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 7: “Indestructible Hope”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- The author’s Adventist understanding of “hope” is confusing and unstable because it is built on a foundation of a false view of the nature of man, a false gospel, and a failure to see that the New Testament promises to the church are not for unbelievers (or members of a false religion) but only for the born again.
This lesson sounds good on the surface. Consider these quotes:
Hope and encouragement can spring from the realization that we know so little. Instinctively, we try to find comfort by knowing everything, and so we become discouraged when we cannot know. But sometimes God highlights our ignorance so that we may realize that human hope can find security only in a Being much greater than ourselves (p. 87).
The sovereign God of the universe says that His people do not need to fear, because He is the one who takes “ ‘hold of your right hand’ ” (NIV). It is one thing to imagine God guiding events on earth from a big throne light-years away from our earth. But it is an altogether different picture to realize that He is close enough to hold the hands of His dearly beloved people (p. 88).
Throughout Hebrews 11, Paul has been painting pictures of men and women of faith. Their faith was what kept them going when they were faced with all sorts of trying situations. As we enter chapter 12, Paul turns to us, the readers, and says that since so many people before us have persevered against incredible odds, we also can run and finish the life of faith. The key is to fix our eyes upon Jesus (Heb. 12:2), that He may be an Example when times are difficult (Heb. 12:3). Reading chapter 12 is like being given a set of reading glasses. Without these glasses our vision or understanding of hardship will always be fuzzy. But looking through these glasses will correct the blurred explanation of suffering that our culture presses upon us. Then we will be able to understand clearly and be able to respond to trials intelligently (p. 90).
Then we see this question at the end of Friday’s lesson:
In class, read aloud sections in Job 38–41. What kind of picture of God does it present? What do you learn that gives you hope and encouragement? How does the Sabbath fit into this picture? How does it help keep before us the nature and character of God?
The reality of Adventism’s worldview emerges if we just keep reading. The reason the lesson is confusing and somehow irritating is that it assumes a not-articulated foundation: man is born with free will to choose God or not; man is a physical being, and salvation involves our getting our physical propensities under control by following the example of Jesus. Jesus, on the other hand, came to reveal that God’s standards and law can be kept if we pray hard enough and depend on the Holy Spirit enough, and God withholds His own power in order to protect Satan’s and our freedom to play out the full extent of our sins and bad choices.
In other words, in Adventism, we creatures are the ultimate value in the universe, not God’s holy glory. God is there to help us; we are not here for God’s glory. In Adventism we vindicate God’s character and reputation instead of God transforming us to worship Him with new hearts and born-again spirits.
Adventism sees reality inside-out: the Bible and the “plan of salvation” are about man. Scripture, however, shows us reality: God is the center of truth and existence. We are here by His choice and mercy, and we are saved not by our good decisions but by His grace and mercy ALONE. He calls us; He brings us to life; He gives us life and baptizes us into Jesus’ body. He grants us new birth by the same power that raised Him from the dead when His sufficient sacrifice broke the curse of death!
Hope
Within Adventism, “hope” is a wish, an idea that everyone wants to experience but may not. Hope is the Second Coming, as the words of Wayne Hooper’s Adventist hymn “We Have This Hope—hope in the coming of the Lord” states. Adventist “hope” is that, if everything goes right, made they will get to heaven.
Biblical hope, however, is a certainty. It is not a wish or a maybe-maybe-not event. First Corinthians 13: 8–3 says this:
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
The lesson refers to this passage, but they miss the reality of what Paul is saying. He is saying that while we live in the flesh as born-again believers, we have—as absolute certainty—faith, hope, and love. These things are the gifts of God to us when we believe and are sealed with His Spirit.
Faith is His gift to our living spirits that we know Jesus died for our sin, was buried, and was raised on the third day according to Scripture (1 Cor 14:3,4). Faith is not something we generate but something He gives us with His own presence.
Hope is the certainty that we are His. It is the KNOWING that we have from God when His Spirit teaches our spirits to call God “Father, Abba” (Rom. 8:14–17). It is the KNOWING that we will be with the Lord when we are absent from the body (2 Cor. 5:1–9). It is the fact that our inheritance in Jesus is a sure thing—not a MAYBE or an IF. It is CERTAIN. And this hope is anchored not in a theoretical idea of Jesus in the heavenly sanctuary according to the Adventist way of thinking, but it is anchored in the person of Christ who is already in heaven at the right hand of God. This Jesus did not go into the Most Holy Place in 1844; He ascended to the Father in Acts 1!.
Hebrews 6:17–20 puts it this way:
So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
Hope is the palpable certainty of the person of the Lord Jesus. We have HIM when we believe. We have His life in our spirits, and we are transferred out of the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the Beloved Son! This hope is not a wish or a “I hope so” kind of attitude; it is a certainty as sure as the fact that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.
Adventist hope is a “maybe”. Real hope is the reality of Jesus and His completed atonement credited to us when we believe.
Finally, the reason Paul says that the greatest of faith, hope, and love is LOVE is that when we see Him face-to-face (the context of the passage in 1 Cor. 13 above), both faith and hope will be realized physically as we are forever, literally, physically with the Lord. Hope and Faith are fulfilled and do not exist anymore. LOVE alone continues for eternity!
Moreover, LOVE cannot be separated from all the attributes of God: His justice, wrath, mercy, grace, faithfulness, patience, eternality, omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, kindness—God’s love includes all of these attributes and is the absolute love from which we experience imperfect love as humans. We benefit from God’s all-encompassing love, but we ourselves are not able to generate love like His.
Only when we are born again can we experience that love in any measure because only then do we have the Holy Spirit with us always.
Adventism tries to talk about these things from a perspective of not knowing the real gospel and of not being born again. In fact, these ideas only generate irritation and confusion when non-born again people who are trying hard to keep the Sabbath so they can understand God’s character try to understand them.
Jesus is the end of the law for those who believe (Rom. 10:4). Adventists do not believe this verse. They persist in attaching the Sabbath (and the law) to the New Testament teaching about the gospel—and it is a non-cohesive mess. Believing in Jesus and keeping the law do not mix, as the book of Galatians explains with incredible detail and with indicting certainty.
The only way for Adventists to understand the concept of hope in their conflicted and traumatic lives is to submit all they know and believe to the Lord and to stand UNDER the Bible, allowing it to inform and change their minds.
The gospel is incompatible with Adventism. It is a travesty for these Sabbath School lessons to try to discuss the New Testament promises that God has given to His church, because Adventism is not part of the true church!
My appeal to Adventists who really want to understand hope is this: read the book of Galatians. Allow the Lord to convict you of your sin of believing that you have a part to play in your salvation. Allow the Lord to convict you of your personal depravity (Eph. 2:1–3) and repent, realizing that Jesus’ shed blood has already paid for your sins—past, present, and future—and when you trust Him, that atonement is credited to your account.
Trust Jesus! Jesus alone is the One who will open your eyes and free you from the bondage of the law and of a false prophet who holds your future in doubt. Jesus will free you and give you eternal life the moment you trust Him.
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:20, 21).
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