Lesson 1: “Signs That Point the Way”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Life Assurance Ministries
Problems with this lesson:
- This lesson misses the point that John’s “signs” revealed Jesus’ identity as God, not merely “divine”
- The lesson explains away Jesus’ relationship to the Sabbath and His identity as one with God
- The “will”is stressed as the activator of belief, ignoring Jesus’ promise of passing from death to life.
This quarter the Sabbath School lessons are a series focussing on the gospel of John. Instead of going systematically through the book, the author is focusing on certain ideas and using the book of John to support the points the author is making.
For example, the first weeks’ lessons address “Signs that Point the Way” without specifically explaining what that “Way” is nor what the reader is supposed to understand from these signs. The second weeks continues with the theme of “signs” with a lesson entitled “Signs of Divinity”. Again, the point of John’s signs is not explained. In fact, the signs John recounts in His gospel were all signs given for the same purpose: revealing that Jesus is God.
Adventists will say that Jesus is “fully God”, but when they say this, they do not mean what the Bible means when Jesus is revealed as God. Adventism does not explain that Jesus took on Himself the personal name of God: “I Am”—Yahweh. Adventism does not teach that, as Paul said,
For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells bodily—Colossians 2:9, LSB.
Adventism’s divine Jesus is said to be God’s Son, but Adventism denies that Jesus has all the attributes of God. He does not share substance with the Father and the Spirit but surrendered His omnipresence forever when He took a body. The Adventist Jesus also gave up His God-power when He came to earth and took on humanity’s sinful nature. Here are some of Ellen White’s statements about Jesus—and notice the dates of these quotations. The latest one is 1902—years after The Desire of Ages was written—the book said to be her book affirming the orthodox nature of Christ.
What love! What amazing condescension! The King of glory proposed to humble himself to fallen humanity! He would place his feet in Adam’s steps. He would take man’s fallen nature and engage to cope with the strong foe who triumphed over Adam. He would overcome Satan, and in thus doing he would open the way for the redemption of those who would believe on him from the disgrace of Adam’s failure and fall.—Review and Herald, February 24, 1874
Christ, in the wilderness of temptation, stood in Adam’s place to bear the test he failed to endure. Here Christ overcame in the sinner’s behalf, four thousand years after Adam turned his back upon the light of his home. Separated from the presence of God, the human family had been departing every successive generation, farther from the original purity, wisdom, and knowledge which Adam possessed in Eden. Christ bore the sins and infirmities of the race as they existed when he came to the earth to help man. In behalf of the race, with the weaknesses of fallen man upon him, he was to stand the temptations of Satan upon all points wherewith man would be assailed.—Review and Herald, July 28, 1874
He took upon His sinless nature our sinful nature, that He might know how to succor those that are tempted.—Letter 67, 1902 MM 181
It’s important to understand that, underlying not only this lesson but this entire quarter’s lessons dealing with John’s gospel, is the Adventist, EGW-inspired “Jesus” This lesson is not looking at John’s gospel contextually and seeing how John revealed that Jesus is ONE with the Father, not merely a separate being who shares a name, a will, and a purpose with the Father and the Spirit.
The quotations above show us that the Adventist Jesus is not almighty God but is a diminutive version, a demi-god who was weakened by human flesh and inherited tendencies to sin who showed us that we, like He, can be good and obey the law.
We have to understand that the foundation underneath these lessons is NOT the belief in the classic Christian Trinity, the Three In One, the One God expressed in three Persons who share substance. Rather, this lesson is teaching the gospel of John in such a way that the Ellen White “godhead” is supported. For example, look at these quotes:
There are three living persons of the heavenly trio; in the name of these three great powers—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—those who receive Christ by living faith are baptized, and these powers will co-operate with the obedient subjects of heaven in their efforts to live the new life in Christ.—Special Testimonies, Series B, 7:62, 63. (1905).
