Lesson 3: “Rough Start”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
As an Adventist, did you believe you were “spiritual Israel”? Why were those stories about Israel in Egypt in the Bible—were they warnings so you would know how to obey better than they did? And what was Pharaoh supposed to represent to you? Was he an evil power persecuting Israel like the pope would be an evil power persecuting Sabbath keepers one day?
Today we are going to look at how Adventism compares Pharaoh with the pope. We’ll see how the great controversy worldview appropriates the stories of Moses and Pharaoh and Israel and makes them types of end-time Sabbath-keepers fighting for religious freedom. And we’ll also see how Adventism has made an idol of the Sabbath. Adventism has missed the point of Sabbath rest in Christ and has made a day an idol defining what they call “true worship” In reality, Adventism practices a false worship based on an idolatrous loyalty to TIME.
Lesson author Jiri Moskala has a style of writing that makes it hard to identify his Adventist assumptions that, nevertheless, shape his lessons. Overall, as I study this third lesson of this quarter’s series, I see this author as particularly clever at disguising Adventism behind academic analysis culminating in moral lessons that miss the point of God’s redemption from sin. The Exodus stories are stripped of their seminal power revealing God’s sovereignty and man’s sin. Instead, the Adventist readers are reassured that they are God’s people who can expect to receive God’s blessing when they commit to growing in obedience and Adventist faithfulness.
Subtle Equation of Pharaoh and the Pope
An example of Moskala’s nod to Adventism’s Great Controversy motif without openly acknowledging it occurs in Sunday’s lesson. The lesson focusses on Pharaoh telling Moses, in Exodus 5:1, 2, that He doesn’t know Yahweh, and he’s not going to let Israel go. The author says that Egypt has become a symbol for systems that not only deny but fight against God.
Almost no one would disagree with this comparison, but he takes it further. In a reference that almost no Christian would understand and which even most Adventists might miss, he says this:
No wonder many saw this same attitude, millennia later, in the French Revolution (see also Isa. 30:1 3 and Rev. 11:8). Pharaoh thought he was a god or the son of a god—a broad reference to a belief in one’s own supreme power, strength, and intelligence.
Absolutely no explanation is given as to how the French Revolution was a display of godless Egyptian unbelief. Significantly, though, he follows this paragraph with a paragraph from The Great Controversy in which Ellen White declared that Pharaoh was the biblical monarch who “most boldly denied the existence of the living Gd and resisted His commands.” She concludes with this declaration:
“This is atheism, and the nation represented by Egypt would give voice to a similar denial of the claims of the living God and would manifest a like spirit of unbelief and defiance.”—Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 269.
Although no direct connection is ever made between the French Revolution and Ellen White’s Great Controversy, the reader has Ellen White reinforced as the best source for understanding biblical dynamics, and her “voice” is heard right after the suggestion that the French Revolution exemplified Pharaoh-like godlessness.
In fact, it is Ellen White who wrote in The Great Controversy that the French Revolution was the culmination of France’s suppression of the Scriptures for centuries under papal authority. She overtly states that John the Revelator pointed to the horrible things that would happen in France because of the pope’s domination of that country, and she identified the suppression of Scripture with the killing of the two witnesses of Revelation 11, saying that the Old and New Testaments are those witnesses. She also identified this period of suppression in France, culminating with the Revolution, as the termination of Adventism’s supposed 2,300-day prophecy.
Of course, Moskala makes not the slightest hint of any of this Adventist muddle which hides under a slicked-up exterior, but true Adventists KNOW what he’s referencing when he mentions that “many” saw a Pharaoh-like attitude in the French Revolution. He was covertly but deliberately making a direct reference to Adventist eschatology and prophecy, indirectly referencing Adventism’s only unique doctrine, the 2,300-days and the investigative judgment and all that includes: the necessity of keeping the seventh-day Sabbath, the belief that the pope has established a false Sabbath on Sunday, and the fear of the Sunday-law which will usher in permission for the public to hunt and kill Sabbath-keepers.
Of course, Moskala with his honed academic precision doesn’t say any of this out loud, but the inside reality nevertheless comes out in his side-handed reference to the French Revolution cemented subconsciously by the deliberate quote from Adventism’s prophet.
The unsuspecting Adventist reader will feel “familiar” and at home—perhaps not fully understanding what all is being suggested, but soothed by the familiar sound of Ellen’s cadence delivered by the dean of the premier Adventist seminary.
