Lesson 11: “Setbacks”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
Adventist, what do you believe about your suffering and God’s involvement? Why do bad things happen to good people? Do you believe, as many Adventists are taught, that your suffering may be the way God answers Satan’s accusations—that your response to suffering will help to vindicate God’s love and grace to an ornery Satan who is trying to prove that God is unfair? Is your suffering an opportunity for you to stay loyal to God as Satan tries to get you to give up in discouragement, like Job’s wife tried to get Job to curse God and die?
What About that Storm?
Sunday’s lesson leads the week by referencing Jesus and His disciples crossing the Sea of Galilee as a storm threatened their lives while Jesus slept in the stern. The author focusses on the disciples’ fear and apparent “lack of involvement” and their questioning of His character and love as He slept through the gale. The author ends the lesson with this paragraph:
It’s in the midst of hopelessness that we might try to save ourselves (like the disciples), or sometimes it’s when we feel pain or loss that we start to question or doubt God’s love and care for us. We presume that He should act in a certain way based on what we think and see from our human perspective. But, as with the disciples, it’s in life’s storms that God can work the greatest miracles. God is always faithful, even when His apparent lack of involvement doesn’t make sense to us. He’s in our storms with us and can calm the storm when we cannot.
Significantly, the author does not discuss the end of the account, although it is part of the day’s Scripture passage:
And He said to them, “Why are you [so] cowardly? Do you still have no faith?” And they became very afraid and were saying to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?”—:—Mark 4:40, 41 LSB
First of all, Adventism sees life as a stage on which Adventists play out their public loyalty to God and His law as part of their requirement to help vindicate God’s character over Satan. This story of the storm is understood by Adventists as a moral lesson reminding them to trust God no matter what happens.
If the lesson had dealt with that last passage where the disciples’ ask who Jesus is, that He has authority over the wind and the sea, they would have to deal with the very identity of Jesus. He is the Creator of the wind and the sea. Only the One who made the elements can command them to start or to stop functioning. He ONLY has authority over the wind and the sea because He Is God.
Adventists, however, see Jesus’ earthly ministry as an example of obedience and right-doing. Dealing with His authority over the storm would remove their focus from their own responsibility to have the proper reaction, to “have faith”, and to stop worrying. If they act rightly, Adventism teaches, God will bless and reward them.
To make the storm account a matter of personal loyalty to what Adventism perceives as “truth” and to the Adventist Jesus changes the meaning of the story. This story is a revelation of God’s sovereign will over our lives. It is a revelation of Jesus’ true identity as God the Son, creator of heaven and earth. It is not a sweet story reminding people that their friend Jesus will always be with them—although He will always be with those who believe and trust in His finished atonement.
Adventists see this as marching orders for themselves: they are Jesus’ people, and they are to stay the course and believe what they are told, following Jesus’ example. In reality, this account shatters the Adventist belief about Jesus; He is sovereign and all-powerful, even as a man, and He never gave up the tiniest trace of His “God power”. He was the Creator sleeping on the lake in the storm that He had caused.
In 2008 Richard and I took a trip to Israel with Gary and Elizabeth Inrig as our teaching leaders. As we floated in a boat on the Sea of Galilee, Gary gave a devotional about this passage from Mark 4. I share below his five points about the real message of this account of the storm:
Storms are an inevitable part of life (by Gary Inrig)
1. Storms come even when Jesus is in the boat. The disciples were in that boat in obedience to Jesus’ command—not disobedience—yet the storm still came.
2. Storms come to expose our lack of faith and trust. The disciples were expert fishermen and sailors. That storm revealed the place where their expertise could not manage. The storm was out of their control, and they were afraid.
3. Jesus said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” I don’t sense my true lack of faith until the storm comes.
4. The storms don’t just expose us, they reveal the Lord. Suddenly the disciples understood Jesus in a new say. “Who is this man, that even the winds and the waves obey him?”
5. Storms enlarge our vision of Jesus. Jesus had told the disciples to go to the other side of the lake. They actually got where Jesus told them to go—they just didn’t get there the way they expected to get there!
What About Job?
As an Adventist, what did you think the book of Job was about?
I learned that the book of Job showed us that our trials may have a back story that we don’t understand that is for the purpose of disproving Satans accusations.
When I think about the fact that I believed my life might be about proving Satan wrong and God is good, I am horrified. What kind of god would ours be if he used us to prove he was better than Satan? Who would actually have the power in the universe? If my life is an object lesson for the universe to prove that Satan is a liar and God is good, then both Satan and I have more absolute authority than does God. That mode places God at our mercy, not us at His mercy.