We are to co-operate with the three highest powers in heaven,—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,—and these powers will work through us, making us workers together with God.—Special Testimonies, Series B, 7:51. (1905).
Notice that as late as 1905 Ellen White was identifying the Trinity as separate beings, the “three persons”, the “heavenly trio”, the “three highest powers in heaven”. These descriptions are not identifying the One God of Israel whom the Lord Jesus affirmed. In Mark 12:29 Jesus, when asked what the greatest commandment was, quoted the famed “Shema” of Deuteronomy 6:4:
Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD’”—Mark 12;29
Jesus, eternally God the Son, took a human body and a human nature onto Himself without ever giving up any degree of His divine nature and identity. He did not divest Himself of any of His attributes of God while on earth, and He never gave up His omnipresence. He was one Person who had two natures, but this singular miracle did not mean He had two consciousnesses nor experiences. He was one Person with one consciousness, and that is who He is for eternity. He eternally identified with us, His creatures, in order to pay the penalty for our sin.
This reality of who Jesus is must be understood before we launch into examining these lessons this quarter. The book of John was written to show us that Jesus is not merely a part of a heavenly trio or a privately understood “godhead”. He Is God, and He has every single attribute of God that the Father has and that the Holy Spirit has. They share substance. Only understanding this difference between what Adventism teaches and what the Bible reveals about Jesus will enable us to see how deceitful and blasphemous these lessons are.
They suppress the revelation of Jesus’ identity, the nature of God, and the nature of our own spiritual death which is reversed through belief in the Lord Jesus!
Wine At the Wedding
The lesson leads (and thus the quarter opens) with the account of Jesus’ transforming the jars of water used for ritual washings into wine at the wedding at Cana. The story is found in John 2:1–11, and verse 11 tells us:
Jesus did this in Cana of Galilee as the beginning of [His] signs, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.—John 2:11, LSB
John identified this miracle as a sign—the first of Jesus’ signs, in fact. These signs were for the purpose of identifying the Lord Jesus as the prophesied Messiah—and for revealing that He was not just a redeemer sent to provide political freedom but that He was actually God. This miracle revealed Jesus to be the Creator, the One who had power over nature. He transformed water into wine just as He had turned the Nile River’s water into blood during the days preceding God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt.
Only God, the Creator who had authority over the water and the land, could change the nature of the water. Monday’s lesson, however, misses the opportunity to make this strong statement. Instead the author remarks that this miracle echoed the plague of blood in Egypt, and thus “John was pointing to Jesus as our Deliverer.”
Well, yes—but “our Deliverer” did not have to be understood as Almighty God Himself. In fact, the author further says this:
Seeing Jesus perform the miracle of changing the water into wine provided evidence in favor of the disciples’ decision to follow Jesus. How could it not have been a powerful sign pointing to Him as being someone from God? (They probably were not yet ready to understand that He was God.)
This speculative analysis misses the entire point of the account. Jesus was not merely “someone from God”, and it was not merely “evidence in favor of the disciples’ decision to follow Jesus.” First, Jesus CALLED His disciples; it wasn’t merely a volitional decision. Second, the disciples weren’t drawn to “someone from God”. Jesus didn’t perform His miracles to convince people to follow Him. He was calling people to BELIEVE. He was revealing He Was God.
Finally, Monday’s lesson as well as the Teachers Comments include specific teaching that Jesus changed the water into UNFERMENTED grape juice. In fact, the author turns to EGW for proof of this interpretation:
What did the master of the feast think of the unfermented wine that Jesus provided?…
The Greek term oinos is used both for fresh and fermented grape juice (see The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Dictionary, p. 1177). Ellen G. White states that the juice produced by the miracle was not alcoholic (see “At the Marriage Feast,” The Desire of Ages, p. 149). No doubt, those who knew what happened were astonished at what had taken place.
