, so that we might be restored to His kingdom when we accept this gift by faith.
Adventists read Scripture through the tradition of EGW, and they don’t even recognize the fact! Even more, this quote reveals that their great controversy filter is firmly in place. They are actually applying the great controversy paradigm to the reformers—and this claim is clearly false! They didn’t have a great controversy worldview; they had a biblical worldview.
Furthermore, the above quote makes the case that the basic message of the Reformation was that “God is a God of love and righteousness not a tyrant.”
No, the basic message of the Reformation was the declaration of justification by faith in Christ alone. That message was important because man could not be made right with God by any means other than belief in the finished work of the Lord Jesus dying on the cross, being buried, and rising on the third day according to Scripture. Yet this message of the Lord Jesus completely atoning for sin is not included in the summary statement of God’s love and righteousness being the central focus of the great controversy.
Both the great controversy paradigm and the central message of God’s not being a tyrant are deceptive twists that change the message of Scripture.
A subtle but profound illustration of this Adventist refusal to truly accept all of Scripture in context but reading it through the nearly-invisible lens of Ellen White is what author Finley did with Romans 3:23–31.
Wednesday’s lesson opens with the command to read Ephesians 2:8, 9; Romans 3:23, 24, and Romans 6:23 and find out what these verses “teach about the plan of salvation”. We look here specifically at the Romans 3 passage. Verses 23, 24 says this:
…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus;—(Romans 3:23-24 LSB)
We learn here that redemption is in Christ Jesus, but we do not learn the means of that redemption. How does one access it? What did He do?
Then Thursday’s lesson opens with the command to read Romans 3:27–31 along with two other passages, and the question is: “What do these verses teach us about salvation through Christ’s righteousness alone?” Here are verses 27–31:
Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. For we maintain that a man 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 indeed God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that faith, is one. Do we then abolish the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law.—(Romans 3:27-31 LSB)
Here we see another passage that Adventists use to make the point that they must keep the law. It reinforces that justification is by faith and not works, but they read this to say that faith does not abolish the law. Of course, there is no discussion of the fact that the law is fulfilled!
But the most egregious thing is that verses 25 and 26 are left out entirely:
…whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith, for a demonstration of His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.—(Romans 3:25-26 LSB)
The heart of the passage was simply OMITTED!! This is the passage that explains the object of our faith and the mechanism by which God’s grace is extended to us! This is the passage that explains that God answered the only existential question. It wasn’t, “Is God fair? Did He give a law too hard to keep?” No! Rather, the question was, “Why hasn’t God killed the sinful race?”
The answer? God always intended that He would be the One who took the penalty for human sin. He passed over the sins prior to the cross because He was coming in the person of the Son to be the Justifier of all who believe. He would take their sin and die their death and fully propitiate for human sin.
He would show that He was just because all that sin was fully punished. It was fully paid for and dealt with—and He was the Justifier because He Himself died and fully paid for their sin!
This is the passage that contains the message of what Jesus did and why He came—and in typical Adventist fashion, this lesson totally OMITTED it as they use the surrounding verses to do lip service to God’s grace and law-keeping!
Adventism does not believe in sola Scriptura; it does not believe the Bible is inerrant, and it believes that its verses can be taken out of context in any way necessary to support its unbiblical doctrines. It subtly but deliberately eclipses the once-for-all sufficient work of Jesus in shedding His blood for our personal sin.
Adventism does not love the blood of Jesus, and the great controversy paradigm is not structured around the cross of Christ.
Once again, the claims of Adventism are deceptive and untrue. It is not sola Scriptura but retains Ellen White as an interpretive lens for Scripture, and in spite of its grace language, it does not teach the finished atonement of the Lord Jesus.
Once again, the Lord extends to you the invitation to confess your sins and lay them at the foot of His cross. Trust His shed blood that paid for them and cleanses you from all unrighteousness. Trust His death and burial and His resurrection on the third day that demonstrated that His blood had been the full payment for your sin!
When you trust Jesus, you will receive His life and the assurance that you are eternally secure. When you believe Him, you will pass from death to life. †
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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