Lesson 3: “Life and Death”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
There is no topic that we at Life Assurance Ministries ever address that elicits more anger from Adventists than the subject of the state of the dead. In fact, the three subjects that seem to elicit the most defensive responses are the state of the dead, the Sabbath, and the role of Satan as scapegoat. Of course, there are others that generate responses: the three angels’ messages, the role of Ellen White, the health message, and even the Trinity, but the idea that man has an immaterial spirit that survives the death of the body seems to function like a red cloth in front of a bull.
Consummate Irony—Or Programmed Deception
This quarter’s Sabbath School lessons are covering the books of Colossians and Philippians. Read contextually, these books present clear, beautiful expositions of the sufficiency of Jesus’ finished atonement to accomplish every believer’s salvation. Even more, Colossians calls believers not to become sidetracked but to keep their eyes on Jesus, not on the law or on the visions of so-called prophets. Philippians explains that when we believe in Jesus, the personal righteousness of God Himself is credited to us. Paul explains that the gospel of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection is so precious to him and so necessary for all humanity that he would willingly die if necessary to ensure that the good news of the Lord Jesus was known to all men everywhere. Moreover, he assures us that God’s promises are so trustworthy that we can live through all of life’s trials without anxiety. Our Lord Jesus sees and knows, and He is taking care of us, holding us in peace as He provides whatever is necessary for us to live faithfully.
More to the point for this week’s lesson, Philippians is the source of one of Paul’s most clear declarations that existence does not cease when we die. Ironically—or deliberately—this lesson addresses this passage of Paul’s and obfuscates its meaning. Using the great controversy motif as the underlying assumption, this lesson explains away Paul’s reassuring words that for him, to die is gain. The author reinforces the Adventist belief that no part of a person survives death; no consciousness or personality exists outside the body. Knowing the Adventist readers would never question the Adventist assumption, the author assigns strange interpretations and assumptions to Paul’s statement of fact and strips it of its power and truth.
Before we unpack the Adventist view of life and death, let’s look at the passage in Philippians that the lesson eviscerates:
What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in this I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that THIS WILL TURN OUT FOR MY SALVATION through your prayers and the provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and hope, that I will not be put to shame in anything, but [that] with all boldness, Christ will even now, as always, be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. But if [I am] to live [on] in the flesh, this [will mean] fruitful labor for me; and I do not know what I will choose. But I am hard-pressed between the two, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for [that] is very much better, yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake.—Philippians 1:18–24 LSB
In order to explain away what Paul clearly said, the author first establishes the reader in the great controversy worldview and argues from its perspective. He goes on to state that “this passage has been greatly misunderstood through the ages,” and then he reminds his readers that they must “recognize that the dead are really dead.” In Tuesday’s lesson he writes:
If, when people die, they go immediately to heaven, imagine how that would be for Lazarus. After four days of Lazarus frolicking in Paradise, an angel comes with the “bad” news: “Sorry, Lazarus, but Jesus is calling you back to earth. You can’t stay here.”
When we follow error to its logical conclusion, we see how erroneous it is. Death is like a dreamless sleep from which Jesus will awaken His faithful followers at the Second Advent; then, together with the living saints, they will be caught up and taken to heaven to be with Jesus forever (see 1 Thess. 4:16, 17).
Paul’s “departing” from the present life to be with Christ means to be with Him in suffering and dying (2 Tim. 4:6) in order to “attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Phil. 3:11, NKJV). Also, he was no doubt aware that he would close his eyes in death and that the very next thing he would know, in the twinkling of an eye, would be seeing Jesus, who would take him, with all God’s people, to the place Jesus has prepared for all who love Him (John 14:3, 1 Cor. 2:9).
First, notice the typical Adventist speculation that mocks Jesus’ miracle by imagining that Lazarus had been “frolicking in Paradise” for four days before an angel came with the “bad” news: Jesus was calling him back to earth.
The Adventist use of this Messianic miracle to try to disprove that one’s spirit survives one’s body is dishonest and cheap. First, it assumes that Christians who believe one’s identity does not cease to exist at death imagine the dead to be trivially “frolicking’ in Paradise. Second, it assumes that if Jesus brought the dead to life on earth, that return to life would be “bad news” if the person’s spirit was in heaven. In other words, Jesus’ miracle would have been a sort of persecution of the dead.
Instead of attempting to read the words and accept what God has said, Adventists accuse Jesus of performing an act of pain by raising the dead if the biblical scenario is true. This argument from speculation is completely invalid. It negates the plain meanings of the words and instead imposes the Adventist worldview over the story so that the read is shamed into believing that what Jesus actually did was harsh; that Jesus would never do something so cruel, and they must ignore the plain meaning of Scripture in order to preserve their Adventist great controversy worldview that people cease to exist when they die.
