Lesson 12: “The Hour of Glory: The Cross and Resurrection”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine
Problems with this lesson:
- The cross is presented as Jesus’ “enthronement”.
- Jesus’s ascension is misdefined.
- An incomplete atonement denies the reason for and the power of atonement.
This week’s lesson reveals the heart of Adventism’s cultic twisting of the essence of the Lord Jesus’ redemption. So much of what Adventists believe about Jesus’ death and resurrection is couched in Christian words, but its underlying denial of the finished atonement and its denial of the true power of the resurrection breaks through in this lesson.
As we have often said, Adventism’s worldview which denies an immaterial human spirit is the soil in which Adventist deception flourishes. Because Adventism denies the literal human spirit, it denies both the nature of Christ and the real purpose of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
The Cross Is not “Enthronement”
Saturday’s lesson introduced this strange idea of the cross being enthronement as it introduced the week’s studies this way:
John presents the Cross as the enthronement of Jesus, particularly tied to the idea of the hour, which is referred to numerous times throughout the book (John 7:30, John 8:20, John 12:27). This idea of enthronement is an ironic picture since crucifixion was the most ignominious and shameful way to die that the Romans used. This contrast points to the deeply ironic depiction that John presents: Jesus is dying in shame, but it is, at the same time, His glorious enthronement as the Savior.
“Enthronement” means to install a monarch, or to seat in a place of authority, or to exalt. This idea that the cross of Christ represented his enthronement was actually new to me. I had to learned this idea in Adventism—and yet, the concept behind this idea comes straight from Ellen White’s Desire of Ages. I just had never before seen her views regarding this idea developed so clearly.
Before we see what EGW said, I want to share a quote from GotQuestions.org, a reliable Christian website that addresses biblical questions. This paragraph came up in answer to the question, “What is the enthronement of Jesus?”
Symbolically, the appearance of Moses and Elijah [on the Mount of Transfiguration] represented the Law and the Prophets. But God’s voice from heaven—“Listen to Him!”—clearly showed that the Law and the Prophets must give way to Jesus. The One who is the new and living way is replacing the old—He is the fulfillment of the Law and the countless prophecies in the Old Testament. Also, in His glorified form [Peter, James, and John] saw a preview of His coming glorification and enthronement as King of kings and Lord of lords.
First, this paragraph points out the important point Adventism does not teach: Moses represented the Law and Elijah represented the prophets. They appeared with Jesus, and then a cloud covered them all, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son; listen to HIM!”. The cloud lifted—and the law and the prophets had disappeared. Jesus alone stood before them.
Second, this paragraph refers to Jesus’ enthronement as His eventual reign as King of kings and Lord of lords. The glory of His transfiguration prefigured the glory of the resurrected and ascended Lord Jesus seated at His Father’s right hand where He reigns over all rule and authority. Further, it prefigures His eventual throne on earth where He will sit to rule over the nations.
Jesus’ enthronement is a consequence of His being our Savior. He paid the price of sin and ransomed us out of death by His blood. His act of saving us is NOT His enthronement. Rather, His enthronement is God’s exalting Him to His right hand because He completed everything He came to do. His victory over Satan at the cross when He disarmed him (Col 2:14, 15) is not Jesus’ exaltation. Rather, His glorification after His resurrection and ascension when God seated Him at His right hand was His glorification.
Psalm 24:7–10 describes King Solomon’s arrival in Jerusalem when he has completed his march from Egypt. This passage also can be seen as a Messianic psalm foreshadowing the eventual arrival of King Jesus as He comes to His kingdom in Jerusalem, and this psalm is also a picture of the Lord Jesus being welcomed into the heavenly throne room after His ascension following His death and resurrection:
Lift up your heads, O gates, And be lifted up, O ancient doors, That the King of glory may come in!
Who is this King of glory? Yahweh strong and mighty, Yahweh mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O gates, And lift [yourselves] up, O ancient doors, That the King of glory may come in!
