|
||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
||||||||||||
Commentary on "The Promise of His Return"
Day 2: Sunday, March 25, 2012 - The Beginning and the End
Overview
Today's lesson highlights the concept of a literal second coming. The author is concerned that some Christians abandoned belief in the restoration of God's kingdom in a literal-historical way and replaced it with a belief in a present restoration of the kingdom. He considers belief in a literal creation as a kind of antidote for this theological virus, in which the second coming restores the initial creation, restores the kingdom of God. If the creation was a literal event, it follows that the second coming restores a literal kingdom of God too, and this is the only view that brings comfort, because it puts an end to sin, while an evolutionary view of life doesn't offer any hope.
Observations
At first sight this is a better view than holding to a belief of origins based on evolution instead of creation. At the same time this view misses some important elements that can modify other important areas of the Adventist doctrinal package. For example, the author bases his argument on 2 Peter 3;1-10 in order to show that God is going to make the old world a new world. What is left outside the picture is the fact that the text speaks about the world before the deluge, before Noah and his ark as a world that went the full circle, from beginning to end.
"The heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished" (2 Peter 3:5,6).
At creation the world appeared from water when God separated the dry land from the seas, and the reversible process was used to put an end to this world, through the deluge the dry land went back to the original status, were it was before creation. In this way, what happened after the deluge was the beginning of a “new” world when, again, the dry land was separated from the water. God repeated in some sense what he did at creation. Still, this time things will end differently.
These details show that in some sense the restoration of God's kingdom is not necessarily a coming back to the original after-creation status of the world. The deluge went farther than this. The flood took the world back to the place where only water covered the earth, as it had before creation. The point of reference, the point that repeats three times, is the comparison of creation, the deluge, and the second coming. These events are not examples of a return to creation but of a repetition of the pre-creation status. The created order repeats the void into which God speaks and creates. Since even the method of bringing the world back to this status differs (the destruction of the first world was through water, the destruction of the second world will be through fire), this should be enough to understand that there are important dissimilarities between the past and the future. While there is similarity regarding creation and the second coming, the similarities are related to what happened prior to creation, not to what occurred as a result of creation. The prediluvian world emerged from water and ended in water, the postdiluvian world emerged again from water but will end in fire, and the future new world will emerge from fire. It should be clear that the new world is created in a different way. It will be created from fire, not from water. It's a significant departure from the way in which the previous two worlds came to existence. The new creation is going to be something different from the world as we know it.
This means that the new creation cannot be classified as a restoration of the world. It's a creation of a new world, not a restoration of the old world. It's not a going back to Eden, to the status in which Adam was then. That's not the goal; Adam is not the ideal. Jesus, the new Adam, is at every point better than the first Adam (see Romans 5;12-21), and his work of obedience will bring a blessing much more greater than the blessing Adam enjoyed in his sinless state, before the fall. Unfortunately, Adventist theology is stuck with the first Adam, with a restoration of Adam's first state, while in the present, the believers have to act better than Adam acted in the garden. Adventist believers are still under probation, and if they say "no" to temptation, they will live the "victorious life" over every sin. They will defeat Satan and will pass the test Adam failed, and they will be received back into Eden. This detail of Adventist theology is why for the Adventist mindset, the goal of the new creation is the restoration of Adam's Eden. This goal for the future misses the reality of the second Adam's accomplishments that won more than the world that Adam lost through sin. The second Adam assured an eternal inheritance (Hebrews 9:12; 10:14) for every believer, apart from any "time of probation".
Copyright 2012 BibleStudiesForAdventists.com. All rights reserved. Revised March 23, 2012. This website is published by Life Assurance Ministries, Camp Verde, 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 13
Teacher's Edition Study Guide Week 13
Easy Reading Edition Study Guide Wk 13
Search the Complete Published Ellen G. White Writings
Please Support This Project
