Sabbath School With Branch Davidians

In today's study, we discuss the main principle behind prophetic symbolism and typology that will help us understand how and why they are used, and that even hopefully will help us understand God's character a little better. Did God to purposely make someone's life terrible, like Hagar's, just so that people of a later generation could enjoy the benefit of a typological symbol? Are types and anti-...

This week's lesson is about the Sabbath. So, we thought we'd take the opportunity to bring some clarity to two aspects of the Sabbath: First, what the word "Sabbath" means, and second, what it means to keep it "holy." "Sabbath" is actually just the English pronunciation of the Hebrew word "Shabbat." In other words, the word "Sabbath" isn't actually a *translation* of the Hebrew word - it is just a...

In this study, we talk about the idea of God's transcendence and immanence; that is, the idea that God is above and beyond all creation and yet in our world at the same time. Theologians also explain it as God existing outside of space and time while also existing in every point of space and every moment of time. Of course, to say that God is outside of space and time is to say that God is immater...

In the EGW notes for Friday's lesson, it is suggested we read Selected Messages , "The Claim to Sinlessness," book 3, p. 353. The last paragraph on the page reads, "Why is it that so many claim to be holy and sinless? It is because they are so far from Christ. I have never dared to claim any such a thing. From the time that I was 14 years old, if I knew what the will of God was, I was willing to d...

Between Revelation 5:11-14, Romans 14:10-12, and Ecclesiastes 12:13-14, it's clear that eventually everyone will be satisfied with God's judgments. Everyone will acknowledge the love of God and the righteousness of Christ - even those who don't receive salvation. How could that be? God's judgments are true and righteous; basically, they are correct and when all the evidence brought forward in the...

What did Paul mean by saying, "Don't you know that you are a temple of God, and that God's Spirit lives (or dwells) in you?"  1 Corinthians 3:16. Was Paul saying that the Holy Spirit is a disembodied immaterial "being" who actually takes up residence in each Christian's body? Or is he saying that the Holy Spirit is not a being at all, but a force or an influence that acts upon the human body to ma...

As you may know, the SDA pioneers unitedly believed and taught that the investigative judgment began at the fulfillment of the 2300 days of Dan. 8:14 in on Oct. 22, 1844. But many in the church today question this doctrine. In this study, we'll be looking at some of the scriptural evidence for the investigative judgment, and the timeframe within which scripture narrows it down to, saying nothing o...

Most SDAs invariably know that not every mention of Jesus riding on a cloud in the bible represents the physical return of Christ to the earth. For example, we know that Daniel 7:13, in which the cloud riding Jesus goes before the Ancient of Days to receive his kingdom, does not depict the second coming of Christ to the earth, but the coming of Christ to the Ancient of days in the Heavenly Sanctua...

Revelation 12:17 is the most solemn message from Jesus on how to find God's end-time church - how to know it from all others that claim to be God's church. We note that the remnant people "keep the commandments of God and *have,* (present tense), the testimony of Jesus, which is the Spirit of Prophecy." Now we might be inclined to assume that the Seventh-day Adventist church must be the remnant ch...

Revelation 21:8 is what might be called a "laundry list" of descriptions of people who will experience the second death. There are other such lists in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Ephesians 5:5, and Galatians 5:19-21. The prophets John and Paul are basically telling us the same thing: those who practice sin will not inherit God's Kingdom.  There are also "laundry lists" for those who will *not* experienc...

How many Seventh-day Adventists today really understand the investigative judgment? Some may think, we have other doctrines more important than this doctrine of the investigative judgment, right? Do we really need to understand this doctrine in order to make it to heaven?   I mean, if Jesus' death for the sins of the world made it so all we need to do to make it to heaven is believe this, and then...

Most of us focus on the wrong things that we think we need for security – like acquiring lots of food and clothing and money. We work so hard to have money, and then we hoard it for fear that if we don't, we will be destitute someday. But Jesus tells us to not worry about these things, but to seek first the Kingdom of God.  Christ commanded his followers to give up their personal earthly wealth an...

