Lesson 10: “Rules of Engagement”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine
Central Problem: This lesson assumes a covenant between God and Satan with rules governing their great controversy.
This week’s lesson assumes that the great controversy is universal truth. It develops the idea that specific rules and limits define God’s power and responses in this battle and establish parameters containing Satan’s evil.
In order to establish this shocking idea—that God has covenanted with Satan to permit him certain freedoms and accesses to humanity in order to demonstrate his evil so no one can doubt his nature—Sunday’s lesson states Adventism’s core claim about God’s central motivation: to act in love. Ellen White, commenting on Daniel 10 where we learn that Gabriel wrestled with evil forces in the ancient Persian empire, is quoted on page 125:
“For three weeks Gabriel wrestled with the powers of darkness, seeking to counteract the influences at work on the mind of Cyrus. . . . All that heaven could do in behalf of the people of God was done. The victory was finally gained; the forces of the enemy were held in check all the days of Cyrus, and all the days of his son Cambyses.”—Ellen G. White, Prophets and Kings, p. 572.
Ellen’s speculation that “all that heaven could do in behalf of the people of God was done” suggests that had God not been constrained in some way, He could have helped Gabriel and God’s people be rescued from the evil forces arrayed against them much sooner. Lesson author John Peckham proposes:
In order for such a conflict to transpire, God must not be exercising all of His power. The enemy must be afforded some genuine freedom and power that is not removed capriciously but is restricted by some parameters known to both parties (the details of which are not revealed to us). It seems there must be parameters in the cosmic conflict that even God’s angels are operating within, which in the coming lessons will be referred to as the “rules of engagement.”
Peckham then goes on to identify these supposed “rules of engagement” as being “the principles emanating from love” that “help us better understand the great controversy.”
“Engagement” suggests a mutual arrangement of agreement.
The online Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines engagement like this:
1: a: an arrangement to meet or be present at a specified time and place
b: a job or period of employment especially as a performer
2: something that engages : PLEDGE
3: a: the act of engaging : the state of being engaged
b: emotional involvement or commitment
c: betrothal
4: the state of being in gear
5: a hostile encounter between military force
An “engagement” is a mutually agreed-upon set of parameters or behaviors or plans. It can exist between friends, lovers, superiors and subjects, or enemies—but the terms are known to both and agreed-upon. An “engagement” does not suggest that limits set by those in authority reflect an “engagement”.
For example, a parent’s rules governing a toddler’s behavior do not reflect a mutual agreement. Parents and toddlers do not bring mutually mature perspectives to their relationship and cannot establish rules of engagement. Mutual engagement of any kind suggests an agreement between mutually responsible parties, even if one party is under the authority of the other, as in the case of employees and bosses or of a military engagement that results in the losing side being subject to the winning side.
God has no covenant with Satan
Wednesday’s lesson takes this idea that God and Satan have rules of engagement to a place that suggests that God has engaged with Satan in an egalitarian way. In fact, Packham’s language puts words to the EGW-generated belief that God owes Satan freedom and respect—the belief that Satan had a right to expect God to let him live out his desires. After all, the great controversy is built upon the idea that God’s love requires Him to respect even evil enough to allow it to self-destruct.
God cannot “coerce” His opponents and expect His friends to trust Him, the Adventist reasoning goes. Look at this paragraph from page 128:
Nevertheless, there are “rules” that limit what God can do while remaining true to the principles behind His government. These limits include at least (1) the granting of free will to creatures and (2) the covenantal rules of engagement, which we are not privy to, at least now. Such impediments and limitations on divine action have significant implications for God’s moral ability to reduce and/or immediately eliminate evil in this world. Thus, we see continued evil and suffering, which can indeed cause many people to question either God’s existence or His goodness. However, once the background of the great controversy is understood, and the limits God has placed on how He will deal with evil, we can to some degree better understand why things are as they are—at least until the final triumph of God over evil.
Notice that the author says God has established “covenantal rules of engagement” with Satan. Where in Scripture is such an idea even hinted? Satan is condemned and disarmed. God has no “covenant” with Satan, and to suggest such a thing is pure speculation.
Yet a covenant between God and Satan actually helps cement the notion of a great controversy into the minds of Adventists. The belief that God limits His own power and sovereignty for the sake of honoring Satan’s free will is nothing short of blasphemy and a peek into the true demonic nature of the Adventist worldview.
The great controversy that Adventism embraces puts God n a limited position and Satan in a powerful one. Notice that the above paragraph admits that “we are not privy” to the terms of God’s covenant with Satan. In other words, this idea is completely made up speculation. A covenant agreement between God and Satan suggests a certain amount of mutual respect and agreement.
God is not morally limited
Thursday’s lesson assumes that, as EGW has said, Satan has made serious allegations against God, and God must allow “open investigation” to prevent His government of love from crumbling.
Here is a quotation from page 129:
If serious allegations are brought against a person in power, the best (and maybe only) way to defeat the allegations would be to allow for a free, fair, and open investigation. If the allegations threaten the entire government (of love), they cannot simply be swept under the rug.
What does all this mean for understanding the cosmic conflict and relating to the problem of evil? If God makes a promise, would He ever break it? Of course not. Insofar as God agrees to rules of engagement, His future action would be (morally) limited.
