Lesson 7: “The Problem of Evil”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine
Problems with this lesson:
- Adventist understandings of evil depend upon EGW’s great controversy paradigm.
- Satan is not blamed for human evil, and God is not protecting creatures’ free will.
- Jesus’ death was not to defeat Satan nor was it a step toward a hope he could not see.
This week’s lesson attempts to explain the existence and apparent flourishing of evil from an Adventist, great controversy perspective. The underlying worldview established by Ellen White’s great controversy vision has redefined reality so that Adventists perceive creatures’ free will to be the greatest “value” in the universe. This view of reality also requires that God limit His own superhuman power to allow His creatures’ to freely practice their decision-making without manipulation from a sovereign God.
Also intrinsic in this view is the understanding that humans are not depraved, dead in sin by nature but rather are able to freely choose to obey or to disobey God. They do not believe humans are born literally spiritually dead, but they believe that humans are merely born with physical, genetic predispositions to sins. Further, they believe that Satan is originally and ultimately responsible for human sin, and they also believe that Jesus’ death was for the purpose of defeating Satan and launching a long-range plan for ultimately undoing evil. They believe that Jesus could not see the future hope of ultimate victory and resolution but that He died on the cross without seeing “through the portals of the tomb”.
Significantly, the Adventist premise for the existence of evil and for God’s gentlemanly permission for sinners to carry out their free will to the utmost is established in this lesson by quotations from Ellen White. This argument assumes that God can’t expect His creatures to love Him unless they are perfectly free to choose Him or not. The Adventist God, therefore, restrains His own power to punish or otherwise intervene to stop evil so that everyone will see that He is fair, and all His creatures love Him because they want to—not because they have to.
Some EGW Quotes to Set the Stage
Thursday’s lesson, for example, quotes this to explain that Satan’s deceptions could only be broken by love, not by force. In other words, humans and other creatures are responsible for exposing Satan’s evil. God patiently waits for enough people to obey Him out of love so that the watching universe will be convinced by this evidence that Satan is really bad:
“The earth was dark through misapprehension of God. That the gloomy shadows might be lightened, that the world might be brought back to God, Satan’s deceptive power was to be broken. This could not be done by force. The exercise of force is contrary to the principles of God’s government; He desires only the service of love; and love cannot be commanded; it cannot be won by force or authority. Only by love is love awakened. To know God is to love Him; His character must be manifested in contrast to the character of Satan.”—Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 22.
Friday’s lesson emphasizes the point with this quotation from Patriarchs and Prophets:
“Even when he was cast out of heaven, Infinite Wisdom did not destroy Satan. Since only the service of love can be acceptable to God, the allegiance of His creatures must rest upon a conviction of His justice and benevolence. The inhabitants of heaven and of the worlds, being unprepared to comprehend the nature or consequences of sin, could not then have seen the justice of God in the destruction of Satan. Had he been immediately blotted out of existence, some would have served God from fear rather than from love.…
“Satan’s rebellion was to be a lesson to the universe through all coming ages—a perpetual testimony to the nature of sin and its terrible results. The working out of Satan’s rule, its effects upon both men and angels, would show what must be the fruit of setting aside the divine authority. It would testify that with the existence of God’s government is bound up the well-being of all the creatures He has made. Thus the history of this terrible experiment of rebellion was to be a perpetual safeguard to all holy beings, to prevent them from being deceived as to the nature of transgression, to save them from committing sin, and suffering its penalty.”—Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 42, 43.
From these quotations alone we see that the great controversy paradigm places God in a position of self-limitation in order to place humans on center stage with Satan as the major antagonist and Jesus as his protagonist. God could not destroy Satan, she argues, or the rest of the created worlds (which are nowhere mentioned except in her writings) would doubt God’s fairness. God had to allow Satan to play out the full extent of his evil, and we humans had to be completely free to follow Satan or to follow Jesus.
Ellen has established a completely anti-biblical view of reality. She has made humanity and its supposed “free will” the central focus, and God is the servant of the creatures as He allows us to either vindicate His reputation or confirm Satan’s deceptions about God.