This interpretation is entirely Ellen White’s. The Bible does NOT teach that Jesus created grape juice but rather wine. In fact, wine, not grape juice, is in view whenever the Bible uses the word “wine”. Without refrigeration, fermentation was the only way to preserve grape juice. Ellen White, however, taught Adventists that fermented wine is a sin, that Jesus would never have created nor drunk it, much less taught others that wine is not a sin.
God the Son and the Sabbath
Interestingly, Monday’s lesson stresses:
It is important to recognize that miracles, in and of themselves, did not prove that Jesus was the Messiah. Others have performed miracles. Some were true prophets, others false. Miracles reveal only the existence of the supernatural; they don’t, by themselves, mean that God must be the One doing them. (Satan can perform “miracles,” if by the word “miracles” we mean supernatural acts.)
The day’s lesson asks the reader what other criteria should they look for before assuming a miracle is from God? Significantly, the lesson never answers that question. The author actually leaves room for the reader to hold Jesus’ miracles at arms’ length, demanding other evidence to believe they were from God. Yet Jesus’ signs in the gospel of John were not acts that had to be analyzed for validity. Jesus was systematically doing acts that the Old Testament had said the Messiah would do. In fact, many of His miracles were acts that never occurred in the Old Testament. Only God could do what Jesus did, and even the Pharisees knew this to be true.
The account in John 5 of Jesus healing the paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda is the focus of Tuesday’s, Wednesday’s, and Thursday’s lessons. Yet some of the most seminal passages are ignored or barely dealt with. First, Thursdays lesson asks why Jesus was persecuted for His action on the Sabbath:
And for this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath. But He answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.” For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.—John 5:16–18
The author dismisses this passage this way:
John 5:18 can be disturbing because it seems to say that Jesus was breaking the Sabbath. However, a closer look at John 5:16–18 shows that Jesus argues that His “work” on the Sabbath is in line with His relationship to His Father. God does not stop sustaining the universe on the Sabbath. Consequently, Jesus’ Sabbath activity was part of His claim to divinity. The religious leaders persecuted Him on the basis of supposed Sabbath-breaking and a claim to equality to God.
Yet Jesus was saying that He and the Father were completely united; both of them were working “until now”. They were sustaining all of creation; they were working for man’s redemption. Jesus was saying two things: He was one with God—not merely “acting in harmony” with Him as the lesson states—and God is exempt from the Sabbath!
Jesus actually was “breaking the Sabbath”, as John stated. He commanded the paralytic to get up and carry his mat and go home. The Old Testament stated that if an Israelite carried a load on the Sabbath, he was breaking the sacred day. Jesus told that man to do what God had decreed was illegal for an Israelite to do on the Sabbath. Jesus was not only healing on the Sabbath, but He was asking the man to break the rules for Sabbath-keeping!
Furthermore, Jesus did this shocking thing by claiming to be God!
Yet Jesus was without sin as He broke the Sabbath. He was showing that the shadow of the Sabbath had always been pointing to HIM. He was revealing Himself as the One who would give them rest, who would heal all their diseases, who would restore them and forgive them and fulfill the Sabbath!
The Sabbath was made to be a shadow of Jesus, and He was demonstrating that He, indeed, was the One who was expected. He was the Christ whom the prophets foretold. He alone had the authority to do these acts on the Sabbath as He filled the day with the reality of the meaning its rest foreshadowed.
He could do these things because God is exempt from the Sabbath; the Lord Jesus IS its substance. Paul says it this way:
Therefore, no one is to judge you in food and drink, or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day—things which are [only] a shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.—Colossians 2:16, 17 LSB
Will or Belief?
Finally, John 5 contains one of the Bible’s central passages—spoken by the Lord Jesus Himself—that defines how to be saved. The authors, of course, do not address this passage although it is included in the passage Adventists are asked to read on Thursday. Here is the passage:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”—John 5:24 LSB
Jesus clearly states that believing in Him is the one thing necessary to pass “out of death into life”. This statement addresses the fact that eternal life is not merely a promise for some future time when the body is resurrected but is something our immaterial spirits, our identities, enter the moment we believe. Jesus distinguished between physical life and death and spiritual life and death. (In fact, in the next five verses in John 5 He explains that there are two kinds of coming to life: spiritual life when the spiritually dead hear His voice, and physical which will happen in the future when all “in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth”.)
