A Seventh-day Adventist Philosophy for Witnessing, pt. 2: The Adventist Edge

Larry Kirkpatrick ++ Mentone Church of Seventh-day Adventists ++ 16 November 2002

EGW Quotes Handout: Click here for handout

Today we continue our witnessing seminar. Whereas in our first presentation we had much to say about what not to say, we shall here and in our next talk invest our energies in pursuit of a better understanding of what is almost certainly our richest untapped evangelistic resource: the Great Controversy Arc.

Maps

Here is something most of you have in your car. It's a map. A map consists of four main aspects: (1) the main map area (most of the paper), (2) the "key" or "legend," which tells you how to interpret the symbols on the map, (3) the "scale" of the map, which helps you understand what the representation of distance on the map is, and (4) someplace on the map that shows which direction north is or else what the longitude and latitude lines are. That is, altogether a map includes representation of an area, a key for interpreting its representations, and orientating data.

We usually use a map with a very utilitarian purpose in mind. We are traveling from one place to another place and the map is a tool to help us move accurately from one place to another. Besides being a good source for a small scale domestic argument, maybe we aren't usually very interested in maps. After all, there is only so much to become excited about on a map of San Bernardino.

Then there are bigger maps. A street map of San Bernardino is one thing, a globe of planet earth is another. That is a very helpful map, showing the relationship between land masses, nations, and so on. Larger scale maps are more helpful for showing "the bigger picture." Some of us are really fascinated by "the bigger picture." When I was in maybe fifth grade, my brother (two years younger) and I shared the same bedroom. I was fascinated by the planets and stars. I would check out book after book from the school library on that. I well remember laying there in bed night after night, telling my brother about the planets of our solar system (from the Sun out, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, asteroid-belt, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto). Somewhere in mid-explanation, of course, I would realize that he had fallen asleep and I'd stop.

We all need knowledge of that which immediately, locally confronts us, but the bigger-picture is important too.

Structure Hunger

Some psychologists theorize that as human-beings we each have built-into us three "hungers": (1) stimulus hunger, an inward drive for things like food, water, and other interesting experiences (2) structure hunger, that which drives us to organize our experience and understand the relationships between those things that compose our world, and (3) social hunger, a need to interact with other people.

If we have within ourselves such drives, we can readily understand the power of religion. The Bible teaches us that we were designed to be worshipping beings. I believe that we have a built-in desire to know God, to have social experiences with other people, and to understand our own personal place in "the bigger picture." In fact, one of the reasons why religious systems rue and false have been so successful through the years, is for the very reason that because of what they are, because of what they do, they feed one of our most basic hungers -- structure hunger. Understanding how everything fits together goes a very long way today. Presenting things in a plausibly organized manner will go a long ways toward getting your ideas a hearing.

I have here a set of cards that is used by Mormon missionaries. They will come into your home and lay these cards out one by one in a certain order, and describe for you their understanding of how everything works -- they'll present for you the Mormon equivalent of the great controversy. Their understanding may be wrong, but they'll show you how everything fits together, at least in their scenario. And many find it interesting, even compelling, especially if they've not really ever held a viewpoint, before they bring and present their version of "the big picture" to them.

In their rather human-centered view of things, they show how how your existence fits into the big picture (as they see it), from your quote, "pre-mortal," unquote existence (the Bible doesn't teach that!) to your present life, to your final immortal existence in the "terrestrial, celestial, or telestial" realms (most of that is erroneous as well). Even now, some of you are curious. Some of you would be interested in my demonstrating how all these cards fit together in "the Mormon great controversy." Am I right? People are insatiably curious. All this is is another way of sharing a map.

The Great Controversy Arc

Fortunately, to propel forward his final religious movement, God gave to His people the ultimate evangelistic help when it comes to the area of structure hunger. We were given, on a silver platter no less, the great controversy. We can call it the great controversy theme, or the great controversy arc, or just the great controversy, but whatever we call it, it is an extremely powerful idea.

To put it into modern terms, the great controversy is like a giant viewing screen or a giant globe or map that describes the interrelationships of spiritual truths. How does the big picture when it comes to God and religion and salvation and life and death and sin and suffering fit together? On March 14, 1858, 144 years ago in Lovett's Grove, (now known as Bowling Green) Ohio, Ellen G. White had a vision in which she was shown much of this broad sweeping picture of the battle between good and evil. Much that she was there shown was presented in a small volume (today found in Early Writings, pp. 145-295). Those 150 pages were eventually expanded into the Conflict of Ages set of five volumes covering nearly 4000 pages! The book Great Controversy itself has been perhaps the single most effective evangelistic book in the history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. There are many who trace their conversion to Seventh-day Adventism to reading this book. In fact, may I have a show of hands? How many here became Seventh-day Adventists after reading the book Great Controversy? I expected as much!

