Lesson 6: “Spiritual Gifts”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! |
Adventist, what is a spiritual gift? Who can have spiritual gifts, and how do you get one? Are spiritual gifts another name for talents? How do you know when and how to practice spiritual gifts, and how do you get other people to take your gift seriously?
Adventism and Spiritual Gifts
Adventism has always had problems teaching spiritual gifts. Oh, they teach the subject, but they do not know how to teach it biblically in a consistent way that makes sense. On the one hand, Adventists are “continuationists”, believing that spiritual gifts are for “the church” (read that for Adventists) today. At the same time, they discourage manifestations of sign gifts including tongues. They are willing to embrace gifts of teaching, preaching, hospitality, administration, and other social service expressions. Concurrently, they endorse a modern-day gift of prophecy in their own Ellen White. In fact, their endorsement of the gift of prophecy as it relates to one of their founders is so strong that they devote an entire Fundamental Belief—#18 out of their 28 statements—to explaining and endorsing Ellen White as manifesting the “gift of prophecy” and upholding her counsels as continuing to carry prophetic authority for their organization.
They have to deal with 1 Corinthians 12–14 because these three chapters are conspicuously at the heart of 1 Corinthians—and this quarter’s lessons cover 1 and 2 Corinthians. Yet in practice, Adventists learn to mock charismatic demonstrations of “spiritual gifts” of healing, miracles, prophecy (apart from EGW), and tongues. In fact, when people leave Adventism, one of the things that often draws fresh “formers” is the teaching and practice of sign gifts and supernatural gifting. Adventists do not have a biblical understanding of how the Bible teaches and demonstrates spiritual gifts, and they are—almost ironically—vulnerable to getting caught in deceptive practices and beliefs that take their eyes off of the Lord Jesus’ gospel and put it onto spiritual experiences. This reaction is no surprise; Adventism left people vulnerable to spiritual deception. This week’s lesson is an example of the skewed way the organization deals with spiritual gifts.
The lesson’s author sets the stage in Saturday’s introduction by saying this:
Paul’s primary concern has to do with the problem of disorderly gatherings. His answer to this problem is that the church is a body whose parts have different functions that contribute to “the edifying of the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12, NKJV). In short, God gave the church spiritual gifts in order to promote unity through diversity.
So the first idea the reader encounters is that Paul’s teaching on spiritual gifts is a course-correction for confusion and disorder in the local church services of that day. His second point, which he emphasizes throughout the week, is that the spiritual gifts are intended to “promote unity through diversity”.
The whole “unity through diversity” idea has nothing at all to do with God’s giving spiritual gifts to the church. In fact, “unity through diversity” is not even a biblical concept. The phrase conveys the message that the diversity of Adventism should be appropriated to build a sense of shared loyalty to the Adventist identity. Through all the multi-cultural Adventists rallying around their Adventism, they will develop a sense of “unity” for a cause, for an organization that promises education, employment, and a religious cause that will bind them all together because they share a common “target”: they are Sabbath-keepers who teach a health message for the world.
In fact, Monday’s lesson drives home the author’s argument that the Adventist “unity” which the spiritual gifts are supposed to enhance is really a reflection of the “character of God”. Without defending Adventism’s teaching that the Ten Commandments are the revelation of the character of God, the author uses this very Adventist phrase to cement the Adventist worldview in his Adventist readers’ minds. He takes this opportunity to reinforce the Adventist “tritheism”:
Alongside the concept of unity, Paul highlights the diversity of members in the body of Christ through such expressions as “many members” (1 Cor. 12:12, 20), “we were all baptized” (1 Cor. 12:13, NKJV),“not one member but many” (1 Cor. 12:14, NKJV)…This emphasis on both unity and diversity indicates that spiritual gifts aim to promote unity through diversity.
This unity amid diversity must reflect the character of God. The Father is one person, the Son is another person, and the Holy Spirit another. The three maintain Their individualities while working together to edify the church and empower it for mission (1 Cor. 12:4–6, Eph. 4:11–13).
True Christian Trinitarianism does teach that God is One Being expressed in three Persons. God is One, as both the Old Testament and the Lord Jesus state:
“Hear, O Israel! Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one!—Deuteronomy 6:4 LSB
Jesus answered, “The foremost [commandment] is, ‘HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD;—Mark 12:29 LSB
The Bible teaches that the attributes of God are shared fully among the three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In fact, Paul emphasizes that in the Lord Jesus, God the Son incarnate,“all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Colossians 1:19), and “For in Him all The fullness of Deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9).
Yet Adventism denies that the three Persons share substance. They insist that Ellen White’s “Heavenly Trio” and “the Three Worthies of Heaven” are the correct view of the Trinity. She also taught that Jesus relinquished many of His attributes of deity, even permanently giving up His omnipresence—a loss that would have rendered Him not truly and fully God.