I’m realizing how dark Adventism is; they hate the idea that God might not have mercy on a creature who chooses not to believe Him. They twist what Scripture reveals about realty and make God so “good” that He would never punish someone who refuses to believe.
The lesson concludes Tuesday’s lesson with this:
We, too, live in the middle of this same battle. Satan afflicts us with pain, suffering, loss, and hardship as part of his plan to distort our picture of a loving God. In such times, we can respond in one of two ways: blame and reject God, or cling to Him with all our might. Although the battle rages around us, we must remember that, in light of eternity, our momentary troubles are but temporary trials (2 Cor. 4:16–18). There is so much more to the picture than what we see here and now, and one of the great challenges for a believer is to trust God even in the darkest times. God has, in many ways, revealed to us the reality of His love. We must cling to this crucial truth—that of God’s love—even when we might not sense it at the moment.
The lesson utterly misses the central point of Job: God is sovereign, and no one can understand how He works or creates or holds creation together. He is above us all and has authority over all creation. There is no creature who can thwart Him or threaten Him or explain Him. We do not understand His ways, and we do not know the story of the angels. We only know what the Scripture tells us, but Adventism is founded on a Satan-narrative that is extra-biblical. Adventism sees reality through a Satan-shaped lens that puts Jesus in a position of near-equality with Satan and God in a position of needing to vindicate Himself to—the devil and to supposed extra-terrestrial beings! These ideas are not biblical.
The thing that most surprised me after becoming a Christian and revisiting Job is the fact that the book culminates with Job the righteous man REPENTING in sackcloth and ashes—repenting for having spoken to his friends about God without understanding His true inscrutable authority and power. It took God asking Job a series of questions for which Job had no answer to cause Job to realize he had thought he understood God’s dealings with good, evil, and humanity—but finally understanding that he had absolutely NO IDEA how God does what He does. Job ends with his repentance and with God’s restoration of him. Here is his repentance:
Then Job answered Yahweh and said, “I know that You can do all things, And that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, Things too marvelous for me, which I did not know. ‘Hear, now, and I will speak; I will ask You, and You make me know.’ “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You; Therefore I reject [myself], And I repent in dust and ashes.”—Job 42:1–6 LSB
Then, the repentant Job was restored. God “increased all that job had twofold” (Job 42:10). I used to think that even this blessing was unfair. God replaced all the animals Job had times two, but He only gave him 10 children to replace the 10 he had lost in the whirlwind. That seemed unfair, and yet one cannot replace children. Animals, yes…but children, no. If Job had received 20 more children, that increase would never make up for the ones he had lost.
That is—it seemed unfair to me until I left Adventism and learned what Scripture teaches about the nature of man and the nature of death. The Bible teaches that we have immaterial identities that survive the death of our bodies. Paul tell us that “we” live in mortal tents, and when the tent is torn down, “we” are absent from the body and present with the Lord—a situation that is much to be preferred to remaining in this mortal tent (1 Corinthians 5:1–9).
One day I realized that the ten children Job lost are not gone! They went to the Lord, and when God gave Job ten more children, He did double the number of his family. Now, millennia after Job wrote his book, he is also with the Lord—and with his 20 children. He did not lose any of them!
Of course, the lesson never hints about this scriptural fact. The most essential insights of the book of Job are missing from the Adventist understanding of this book. Because Adventism has to respect Satan and his role and limit God’s sovereignty in order to be “fair” to Satan and prove him wrong, Adventists are shielded from understanding God’s authority and power. They can’t see that God is sovereign, that Satan is God’s monkey and cannot do one thing beyond what God allows.
Adventists cannot see that righteous Job needed to repent. Job was not doing disobedient deeds; he was misunderstanding God’s sovereignty over his own life! He had believed that his own behavior and loyalty affected how God treated him, that his behavior affected his blessings. God revealed to him that he had no idea how God functions—and God finally blessed him as only God could bless him. After Job repented and acknowledged God’s inscrutable sovereignty over his own life, Yahweh doubled all that he had lost, doubled his children, and gave him a long life. The book of Job ends with these words:
Now in all the land no women were found so beautiful as Job’’ daughters; and their father gave them inheritance among their brothers. And after this, Job lived 140 years and saw his sons and his grandsons, four generations. Then Job died, an old man and full of days.—Job 42:15–17 LSB
Once again, the Sabbath School lesson dishes up a moral teaching and misses the revelation of the Lord God and His sovereign faithfulness to His own word and His own creatures.
