Inside Story for Friday 19th of April 2024

By Andrew McChesney

In Italy, schoolchildren have the option of attending an hour of religion classes every week in public school. As a small girl, Sara decided to attend because she wanted to know more about the Bible.

Her classmates quickly realized that she knew the Bible well. So, when the teacher asked a question, they would say, “Sara knows the answer!”

After hearing the children say this for many months, the teacher asked Sara, “How is it that you know the Bible so well?”

“I go to the Seventh-day Adventist Church,” Sara said.

The teacher wanted to know more, so she went to church with Sara.

Sara got a new religion teacher in the sixth grade. Again she was able to answer the teacher’s questions. Impressed, the teacher invited her to give an hour-long class presentation about the Adventist Church. Sara prepared with help from her pastor and other church leaders. At the end of the presentation, classmates peppered her with questions about the seventh-day Sabbath.

Today, Sara is in high school, and her religion teacher is a nun. Once, she impressed the nun by writing a Bible verse on an exam. Other teens rarely cited the Bible. The nun asked for an explanation, and Sara told her about her faith. Afterward, the nun came to her church.

In another high school class, the teacher grew upset when Sara could not answer a question about religion in Italy. Sara explained that she did not know because she was not a member of Italy’s largest denomination. The teacher asked several questions and invited Sara to give the class a lesson about the Adventist Church. Sara’s presentation pleased the teacher, and she said, “It is wonderful to learn about another faith in our class.”

The next year, however, Sara had a Saturday class from the same teacher. The teacher pressured Sara to attend, and when she didn’t, teased her. “Please come to school,” she said. “We won’t tell anyone that you came.” Week after week, she mocked Sara. “I also could stay home on Saturdays,” she said. “It would be better than coming to school.”

To Sara’s surprise, her classmates began to defend her to the teacher.

Then one Sabbath, when Sara was in church, the teacher praised her to the class. “Even though Sara is only here half the time, she gets better marks than the rest of you,” she said.

Sara believes God has blessed her for being open about her faith.

“I never have hidden my faith from my classmates,” she told Adventist Mission. “My classmates respect me and know my faith is serious for me.”

This mission story illustrates Spiritual Growth Objective No. 7 of the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s “I Will Go” strategic plan: “To help youth and young adults place God first.” For more information, go to the website: IWillGo2020.org.

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/24b-03-inside-story-faithful-student-in-italy/

Daily Lesson for Friday 19th of April 2024

“The same spirit of hatred and opposition to the truth has inspired the enemies of God in every age, and the same vigilance and fidelity have been required in His servants. The words of Christ to the first disciples are applicable to His followers to the close of time: ‘What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.’ Mark 13:37.”—Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, pp. 56, 57.

Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com

In many parts of the world, especially where people have free access to the Bible, Satan has employed other means to weaken its influence. One very effective way has been through various scientific endeavors or even biblical scholarship, which sometimes takes positions that, if accepted, would undermine trust in the Word of God. For example, though the book of Daniel dates itself to more than 500 years before Christ, many Bible scholars date it, instead, to the middle of the second century b.c. They argue that it had to be written at this time; otherwise the prophet would have been accurately telling the future, and that can’t happen. Therefore, they argue, Daniel was not written when it says it was but, rather, hundreds of years later. Unfortunately, this lie about the Bible is one of many that modern scholarship seeks to foist upon us. And more unfortunately, many people accept this error because, after all, Bible scholars are teaching it. No wonder Paul warns us, “Test all things; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21, NKJV).

Discussion Questions

1. Refer to the quote in Tuesday’s study and then consider the following: How is Satan using similar methods today to subtly undermine the authority of the Scriptures?
2. What are our greatest safeguards against misinterpreting God’s Word?
3. Satan’s major attempt in the great controversy between good and evil is to malign God’s character and present Him as an authoritarian, unloving tyrant. How does the evil one attempt to do this, and what is God’s response to his lies?
4. The apostle Peter affirms that “no prophecy is of private interpretation” (2 Peter 1:20). How can we be sure we do not distort the meaning of Scripture to achieve our own ends? Why might this be easier to do than we realize? How can we safeguard ourselves against it?

