September 21–28

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.

 

Lesson 13: “A Community of Servants”

In rounding out the quarter’s study on “The Least of These”, this week’s lesson has a lot of words that sound good and noble and extend a call for the members to join in that good work. So many words, but very little is actually said.

There is an issue I have raised in previous lessons that again stands out this week in Saturday’s, Wednesday’s, and Thurday’s lessons. This issue is stated slightly differently in each case, but each time is goes something like this sentence in Saturday’s lesson:

“…and along with that preaching comes the work of helping the oppressed, the hungry, the naked, and the helpless.”

For the moment, we will set aside the Adventist meaning of “preaching the gospel” and the fact that it is impossible to preach a gospel if you have no understanding of that gospel.

In this instance, I am more concerned with the last words in that above quote—“the helpless”. In the other places the author uses “the vulnerable” and “the voiceless”. Those sound like noble words expressing a noble idea, but I ask you—who is more helpless, vulnerable, or voiceless than the unborn person? 

Why is it so important to help those in need after they are born, but so easy to snuff out that life before birth? 

If the Adventist organization is truly concerned with the truly voiceless, why do they still allow abortion-on-demand in their hospitals? The very hospitals that they praise as being the “right arm of the gospel” are places where life may be snuffed out of the helpless, vulnerable, and voiceless unborn 

If Adventist members who serve in the military are expected to adhere to their understanding of “thou shall not kill” by being non-combatants, why is it considered a non-issue to kill-on-demand in Adventist hospitals just because the victim is not yet born?

Do they even realize the blood they have on their hands when they rationalize this “medical” procedure as something that is just “a choice” and something that God will overlook?

Moving on.

Usually Adventist writings are careful to say that they are part of the body of Christ, but in Saturday’s lesson we see this:

Together as a church community and organization, we are the body of Christ (see 1 Cor. 12:12–20). (Emphasis mine) 

The lesson correctly uses the passage in 1 Corinthians 12 but then applies it specifically and exclusively to the Adventist Church.

For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit (1 Cor. 12:12, 13).

This letter of Paul’s was written a very long time before there were denominations and is meant to be all-inclusive of the Body of Christ, but here the author, following the doctrine of the Adventist Church which claims to be “the remnant”, applies it to only their own little group.

Paul is saying that by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we are all members of one body, we all drink of one Spirit. In the Body of Christ, there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, free and slave, male or female—and if I may extend the clear meaning—Christian denominations. For the truly born-again, church membership is just an earthly construct and should not be allowed to separate the body into those who are “right” and the others who must, therefore, be wrong because of theological differences.

 

Agents of Change

From the lesson:

“Paul uses a number of metaphors to portray the church’s action in the world.…Each of these images talks about a role as representatives or agents of God’s kingdom even now, even amid a world ravaged by the great controversy.” 

First of all, the Adventist understanding of the great controversy is completely contrary to Scripture and denies the gospel of Jesus. In a previous week’s commentary I outlined this Adventist doctrine, so I won’t go over it in detail again here. 

This doctrine was started by those who had little or no understanding of God, sin, creation and the nature of man. It totally contradicts what the Bible tells us about those things and even denies that Jesus was always God.

Instead, it would be accurate to say that this world is ravaged by sin, not some mythical controversy that reduces God to an inept, weak being that must be vindicated by the behavior of His created beings.

From the lesson:

“Read 2 Corinthians 2:16. What is the difference between the two aromas, and how can we know which one we are?”

First, let’s read that verse, but we’ll back up to the beginning of the thought which starts in verse 14:

But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life. And who is adequate for these things? (2 Cor. 2:14–16).

Do you see what Paul calls the aroma? It’s the knowledge of Him, of God. That is truly a sweet aroma of life that is desperately needed by the lost of this world. Yet the knowledge of Him is an aroma of life to those who are being saved, but it is an aroma of death to those who are perishing. 

Is the knowledge of God an aroma of death to those who cling to the incomplete atonement of Christ? Or do those who teach a weak God who is subject to His creatures and is waiting for them to vindicate Him and His law by keeping it perfectly so that He can win out over Lucifer, a created being—do these people find the “knowledge of Him” to be an aroma of death?

Or do those who endorse the idea that Satan will ultimately become our sin-bearer by taking the guilt of all the sin he led us to commit—do these people recoil from the true “knolwedge of Him”? 

What about those who believe the idea that justification—the salvation of our very souls—is just the starting point followed by the notion that after the law pointed us to Christ—the very same law which the Bible says can never make anyone right with God—we must then turn back to that Law to keep ourselves saved? Do these people recoil from the aroma of “the knowledge of Him”?