Ellen’s Scenario Is A Deception
Ellen has led the whole Seventh-day Adventist organization into a matrix that denies biblical reality. As we read in the quote above from Patriarchs and Prophets, she has created a belief that Satan’s rebellion against God is itself the “perpetual testimony” about the dreadfulness of sin.
Did you catch that? She teaches that Satan’s evil deeds are the “perpetual”—that is ETERNAL—evidence that sin is bad! Satan is the proof that evil hurts the universe! She makes Adventists believe that people will reject evil when they see how evil Satan is—and God has to allow Satan to create havoc and destruction in order to get the our attention so we notice that God is the good guy who is not manipulating us but is lovingly allowing Satan to do whatever he wants in an effort to prove to US that we can’t trust the devil! After all, when Satan makes our lives miserable through deceit and abuse, then we’ll resist him and see that God is a much better choice!
Do you see how backwards that is?
Furthermore, the quote above actually states that the flourishing of evil and rebellion in the universe is a “terrible experiment” that God has allowed in order to see how it would play out. She actually says that Satan’s being allowed to rebel and wreak havoc will be “a perpetual safeguard to all holy beings, to prevent them from being deceived” and that it will save people “from committing sin”!
Think about that! EGW teaches that Satan’s wicked ways will be the ultimate safety net to prevent creatures from sinning in the long run! We’ll finally get fed up with the suffering Satan is causing, and we’ll decide that we can’t trust Satan and we’ll turn away from him. As we do, we’ll remember that God was so loving that He allowed Satan to hurt us and allowed us to hurt each other so we would see for ourselves how dreadful Satan’s deceptions are. We would, God hopes, ultimately see that God is the good guy who would never wipe out Satan—or us—for the sake of preserving life or flourishing.
In other words, all suffering is our own fault. Because we let ourselves be deceived and because we gave in to Satan’s deceptions, we, like Adam and Eve, would be part of proving to the watching universe that ultimately there’s no good future with Satan. God is benevolent and kind, and when we get tired enough of suffering that we look for an option, then we’ll realize that God has been there on the sidelines all along, just waiting for us to acknowledge Him and turn to Him and begin obeying His law.
In this way EGW makes Satan, the evil one, actually responsible for convicting us sinners humans that sin is the wrong choice. We finally see that Satan is nothing but trouble, and we begin turning to God instead. Satan is the one who shows us that sin will destroy us.
Furthermore, she even says that Satan’s feely-practiced evil is the “thing” that keeps unfilled beings throughout the universe from sinning. Watching Satan is what will convince sentient beings that God is really fair and good.
Thus EGW makes Satan the agent of repentance in an immediate sense.
Satan the Cause of our Sin
Furthermore, by grounding the Adventist worldview in a supposed pre-creation history that says Lucifer rebelled against God when God supposedly exalted Jesus to be His Son, EGW makes Satan the originator of sin. She says that God sent him to earth because of his rebellion, and there Satan was the cause of Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden.
Thus Adventists believe that Satan is the one responsible for causing human sin. They do not learn that Adam is held responsible nor that we are all born dead in sin because of Adam’s sin. In fact, they deny that we are born depraved because of Adam. Instead, they insist that people are born with free will to choose to obey God or to believe Satan—and that God is patiently waiting for us to figure it out and vindicate His reputation.
So we see that in the Adventist great controversy framework, Satan is responsible for human sin in the beginning, and he is the agent of convincing us that evil is awful and that we need to turn to God. Further, Satan’s evil is actually the safeguard against sin continuing for eternity. As EGW said, this “terrible experiment of rebellion” will be the thing that keeps all creatures from returning to sin in eternity because we will see how bad it was. Satan’s evil plan will ultimately convince us all that he was bad and God is good!
Jesus’ Death was about Satan, Not Us
The quote above from The Desire of Ages said this: “The earth was dark through misapprehension of God. That the gloomy shadows might be lightened, that the world might be brought back to God, Satan’s deceptive power was to be broken. This could not be done by force.…To know God is to love Him; His character must be manifested in contrast to the character of Satan.”