It is incredible to me that the Ten Commandments are so comprehensive, even being our schoolmaster of thought. Covetousness is based in selfishness, and selfishness is the foundation for every other sin. As Sunday's lesson points out, covetousness could even be considered the original sin – that of Lucifer. Covetous thoughts are immoral. And covetous thinkers will not enter the kingdom of heaven,...

The basic meaning of success is the achievement of an aim or a goal, and the sorts of goals people usually have in mind when talking about success have to do with bringing about some different set of circumstances in the future. If the circumstances come about, the person is considered successful while if they don't come about, the person is thought to be unsuccessful. John the Baptist's life seem...

What did Jesus do for the poor? Well, we know that not every thing He did was written down (John 21:25), but, from Matthew 11:5, we know one thing He did for the poor - He preached the gospel to them. The Sabbath School lesson rightly says that things like war, famine, sickness, and crime, among other things, cause poverty. And what does the gospel do to these things? Well, if received and put int...

This week, we talk about the idea of giving up everything, specifically as it relates to the Sabbath School's theme this quarter - financial stewardship. In the past few lessons, we've talked about God's requirements in returning to him a tithe (that is a tenth) of our income along with offerings, and we also covered the much neglected second tithe. We might think that once we have given God our t...

Sunday's lesson discusses three reasons people get into financial difficulty. First is ignorance in regard to good financial principles, second is greed or selfishness, and the third listed in the lesson is personal misfortune. In this lesson, we address the third reason people get into finacial difficulty...personal misfortune. Does the church church organization have any responsibility in these...

This week, we learn more about the perfect fulfillment of Malachi chapter 3's prophecy relating to tithes and offerings and see that the message that the final antitypical Elijah brings during the judgment of the living (the judgment or cleansing that comes after the period of the judgment of the dead - see Ellen White, The Spirit of Prophecy Volume 4, p. 314.3), will purify those who heed it befo...

Malachi 3 tells us that tithes are to be given to support God's house. And the Sabbath School  lesson this week rightly points out that God's dwelling, and thus the storehouse for tithes, has transferred from place to place over time. This means that we can't simply assume that where God's storehouse was in the past must be where it is today. To be sure we're tithing to the right place, we need to...

People sometimes equate "legalism" with the belief that we earn salvation by works. In reality, while these are both pitfalls, they aren't the same pitfall. To understand what legalism is and how you might be falling into it without even realizing it, we recommend another study of ours called "Legalism: Treating the Law as Policy Rather Than Principle," linked below. But in this study, we'll be ta...

Ellen White took note of the places in scripture that parallel the church with the bride of Christ, but she also expounded upon scriptures where the church obviously isn't the bride of Christ, but is instead depicted as the wedding guests. We know from Revelation 21 that the bride, the Lamb's wife, is the New Jerusalem. And as Ellen White said that "in the Revelation all the books of the Bible mee...

We are going to see in this study that the term "spirit" and its variants: "spiritual," "spiritualistic," "spiritualism," and "spiritualize," have multiple different uses. And this is of course not peculiar to the word "spirit," it's just the way that all words work. People use words in different ways and understanding an author's meaning is not always as simple as we might imagine. This is especi...

Today, we discuss the fact that there are two phases of the pre-Advent judgment, as both inspiration and reason attest to. The two phases are the judgment of the dead and the judgment of the living. Obviously, if when Christ returns his reward is with Him, to give every man according to his work (Revelation 22:12), the living necessarily have been judged by the time He comes. Ellen White also atte...

Ellen says that the *purpose* of redemption is to restore in man the image of his Maker, to bring him back to the *perfection* in which he was created. This sure sounds like we are to fully expect, and are fully expected to be equal to the moral character of Jesus, as it is the very purpose of redemption. It's common for Christians to think we can't be morally perfect in this life - that we can't...

The Sabbath School lesson this week looks at bible verses that conflict with the idea of reincarnation. This is great if your audience is made up of people professing to believe in the teachings of the bible, but what if you have an audience that doesn't share that belief, as would most likely be the case if you were witnessing to someone who actually did hold a belief in reincarnation, such as a...