Furthermore, notice in the quote above that the author described the raising of Lazarus by saying “an angel comes with the ‘bad’ news”: Jesus is calling Lazarus back to earth. Never, ever does Scripture say an angel is involved with the resurrection of the dead. Ellen White includes angels in the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection, and Adventist art reinforces Adventist belief that at the resurrection at the end of time, angels will carry the resurrected children to their parents to be raised in heaven, but these are entirely extra-biblical ideas. Even more, Ellen White says that Michael the Archangel is another identity of Jesus, and she claims that Michael the Archangel raised Moses from the dead in Jude 9.
First, Moses not was raised from the dead. Second, Michael is NOT Jesus. Only God calls and raises the dead. Angels absolutely do not raise the dead, nor are they involved in calling them to life.
Finally, in the quote above, notice that the author of the lesson reinterprets Paul’s words by redefining his word “depart”. Paul clearly said, “But I am hard-pressed between the two, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for [that] is very much better.” He also said that “to die is gain”.
The lesson, however, says, “Paul’s “departing” from the present life to be with Christ means to be with Him in suffering and dying (2 Tim. 4:6) in order to “attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Phil. 3:11, NKJV). Also, he was no doubt aware that he would close his eyes in death and that the very next thing he would know, in the twinkling of an eye, would be seeing Jesus”.
What Is Paul Saying?
Notice how the lesson supports its twisting of Paul’s words by throwing in two proof texts out of context. Paul clearly said what he meant: he was torn. On the one hand he wanted to remain alive and be able to minister more to the church, but on the other hand he desired to depart and be with Christ.
Those words, read in the normal manner using normal rules of vocabulary and context, can only mean one thing: Paul longed to be with Christ—the conscious reality that he would enter when his body died. Paul was NOT saying he longed to close his eyes in death and eventually awake in the resurrection. Furthermore, that Adventist defense that from Paul’s perspective, the very next thing he would know—even if it took thousands of years to occur—would be the resurrection and the sight of Jesus coming.
NO! Anyone reading this passage would never get that idea. Paul’s words are clear: he longed to depart (“depart” means to leave a location) and be with Christ. The normal reading of these words is that Paul himself would depart his body at death and be in the presence of the Lord. There would be no break. He would simply lose his physical body, and his spirit, which was already in Christ, would remain in Christ after death without the encumbrance of the mortal body.
Adventism, however, on the basis of the great controversy worldview, redefines Paul’s words and gives the Adventist readers confirmation of their physicalist worldview.
Significantly, despite all the accompanying texts the author uses to bolster his argument, he NEVER uses Paul’s central passage describing death: 2 Corinthians 5:1–9.
For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge. Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord—for we walk by faith, not by sight—we are of good courage and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him.—2 Corinthians 5:1–9 LSB
Notice that Paul states explicitly: “while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord”, and “we are of good courage and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.”
Again, we cannot read these passages using the normal rules of grammar and context and arrive at any conclusion other than this: the essence of “us”—WE—live in our bodies. While we are alive in earth, WE are absent from the Lord in a real way. We are here and He is in us, but we are not where He is. When we die, we are AWAY FROM THE BODY. Even more, we are “at home with the Lord”.
Notice that: when we die our identities—WE ourselves—are away from the body and at home with the Lord! There is a real, tangible meaning to those words. We are not our bodies! We are not our physical brains. WE are immaterial spirits—just as “God is spirit” (John 4:24) and just as angels are “ministering spirits” (Hebrews 1:14). We also are spirits, but the Lord has made us human, neither God nor angel—and our spirits are housed in physical bodies. This is our design as humans.
When we die, we do not cease to exist. Our immaterial spirits go to the Lord, but they are conscious and know that they are very much better than when they were in their bodies.
Furthermore, look at verse 9 above: Paul states overtly that our ambition, “whether at home or absent”—in context he refers to the last verse where he says that when we die we are absent from the body as opposed to before our deaths when we are at home in the body—“to be pleasing to Him.”
Notice that: we can be pleasing to God in our deaths! If we ceased to exist or went into an unconscious, inactive state of storage, or if we were merely data in God’s memory, we would not be able to please God. We have to have will and cognition and volition to be pleasing to God!
Ultimately, the Lord will fully redeem our humanity, and at the resurrection He will unite our spirits with our new, resurrection bodies. We will eternally be body plus spirit—and this reality is what our Lord Jesus chose to share with us in order to redeem us with spotless human blood shed for our sin.
Who Are the Dead?
