Lesson 11: “The Impending Conflict”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Life Assurance Ministries
Problems with this lesson:
- This lesson emphasizes that the seventh-day Sabbath, not belief in Jesus, is the sign of loyalty to God and the heart of the final battle of the great controversy.
- The supposed final enemies of Sabbath-keepers will be the Roman Catholic Church and the United States of America who threaten those who keep God’s commandments.
- The Teachers Comments warn against leaving Adventism’s interpretations, thus saving people from Satan by announcing Babylon’s fall and reminding people to get ready for Jesus’ coming.
This week’s lesson establishes Ellen White’s scenario for ushering in Satan’s final attack against the Sabbath. We have already seen how Satan, not the Lord Jesus, is the visible focus of attention in the great controversy. He is the one people must fear and resist by their commitment to the law and to the Sabbath. This week Adventism’s belief that the Sabbath will be the center of global conflict because Satan hates Sabbath and the Creator. Here is how Mark Finley sets the stage in Saturday’s lesson:
The aim of this week’s lesson is to reveal the coming conflict over worship. Satan will challenge God’s authority by attempting to undermine God’s law. Specifically, the Sabbath will become the center of a global conflict over worship. Satan hates the Sabbath because he hates the Creator. He will use coercion, pressure, and force to break our commitment to Christ. There will be a collision of beliefs over the true and false day of worship. God’s final appeal is an appeal to faithfulness to Christ despite persecution, an economic boycott, imprisonment, and a death decree. This week’s study emphasizes Jesus’ strength to take us through earth’s final conflict.
Adventism sees the seventh-day Sabbath as the symbol of God the Creator. Further, it equates keeping the Sabbath with loyalty to Christ. Keeping the law and especially the Sabbath in the face of persecution for a day is the Adventist’s proof of salvation-worthiness.
Significantly, there is no mention of the cross of Christ, of His death, burial, and resurrection for the forgiveness of sin and to break the curse of death. From EGWs great controversy perspective, keeping the seventh day is the proof that person is loyal to God. The cross and one’s trust and belief in Jesus’s completed atonement is not part of Adventism’s plan of salvation. In fact, Satan’s hatred is focussed on Sabbath, and Finley expresses Adventism’s doctrine that of all created things, the Sabbath is The Thing that represents the Creator!
The fact that the Lord Jesus came to save humanity, not the law with its holy days, and that He actually took on the flesh of His only creation that was made in His image doesn’t change their minds. Within Adventism, the sacred cow is the Sabbath, and humans are subject to its eternal holiness. In fact, their worship must include the seventh-day Sabbath or they are not worthy of God.
Sunday’s lesson quotes Ellen White:
“While the observance of the false sabbath in compliance with the law of the state, contrary to the fourth commandment, will be an avowal of allegiance to a power that is in opposition to God, the keeping of the true Sabbath, in obedience to God’s law, is an evidence of loyalty to the Creator.”—Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 605.
Adventism sees Jesus’ incarnation as primarily serving the law, not as rescuing mankind. He came to show humans that they should and could obey the law, and keeping the Sabbath is their sign that they took His warning seriously. The entire premise of Jesus’s coming was to rescue the law from Satan’s lies and to make humans part of the army of law-keepers who would prove Satan wrong.
Further, Finley inadvertently reveals Adventism’s weak and hapless Jesus when he says in the quote above that this lesson “emphasizes Jesus’ strength to take us through earth’s final conflict.”
That is backwards and upside-down! Jesus saves us and keeps us from the trial that is coming on the earth. We are not the heroes who grit our teeth and stay loyal to the Sabbath while Jesus, like Adventism’s legendary Desmond Doss, pulls us through the fray under enemy fire by His sheer strength.
Jesus Himself destroys His enemies by the word of His mouth (Revelation 19), and His saints ride into battle with Him but do not fight. The Lord Jesus, not the Sabbath, is the only One to whom we are loyal. Jesus, not a day, saves us completely, and He places us in Himself when we believe. Our inheritance is completely secure the moment we believe in His completed death, burial, and resurrection for our sin and for our eternal life. In Him our eternity is never in doubt, and we do not prove our loyalty with a day.
Who Are Those Beasts?
In Monday’s lesson Finley states,
“As we saw in lesson 9, the central conflict between good and evil is over worship. The beast uses deception and, when that fails, force and coercion.” —p. 139.
Then, in the lessons for the next three days, Finley summarizes EGWs teaching that the beast that rises from the sea and the “lamblike beast” with two horns, both described in Revelation 13, are actually the Roman Catholic Church and the United States of America. He quotes Pope Benedict in 2012 saying, in a speech,
“Sunday is the day of the Lord and of men and women, a day in which everyone must be able to be free, free for the family and free for God. In defending Sunday we defend human freedom.”
He follows this out-of-context quote with this from EGW:
“Those who honor the Bible Sabbath will be denounced as enemies of law and order, as breaking down the moral restraints of society, causing anarchy and corruption, and calling down the judgments of God upon the earth. . . . They will be accused of disaffection toward the government. Ministers who deny the obligation of the divine law will present from the pulpit the duty of yielding obedience to the civil authorities as ordained of God. In legislative halls and courts of justice, commandment keepers will be misrepresented and condemned.”—Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 592.