So in the Sabbath School lesson, the EGW paradigm is emphasized without specifically referring to it. Notice that the author said that the “unity and diversity” that the spiritual gifts are supposed to be developing in Adventism must “reflect the character of God.” He then proceeds to present God as three distinct persons who work together. That is exactly how Adventists see the Trinity. Three separate persons who do NOT share substance but who share a name, a purpose, and a will.
That description is not the Trinity of Scripture; it is not Yahweh who is ONE.
With this unbiblical view of God, we already see that the Adventist idea of the “character of God” is not what the Bible teaches us about Him. By beginning with a false idea of God, Adventism leads its people into a false understanding of what “unity” as well as “diversity” are.
The Heart of the Adventist Problem
We see the heart of the Adventist problem right here. Adventism cannot understand or teach the biblical revelations of Christianity or the Christian life because it holds to a false view of God—and also a false view of man and of salvation.
Adventism cannot have an accurate discussion of spiritual gifts as long as they do not acknowledged the words of Scripture to be inerrant, and as long as they believe in a false view of God. Adventism does not understand or teach that humanity is literally born spiritually dead and must be made alive.
The new birth is God’s provision for reconciling spiritually dead humans with Himself. When we hear and believe the gospel of our salvation, we are sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise (Ephesians 1:13, 14). Adventist does not teach this biblical fact.
When we are indwelled with they Holy Spirit, we cannot get away from Him—nor do we wish to. He SEALS us! Adventism has a belief in the Holy Spirit that demands that a person ask Him to come, and if the person sins or turns away, the Holy Spirit will leave until one asks Him back.
It is this Adventist belief that underlies this week’s lessons on spiritual gifts. Significantly, the lesson doesn’t explain HOW a person receives a spiritual gift, nor does it accurately explain that the gifts are God’s grace to every person baptized into the body of Christ.
In all the author’s talk about the girts being for the purpose of “unity” in a diverse church, he gets even this “unity” backwards and upside down. For example, he says this in Monday’s lesson:
[A]lthough the body’s members are individually so different from one another (1 Cor. 12:15–20), they are all dependent on each other (1 Cor. 12:21–26). The feet depend on the eyes to see where they must walk; in turn, the eyes can’t touch anything—only the hands can. Also, the idea that some members are weaker (1 Cor. 12:22) or less honorable (1 Cor. 12:23) than others is only an impression, for all are necessary (1 Cor. 12:22).
This picture of the individual Adventists depending on one another to function because only as a group do they have all they need for godliness is a natural result of the Adventist view of “God” as three separate Persons who do not share substance but who share a purpose—a God-family, if you will. Yet the biblical picture of the church is NOT separate individuals united around a common set of beliefs with a common purpose of bringing in proselytes and keeping the organization alive.
When an individual is born again, God literally gives him a new heart and a new spirit and places His own Spirit in Him. Those who have been born again and filled with the literal Life and Presence of the Lord Jesus—of the entire Trinity—those people are united by the literal life and presence of God that is made possible by the one-time sacrifice of the Lord Jesus.
We are one in Christ—not figuratively but literally, made one by His Spirit indwelling us because His blood opened a new, living way to God. Our spiritual gifts are God’s unfailing promise and gift to us.
Spiritual gifts are not talents, natural abilities with which we are born. Rather, they are Spirit-given abilities to do work for His kingdom, abilities which we did not have before we were born again.
Sometimes spiritual gifts empower abilities that we had in our natural selves, enabling us to do things for God’s kingdom that we could never have done before, but sometimes He enables us to do things that we weren’t close to being able to do.
What About Tongues?
Adventism has always insisted that the gift of tongues described in the Bible was the ability to speak other languages. To be sure, the examples given in the book of Acts at Pentecost and at the baptism of Cornelius’s housefly (Acts 2 and Acts 10) did show that when the Holy Spirit came upon them, they spoke in languages that they did not know with the result that people heard them telling the gospel in their own tongues, and they believed and were born again.
Adventism has never actually taught the truth about tongues. To be sure, there is some ambiguity about exactly how tongues may be manifested. Yet overall, the witness of Scripture reveals something remarkable about the gift of tongues. In Genesis 11 we find the story of the Tower of Babel where God said,
And Yahweh said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they have begun to do. So now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. “Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s language.” So Yahweh scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there Yahweh confused the language of the whole earth; and from there Yahweh scattered them over the face of the whole earth.—Genesis 11:6–9 LSB
Within a few generations of the flood, man’s innate evil asserted itself, and the people refused to scatter and fill the earth as God had commanded Noah when He exited the ark. They assembled on the Plain of Shinar and built a tower to “make for ourselves a name, lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth” (v. 4).
God judged the people of Babel. He made it impossible for them to collaborate and to pursue the depth of their evil—which God said they would be able to do. He judged humanity by confounding their languages so they would become self-protective and hostile, unable to collaborate or to trust one another. In this way He preserved humanity from its own evil.