Who is He, this King of glory? Yahweh of hosts, He is the King of glory. Selah. (Psalm 24:7–10)
Jesus received wrath, not enthronement
The cross was, for sure, the pivotal moment in Jesus’s work and ministry, but it was Not His enthronement. The cross was where the grace and glory of God was on full display as the Father was in Christ Jesus reconciling the world to Himself. As Jesus hung on the cross, He wasn’t just dying to show that He would take the bad rap for our cruelty to Him. He was literally taking our sin into Himself and receiving the wrath of God for it that we deserved. Yet God was IN HIM, even as He poured out His wrath on our sin which He bore—God was not counting our sins against us because He was counting them against Jesus. Yet He did this to reconcile us to Himself and to make us the righteousness of Christ in the same way that He had made Jesus sin for us! Here is how Paul says it:
Now all [these] things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their transgressions against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. … 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 Corinthians 5:18–19, 21 LSB
Here is what Ellen White says in The Desire of Ages, p. 758 as quoted in Friday’s lesson:
“Christ did not yield up His life till He had accomplished the work which He came to do, and with His parting breath He exclaimed, ‘It is finished.’ John 19:30. The battle had been won. His right hand and His holy arm had gotten Him the victory. As a Conqueror He planted His banner on the eternal heights. Was there not joy among the angels? All heaven triumphed in the Saviour’s victory. Satan was defeated, and knew that his kingdom was lost.
“To the angels and the unfallen worlds the cry, ‘It is finished,’ had a deep significance. It was for them as well as for us that the great work of redemption had been accomplished. They with us share the fruits of Christ’s victory.”—The Desire of Ages, p. 758.
It’s hard at first to see what’s “off” with this quote from EGW because the words sound so pious and familiar. After spending years within her great controversy framework interpreting reality through her grid of biblical interpretation, one can almost miss the impact of what she says here. Christians who have never been Adventist might have an even harder time because they don’t have the physicalist view of reality giving EGWs words their “flavor”.
Think back to that quotation from Saturday’s lesson where the authors said that the cross was Jesus’s “enthronement”. That assertion means that it was when Jesus died that he was installed as the king and victor over sin—but that is not what Scripture tells us.
The lesson doesn’t even mention that Jesus received God’s wrath as He hung on the cross. Rather EGW tell us that when He died, “His right hand and His holy arm had gotten Him the victory.”
What victory??
According to the great controversy, the victory Jesus won was perfectly keeping the law and proving Satan wrong. His victory, according to EGW, was proving that the law could be kept!
Jesus’ death not about the law
His death, furthermore, wasn’t about His strong and holy arm getting victory for Himself. His death was the ultimate act of submissive obedience to the Father. He willingly gave Himself to be the perfect human sacrifice that would pay for human sin.
Ellen, however, equates Jesus’ cry, “It Is Finished” with the end of His life of law-keeping, self-denial, and physical suffering. According to the great controversy worldview, Jesus’ victory and suffering were all about His obedience to the law, His obedience to God, and His dying as an ultimate demonstration of His honoring of the law even when faced with ridicule and death.
In addition, Ellen says above that Jesus’ work of redemption was also for the angels, that they “share the fruits of Christ’s victory” with us.
This description reveals that EGWs view of what Jesus did completely misses the point. First, His death had nothing to do with the law except that He FULFILLED the law. He literally became sin and became a curse for us (Gal. 3:13), took God’s wrath that our sin deserved, and fully satisfied God’s demand of death for sin (Gen. 2:17). Further, His death fully paid for our sin—and this fact is why the resurrection occurred.
Ellen says NOTHING about the resurrection as part of Jesus’ victory, yet the resurrection is the evidence that His sacrifice was sufficient to satisfy God and to break the curse of death. Jesus rose not just because He could but because His blood fully satisfied God!
Adventism does not teach that the resurrection was the PROOF that Jesus paid the full price for the sins of all who believe. His resurrection is the means whereby we who believe pass from death to life because we have been reconciled by His blood.
Jesus satisfied the Father with His blood. He endured the full force of God’s wrath against human sin—and THEN He died. His “It Is Finished” was not about physical obedience and endurance but about having taken in Himself the full weight of both our sin and God’s wrath, enduring the separation that our sin brings: the disconnection between man and God. Jesus experienced the full separation of all our sin as He hung on the cross—and then He died.