How, you might ask, was God’s character manifested in contrast to Satan according to EGW?
Sunday’s lesson provides the answer: enter Jesus.
As Adventists most of us had no real understanding of exactly why Jesus died for our sins. We certainly didn’t learn that His death completely paid for all our sins, past, present, and future, and we certainly didn’t learn that His death fulfilled the law so that, when we believe in Him, we literally pass from death to life.
The great controversy explains the Adventist view of Jesus’ death. It was about defeating Satan—not about rescuing US! Here is what Sunday’s lesson says:
On the cross, Jesus Himself voiced the question: “ ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’ ” (Matt. 27:46, NKJV). Here especially we see that God Himself is touched by evil, an amazing truth powerfully highlighted in the suffering and death of Christ on the cross, where all the evil of the world fell upon Him.
But even here there is hope. What Christ did on the cross defeated the source of evil, Satan, and will eventually undo evil entirely. Jesus quoted those words from Psalm 22:1, and the rest of the psalm ends in triumph.
On the cross, Jesus looked forward to a hope that, at the time, He could not see.
Think through what these paragraphs say. First, it says that “God Himself is touched by evil.” To be sure, the Lord Jesus took our sins into Himself by imputation, but this substitutionary sacrifice is never spoken of as God “being touched by evil”. Rather, God is holy, righteous, and eternal, and He cannot be in the presence of evil. Evil cannot exist in the presence of a holy God—and this fact was clearly seen from the earliest days of Israel’s identity as they constructed the tabernacle with a thick veil to shut out the shekinah glory from the presence of the sinful Israelites who would have died in God’s presence.
Second, what happened when Jesus hung on the cross bearing all our sin is that God was pouring out His wrath on His Son as our Substitute. It wasn’t evil that was causing God to suffer; it was God’s wrath against sin that was causing the suffering of the Son and the Father. In fact, read what Paul says about that redemptive event:
…God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their transgressions against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.—2 Corinthians 5:19 LSB
Evil Didn’t “Touch” God
The Father was IN Christ as the Lord Jesus hung on the cross with our imputed sin. As the Father poured out His wrath on Jesus, causing Jesus to cry out, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” the Father was IN HIM. He was not truly separated from the Son, but the Lord Jesus was unable to perceive the presence of His Father because He was taking and enduring the Father’s wrath against our sin!
Furthermore, the Father was not counting our transgressions against us as Jesus hung there because He was counting them against the Son! The Father and the Son were both involved, and both were suffering. Jesus was suffering as our Substitute, enduring the full wrath of God in our place, and the Father was imputing our sins to Jesus as He poured out His wrath on His own Son! This was not evil that was touching God—this was God’s love for His creatures that was at work. God’s wrath was causing untold pain within the Trinity, but the Trinity was enduring this unspeakable suffering so that we who believe can be credited with Jesus’ own personal righteousness and pass from death to life!
Yet notice that quote above again: the author says that what Christ did on the cross “defeated the source of evil, Satan, and will eventually undo evil entirely.” It further says that Jesus “looked forward to a hope” that he could not see!
Jesus Didn’t Die to Defeat Satan
Jesus did not die on the cross to defeat Satan. He died on the cross to take the punishment for our sin! He came and rescued us. He became the perfect human who could be the spotless Lamb of God. He was the only one who could take God’s wrath for our sin because He qualified two ways: He was God our Creator and had the right to take responsibility for us, and He took flesh so that He could shed unless human blood to pay for human sin.
He didn’t deal with Satan on the cross; He dealt with God on our behalf. To be sure, Colossians 2:14, 15 say that He disarmed and humiliated Satan:
Having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us which was hostile to us, He also has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them in Him.—Colossians 2:14, 15 LSB
In other words, when Jesus fulfilled the law by taking its death sentence in His own flesh to the cross, He fulfilled the law’s decrees against mankind. He took the death sentence! By nailing the law to the cross in His own flesh as the Living Law Himself, he removed Satan’s weapon against God’s people. He disarmed Satan because never again could Satan legitimately accuse God’s people of breaking the law. Now God’s people relate to God on the basis of Jesus’ blood, and Satan is disarmed and publicly humiliated.
