Lesson 6: “More Testimonies About Jesus”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine
Problems with this lesson:
- This lesson morphs human depravity into refusing the “gift offered” to people.
- The lesson says Jesus died for our sins but misses the unbelief of those who believe in an unscriptural, fallible Jesus.
- Adventism’s “Sabbath” is reinforced in a lesson focussed on Jesus as Messiah.
This week’s lesson compiles passages from John 1, John 3, and John 5, 6, and 7 (along with a quick reference to Daniel 7:18) to make the case that Jesus was the promised Messiah who came to die for sins.
Each of these passages is taken from bigger contexts that reveal profoundly that the Lord Jesus IS God the Son, that He is inseparable from the Father and from the Trinity. Yet lifted out of a contextual reading of the book of John, these passages can be used to support Adventism’s claim that they believe in Jesus the Lamb of God, that they are Christian, and that the Adventist reader needs to remember to be humble and willing to be strong even when some Adventist beliefs are unpopular among the majority of Christians.
As an Adventist, I heard or read all of the passages used in this lesson, but I had no sense of Jesus’ identity as being one substance with the Father and the Spirit. I could affirm all of the passages this lesson uses from the gospel of John without ever realizing that Jesus could NOT have failed in His mission. I believed that these passages were true, yet I also believed that Jesus gave up some of His God-attributes when He took a human body. I believed He inherited Mary’s sinful gene pool and had to learn to obey God in spite of his inherited flesh tempting Him to sin.
I believed that even though He was “God” in some way, that He was not the same in power and attributes as the Father, and that He was my example of how to please and obey God and the law.
This lesson is not overtly teaching wrong things about Jesus—and that fact is what makes this lesson—and all those presented this quarter—so difficult to address. Once again, these out-of-context passages are making the points that Jesus came to die for sins, that John the Baptist knew he had to decrease while Jesus increased, and that Jesus would eventually send the Hoy Spirit. All these things are true.
Yet all these things are presented without examining the worldview and assumptions of the readers. Adventists reading this quarterly will not find the true presentation of who Jesus is that is the point of John’s gospel.
Even more, the lesson incorporates at least two powerful subliminal reinforcements that keep the reader anchored to their Adventism: the introduction of discussion about staying faithful to unpopular Adventist practices, and the inclusion of a mission story at the end of the week’s studies that tells the story of an “angel” teaching a group of Colombian prisoners the seventh-day Sabbath when the Adventist missionary had to miss his appointment with them.
This story is part of a regular feature in the Sabbath School quarterly. Called the “Inside Story”, this one-page column appears in every week’s lesson right after Friday’s conclusion. Each week the column tells a different Adventist mission story that is unrelated to the lesson—yet this week, when the lesson focusses especially on passages that confirm Jesus’ identity as God’s Son the Messiah, this miraculous Sabbath affirmation is tucked at the end to anchor the reader to the Adventist worldview.
The Adventist reader is never challenged by the contextual words of Scripture but is fenced in with careful wording, leading questions, and great-controversy-worldview stories. The revelation of the Lord Jesus is carefully framed within an Adventist context that keeps the reader seeing the Adventist fallible Jesus as the focus of the lessons.
Depravity Vs. Refusing “The Gift”
Sunday’s lesson takes us back to John 3. The first half of John 3 records Jesus’ nighttime meeting with Nicodemus in which He revealed that no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again. Furthermore, Jesus told the Pharisee that if one believes in Him, the one the Father sent, he would not be judged or condemned. Yet a person is “condemned already” (v. 18) if he has NOT believed on the Lord Jesus.
The lesson, of course, did not teach this revelation of man’s natural state of condemnation.
This week the lesson takes the reader to the last half of John 3 where we find John the Baptist’s last testimony about Jesus. The authors emphasize that John understood that he had to fade into the background as Jesus’ ministry grew because Jesus was greater than John the Baptist.
Surprisingly, the lesson actually mentions John the Baptist’s words about believing in the Son—yet it misses the significance of what John said. Here is how the lesson addresses the subject:
John 3:31–36 continues the comparison between Jesus and John, showing the superiority of the Messiah over His forerunner. With John’s testimony pointing toward Jesus, the idea of witness is again emphasized. Those who receive that testimony and believe in Jesus have eternal life. Those who do not receive Him remain under the wrath of God. That’s what the text says. God loves the world and sent His Son to redeem the world (John 3:16, 17). But those who refuse the gift offered them will have to pay the penalty for their own sins—eternal death.
Notice that the author stresses that those who do not believe “remain under the wrath of God. That’s what the text says.”
In spite of the author’s emphasis that the text states those who don’t believe “remain under the wrath of God”, it swerves and reinterprets those words. Before we look at how the lesson denatures John the Baptist’s words, let’s read what he says in the last four verses of John 3:
“He who has received His witness has set his seal to [this], that God is true.
“For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure.
