Lesson 13: “The Triumph of God’s Love”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Life Assurance Ministries
Problems with this lesson:
- The lesson says the righteous will reflect Christ’s perfection during the time of trouble, but it back-pedals from EGWs statements about living without a mediator.
- The righteous are pictured spending the millennium in heaven getting all their questions answered.
- The teachers comments focus on refuting the biblical view of death and resurrection and downplay the glory of God tabernacling with man.
This last lesson of the series on The Great Controversy covers chapters 39–42. Author Mark Finley skates over the horrors of the Adventist time of trouble and tries to mitigate Ellen White’s many statements that the righteous will have to endure living through earth’s worst trouble without an intercessor.
Those who never read EGWs frightening statements may not notice Finley’s implications as he discusses enduring the “end of probation” and the time of trouble. Before we look at Finley’s whitewashed references to this subject, let’s look at a few of EGWs statements about it:
In that fearful time, after the close of Jesus’ mediation, the saints were living in the sight of a holy God without an intercessor. Every case was decided, every jewel numbered. Jesus tarried a moment in the outer apartment of the heavenly sanctuary, and the sins which had been confessed while He was in the most holy place were placed upon Satan, the originator of sin, who must suffer their punishment. —(Early Writings, 280.2)
When he leaves the sanctuary, darkness covers the inhabitants of the earth. In that fearful time the righteous must live in the sight of a holy God without an intercessor. —(The Great Controversy, 614.1).
“These are they which came out of great tribulation;” they have passed through the time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation; they have endured the anguish of the time of Jacob’s trouble; they have stood without an intercessor through the final outpouring of God’s judgments. But they have been delivered, for they have “washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” “In their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault” before God. —(The Great Controversy, 648.3)
With this essential piece of EGWs time of trouble scenario in mind, Finley’s statements on page 164 make more sense to us:
In the time of trouble, God’s people have a personal relationship with Jesus so deep that nothing can change it. Their consummate desire is to please Him in all things so that, through the work of the Holy Spirit, they will be as pure as He is pure. There was nothing in Christ’s heart that responded to Satan’s deceptions. We can reflect this aspect of His character, as well.
There are some who have misunderstood the concept of living through the time of trouble without a mediator. Jesus ceases His mediation in heaven’s sanctuary when everyone has made their final decision for or against Him…During the time of trouble, our faith strengthens and our longing for eternity increases so that our one desire is to live forever with Jesus.
First, Finley knows that EGWs teaching that the saved will have to live without a mediator is unbiblical. Yet the prophet stated this idea over and over. Instead of admitting she was wrong, Finley tries to reframe the idea to hide what she actually said. Yet the reality of a person’s being spiritually born again and permanently indwelled by the Holy Spirit is not part of Adventism’s soteriology.
Finley tries to hide the desperation of Adventists’ lack of security by saying their eternal fate will be determined by the end of the investigative judgment. Those who are saved will be personally “as pure as [Jesus] is pure.” Thus Finley can say that the saved “can reflect” Jesus’ character during this time because they will have become sinlessly perfect. Because they have overcome sin, Finley can extrapolate the conclusion that they will be growing in faith during the time of trouble because they have overcome sin and thus will have no desire to renounce the Sabbath under duress and persecution.
Yet for all of Finley’s attempts to reassure people that they won’t be alone because Jesus will be with them, still the Adventist belief that man is purely physical and must manage to keep the law perfectly—especially the Sabbath—remains. The notion that Jesus will be with them when the world falls apart remains theoretical. It is not personal and real but is an idea they can choose to believe.
What still counts is that they remain obedient to the law; the close of probation at the end of the investigative judgment will lock in people’s fate, and the righteous will remain righteous even though they have no assurance that they have passed the judgment. It is all “by faith”—choosing to try to obey in the face of fear and suffering with the intellectual knowledge that the prophet has said their fate has been determined.