Road to Emmaus and Ellen’s Vision of Jesus
Wednesday’s lesson presents Jesus’ walk after His resurrection on the Road to Emmaus with two disciples who didn’t recognize Him until he broke bread with them. The lesson’s point is that the two were “disappointed, discouraged, and confused”, but Jesus came to them in their grief and confusion and walked with them in their time of doubts. The day’s lesson ends with this:
This is also Jesus’ message for us today. Too often, we forget that He walks beside us in our valleys. Too often we don’t recognize Him. Too often we forget that there’s much more to the story. Too often we feel troubled and allow doubts to arise in our hearts, forgetting that Jesus holds our lives securely in His hands. And too often we think we know better than Jesus does about what’s really happening in our lives (Luke 24:18).
The lesson completely MISSES the point of this walk and of Jesus’ subsequent appearance to the disciples as they gathered. After listening to the disciples’ sadness, Jesus answered:
And He said to them, “O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! “Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?” Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He interpreted to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.—Luke 24:25–27 LSB
Jesus explained the Old Testament to them and showed them how He had fulfilled every shadow of His atonement for sin. The point was not that He came and was present while they suffered; the point was that He opened Scripture to them and showed them that He Himself was the fulfillment of everything they knew from the Bible. He gave them biblical proof of who He is and what He has done. He gave them answers for every question they would have as they went forward preaching the kingdom of God and the new covenant in His blood!
Furthermore, when He appears later to the disciples, He revealed that it was He Himself in a new, resurrection body. He also reassured them that He was not a spirit but a human body, and in His resurrected, glorified body, He ate fish in front of them! And again He taught them how He was the fulfillment of Scripture, and He opened their minds to understand it:
And He said to them, “O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! “Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?” Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He interpreted to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures. … and He said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.—Luke 24:45–47 LSB
The lesson uses this account to make moral platitudes to the Adventist readers. They themselves refuse to see what Scripture really says. They miss the significance of Jesus’ teaching that He is the fulfillment of the Old Testament shadows and promises, and instead, Adventists read the Old Testament through the commentary of Ellen White and her persistent preservation of the Law as the Adventists’ central focus for righteousness. Jesus is eclipsed by the Ten Commandments. The true Rest for our souls is hidden behind their idolatry of the seventh day.
Finally, Thursday’s lesson recounts Ellen White’s vision in which an angel led her up a steep stairway to heaven:
“In a moment I stood before Jesus. There was no mistaking that beautiful countenance. Such a radiant expression of benevolence and majesty could belong to no other. As His gaze rested upon me, I knew at once that He was acquainted with every circumstance of my life and all my inner thoughts and feelings.
“I tried to shield myself from His gaze, feeling unable to endure His searching eyes, but He drew near with a smile, and, laying His hand upon my head, said: ‘Fear not.’ The sound of His sweet voice thrilled my heart with a happiness it had never before experienced. I was too joyful to utter a word, but, overcome with ineffable happiness, sank prostrate at His feet. While I was lying helpless there, scenes of beauty and glory passed before me, and I seemed to have reached the safety and peace of heaven.”—Quoted in Thursday’s lesson from Early Writings, pp. 79–8
The New Testament model never permits a person to visit heaven, to see its glory, to see Jesus face to face. Furthermore, this vision included a detail that the lesson omits: the angel gave Ellen a green cord to coil up and place on her heart. Whenever she wanted to see Jesus, she had to stretch out the cord, and she would be escorted to His presence.
Paul, the apostle to the gentiles, writes this about his visit to heaven:
And I know how such a man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, God knows— was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak. On behalf of such a man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except in weaknesses.—2 Corinthians 12:3–5 LSB
God did not permit Paul to tell what he had heard, and he did not tell what he had seen. If God did not permit Paul to tell what he experienced in heaven; Ellen White certainly did not experience a true visit to heaven. Furthermore, God would never have provided a feature of witchcraft—cord magic—to enable her to see Him whenever she wanted!
Adventist, I appeal to you: turn to the Lord and ask Him to teach you truth. Ask Him to remove the Ellen White worldview that predetermines how you real Scripture. It’s not even conscious—but because you believe reality looks a certain way—because you believe that Satan has accused God, that Jesus has come to show you how to keep the law, that God must be vindicated, and that you help Jesus win the battle with the devil—those beliefs influence how you understand the words of the Bible.
Ask God to teach you truth, and submit your mind to Scripture. Repent before God and believe that the Lord Jesus has done everything needed for your salvation. Believe that He has died for your sin, and see Him rise on the third day, shattering your curse of death.
Believe in Jesus alone—and you will be born again. Reality will become clear, and you will know what it means to be secure and safe—held by the Lord Jesus and your Father, and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Believe Him, and live. †
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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