This promise from the Lord Jesus Himself is precious to believers; we KNOW that when we bring our sin to Him in repentance and believe that He has born it and fully paid for it with His blood, believing that He rose from death because His blood was sufficient to pay for our sin and thereby broke our curse of death—when we trust Him and His atonement fully, we pass at that moment from death to life!
Yet Friday’s lesson ends the week with more discouraging Ellen White quote. He is part of what we read on Friday:
The Saviour is bending over the purchase of His blood, saying with inexpressible tenderness and pity, ‘Wilt thou be made whole?’ He bids you arise in health and peace. Do not wait to feel that you are made whole. Believe His word, and it will be fulfilled. Put your will on the side of Christ. Will to serve Him, and in acting upon His word you will receive strength.—The Desire of Ages, p. 203
This unctuous statement from EGW is exactly opposite of Jesus’ own words: whoever hears Him and believes Him who sent Him HAS eternal life and DOES NOT COME into judgment. This person HAS PASSED out of death into life! Jesus’ words are not a promise of something that will happen in the future if the person manages to keep the Sabbath, obey the law, and develop the character of Christ perfectly. No!
Ellen White always buries the hope of the gospel in discouragement. She insists that we have to align our wills with God’s will. We have to make sure we do not doubt, do not waver, do not grieve the Holy Spirit, do not give into indulging the flesh. We have to persist in willing to do God’s will. We have to defeat sin by willing ourselves to be good. She even hangs the fulfillment of God’s own word and promises on OUR belief and our will to obey!
Ellen’s message is anti-gospel. It is anti-Christ. It is what Paul calls “another gospel” which is really not a gospel at all!
Ellen hangs our very salvation upon US. Ultimately, we determine our eternal future by our commitment to be good and to imitate Christ.
Yet the Lord Jesus says that what He asks of us is our belief in Him. He asks us to believe in the Father who sent Him, and He asks us to see that our salvation is the work of the One God—the Trinity who has done everything necessary for our salvation.
As we begin looking at the gospel of John this quarter—the quarter leading up to Christmas when we celebrate the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ who came to die for us and to break the curse of our sin—I ask you again: have you believed?
Have you admitted that you are a sinner? Have you admitted that you cannot align your will with God with any consistency, that your good intentions are simply not strong enough for you to be good?
I challenge you: this quarter read through the gospel of John. Read it in context, from beginning to end. In fact, get a notebook and copy the gospel of John, asking the Lord to teach you the truth about Himself. Ask Him to reveal to you what He wants you to know.
Bring your doubts and your sin to Him and tell Him you need a Savior. Lay your burdens at the foot of His cross in repentance, and trust the One who died for you! Believe that He took God’s wrath for your sin, that He died and was buried, and that, according to Scripture, He rose on the third day and shattered death! He fulfilled the law, and by His blood He has opened a new, living way to the Father.
He asks you to come—TODAY. Do not harden your heart if you hear His voice today.
Believe in His finished work, and you will pass today 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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Colleen , Thank you for this well written article
It is not so apparent how false a teaching is because it can sound so right …but actually it is just “almost right “ and truly deception
Comparing Adventism’s false teachings to the Bible like you do in these lessons really shows what’s false and at the same time helps people really see the truth !
I find I understand the Bible better when listening also to ex Calvinist’s explain how words and their definitions and the gospel have been twisted by Calvinist teachings ..Same with other “ isms” in Christianity
I almost got taken in by some Adventist and Calvinist teachings in the past few years
I am an ex new ager – read A Course in miracles for years and do not want to be deceived anymore !