Divine Action Reestablishes Relationship
Tuesday’s lesson is entitled “The Divine ‘I’”. Moskala refers to “poor Moses” who was berated by Pharaoh and also by Israel. He turns to God in frustration, and God tells him what He will do. The lesson says this:
The Lord now solemnly proclaims that He will do four great things for Israel because He is their living Lord: (1) “ ‘I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians;’ ” (2) “ ‘I will free you from being slaves to them;’ ” (3) “ ‘I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment;’ ” and (4) “ ‘I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God’ ” (Exod. 6:6, 7, NIV).
These four divine actions secure and reestablish His relationship with His people.
To be sure, God Himself did do everything that had to be done in order to bring Israel out of Egypt. They did not have to please Him, pray a certain way, or earn His favor. He protected them and delivered them in spite of their grumbling and lack of faith. God Himself delivered Israel because He had promised Abraham that He would bring them out of slavery. He was keeping His own word, and Israel’s bad attitude and sinfulness did not stop God.
Yet notice what Moskala says: “These four divine actions secure and reestablish His relationship with His people.”
God’s delivering Israel was not about securing a relationship with Israel, nor was it “reestablishing” a relationship. Israel had had no conscious relationship with God as a nation prior to the Exodus. Although God had continuously been guarding and growing Israel in Egypt, they had not been interacting with Yahweh as a nation—at least there is no record in Scripture of Israel’s having a relationship with God during their 400 years of slavery. To be sure, the individuals did know about the patriarchs and Yahweh’s promises—at least to some extent.
Yet to say that these four acts of God was His means of reestablishing a relationship with them misses the point.
God was delivering His people exactly as He had promised that He would, and He Himself did everything necessary to move them out of Egypt and bring them to Himself at Sinai, forming them as a nation, giving them a law that governed their civil and religious life, and revealing Himself and preparing the lineage of the Messiah.
It could be said that God was ESTABLISHING a relationship with His people, but that understanding is different from the picture Moskala paints with his words.
God was sovereign over Israel. They literally had no choice about whether or not He would bring them out of Egypt. They did have the ability to refuse to trust Him individually and in this way miss out on His promised blessings for those who believed and obeyed, but they couldn’t stop God.
God’s relationship with Israel wasn’t something that satisfied a need in God. Rather His formation of the nation was for His purpose of redeeming the world through the human death of His Son whom He was preparing to send to the world to be born of Mary and to sit on David’s throne. God was preparing the national and family structures that would support His Son when the time came to send Him.
Although the author states the four things God declared He would do, the overarching sovereignty of God and His faithfulness to Himself is eclipsed by the final sentence:
God offers these gifts for free, out of love; He did it then, to them, and He does it now, for us, as well.
To be sure, salvation is free—but even for Israel, God’s salvation is not “free grace”. Israel had to offer blood sacrifices to atone for their sin, and today, on this side of the cross we receive God’s grace only when we trust and receive the blood of Jesus which paid for human sin.
God’s salvation of Israel was even then founded in the blood of the eternal covenant that would be shed by the Lord Jesus—the One who was the goal of all that God was doing for His nation.
Moskala misses that God’s deliverance of Israel was not the result of a kind heart that couldn’t live without His people’s love. Rather it was the consequence of His eternal righteous love that sacrificially formed and nurtured a recalcitrant nation for the purpose of sending His Son to the world in a recognizable lineage—a Son who would take a human body and shed human blood to pay for human sin.
His point that we can always bring our complaints to God—but only “in faith and trust”—misses the point that only when we trust the Son do we have a relationship that can receive His comfort and provision with faith and trust.
Ending with Ellen
Friday’s lesson is literally a quotation from Patriarchs and Prophets about Pharaoh intensifying the Israelite’s work and abusively treating the Hebrew overseers who couldn’t help the Israelites do all the extra work.
The quote is innocuous enough, being a typical Ellen White embellishment of a biblical account, but the Discussion Questions at the end and the Teachers Notes immediately following reveal the Adventist worldview that underlies this week’s lessons.
The third Discussion Question says this:
What would you say to someone who declares, “I do not know the Lord”? However, suppose the person said it, not in a way of defiance, but as a simple fact about his or her life? What could you do to help him or her know the Lord and explain to the person why it’s important that he or she do so?
I realize that almost no Adventist would be able to talk to someone about what it means to know the Lord nor even to explain why it is important. Adventists do not understand that they are literally dead in sin and must be born again, made alive spiritually through faith in the finished work of the Lord Jesus. They do not know what Jesus actually accomplished on the cross and in His resurrection. They do not know that one must give up his own good works and trust Jesus alone.