Jesus did not come to show how to keep the law and to restore its authority over mankind; He came to fulfill it and to place His blood as the authority that provides the answer to sin. What Jesus did on the cross was not about Satan. He died for US, answering to God on our behalf.
EGW said,
Even doubts assailed the dying Son of God. He could not see through the portals of the tomb. Bright hope did not present to Him His coming forth from the tomb a conqueror and His Father’s acceptance of His sacrifice.—Testimonies for the Church vol. 2, p. 209.3
This is heresy. Jesus knew what He was doing, and He knew the outcome. He did not die looking forward to a hope he could not see! He KNEW what He was doing, why He was doing it, and what the outcome would be. Look at these passages:
[F]ixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.—Hebrews 12:2 LSB
“And they will mock Him and spit on Him, and flog Him and kill [Him], and three days later He will rise again.”—Mark 10:34 LSB
Jesus absolutely knew why He was dying and that He would rise on the third day. He knew that He was redeeming me to God!
“And I say to you, everyone who confesses Me before men, the Son of Man will confess him also before the angels of God.”—Luke 12:8 LSB
Ellen White has created a false worldview in which Satan is the major player. He is the cause of sin and the one responsible for making humans sin. He is the one whose evil is the cause of men and other supposed beings turning to God because they see the evidence that Satan is a deceiver. She makes Satan the ultimate bearer of human sin, the one who will be punished for causing it.
Even more egregiously, she makes Jesus’ death about answering Satan! She does not teach that Jesus came to fully atone for our sin for the sake of rescuing us and of becoming our new human head instead of Adam. She places us, instead, within a paradigm where we have to respond to and answer Satan so that we can vindicate God’s reputation. She makes us the victims of Satan and the ones who ultimately prove him wrong, and she makes Jesus the means of silencing Satan by keeping the law and showing us how we, too, can keep the law.
The Great Controversy Doesn’t Rescue Us
In EGWs great controversy, the paradigm is completely different. Our role is to participate in our own salvation by choosing to keep the law and to obey God because we want to help Jesus prove that Satan is bad. We walk the right path, follow Jesus’ way-showing, and increasingly keep the law more perfectly. Thus we demonstrate that we are safe to save.
The Bible, however, does not include Satan in our story. In the Bible sin begins with Adam and Eve, and Adam is the one in whom we all die. We are by nature dead not because of Satan but because of Adam. As our human head of the race, he failed and sentenced us all to eternal death in hm.
Jesus, though, comes as our Creator wrapped in humanity. He relates directly to us and comes not to show us how to obey but literally to rescue us. He takes our sin in Himself and suffers God’s wrath against our sin. He is our Substitute and God poured out His wrath for our sin on Him. Jesus perfectly fulfills the law and becomes our complete atonement for sin. He sheds His blood to inaugurate a new covenant, placing those of us who trust Him into HIM.
He gives us His life, and His personal righteousness is credited to us because His blood has paid for our sin. He takes responsibility for us and redeems and reconciles us to God. He doesn’t show us how to be good enough to be saved; He literally grants us eternal life the moment we trust Him.
The great controversy does not explain evil or Satan biblically. Rather Adventism is a religion built with Satan at the core of its “story of salvation”. Adventism teaches that Jesus came to defeat Satan and vindicate the law, and we help vindicate God by obeying that law that Jesus honored.
This is not a biblical model. Jesus has replaced the law as our Living Law and spiritual authority. When we trust Him we pass from death to life, and Satan cannot touch us because we are born of God and adopted by the Father.
Evil is in the world by God’s permission, but its power over us is broken when we trust Jesus. We receive His life, and we are forever changed.
If you have not trusted the Lord Jesus and His completed atonement for your sin, come to Him today. Satan is not part of your story; you are dealing directly with God. Jesus’ blood is all you need, and believe that He has already done everything necessary for your salvation. Trust Him, and you will pass from death to life today! †
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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