At Pentecost, after the Lord Jesus had completed the atonement and had ascended to the right hand of the Father, He sent His own Spirit to indwell all those who trusted and believed in Him. Because His blood had opened a new, living way to God, God was able to make His personal presence on earth in the bodies of true believers. In this way the Lord Jesus is working among the nations, bringing about God’s will through His people in whom He dwells.
Pentecost reversed the curse of Babel. The Holy Spirit has restored the ability of humanity to communicate the gospel to those they can’t understand. The gift of tongues is not the talent for languages that enables people to learn quickly; it is a gift God gives when He knows His people need to communicate the gospel and have no means of doing so without a divine intervention. That is what happened at Pentecost. That miracle can happen at any time when the Lord knows it is needed.
God’s judgement at Babel plunged the whole world into language-barricaded settlements. It was a way to preserve humanity from itself, but it was also a judgment on human rebellion. The coming of the Holy Spirit reversed that judgment. In those who know and trust Jesus, His own Spirit is at work, enabling them to communicate truth and gospel hope wherever He sends His people. The actual church of born-again believers is carrying God’s grace and the reversal of judgment into the world as they communicate the hope of the true gospel.
Adventism has no understanding of this grace because it teaches a false gospel and does not understand being born again.
All the spiritual gifts work exactly as the gift of tongues works. God’s spirit enables people to do and say what He needs them to do and say for the sake of His kingdom and for the building up of His own body of believers.
The unity which the lesson keeps proclaiming is a false unity. True unity occurs when people trust Jesus’ finished atonement and are born again. Then the Holy Spirit does His work through His body. He does’t leave believers up to their own imagination; He gives them the work He prepared in advance for them to do (Ephesians 2:10).
Ellen White
The gift of prophecy is in the same category as the gifts of tongues, teaching, hospitality, and so forth. Ellen White did not have the biblical gift of prophecy. Thursday’s lesson says this:
The book of Revelation indicates that the gift of prophecy is a distinctive characteristic of the remnant church (Rev. 12:17, Rev. 19:10). As Seventh-day Adventists, we believe that the gift of prophecy was bestowed upon Ellen G. White and is reflected in her writings.
This statement alone reveals Adventism to be a false religion. Ellen White espoused a false trinity, a godhead that does not share substance. She taught an incomplete atonement at the cross that is continuing in heaven since 1844. She taught that Sabbath-keeping will be the mark distinguishing the saved from the lost. She taught that the health message is the right arm of the gospel. She said that Jesus was not almighty God, and she taught that He had to overcome sin.
Furthermore, although Adventists insist that she pointed people to the Bible and never put her own writings on a level with Scripture, these words of hers are quoted on the screen when the EGWwritings.org website loads for searching her online works (I have bolded the words quoted on the website):
Whether or not my life is spared, my writings will constantly speak, and their work will go forward as long as time shall last. My writings are on file in the office; and even though I should not live, these words that have been given to me by the Lord will still have life and will speak to the people.—22LtMs, Lt371, 1907 Par. 19
Ellen White claimed scriptural-level authority for her writings. She said her words would speak “as long as time shall last”, and that even after her demise, her words would still “have life and will speak to the people”. Yet only Scripture is alive!
The book of Hebrews reveals Ellen White’s deception. First, we have no new prophetic information about God or about salvation. The Lord Jesus was God’s final word to us:
God, having spoken long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days spoke to us in [His] Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds,—Hebrews 1:1, 2 LSB
Second, nothing besides Scripture is eternal and living. Hebrews 4:12, 13 tells us this:
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are uncovered and laid bare to the eyes of Him to whom we have an account [to give].—Hebrews 4:12, 13 LSB
Ellen White was a pretender. She taught a false gospel and a false Jesus. She DID receive dreams and visions, but she did NOT get them from God or from one of His heavenly angels. Only evil could twist the character of God and the nature of man, the nature of God, the nature of sin and of salvation so subtly, bolster that twisting with proof-texts, and deceive millions of people as effectively as Ellen White and the Adventist organization have done.
This lesson is using the biblical idea of spiritual gifts to manipulate Adventists to get busy and help build Adventism. It is once again guilting its readers into unifying around Adventist doctrines and identity—when the Bible reveals that spiritual gifts are exactly that: gifts from our triune God to every person who believes, given by Him to each person exactly as He wills (1 Corinthians 12:11).
Spiritual gifts are God’s grace to true believers who have repented of their sin and have been born again. They are equipped by God Himself to minister His love and His truth in the world—and true spiritual gifts do NOT promote false religions with false gospels!
Adventist, I appeal to you: be reconciled to God. Bring Him your Adventism and your confusion, your helpless sinfulness, and see Jesus dying for your sins, being buried, and rising on the third day because His sacrifice was sufficient for all humanity!
Trust Jesus and be born again. His indwelling Holy Spirit is the proof that His atonement is completed. You can be united with Christ by His own Spirit, and you will become part of His body.
Believe in Jesus today, and you will pass from death to life. †
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