Finley’s attempts to mitigate the fear generated by EGWs statements that they have to live without a mediator can’t really reassure Adventists because Adventists do not know the true gospel and thus cannot have the assurance of salvation. For them, it’s all about being obedient enough to make it.
Millennial confusion
The next end-time teaching in this set of lessons is the idea of the Adventist millennium. Within Christianity there are differing ideas of eschatology, but no Christian reads Revelation 20 and places the saved in heaven. Whatever Christians understand the millennium to be, they all believe that, as Revelation 20 states, it takes place on this earth.
Adventism, however, places it in heaven. Ellen White taught that when Jesus returns as portrayed in Revelation 19, he takes the righteous to heaven and binds Satan to 1,000 years of isolation on an empty, ruined earth. He summarizes Ellen’s teachings this way on page 166:
The imagery in Revelation 20:1–3 is symbolic. Satan is not literally bound with a chain and locked in a pit. For 1,000 years, he is confined to this desolate, depopulated earth, bound by the circumstances he himself has created…
Satan’s work of sin and destruction, along with the tremendous chaos preceding the Second Coming, has brought the earth back to a dark, disorganized mass like its condition at the beginning of Creation…
God deals with the sin problem so that it will never rise again (Nah. 1:9). There are three prime ways God does this. First, He reveals His limitless love, passionate desire, and relentless efforts to save all humanity. Second, He reveals His justice, fairness, and righteousness. Third, He allows the universe to see the ultimate results of sin and rebellion.
Notice that there is no mention of the cross in Adventism’s attempts to explain why sin “will never rise again”. Rather, God allows the universe to become privy to His decisions. He must convince his created beings that He is just, fair, and good as well as loving, and he answers all the questions the saved have about those who didn’t get saved.
In fact, in Wednesday’s lesson Finley describes the great controversy model this way:
During the millennium, the righteous will have an opportunity to observe firsthand God’s justice and love in how He has dealt with the sin problem. Who doesn’t have questions they would like to ask God about a lot of things? Now, during the millennium in heaven, the redeemed get to ask those questions…They will realize anew that everyone who is lost has missed out on heaven because of their own personal rejection of Christ. Only then does God bring final judgment—the second death, which is eternal destruction—on the lost.
According to Ellen White, God submits to our “need to know” before He will pass final judgment on the wicked. He needs everyone to be convinced that He is fair and Satan was a liar before He will act in justice. Essentially, God submits to our human reasoning and answers all our questions because we deserve to know. In fact, we MUST understand Him before He can act, or He would be in danger of affirming Satan’s accusations that He is a tyrant.
This is entirely upside-down and backwards. This idea makes our human free will and human reasoning the ultimate value in the universe. God’s goodness, then, is that He submits to our need. The Adventist god is not almighty and sovereign.
In fact, when Job was asking God why he suffered when he had been a righteous man, God responded:
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell [Me], if you know understanding,Who set its measurements? Since you know. Or who stretched the line on it?” —(Job 38:4-5 LSB)
And Paul says in Romans 9:18–20:
So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? WILL THE THING MOLDED SAY TO THE MOLDER, “WHY DID YOU MAKE ME LIKE THIS”? (Rom 9:18-20 LSB)
Not only is God sovereign, but this picture of the righteous in heaven with Satan bound on earth is not in Scripture. Revelation 20 pictures Christ reigning on earth with the righteous resurrected and reigning with Him while Satan is bound in “the abyss”. At the end of the millennium, the New Jerusalem comes out of heaven and is established on the new earth after the old heaven and earth are destroyed.
Significantly, the Friday’s lesson ends with three EGW quotes from The Great Controversy. Her focus of the eternal state in the new earth is primarily what the saved will be able to do. They will carry out “grand enterprises”; the will realize their “loftiest aspirations” and “highest ambitions”. They will experience “new truths” and enjoy conversation with “unfilled beings”. They will “gaze. Upon the glory of creation”, and they will be part of a universal “pulse of harmony and gladness” that “beats through the vast creation” as every tiny atom and world declares “that God is love”.
