Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from “The Adult Sabbath School Guide” is titled “Spiritualism Exposed”. Our quarterly goes into great depth this week regarding the “state of the dead”. At first, I was unsure of what “spiritualism” really is. It is “a belief that spirits of the dead communicate with the living usually through a medium” (Merriam-Webster). Hence the focus this week. A good lesson on the Biblical “facts”.
We Seventh-Day Adventists have always been big on the facts. To strip away all the falseness that has encroached upon truth since Christ’s ascension. Humans, largely well-intentioned, have interpreted God and His actions based on our own sinful understanding. And these fallacious understandings have gained the weight of tradition over long years of history. Their danger is not in just some minor misunderstanding of certain incidental doctrines. Far from it. These errors color our understanding of our Father. Of our God. And this misunderstanding often has the consequence of paralyzing our relationship with Him and our loving, passionate commitment to Him. It can make us “lukewarm”. This is the real danger of misunderstanding.
On the surface, a belief that the dead can communicate to us through a medium can seem like a minor and inconsequential misunderstanding. But Satan is loath to neglect any misunderstanding to his own benefit… and to hurting the Father by the destruction of His children. And so it is with the “state of the dead”. We long to see beyond the grave. To see into the things of the hereafter. Unfortunately, we will not listen to the God who raises us up to life. Instead, we seek justification for our sinfulness here on earth plus the assurance of the life hereafter, by “communicating” with the dead rather than listening to the Holy Spirit of the Father. “And when they say to you, “Seek those who are mediums and wizards, who whisper and mutter,” should not a people seek their God? Should they seek the dead on-behalf of the living?” (Isaiah 8:19).
We will not listen to our loving, convicting God. “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap-up for themselves teachers and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4). We do not like the “sound doctrine” of our Father. His doctrine is to tell us the truth, lead us to repentance and confessing the truth. All of us children are to “see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and return and be healed” (Isaiah 6:10). But Satan’s influence over any medium is such that we are condemned by the voice of the dead or soothed by the voice of the dead. Both condemnation and soothing-justification are used by Satan to our destruction. Both keep us from a loving relationship with our God. Both keep us from returning “to be healed” (ibid).
The true teaching of the “state of the dead” is not just to set the record straight. The true teaching is to clear the way for the true communication with God through His Holy Spirit. And that is found by first getting to know Him (Bible Study and Prayer) and then by following Him (Obedience… not just mere compliance). This is what sinners such as we do not want to do. We want our own way. However, “there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12). A seeming minor misunderstanding of an incidental doctrine is used in the hands of Satan to our destruction. Such is the nature of Satan’s diabolical hatred of our Father and of us His children. This is why God’s method of winning us back to trust Him is not just eliminating error. It is by radically loving us. A love so strong it draws us to Him. And this is to be our approach to others, too. Not just to refute error, but to love them with the same love with which we are loved. Truly, love conquers all… if we will.
With brotherly love,
Jim