Peckham is not inventing this understanding. Ellen White herself established this egalitarian agreement between God and Satan. She is the one who bequeathed the great controversy to Adventism, and she is the one who presented Satan as a legitimate critic of God—someone whose accusations God must answer.
Scripture NEVER says Satan accused God of unfairness or partiality, and there is absolutely no unresolved cosmic allegation against God. Rather God has already defeated Satan. His end is sure, and his final destiny has already been articulated. God has never agreed to rules of engagement with Satan, and His actions are never morally limited!
The idea that Satan’s supposed accusations against God must be resolved is a straw-man argument. There are no such accusations!
Adventism has made Satan into an almost godlike superpower, and God Himself—Satan’s creator—must lower Himself to reign in His own sovereign power in order to prove He is really loving and not a tyrant!
Scripture, however, states that God is sovereign over all, even over all evil.
Satan’s influence not ended with the cross
In the Teachers Comments on page 134 we read this:
The Gospel of John seems to underscore that “the ruler [prince] of this world” is defeated and cast out by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, His resurrection, and ascension to the Father (John 12:31–33, John 16:11). However, Jesus’ intercessory prayer on behalf of His disciples, in John 17, assumes that the influence of Satan over humanity does not end with the cross.
This argument assumes the great controversy worldview is correct: that God has a covenant agreement with Satan that he may do all he can to tempt and destroy humanity and thus prove that God is loving and that Satan is a liar when humans follow Jesus’s example and commit themselves to obeying the law.
Adventism ignores the biblical revelation that God the Creator has already defeated Satan and provided rescue for His own people. Because Adventism says the law is the central thing that identifies and proves those who will be saved, it cannot read Scripture accurately. Adventism maintains that Jesus came to demonstrate that the law can be kept, and the saved will also keep the law because they are committed to the law and ask Jesus to gives them the strength to obey.
Scripture, however, teaches that the law came to reveal sin and to show us that we are all born spiritually dead in sin. It teaches that the law came with a death sentence at its core, and the Lord Jesus came not to demonstrate that we, like He, can KEEP the law but to take the law’s death sentence in our place.
Jesus came and took our sin by imputation and died the death the law demanded that we die because we are sinners by nature. Colossians 2:14, 15 states what Jesus did with the law and how that action affected 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
The “certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us” was the law—the entire Mosaic law including the Ten. When the Lord Jesus took our sin into Himself, He went to the cross and took God’s wrath against our sin—and then He died. He was buried and experienced the death our sin deserved.
By fulfilling the law’s death sentence against all who sin, the Lord Jesus disarmed Satan and his minions. In fact, He publicly humiliated them. The cross was His triumph over them!
With the law fulfilled, Satan could never again accuse God’s people of deserving God’s judgment. Satan’s weapon against us—the law which he wielded as “proof” of our guilt before God—was fulfilled in Jesus by His death, burial, and resurrection.
Now, if Satan brings an accusation against a believer to God, there is absolutely no argument. The Lord Jesus—the Savior of all who believe—has not only paid the full price of ALL our sin, but each one who believes already has Christ’s righteousness credited to him or her and has already passed from death into eternal life!
Satan’s weapon—the law—has been completely fulfilled, and the Lord Jesus Himself now stands in our place. Satan’s attempts to accuse us are thwarted by the Lord Himself.
The Adventist Lie
There is no ongoing great controversy. Satan is, of course, still present in this world. He still tempts us, and we are capable of living by our flesh instead of by the Spirit. Yet our eternal destiny is secure if we have trusted in the Lord Jesus’s finished work of atonement.
The great controversy denies that Jesus has completed the atonement at the cross. It insists that the atonement is STILL ongoing in heaven. Nothing was actually FINISHED when Jesus died.
Adventism believes and teaches a lie, and it presents to its members a powerful Satan fighting God with mutually agreed-upon terms of engagement! The Adventist worldview keeps its members in a perpetual struggle with Satan without a sovereign God who has already defeated our enemy.
The real sovereign God has rescued us by sending His Son. Satan is not part of our salvation story. He is a accuser who attempts to distract us with temptations and deceptions, but our God is stronger, and He does not limit Himself to protect the devil’s free will. Furthermore, He comes after us Himself. He does not limited Himself in any sense. He finds us in our natural state of spiritual death, and He reveals Himself.
There are no “rules of engagement” between God and Satan. God has already revealed His dealings with the devil, and his end is certain. Jesus has already taken our sin, paid its debt, and broken our curse.
All that remains is for us to learn to trust Him. Adventism distracts its members with dark doctrines and fears about Satan and death. God breaks through our darkness and reveals His Son—and He brings our dead spirits to life when we believe and trust Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection as the complete provision for our sin.
We are not subject to Satan nor victims of Him. We are called to trust our sovereign God and to thank Him for His provision for us in His Son.
Have you trusted the Lord Jesus? Have you laid your sins at the foot of His cross and trusted that His shed blood is the permanent, sufficient atonement for your sin ad death?
If not, trust Him today. You do not have to help God defeat Satan, and God is not limiting Himself to let Satan run roughshod over you. You have a Savior who has already defeated the devil.
Believe Him today—and you will pass from death to life. You will be freed from the fear of death, and God Himself will seal you and protect you eternally from the dark deception of Satan. †
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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