“The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.
“He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”—John 3:33–36 LSB
Notice how the lesson morphed the impact of John’s words. First, it acknowledged that John said that the “wrath of God” remains on unbelievers. The verb “remains” is important: it is in the present tense. This passage is equating believing in the Son with obeying the Son. In other words, belief is the “work of God” (as Jesus said in John 6:29) that is all God asks of us in order to have eternal life. Those who do not believe are not obeying the Son. Furthermore, unbelievers will not “see life”, and God’s wrath currently resides on them.
Adventism, though, does not teach that humans are born under God’s wrath and condemnation. They teach that we are born with sinful tendencies and propensities, but they also teach that we are born able to choose to obey God or not. We are born, Adventists say, with “free will” and are completely free to choose Jesus or to reject Him.
Yet Jesus taught differently. Significantly, in the quote we read from the lesson, the author explained this “wrath of God” statement this way:
That’s what the text says. God loves the world and sent His Son to redeem the world (John 3:16, 17). But those who refuse the gift offered them will have to pay the penalty for their own sins—eternal death.
Notice the way the authors subtly changed the meaning of the text. First, they referred the reader back to John 3:16, 17 in Jesus’ discussion with Nicodemus. Here are John 3:16, 17:
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
“For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”—John 3:16, 17 LSB
Then the author “explains” the wrath of God remaining on a person by saying “those who refuse the gift offered them will have to pay the penalty for their own sins—eternal death.”
Saying that those who REFUSE the gift offered to them will have to “pay the penalty for their own sins” is very different from saying the wrath of God already remains on them.
Furthermore, the authors left out—again, as they did previously when discussing Jesus’ words with Nicodemus—verse 18 in which Jesus Himself states the condition of every person who does not believe:
“He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”—John 3:18 LSB
I know that Adventists will attempt to argue with me on this subject, but the words of Scripture are clear—and they do not agree with Adventism’s belief in the nature of man. Jesus Himself said that those who do NOT believe in the Lord Jesus “have been judged already” BECAUSE they have not believed.
This verse must be read at face value, and again the verb tenses are telling us the truth. Those who place their full weight of trust and belief in the Son and His sacrificial death for our sin are NOT judged. In fact, this state of being free from judgment contradicts the Adventist doctrine of the investigative judgment.
Adventism says everyone is subject to judgment for their sin, and it further says BELIEVERS are currently being judged in heaven by Jesus. EGW said professed believers are currently on probation pending the close of the investigative judgment—in other words, everyone is in a state of ongoing probation and judgment as Jesus evaluates how obedient each one is to the law and how faithful each one is to confess each single sin.
Yet John 3:18 says that those who have NOT believed in the name of the Son of God with the full weight of their faith and trust are “judged already”.
In other words, each person who has not believed is already under judgment. Jesus’ words set the stage for John the Baptist’s words that the wrath of God abides on the person who has not believed.
Each person, therefore, is born judged and condemned by God. Only by believing in the Son does one pass out of judgment into life. When we trust the Lord Jesus, we are justified and pass out of judgment because we have trusted Jesus’ own payment for our sin. We have trusted His having taken the judgment of God in our place!
All to say, the lesson does not teach what the Bible actually says about our state of being born judged already for sin, but it uses special Adventist sleight-of-hand to change the meaning of the words by suppressing the supportive texts and inserting the EGW-endorsed view that teaches we’re born with free will and we choose whether to be judged or not.
Consequently, even while the Adventist is being led through this powerful passage of Scripture, the actual context and words are hidden from the reader, and the Adventist worldview that denies depravity is reinforced.
God’s Word Doesn’t Abide In Them
Wednesday’s lesson uses multiple text fragments from John 5, Matthew 3 and 17, Mark 1, Luke 3, and also 2 Peter 1 to make the case that the Father testified about Jesus. The authors say that the Father sent Jesus, confirmed Jesus was His Son, and then confirmed that the Father would glorify Jesus as the Lamb of God who culminated His ministry on the cross. Yet the passage the lesson asks the reader to read from John 5:36–38 actually condemns the Adventist worldview based on EGWs great controversy. This condemnation, of course, is entirely overlooked:
“But the witness I have is greater than [the witness of] John; for the works which the Father has given Me to finish—the very works that I do–bear witness about Me, that the Father has sent Me. And the Father who sent Me, He has borne witness about Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time nor seen His form. And you do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent.”—John 5:36–38 LSB
This passage occurs after one of Jesus’ most profound revelations of who He is and what His relationship is with the Father and with humanity. For example, in John 5:24 Jesus said:
“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
This verse alone destroys the Adventist doctrine of salvation. Adventism teaches that no one can know whether or not they are saved until the Lord Jesus comes again. Jesus, they say, has to finish His “pre-advent judgment” in heaven, and no one can know he or she is saved before Jesus finishes His investigation.