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/24b-03-further-thought-light-shines-in-the-darkness/

And all the people who belong to this world worshiped the beast. Revelation 13:8 NLT

Sadly many put their confidence in popular opinion, while the Bible tells us the vast majority of the world will worship the beast.

Image © Lars Justinen from GoodSalt.com

Interestingly while Jesus claimed to be God, the majority accused Him of blasphemy and had Him crucified for making such a claim. Later the beast claims to be God, but, instead of accusing him of blasphemy, the majority worships him. Truth is clearly not a popularity contest.

Occasionally, at church or the Adventist school where I teach Bible and evangelism, someone will ask me, “What do we believe about such and such?” My response has always been, “I don’t know what you believe, but here is what I and many Seventh-day Adventists believe,” and I show them in the Bible what I believe and why. I am not going to tell someone what they believe. That is not teaching. That’s brainwashing. Besides truth is not truth just because everyone in the Adventist church believes it. Truth is not a popularity contest in the church or the world. Truth is truth only if the Bible supports it.

During the Dark Ages, when people did not have access to the Bible, people trusted their priests to tell them what they believed, and because of that there was a lot of brainwashing going on.

Even before the Dark Ages, priests abused their authority, and tried to brainwash people into believing whatever they believed. This happened in Jesus’ day when those in “authority” were trying to capture Jesus.

When the Temple guards returned without having arrested Jesus, the leading priests and Pharisees demanded, “Why didn’t you bring him in?”

“We have never heard anyone speak like this!” the guards responded.

“Have you been led astray, too?” the Pharisees mocked. “Is there a single one of us rulers or Pharisees who believes in him? John 7:45-48 NLT

The guards experienced and heard the Word of God speaking to them and believed. Since the Pharisees did not want to believe, they mocked at this. In John 7 the Pharisees misconstrued Scripture to try and prove their point, but amazingly, instead of hanging their hat on Scripture, they hung it on the fact that none of the rulers or leaders believed. Is truth a popularity contest? If everyone else believes something is it right, and if no one else believes it, then is it wrong? Is that how it works?

The number of people who believe something simply because everyone else believes it is staggering. Take the state of the dead for example. Years ago I attended the funeral of a dear Adventist saint. Her family believed in the immortality of the soul and asked the Adventist preacher doing her funeral to “put her in heaven now.” The pastor replied that he could not do that since it simply is not true. However he told them he believed in liberty of conscience and freedom of speech so if one of them wanted to stand up and say she was in heaven, they could. So one of the family members stood up and talked about how her grandmother was now in heaven. I remember she kept saying “we cling to this!” Very emphatically, yet she gave no Scriptural reference other than that is what everyone believes. So I am not sure exactly what it was she was clinging to other than popular belief. In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 Paul tells us to “comfort each other with these words” about the resurrection. Sadly instead of comforting each other with the words Paul told us to use to comfort each other, many people use phrases about going straight to heaven when you die that are nowhere in the Bible and Paul nor anyone else ever suggested that we use. Sadly those phrases have been used so often that people believe it because they have heard it so many times.

When it comes to Sabbath keeping, I have heard so many people say that Sunday must be the true day because the whole world can’t be wrong. They forget that at the time of the flood only 8 people were right! Truth is not a popularity contest.

And the people of Berea were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, and they listened eagerly to Paul’s message. They searched the Scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth. Acts 17:11 NLT

Like the temple guards, the Bereans were interested in new ideas as long as they were found in Scripture. They didn’t believe something because Paul and Silas believed it or because a ruler did. On their own they searched the Scriptures daily to find truth.

I have heard Seventh-day Adventists telling their Baptist and Methodist friends to search the Bible for themselves because their pastors could be wrong. I have watched some of the same Seventh-day Adventists listening to their own favorite Adventist preachers, without bothering to search the Scriptures, because, after all, their pastor is Adventist, so he is automatically right, right? Wrong! We all make mistakes, as we all continue to learn and grow.

Let’s not be like the foolish Pharisees in John 7, who hung their hats on how many people believed or did not believe something. Truth is not a popularity contest. Let’s search the Scriptures ourselves to find truth.

You may watch the video presentation of this article here.

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