This experience of God’s wrath was not His enthronement! It was His complete substitution of Himself for us, demonstrating that He was both just and the justifier of those who believe (Rom. 3:26).
The resurrection was the undeniable proof that He paid the full price. Because His blood paid for all human sin for all who believe, the curse of death no longer could hold the sin-bearer—and it can no longer hold any one of us who believes!
Jesus didn’t help angels
Also importantly, Jesus’ death on the cross was not for the angels! In fact, while His death reconciled all things in heaven and on earth to God (Col. 1:20), that reconciliation was not “for” the angels. Hebrews 2:14–17 tells us this:
Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the seed of Abraham. Therefore, He had to be made like His brothers in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.—Hebrews 2:14–17 LSB
Jesus did not come to earth to help the angels. He came and took a body in order to identify with humanity, the “seed of Abraham”—all who would believe.
It is clear that EGW taught falsely about Jesus’ death and atonement for sin. She denied what He really did—and her physicalist view of reality makes it nearly impossible for Adventists to understand what Jesus really did.
For an Adventist, righteousness is “right doing”. Salvation is about honoring the law as a means of demonstrating one honors God. There is absolutely no understanding within this Adventist framework of the human spirit being by nature dead in sin and needing to be born again—born of God (John 1:12). Jesus died to pay, literally, for our sin so we could be reconciled to God. We could never pay for our own sin; we spiritually dead humans could never satisfy God’s demand for a perfect sacrifice to pay for our sin. We were born into collective death because we are born into Adam.
We can only escape by accepting Jesus’ blood shed on our behalf—the only possible sacrifice that could pay for all sin. Jesus was the only human born who did not have to be born again because He was conceived by the Holy Spirit. He was born spiritually alive, and He had no sin in Him. He was the perfect Sacrifice not because He had the best self-control and will-power but because He was God in flesh.
God paid for our sin. Jesus is the one mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2:5, 6), and in Himself He completed everything necessary for our reconciliation with God. His cry, “It Is Finished!” Announced that His endurance of God’s wrath and His physical death which was the consequence of sin was finally completed. He died because He had satisfied God’s death sentence—and it was sufficient for our entire race.
Ascension was not to get Father’s approval
Thursday’s lesson confirms EGWs teaching with this statement:
Suddenly, the surprised Mary recognizes that the risen Jesus is talking to her and acknowledges Him. Jesus insists that she not detain Him, as He must ascend to His Father. But her task is to go and tell the disciples that He is ascending “ ‘to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God’ ” (John 20:17, NKJV). Mary fulfilled her mission.
Ellen White said:
Jesus refused to receive the homage of His people until He should know that His sacrifice had been accepted by the Father. He ascended to the heavenly courts, and from God Himself heard the assurance that His atonement for the sins of men had been ample, and through His blood all might gain eternal life.—Story of Jesus, p. 160.9
This idea, that Jesus had to go to heaven before He could see His disciples because He didn’t know if His sacrifice had been sufficient, reveals that EGW had NO IDEA what Jesus’s death actually accomplished. She had no idea that Jesus rose from death as the evidence that His sacrifice had been enough—that He couldn’t have broken death if it hadn’t!
Furthermore, EGW used the notion of Jesus having to ascend to “prove” that no part of a human remains after death and goes to the Father:
Jesus said to Mary, “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father.” When he closed his eyes in death upon the cross, the soul of Christ did not go at once to Heaven, as many believe, or how could his words be true—“I am not yet ascended to my Father”? The spirit of Jesus slept in the tomb with his body, and did not wing its way to Heaven, there to maintain a separate existence, and to look down upon the mourning disciples embalming the body from which it had taken flight. All that comprised the life and intelligence of Jesus remained with his body in the sepulcher; and when he came forth it was as a whole being; he did not have to summon his spirit from Heaven.—Spirit of Prophecy vol 3, p. 205.2
Ellen White used her false, physicalist worldview to twist Jesus’ message to Mary that she should not hold onto Him—should not detain Him—because there was still time BEFORE He ascended to the Father! We see Jesus’ ascension in Acts 1:9–11 when He is caught up to heaven, “and a cloud received Him” out of the disciples’ sight. It is this ascension that marks His enthronement, not His death!