Yet here Jesus said that when a person believes (and the Greek word carries a meaning of “trust” along with “belief”), that person passes at that moment from death to life. This teaching reveals that man has an immaterial spirit that is born dead, as Ephesians 2:1–3 states and as Jesus’ words in John 3:18 revealed, but when we place our faith in Jesus, we come to life spiritually and enter eternal life AT THAT MOMENT.
Adventism does not teach this view of human nature or of salvation, nor does it teach that the Lord Jesus saves eternally at the moment of belief. Yet this text alone establishes the truth about the Lord Jesus and His authority to give us eternal life at the moment of belief.
So when we come to John 5:36–38 in the lesson and we read Jesus saying,
“And the Father who sent Me, He has borne witness about Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time nor seen His form. And you do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent.”—John 5:38 LSB
In this passage we find Jesus’ own indictment of Adventism. Adventism does not believe in the Lord Jesus whom the Father revealed. It does not believe in an infallible Jesus who could not have failed in His mission. Adventism does not believe in a Jesus who never gave up one iota of God’s attributes or nature. Adventism believes in a Jesus who gave up His omnipresence when He took a body, and that belief is heresy. If Jesus gave up His omnipresence, He was not God.
And here we read Jesus saying that if a person does not believe in the real Jesus whom the Father revealed, that person does NOT have God’s word abiding in him. If a person does not believe in the real Jesus whom the Father sent, that person does not know God and does not have God’s word in him.
Unpopular Aspects of Faith
Finally, this lesson subtly reminds the Adventist reader that they are unique and peculiar. At the end of Tuesday’s lesson after discussing how the Jews became divided after His feeding the 5,000 and He taught that they must eat His flesh and drink His blood. Here is what He said:
So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven, not as the fathers ate and died. He who eats this bread will live forever.”—John 6:53–58 LSB
The lesson discussed the fact that many of those following Jesus left when He taught them that He was the Bread from heaven, but His disciples stayed, recognizing that He was “the Holy One of God” (Jn. 6:69).
Then, with no real explanation of the significance of Jesus being the fulfillment of the symbol of the manna given to Israel nor of the significance of His body and blood for salvation, the lesson abruptly ends with these thought questions:
What can we learn from this story about the fact that the majority is usually wrong? Why must we remember this, especially with the aspects of our faith that are unpopular with the majority—even the majority of Christians?
Nothing about the Sabbath is mentioned, but in an Adventist Sabbath School class, what would be the most likely subjects for class members to discuss? The seventh-day Sabbath, of course, and possibly the health message—although veganism is increasingly accepted in the culture.
Then, at the end of the week’s lesson, the weekly “Inside Story” column relates the story of an Adventist carpenter who taught Bible classes in a Columbian prison every Friday. One week he couldn’t attend his class because of another appointment, and the following week when he came, 38 inmates came to him and asked where the man was who had taken his place. The carpenter new nothing of another man, and the prison guard, who checked visitors in and out, said no one had come. Yet the prisoners all said a tall, well-dressed man came and spoke “about the seventh-day Sabbath” and that he knew his Bible very well.
The carpenter was convinced: an angel had come that day and had spoken to the prisoners. Now, six years later, “nearly all 38 inmates have given their hearts to Jesus in baptism”. Of course, this reference is to Adventist baptism.
There is no explanation as to how there could have been a prison meeting with 38 inmates and a visiting teacher without the guards knowing about it. In fact, this story is in the genre of “miracle stories” that Adventism has always used to support its unique messages. Furthermore, the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses also have similar miracle stories that support their unique messages.
Yet this story is published in the quarterly as a true account, and it is used to reinforce Adventist doctrines and to bind the consciences of the Adventist readers. In other words, even though the week’s lesson is vague and superficially about Jesus the Messiah, the contextual depth of Jesus’ identity and work is obscured, and the Adventist identity and uniqueness is promoted IN SPITE of the lesson’s overt focus on Jesus. Even more, the Adventist Sabbath is presented as a biblical teaching delivered by an angel from God in miraculous circumstances.
Once again the real Lord Jesus is obscured and Adventism is propped up and endorsed. The subtlety of the methods used to keep the reader committed to Adventism is not a mistake.
Once again I plead with the every Adventist: ask the Lord to show you what is real and true. Stop reading Adventist publications and begin reading the Bible on its own terms, contextually.
Begin by reading the gospel of John, one chapter—or even a half chapter—at a time, asking the Lord to show you what He wants you to know. Ask Him to show you who Jesus really is and what He really came to do. And ask Him to show you your true need. Ask Him to show you your need of a Savior and to grant you repentance.
Bring your sin to His cross and thank Him for taking your penalty, for taking God’s wrath for you so you can be made alive in Him. Trust His finished atonement: His death, His burial, and His resurrection on the third day, and believe that He has done everything necessary for your justification and salvation.
Believe Jesus—the real Jesus who took your sin—and 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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