Adventists do not know that their Sabbath-keeping is an idol, a spiritual discipline that they believe they must do in order to maintain their salvation. Their Sabbath-keeping is an addition to faith, a work required to show that they love God.
Yet Galatians is clear that going back to the law when we have trusted Jesus is to fall from grace (Gal. 5:4). It is the same as returning to paganism! Our Sabbath-keeping, which was a requirement of our Adventist false gospel, is an idol to us who have been Adventist. We have to give it up in order to place the full weight of our trust and belief on Jesus alone.
I don’t know of any practicing Adventist who can help another person know the Lord and be born again. It’s possible that there are some Adventists who have been Christians before becoming Adventist who know the Lord and understand the new birth, and it’s possible that there may be some young Christians who have understood the gospel IN SPITE of Adventism, but those who live and practice Adventism do not know the real gospel and the infallible, omnipresent Jesus who has purchased our salvation, satisfying God—not Satan—by His death and resurrection.
Do Your Part
Finally, the Teachers Comments lead with an overview of Exodus 5 and 6, the subject of this week’s lessons. Moskala outlines the chapters, showing the dialogues that define them. He shows where Moses spoke with Pharaoh, where Pharaoh speaks with Israelite overseers, where Israelite overseers speak with the Israelites and then with Pharaoh, and finally he ends with the Lord speaking to Moses.
He points out that Moses’ and Aaron’s obedience is emphasized and that their ages are given: 80 and 83. He then summarizes these two chapters which reveal the spiritual dynamics at work as Pharaoh was confronted by God’s demands through Moses and Aaron and where God heard Israel’s cries and brought them the promise of redemption.
These two chapter of Exodus are profound, revealing God’s sovereign plans, promises, and power—yet Moskala says this:
We can thus conclude that there is no retirement from the service of God. He needs everyone to work closely with Him to advance His cause: young and old, male and female, children and adults, free and enslaved, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, people in high places with influential positions and common workers. Everyone can do his or her part, and together we can fulfill God’s mission for us.
Once again, the Adventist view of Scripture is man-centered. This account of Israel being abused and of God’s setting His deliverance in motion, forcing the pagan, narcissistic Pharaoh to look right at Yahweh and recognize His sovereign power, is eclipsed.
And what, I ask, does it mean that “everyone can do his or her part, and together we can fulfill God’s mission for us”?
There’s only one answer from an Adventist viewpoint: God’s mission is to make proselytes. Each Adventist is to do whatever he or she is gifted to do: bake bread for the neighbors, hand out literature, sing in the nursing homes, run health-screening clinics, go on short-term mission trips with one’s profession classmates, help with evangelistic series, eat vegan, bring people to church—for an Adventist, doing one’s part is a guilt-producing command that means one’s entire frame of reference is to make new Adventist converts!
Moskala is sophisticated in his writing and doesn’t overtly sound “Adventist”, but he uses quotes, concepts, and words that keep the readers bound to their Adventist worldview. They likely can’t even find a crack in the lessons that cause them to experience dissonance. Everything is familiar and reassuring, providing new reassurance that their religion, their view of reality, is true.
But it isn’t true. Adventism is built on the great controversy worldview that says Jesus is battling with Satan for the souls of men. Adventists all know that the law is the essence of the conflict: Jesus came to show them how to keep the law, and if they obey the law as Jesus did, they will help to prove that Satan is a liar. He has unfairly accused God of giving a law too hard to keep, but they are here to help the universe know that God IS fair, and His law can be kept.
Their “part” is to stay loyal to Adventism, to keep the Sabbath, and to live a life demonstrating Adventist obedience and lifestyle, helping outsiders to want what they have.
But I have a different message of hope. We are all sinners, dead in sin and unable to please God. We need a Savior; without a Savior, we are doomed to eternal death.
The Lord Jesus came, God the Son in human flesh, and He took our sin into Himself and died our death on the cross. He experienced God’s wrath for all our sin as He hung there. He died the death for sin that we are by nature sentenced to die—and He rose from death on the third day, our curse shattered by His perfect, sufficient sacrifice!
He brings our dead spirits to life and transfers us from the domain of darkness to the kingdom of the Beloved Son when we trust His finished work.
If you haven’t seen your need of a Savior, if you haven’t trusted the Lord Jesus with all your sin, do it now. Listen to Him say, “Come unto Me, and I will give you rest,” and place your entire trust in Him.
He will bring you to life and fill you with His Spirit—and the Father will adopt you as His own child.
Trust Him today—and escape from the crushing demands of Adventism. Come to Jesus—and LIVE. †
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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