There is an even more fundamental truth we need to know about ourselves, though. When Adam sinned, he died the day he ate the fruit—exactly as God had said he would if he ate:
And Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may surely eat; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from it; for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”—Genesis 2:16, 17 LSB
Adventism says Adam “began to die” the day he ate, because Adventism says the death of the body equals the cessation of the person. If Adam did not really die that day, however, then God lied—or at best, He tricked people. No, Adam died the day he ate—he died spiritually, and that death is not metaphorical. It was absolutely real.
Furthermore, every one of us is born in Adam, and we all are born dead in sin because of Adam:
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.—1 Corinthians 15:22 LSB
We are born dead in sin, by nature children of wrath:
And you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all also formerly conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.—Ephesians 2:1–3 LSB
Adventism teaches that we are merely physical: bodies that breathe. When the breath stops, the person ceases to be alive or to exist. We go into the ground where we wait untold centuries for the resurrection. We can’t know before Jesus comes whether we will be resurrected for eternal life or for death by fire.
Related to this physicalist view of humanity, Adventists also believe that hell is not eternal. It is the lynchpin of the great controversy worldview that humans are merely physical bodies that breathe, and when they die, they cease to exist except as memories in God’s mind.
This physicalist worldview is necessary in order to support the investigative judgment. There cannot be saved people with the Lord in death prior to His coming and the resurrection or there could be no support for their idea that Jesus is in heaven now checking the list of the saved and finding which sins have been confessed so that He can apply His blood to them and write “pardon” beside them.
Furthermore, we know that humans have immaterial spirits that are dead in sin not only because Paul told us so in Ephesians 2:1–3, but also because the Lord Jesus affirmed this truth. In Luke 9 we read the account of Jesus telling a man to follow him:
And He said to another, “Follow Me.” But he said, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.” But He said to him, “Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God.”—Luke 9:59–60 LSB
Jesus was referring not to decaying corpses but to people who are still dead in sin! We are all dead until be believe in the Lord Jesus and His finished work. When we believe—when we place the full weight of our sin—our natural spiritual death and all the sins that death leads us to commit—on the Lord Jesus and His finished atonement on the cross, we are made alive at that moment! Here’s what Jesus said:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”—Luke 5:24 LSB
This transformation from death to life is exactly what Jesus told Nicodemus. No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born of God, born of the Spirit (John 3:3–6).
As Adventists we had no way to understand the reality of being born again nor of our natural depravity, of being dead in sin. We didn’t believe we had immaterial parts of ourselves that are literally born dead, separated because of Adam from the life of God. Sin is primarily an identity: a dead spirit that is without God’s Spirit and is under the control of the evil prince of the air. Yet the Lord Jesus knows our weakness and death, and He came as a man, never dead in sin because He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and He took responsibility for us and died the death our sin deserved.
When we trust Jesus, we literally pass from death to life. Even though we are still living in mortal tents, when we trust Jesus His Spirit comes into us and He gives us His life. We became alive; no longer are we the walking dead.
When we die, our spirits, now alive with Jesus’ own resurrection life, pass out of our mortal, dead bodies and go to be with the Lord. We do not cease to exist; we merely go to another location—in Christ—where we are kept for Him and for our own eternal inheritance that is ours. When He resurrects us, He places our now-living spirits into our glorified bodies, and He thus completes His salvation of our whole person.
The Adventist teaching that humans are merely bodies that breathe is a heresy, and this heresy obscures the true nature of our sin, of our salvation, and of our Lord Jesus.
We have real immaterial spirits that are by nature dead. Those who never believe in Jesus alone remain under God’s wrath (John 3:36), but when we believe we pass from death to life. Salvation is not about whether or not we keep the law and prove Satan wrong. Salvation is entirely about believing and trusting our Lord Jesus who paid for our sin and shattered our curse of death.
Adventists can’t teach the biblical doctrine of death because if they did, it would destroy their great controversy worldview and their false gospel. Yet the Lord Himself has made it clear that we are spirit beings housed in physical bodies—and we need His life.
If you want more information about this subject, check out the article: “Are Humans More than Living Bodies?” https://lifeassuranceministries.org/2021/05/27/are-humans-more-than-living-bodies/
Also check out these episodes of Former Adventist Podcast dealing with the Adventist fundamental beliefs. Number 7: The Nature of Man: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/former-adventist/id1482887969?i=1000523073884
Also see #25: Death and Resurrection: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/former-adventist/id1482887969?i=1000537638608
Ask God to teach you what is real and true. Ask Him to remove the Ellen White filters from your eyes so that you can read His word in context, believing every word means what it says. Ask Him to plant you deeply in truth and reality. Trust Jesus today, and pass today 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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