First, the papal quote is not a statement demanding that people give up Sabbath (or Friday or no day) and keep Sunday. It was a statement saying Catholicism defended Sunday as a day of freedom, not as a day of obligation. Second, EGW says that Sabbath-keepers will be cited for civil disobedience one day. These two statements do not demonstrate the conclusion Finley is trying to make. The pope’s declaration is not a statement leading to persecution of Sabbath-keepers. Rather, these have been juxtaposed to create the historic Adventist fear that the Catholics are coming to get them. Furthermore, there is no hint that governments will legislate against Sabbath-keeping.
In Thursday’s lesson Finley uses EGWs arguments to identify the beast from the earth as the United States of America. In its context in Revelation 13, this beast with the two horns is usually identified as the false prophet which coerces the world to worship the beast from the sea—the antichrist. EGW, however, says it is the USA, and its two horns represent its “political and religious liberty”. Further, Finley leads the reader to speculate further in the thought question at the end of the lesson: “Think about the political instability in America today. How might that one day lead to the fulfillment of this prophecy?”
In other words, instead of understanding the context in Revelation 13 of the beast from the sea corresponding to the nondescript fourth beast of Daniel 7, an antichrist power and a political figure called up by the dragon himself and the lamblike beast being the religious authority that performs miracles to coerce all nations to worship the first beast, Finley—on EGWs authority—stirs up Adventists’ fear that a Sunday law is imminent and that Catholics and apostate Sunday-keep Protestants will hunt and kill them because of their loyalty to the Sabbath!
Lesson Themes
The Teachers Comments identify the week’s major themes:
1. Biblical prophecy describes a final battle between God and His people on the one side, and the devil and his agents (symbolized, in Revelation 13, by the beasts from the sea and the earth) on the other. The battle will focus on worship and the Sabbath, which celebrates God’s Creatorship, Kingship, and salvation.
2. God will emerge victorious. He calls His people to partake in His victory over evil and over the devil by proclaiming His eternal gospel.
The Bible simply never identifies the Sabbath as the THING that celebrates God’s Creatorship Kingship, and salvation! Here was have Adventism’s true belief: the Sabbath is at the heart of Adventist soteriology. This day, not the cross of the Lord Jesus, His shed blood, His burial, and His resurrection, but the Seventh Day is the “thing” that defines God’s character, identity, and provision for us.
Furthermore, Adventists are asked to be part of gaining victory over evil and the devil by “proclaiming His eternal gospel”.
First, humans NEVER participate in gaining victory over Satan and evil! That is the work of our Lord Jesus who took human flesh in order to propitiate for human sin. We are asked to believe that Jesus has completed the atonement for sin. In fact, Jesus disarmed Satan at the cross (Colossians 2:14, 15) by fulfilling the law in His flesh and removing it as Satan’s weapon of accusation! Second, what is the “eternal gospel” Adventists are supposed to proclaim?
According to their “three angels’ messages”, their gospel is that the world is to worship on the seventh day, to believe the investigative judgment has begun, and to start obeying the law accordingly, and to remind everyone that, ready or not, Jesus is coming soon! In the words of Tim Martin from The Centers for Apologetics Research, all of the adventist groups that descended from the Millerite movement (including the Jehovah’s Witnesses) have the same “gospel”: “Jesus is coming; pack your bags!”
But that is NOT the gospel! The gospel is all about Jesus and His death, burial, and resurrection:
1 Corinthians 15:3 4
3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,—(1 Corinthians 15:3-4 LSB).
When we place our faith and trust in what Jesus has already completed, when we understand that we are born dead in sin and need a Savior, when we believe and trust in Jesus’ finished work, we pass at that moment from death to life and do not come into judgment (John 5:24)!
The Teachers Comments, however, dedicate over two pages to quoting Ellen White, enforcing her warning that no matter how times change or how much the Catholic Church may appear to change, Adventists are to remember that “Ellen G. White clearly has warned us against abandoning our original prophetic interpretations regarding the two beasts of Revelation 13.”
In other words, Adventists are never to consider that they have the wrong understanding of prophecy. They must never consider that their three angels’ messages are not biblical, or that a created day cannot be the thing that most accurately represents God or His deepest concern.
Our Father’s deepest concern is not creation: it is His own glory. He is sovereign, just, and merciful, and as our sovereign Lord, He sent His Son wrapped in human flesh to be our Substitute. He fulfilled the Sabbath and ushered in our eternal rest in Him when He died for our sin, was buried, and rose on the third day because His blood was sufficient for us all!
The Sabbath is not part of our salvation story, nor is Satan. Our salvation is accomplished by the Lord Jesus alone; He is our sovereign Lord, and when we believe and trust Him, we are placed in Christ, and everything that is His is ours. We are adopted and made heirs of God in Jesus, and we will never die.
Our eternal future is 100% secure when we are made alive in Christ; we never have to worry about our loyalty to a day.
There is only one question: have you believed Him? Have you trusted our Lord Jesus’ shed blood for your sin?
If not—trust Him today and pass right now from death to life. †
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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