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Commentary on "Planning Ahead"
Day 7: Friday, November 6, 2009
This closing part of the study contains a paragraph from Ellen White emphasizing the role of praise and our personal testimony in the salvation of others. The final questions deal with this quotation and with some other aspects from Monday’s lesson.
Positive aspects
The praise we give to God is indeed our praise only when it comes from our own experience, and this indeed confirms that our testimony about God is genuine. It inspires trust in people regarding God’s reality truly manifested in the 21st century. The question for Monday is important because it reveals the preoccupation with not showing superiority to those who are not sharing the particular and assumedly biblical views of Adventism.
Negative aspects
As important as our own genuine faith it is, people need to be directed to the objective reality of the gospel, Christ himself, Christ who made a finished atonement on the cross. Our faith is in vain if Christ had not atoned for all our sins once and for all, blotted them out, and had not raised from the dead. While Adventists acknowledge the historicity of Christ’s death and resurrection, the magnitude of what Christ accomplished in these acts, a full salvation that is not dependent on man’s ability to cooperate with God, this majestic and liberating truth of the gospel is absent in the Adventist theology.
The question related to the subject dealt on Monday says:
How do we treat those who are not of our faith, those who hold views that we believe to be wrong? How should we treat them? At the same time, how do we show them that we believe we have something that they need to know, while not acting as if we are somehow superior?
It’s not clear if the questions assumes Adventists are superior or just gives the impression that they are superior. It’s one of the troublesome aspects of the Adventist’s public relations to appear as an evangelical church with some peculiar traits, and at the same time to present itself, to those familiar with it’s doctrines, as the one true church, the remnant church, in contrast with the rest of the evangelical churches which constitute the apostate Babylon of the book of Revelation. That ambivalence is what makes the above paragraph important: does the paragraph argue for a true humility or just for the necessity of appearing to be humble? The evidence points to the second answer, because as long as the SDA Church will not renounce her claim of a special superior status as a remnant, only true visible church body, the superiority complex and lack of humility can be resolved only by teaching members to hide their superiority. In spite of the good intentions not to appear superior to others, if the concern does not go beyond the surface level to the substance and cause of the superiority complex, the problem remains unsolved.
Copyright 2009 BibleStudiesForAdventists.com. All rights reserved. Revised October 27, 2009. This website is published by Life Assurance Ministries, Glendale, Arizona, USA, the publisher of Proclamation! Magazine. Contact email: BibleStudiesForAdventists@gmail.com.
The Sabbath School Bible Study Guide and the corresponding E.G. White Notes are published by Pacific Press Publishing Association, which is owned and operated by the Seventh-day Adventist church. The current quarter's editions are pictured above.
Official Adventist Resources
Standard Edition Study Guide Week 6
Teacher's Edition Study Guide Week 6
Easy Reading Edition Study Guide Week 6
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