Furthermore, we see here that EGW rewrote Scripture to diminish Jesus and to claim that nothing conscious and essential of Him remained alive or went to the Father as His body lay in the tomb.
Investigative judgment redefines death and resurrection
Because of Adventism’s unique doctrine of the investigative judgment developed to save face after the embarrassment of date-setting Jesus’ return, every single doctrine of Adventism deviates from Scripture. If one endorses a heresy as essentially RIGHT instead of repenting, the rest of one’s worldview becomes heretical, too.
Because EGW taught that Jesus moved in 1844 from the holy to the most holy place in heaven and began a work of judgment of believers, investigating their lives to see if they have repented of every sin and have kept the law with increasing perfection, she had to claim that Jesus’ atonement was not complete on the cross. This need to keep Him “applying His blood” to the books in heaven, covering sins and marking them pardoned since1844, meant that His death had to be about something OTHER than fully paying for sin. In the Adventist worldview, sin is STILL being atoned in heaven. In other words, His taking God’s wrath on the cross and shedding His blood did NOT pay for all sin once for all. Adventist sin is paid for as it happens. Therefore, she had to make a different explanation for the purpose of His death—and she had to downplay the significance of the resurrection instead of showing that it was the public proof that His blood was sufficient for all!
In Summary
Adventism, on Ellen White’s authority, redefined the work of Jesus’ death. Instead of revealing it as the one sufficient sacrifice of human blood sufficient for all human sin for all time, instead of explaining that Jesus enduring the hell of consciously receiving God’s wrath for all our sin before He died physically, Adventism makes Jesus’ death merely the end of His perfect obedience, His selfless suffering, and His moral life of good deeds. Furthermore, it denies that Jesus actually went to the Father as He said He would when He died.
Concurrently, Adventism denies that Jesus’ resurrection was the evidence that His sacrifice was sufficient because it literally broke open the curse of death. Death cannot hold anyone who believes in the Lord Jesus and trusts His sacrifice for their sin. When one believes Jesus, he is born again, and Jesus’ resurrection life gives eternal life to his sprit, and they will never die.
Adventism’s ongoing atonement in heaven is a heresy that denies what Scripture reveals about Jesus and what He did. He did not come to help angels or to answer Satan. He came to rescue us from death by dying our death and taking God’s wrath in our place.
At its heart, Adventism is an egregious heresy. It uses lovely words to deceive people and teach them that Jesus was our example, our moral teacher, and our way-shower. It deprives its members of knowing they need to be born again and keeps them from experiencing trust and faith in the sufficient sacrifice of our Lord Jesus.
If you haven’t understood that you are by nature dead in sin and that you need to be made alive and saved from God’s wrath, you can believe today. Get your Bible and read John chapters 14–21. Ask the Lord to teach you what you need to know, and see who Jesus is. See Him take your sin into Himself and endure God’s wrath for you. Believe that He has completed everything necessary for your salvation, and believe Him.
Ask Him to take your sin, and thank Him for dying for you. Ask Him to teach you now—to rescue you from the tangled darkness of Adventist thinking. Ask Him to teach you to understand His word, and ask Him to plant you deeply in truth and reality. Thank Him for being your perfect Sacrifice and for giving you eternal life.
And when you believe, you will pass at that moment from death to life, and you will never be separated from the Lord Jesus and His love. †
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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Hi Colleen! ”King Solomon” brought the Ark of the Covennt to Jerusalem? My limited reading indicates it was David who accomplished that deed. On a different note — Your scripture-supported answers, Colleen, to the urgent queries of ‘Beth’ have been, and shall remain, most important guidance on my journey out of darkness. (and, ”…how great is/was that darkness”)! Thank you and yours for all the years of effort on our behalf. HFC