Revelation 21 and 22, however, reveal that the focus of the new earth is that the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb share one throne and dwell personally in the city with the redeemed. God’s people will live to serve Him, and they will literally “see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads” (Rev. 22:3, 4).
The Bible does not discuss what the saved will be able to do; rather, the eternal state focusses on the Lord God tabernacling with us! The Holy City, according to Revelation 21:17, is a very large cube—the ultimate realization of the only other cube in the Bible: the Most Holy Place in the temple. The New Jerusalem is where God Himself will live with us face to face!
The Lamb—the eternal sacrifice—will be on the throne, and the saved will be priests forever. All the shadows of the earthly temple will be realized with the Lamb and His kingdom of priests in the New Jerusalem.
In fact, there will be “no sanctuary in” the city, “for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its sanctuary” (Real 21:22).
Adventist heaven is a human destination; the real New Jerusalem is where our sovereign God makes His eternal home, forever united with His people redeemed not by their obedience to the law but by the full propitiation of Jesus’ blood shed for our sins.
Resurrection
Finally, the Teachers Comments make their main emphasis a reiteration of the Adventist teaching of death and resurrection. On page 173 and 174 we find this:
As a result of the influence of classical Greek philosophy on traditional Christianity, most Christians now believe in the immortality of the soul and in a spiritual, as opposed to a material, heaven. These Christians do not realize that these philosophical concepts create irreconcilable contradictions in their theology and lives. On the one hand, when thinking about death and heaven, traditional Christians think in Greek philosophical terms: at death, the immortal soul goes to a transcendent, timeless, spaceless realm, called either hell or heaven. On the other hand, these same Christians believe in the exceedingly clear biblical teaching of the resurrection of the body. However, they do not realize that the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body are simply incompatible and generate a lot of inconsistencies. If our souls are immortal and are in heaven with God, why resurrect the body? Under such circumstances, the resurrection of the body would imply that the soul would leave the spiritual realm of heaven and re- enter the material, temporal, and spatial sphere…
According to the Bible, at death our being is not divided. We do not survive as an ethereal soul, and that soul does not transition, fully conscious, to a state of transcendence beyond the created universe. When we die, our entire being dies. However, when Christ returns, He will resurrect our entire being and welcome us into His real, historical, temporal, and spatial kingdom.
Again, Scripture teaches that when we die, if we are believers we immediately enter the presence of the Lord. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (see 2 Corinthians 5:1–9). When we are resurrected, God brings with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him, and then the righteous are resurrected as He rejoins our immaterial spirits and our glorified bodies.
The great controversy model of the resurrection and the new earth suppresses the Bible’s glorious promises that God has made us to be joint heirs with Christ and that He Himself will live with us and be our God! The Bible reveals a future far more glorious than a restored Eden. Our eternity does not depend upon our managing to keep the law. Paul tells us this:
Behold, I tell you a mystery: we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed.
For this corruptible must put on the incorruptible, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this corruptible puts on the incorruptible, and this mortal puts on immortality, then will come about the word that is written, “DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP in victory. O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR VICTORY? O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING?”
Now the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! —(1Co 15:51-57 LSB)
Did you notice that? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law! It is not our means of salvation from sin; rather, it is what DRIVES sin!
Our eternal future hangs entirely upon our Lord Jesus Christ and His finished atonement! We are asked to believe Him, to trust in His finished work of atonement. Our God is sovereign and righteous, holy and just, and He will do right. He does not depend upon our understanding or our endorsement of His character.
God the Son took our sin and paid for it, and when we trust Him, we pass from death to life. The Father sends His Spirit to indwell us, and He adopt us as His own children.
You never have to feel afraid of the future again. Bring your fear and your sin to the Lord Jesus. Admit that you cannot please Him or obey Him and place your faith in the finished work of His death, His burial, and His resurrection.
Believe Him and be rescued forever from the hopelessness of the great controversy. Believe Jesus and be born again—and you will know the God who knew you in your mother’s womb and saved you for His own glory. Trust Jesus today, and 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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