Those beliefs are certainly opposed to the ‘sweet aroma’ of Christ. Those beliefs are a part of the “another gospel” that Paul so sternly condemned in Galatians 1 and not part of the gospel which he so simply laid out in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8. 

Which person are you in the world? Do you perceive the knowledge of the true God as an aroma of life—the truth carried by the pure gospel—or is that gospel an aroma of death to you?

 

A Servant Remnant

Here, again, we see the effort to classify the Adventist Church as the only true church that follows God and the only one whose members are truly saved.

From the lesson:

“The standard definition of the remnant people identified in Bible prophecy is found in Revelation 12:17: those “who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ” (NKJV; see also Rev. 14:12).

That one quote from the lesson twists the Bible in all sorts of strange ways to make it seem valid to insert the Adventist church into the text.

1. This “remnant” in Revelation 12 is referring to the followers of Christ that hold true to Him during the Tribulation. 

2. The “woman” in the first 6 verses of Revelation14 can only be Israel as she “gives birth” to the male child (verse 13) who is Jesus. To change that to mean the Adventist Church is to say that Jesus came out of the church, not out of Israel—when in fact He was born of Israel, not the church. 

3. The word “commandment” is used to show that keeping the 10 Commandments, specifically the 4th, is a sign of the remnant in Revelation 12 and 14. But what did Jesus say about the commandments?

Look at Mark 12:28-31:

One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, “What commandment is the foremost of all?” 

Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these”. (emphasis mine)

The commands to love God and love your fellow man are what Jesus said are the most important commands given. He did not identify the Sabbath as the most important—the command which was given specifically to Israel as the sign of the very words of the Old Covenant between God and Israel. (See Deut. 28:69, Ex. 34:28, Heb. 9:4 to list just a few.) If you are not part of Israel, you are not under that covenant or subject to the laws of that covenant. 

Remember, if you put yourself under the Old Covenant, you are required to keep ALL the laws and if you fail in one, you are guilty of all. James 2:10

4. The most problematic twisting of Revelation 12:17 is the terrible misuse of the phrase “the testimony of Jesus”. It has been changed in Adventist theology to mean the testimony of Ellen White. It has been used by them for so long that they no longer see how they have substituted Ellen for Jesus and follow what she says, even when it so often contradicts what He said. Her numerous errors, self-contradictions and deviations from the Bible are explained away, ignored and just plain accepted as progressive truth from God. 

They make all of these revisions to the biblical text just to make themselves the “remnant” spoken of in Revelation to support their claim that the final conflict in the endtimes—the Tribulation—will be a simple matter of the Sunday-keepers hunting down and killing the Sabbath-keepers, otherwise known as the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

 

Reaching Souls

The question at the end of this section is this:

“How can we make sure, though, that as we do good works for others, we don’t neglect preaching the good news of salvation, as well?”

This brings to mind a rather ironic thought: you have to have the gospel before you can preach the gospel. If you have a twisted, unbiblical gospel, how can you possibly preach the gospel to others? (Matthew 23:15 comes to mind.)

 

Grace Within the Church

In this section we find one of the most preposterous statements yet:

“It is remarkable that God allows His reputation to hang on how His people live on this earth. But Paul expanded this faith God has in some of His “saints” to include the community of the church: “His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 3:10, NIV).

This interpretation relies heavily on the Adventist doctrine of the Investigative Judgment where we, the fallen but redeemed “saints”, have the obligation of living the Law perfectly in order to prove that God was not unjust to have demanded perfect obedience.

On the contrary, God’s reputation is not dependent on our living the law perfectly. Just read Job 38-41 where God tells Job that He is so far above all that He created as the absolute power behind it all that Job has no right to question Him. Never does God claim to be dependent on us to validate His reputation! 

And using Ephesians 3:10 in no way supports the absurd claims made in the lesson! It isn’t talking about God’s reputation but rather Paul’s mission. Ephesians 3 starts out with Paul’s statement of his stewardship and explains the ‘mystery’. To correctly read verse 10, you need to back up to verse 8:

To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ, and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things; so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him (Eph. 3:8–14).

It isn’t talking about God’s reputation but rather the glorious mystery, hidden in ages past but now revealed, that the Gentiles are also part of the Body of Christ. He is revealing the almost unbelievable riches of Christ that are now shared by all believers, including Gentiles!

 

Encourage Each Other to Good Works

There are a lot of good-sounding words about working together as a team for better results, but by the end, there is really nothing much that is actually said.

But then, the author drops this on us:

“While results are important when seeking to do what is right—the results are about people and their lives—we sometimes have to trust God with what the results might be. (emphasis mine)

Did he really mean to say that sometimes we have to trust God with the results, but most of the time we just trust ourselves?

Why is trusting God the last resort?