November 21–27

 

Lesson 9: “The Church and Education”

In a quarterly full of statements that deny the gospel, downgrade the role and person of the Holy Spirit and openly contradict the Bible, this week’s lesson is one of the most distasteful.

After opening fairly well with a discussion of the need for good education, this is slipped in with no attempt at providing Biblical support:

“As Seventh-day Adventists, we have been blessed with an abundance of doctrinal light and truth (the state of the dead, the Sabbath, 1844 and the judgment, the great controversy, to name a few teachings) that even most of the Christian world still doesn’t understand.”

But are these things doctrinal light? Or truth? Are they something about which to brag and be smugly superior?

There is a question at the end of the week that asks:

“Think about the responsibility that we as Seventh-day Adventists have to teach others the wonderful truths that we have been given.”

“Wonderful truths”? Let’s look into the list and see how true they are.

The gospel

Although it isn’t in that list, the gospel is the place to start. Jesus died according to Scripture; He was buried, and He rose again on the third day according to Scripture (1 Cor. 15:3-4). 

Jude 3 is quite clear that the gospel was once-for-all handed down, or stated, so anything added to it is not the gospel. This is the entire point of Galatians. There is no additional gospel or truth needed which rules out any possibility of a different “endtimes” gospel that adds to or changes what was already given.

So just how is this house of cards stacked up? Where did it start?

The Investigative Judgment

It started with an abysmal lack of understanding of Daniel by people who had little or no understanding of the original languages. This lack of understanding was compounded by four failed attempts at setting a date for Christ’s return which, when proven to be wrong, were followed by a lame attempt to blame God for their mistake because of a total inability to admit and confess error.

To cover up their error in date-setting, an entire unbiblical notion of a judgment of the righteous was concocted in an attempt to explain what really happened. But that idea is soundly refuted by John 3:18 which says:

“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.”

The righteous saved are not being judged by God; He knows all, and He has no need to do an internal audit to determine just who can be saved and who does not measure up.

State of the dead

Then, because a failure to measure up in the judgment would mean expulsion from heaven (and since this supposed judgment started with those already dead), there was no other choice but to say that at death there was no spirit or soul that returns to God while the body rests in the grave; instead, they claimed what is called “soul sleep”—total, unconscious lack of existence.

This heresy can be “proved” only by changing the meaning of the Bible. For example, Adventists have to claim that Saul did not actually see Samuel (1 Samuel 28) even though he clearly identified the one he saw as the prophet who had died. And the use of proof-texts to “prove” that when the Bible says that the dead are asleep, it means total, unconscious lack of existence. 

This idea is heavily supported by the use of what is called the wisdom literature like Ecclesiastes and poetry like the Psalmist—but only when it agrees with their previously held idea—and by arbitrarily choosing which parts of God’s Word are really true and which parts are just make-believe. For instance, Ecclesiastes 9:5 is deemed to be literally, physically true: 

For the living know they will die; but the dead do not know anything, nor have they any longer a reward, for their memory is forgotten.

while Ecclesiastes 8:15 is not:

So I commended pleasure, for there is nothing good for a man under the sun except to eat and to drink and to be merry, and this will stand by him in his toils throughout the days of his life which God has given him under the sun.

The Great Controversy

Because all of their interpretive liberties make God an inferior, weakened being who must be vindicated by His created beings, as evidenced by the supposed idea that He has to audit His own records to make sure He was right the first time, another heresy was necessary. It was decided that Jesus was not always God, but He was elevated to that position and declared to be equal to God. This led to jealousy on the part of another created being (Lucifer) who thought that he should have been the one honored.

When he rebelled, he was thrown out of heaven, and ever since then, he has been in a fight with God. In fact, this is a fight that, because God is forced to honor our “free will”, He could actually lose if we, the created beings don’t vindicate Him before the universe by perfectly keeping a law to prove that God was not unjust in demanding perfect obedience.

The Sabbath

Then, because of all of this power given to the created beings to save their god, those created beings have to have some sort of guide for behavior. Apparently this submissive god is unable to control their behavior, so laws had to be brought in to make them toe the line. And since this god could not be trusted to keep his word in his promises to Israel, they are removed, and the church is put in their place, claiming all the promises of the Mosaic covenant (but, strangely enough, none of the curses). In the process, a few of their laws are retained while most are called “ceremonial” and no longer needed contrary to clear statements in the Bible that the Law is all or nothing.

And, since this god is more of an idea of the mind than a real being, the created beings have to obey laws to keep themselves saved.

This convoluted chain of inventions is Adventism in a nutshell. Now look at the last part of the lesson’s claim: “even most of the Christian world still doesn’t understand.”

Of course they don’t—most Christians know the gospel and rely on Jesus and His finished work on the cross to save them, not some set of rules that were never intended for anyone but Israel! Although many other Christian groups do hold onto the 10 Commandments as a general guide for behavior, the rest of the ideas in the above list are recognized for what they are—silly, unbiblical oddities.

A question at the end of Monday’s lesson asks:

“What are ways that we can, indeed, point others to the reality and goodness of God?”

I would like to ask just how you can point anyone to God when you don’t acknowledge, or perhaps even know, what and who He is, particularly when knowing God is considered to be nothing more than just a meeting of the minds, as repeatedly stated last week? How can one share God when one believes that the purpose and work of the Holy Spirit is nothing more than the process of allowing our minds to meet God’s mind and to access His knowledge, also inferred in the lesson for week 8? When you have such a low opinion of God, why would you even want to point others to Him?

1 Timothy 4 has some pertinent words to say about this Adventist reality:

But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron, men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth.

Better to point others to the real Jesus Who was always God, Who seals all believers by the Holy Spirit from the moment they believe. The real Jesus is not in a fight-to-the-death battle with a created being who could still lose to that being. The real Jesus is not asking for a group of rule-keepers but instead, is inviting us to rest in Him in relationship. †