Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils (1 Tim. 4:1)
From: [Brother in Australia]
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 1:03 AM
To: …
Subject: RE: Sabbath School Insights No. 4, Qtr 3-08
The following by 1888 MSC is terrible.
It is Catholic to the core.
They are worshiping an image/mark as defined by the beast
From:
Sent: Wednesday, 23 July 2008 1:15 PM
To: [Brother in
Subject: Sabbath School Insights No. 4, Qtr 3-08
Insights No. 4
First Quarter 2008
Agents of
Hope: God’s Great Missionaries
“The Son of God Among Us”
(Produced by the
Editorial Board of the 1888 Message Study Committee)
Jesus is the Son of God. He is among us. This means that He is God,
revealed to man. The term “Son of God” is an analogy that describes the
connection between Himself and God the Father. It indicates origin, a
close association and identification. It describes the link within the Godhead.
It expresses an intimate relationship between the two: God the Father, and God the Son—Jesus the Messiah. Christ is the
image of God to mankind. God—omnipotent revealed Himself to mankind, in Christ.
The meaning of the term “the Son of God” is that He is of the same
nature as God. God the Father is not God the Son and God the Son is not God
the Father. They are distinct persons with distinct centers
of consciousness. The Father and the Son are one God not two Gods,
one essence, one divine nature. From all eternity, without any
beginning, the Father has always had a perfect image of himself and a divine
reflection or radiance equal to himself in the Son.
In Christ, the invisible God is revealed. Jesus was with the Father
before the world was created. Christ, as God the Son, is the Creator of
all things. God in all His fullness, dwelt in Christ, reconciling the world to
Himself (2 Cor. 5:10; Col. 1:13-20).
Jesus called Himself the “Son of God” (John 3:16-18). Gabriel testified
to this in his instructions to Mary (Luke 1:35). The disciples identified Jesus
as the Son of God (Matt. 16:15, 16; John 1:1, 34; 11:27; Rom. 1:3; Phil.
2:5-11), as well as devils and the Roman centurion (Matt. 8:29; 27:54).
Further, Jesus identified Himself as God revealed in the flesh (John 8:58).
While angels, prophets, and nature can reveal to us something about God,
God alone can reveal God. It takes God to reveal Himself to mankind. The
eternal Revealer revealed Himself to man by clothing
His self-expression in human form as Jesus the Messiah. “The Word was made flesh and
dwelt among us” (John 1:14).
And what is a word? It is simply the expression of a thought.
Perhaps you have used or have heard the following: “I am going to give him/her
a piece of my mind!” How is this done? By speaking. Jesus
is God’s thought made audible and visible. This is the testimony of the
Gospels—God’s eternal self-expression, His Word, His Son,
has entered human form as Jesus the Messiah.
Today the tendency of most
of mankind is the desire for dramatic experiences for evidences of Jesus as the
Son of God. This tendency is to bypass the fact that God revealed Himself in
the Son of God in a town of public disgrace in
Elder E. J. Waggoner had this to say about “God with us”: “What could be
weaker than a helpless babe, made still more helpless by being bound in
swaddling clothes? Yet
that represented the measure of the power which he had in himself when he
performed the mightiest miracles. Faint with fasting, he resisted the
temptations of the devil; and by the same power he cast out devils. He said, ‘I
can of Mine own self do nothing;’ it was ‘the fullness of the Godhead bodily’ dwelling in him,
and not his human flesh, that did the works. His name is ‘God with us,’
and he is ‘the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever;’ and therefore the
weakness of our flesh is no bar to the manifestation of his strength in us. The
power that does ‘exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think’ is ‘the
power that worketh in us.’ Eph. 3:20’” (“The Manger and the Cross,” Advent
Review and Sabbath Herald, Jan. 6, 1903).
Although Jesus limited Himself as a man, He is not a mere man or a
high-ranking angel in human form. He is truly God as well as truly man. The
Sonship of Christ is revealed in this: He was revealed as God in the
flesh, and yet submitted to God the Father. The prime duty of a son is
to honor and obey his father, to serve him freely and
fully. Jesus as God the Son served God the Father not out of
compulsion but because of His unity with the Father, served out of love.
The title of our lesson this week “The Son of God Among Us” points to
the Old Testament prophecies in Isaiah: “Immanuel” (Isa. 7:13, 14), the “Mighty
God, Everlasting Father” (9:6, 7) which are fulfilled in Jesus. “Behold, the
virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and they shall call His name
Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us” (Matt. 1:23).
Elder A. T. Jones connected
“God with us” and the third angel’s message: “God was in Christ reconciling the
world to Himself. ‘His name shall be called Immanuel’—that is, ‘God with us.’
Now then, He wants that garment [Christ’s righteousness] to be ours, but does
not want us to forget who is the weaver. It is not
ourselves, but it is He who is with us. It was God in Christ. Christ is to be
in us, just as God was in Him, and His character is to be in us, just as God
was in Him, and His character is to be woven and transformed into us through
these sufferings and temptations and trials which we meet. And God is the
weaver, but not without us. It is the cooperation of the divine and the
human—the mystery of God in you and me—the same mystery that was in the gospel
and that is the third angel’s message. This is the word of the Wonderful Counselor” (1893 General Conference Bulletin –The Third
Angels Message, No. 10).
[COMMENT - Christ identified in
this manner, and this language is in no way like us or is it possible for us to
be like him, we are not in anyway in any manner like this Christ that in a true
manifestation or, hocus pocus
like this description intimates, of the making of this SON of God as portrayed
above.]
In Thursday’s section of this week’s lesson there is reference to
Matthew 23:37 where Matthew records the Son of God lamenting for
This lament is on-going until the end of the world. What happen to
Today’s message of Rev. 18:1-4 is another of the same kind that the Son
of God gave when He was among us. Only those who receive His message of the
“Loud Cry” to “come out of her (
The letter to the Galatians gives the foundation of our hope in these
last days: “When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son ... to redeem
those who were under the law” (Gal. 4:4-5). The Father sent His one and only
unique divine Son to redeem you and me. Galatians 2:20 says that we are to
“live by the faith of the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us.” Jesus
is “The Son of God Among Us” even “God with us.”
This is the end-time message of the everlasting gospel (Rev. 14:6). The
truth of the everlasting gospel is that the Son of God is among us, as one of
us and He is one with the Father (John 17). The Son of God among us is our
redemption, our safety, our haven of rest.
—Gerald L. Finneman