A Seventh-day Adventist philosophy for witnessing is unworthy of the name SDA if it fails to include as one of its most significant factors the great controversy arc. We're doing our homework now. Here's something that, if we can begin to understand it, will prove to be one of the most powerful tools we can have for sharing the faith of the Bible with others.

Although God gave us a boost by, through Mrs. White, giving that vision, we can go much further. The only way of sharing the great controversy is not by Mrs. White's vision. We can use Scripture. And I believe that she always intended us to. See, once you understand the great controversy paradigm, and then you go to read the Bible, and everything fits into that broader scheme. Put simply, if we read the Bible carefully, we can come to no other conclusion than the rich discoveries in great controversy.

Breakthrough After Centuries of Error

Did people read the Bible for 2000 years and fail to see the great controversy there? No, we wouldn't say that. Many saw many aspects of it. And yet the sweep of history between the time when Christ died on the cross for us, and our present day, is mostly a period of darkness and oppression toward the truth. For centuries God's two witnesses, the Old and New Testaments, prophesied in sackcloth.

For most of the period between then and Mrs. White's day, God's Word was locked away from the common people in inaccessible languages and buried under the vast theological landfill of Roman Catholic doctrines and false teachings. And because those who inherited the Protestant Reformation lost their momentum and ceased to reform, by Mrs. White's day Protestantism itself was choked with its own set of traditions, the trend of which was ever to remove from consideration the crucial role of God's law and real obedience to it.

When we go to the Bible today, as did Mrs. White, our sight unobscured by the errors that blockaded us from seeing the big picture, we can develop an understanding of the battle between good and evil that we can use for the rest of our lives. And for virtually all who hear it, it will be the first time! It will be the first time they've heard a picture, that was biblical, that made sense about the battle between good and evil. And their own place in it.

In a Nutshell, What is the Great Controversy Arc?

God's Original Purpose

To create from nothing a universe filled with sentient, free, unselfish beings who would for eternity lead holy and happy lives and share with Him in His goodness.

Satan's Defection and War Against God

Satan, a being originally created holy and happy, voluntarily twisted himself and sought the worship of other created beings. He insists on a universe running on his self-interested paradigm and wages relentless war against the Creator.

God's Original Purpose for Man

God's original purpose for man was that he would be holy and happy and have his part in the joy of the creation, living in close communion with His Maker.

Fall of Man

Although lovingly warned by God, Adam and Eve in their immaturity were lured into Satan's trap, and chose to disobey. The consequences included the fall of humankind and the radical twisting of human nature so that where the race originally cleaved to good now it is naturally inclined toward evil; now we are naturally inclined toward self-interest and our moral constitution has been weakened so that we are incapable of obeying God or having any interest in His principles unless He intervenes to guide and empower us back toward our original perfection.

Planet Earth, Jesus, and Humankind -- The Ultimate Test Case

Can God repair the broken race -- a race now unnaturally hereditarily inclined to evil -- and lead it back to holiness and happiness? One of the three persons of the godhead entered His own creation and became as human as we are, lived God's law and died having been totally faithful to divine principles. His life offered up in our behalf not only substitutes for our failures, not only shows us the example of how we can overcome, but offers us overcoming power to live without sinning. Satan bitterly denies God's goodness and engages in warfare to his utmost to destroy humankind and demonstrate that God is unfair in demanding holiness.

Redemption and Restoration of Man

The salvation planned for us by God means more than humankind being processed through some higher order of cosmic legal system, but includes our actual restoration to purity during the period of our present existence.

Closure

Those who accept God's gracious gifts will ultimately compose a race who have been entirely bought back from sin, entirely restored through the power of Jesus, a people who are -- at last -- safe to save. When in the end God produces a people who show what the power of Jesus can do in fallen humans, Satan's power will at last be broken; no question will remain, no doubt linger in regard to God's love toward man and fairness in healing His universe of sin and discontinuing the existence Satan. The universe will have evaluated both forms of government in operation and carefully observed their distinct fruits; sin will never rise up again through all eternity.

Realization of God's Original Purpose

A universe filled with its community of sentient, free beings, able to choose good or evil but forever choosing the good, now sufficiently matured to proceed, will continue increasing in ever greater heights of holiness and happiness. Side by side with Jesus forever, they grow ceaselessly in love and embody the beauty of God's kind of unselfishness.

Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words?

NOTE: To make a separate print-out of this at 8.5x11 horizontal, click here and fiddle with your printer settings.

Let's expand on this with the chart you've been given. By the way, we are not saying you will have to remember this whole chart. It is just given you to help you think about the great controversy. Now we are going to use some EGW quotes here as we explain, but we are going to in our next presentation give many Scripture texts that will help us share the great controversy from with others, from the Bible itself.

Through the Sweep of Time

Notice that at the left margin of the picture it reads "INITIATION," or the beginning of the great controversy. At the right edge, you read "CLOSURE." Everything that happens along the way has its place. Notice the text at the left margin again, where it reads "Heaven: where the war began." And there we reference Revelation 12:7-9, which read "And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him."

This warfare continues until God brings the conflict between good and evil to closure, as we read in the Bible at Revelation 20:7-9, "And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them."

You'll notice in the ten quotations we've given you on the handout a number of references about time, that "time must be given" temporarily to Satan so that he could show by demonstration the bankruptcy of his principles of government to the whole universe. In the bottom quote on the second page in the middle we read, "God carries with Him the sympathy and approval of the whole universe as step by step His great plan advances to its complete fulfillment. He will carry it with Him in the final eradication of rebellion." (Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and prophets, p. 79). The Bible's "In the beginning" in Genesis 1:1 meets finally with its heartfelt plea in its closing breath as John prays, "Even so, come Lord Jesus" (Revelation 22:20).

The Underlying Principles of the Great Controversy

Here are three underlying principles in the great controversy, three things that will remain forever true: (1) The law represents God's character and cannot be changed, (2) God will never remove from us our free choice, and (3) God will not force any being to worship Him. Look with me at the second to last quote: "From the first the great controversy had been upon the law of God. Satan had sought to prove that God was unjust, that His law was faulty, and that the good of the universe required it to be changed. In attacking the law he aimed to overthrow the authority of its Author. In the controversy it was to be shown whether the divine statutes were defective and subject to change, or perfect and immutable." (Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 69).

Realize that in making this claim, Satan was claiming that God's law was defective, and since God's law represents God's own character, He was claiming that God's character was defective. And obviously a God having a warped character is unfit to rule a universe filled with heavenly intelligences, isn't He? All through the conflict, God operates under His own principles while Satan operates according to his own principles. For God to be true to Himself, His plan can never include the removal of our free choice. Read with me the third quotation on the second page:

"Even when he was cast out of heaven, Infinite Wisdom did not destroy Satan. Since only the service of love can be acceptable to God, the allegiance of His creatures must rest upon a conviction of His justice and benevolence. The inhabitants of heaven and of the worlds, being unprepared to comprehend the nature or consequences of sin, could not then have seen the justice of God in the destruction of Satan. Had he been immediately blotted out of existence, some would have served God from fear rather than love. The influence of the deceiver would not have been fully destroyed, nor would the spirit of rebellion have been utterly eradicated. For the good of the entire universe through ceaseless ages, he must more fully develop his principles, that his charges against the divine government might be seen in their true light by all created beings, and that the justice and mercy of God and the immutability of His law might be forever placed beyond all question."

"Satan's rebellion was to be a lesson to the universe through all coming ages -- a perpetual testimony to the nature of sin and its terrible results." (Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 42).

If God had destroyed Satan at the beginning, we would have served Him out of fear for our own existence rather than love for His existence. Since God has no plans to take away our freedom of choice, He provides the universe with a persuasive testimony about what the final result of sin is. Notice again, the goal of God, in the fifth quotation on the first page: "Glorious to the eyes of heavenly beings was the promise of the future. A restored creation, a redeemed race, that having conquered sin could never fall, -- this, the result to flow from Christ's completed work, God and angels saw. With this scene the day upon which Jesus rested is forever linked" (Ellen G. White, Desire of Ages, p. 665).

And again, what will be when the great controversy is over, the quotation above it: " Every question of truth and error in the longstanding controversy has now been made plain. The results of rebellion, the fruits of setting aside the divine statutes, have been laid open to the view of all created intelligences. The working out of Satan's rule in contrast with the government of God has been presented to the whole universe. Satan's own works have condemned him. God's wisdom, His justice, and His goodness stand fully vindicated." (Ellen G. White, Great Controversy, p. 670).

We shall be free for eternity, brothers and sisters, to sin. But we will never sin again through all eternity, for we will see what it means.

God's Overarching Purpose in the Great Controversy

Move to the top of the chart where it reads "God's overarching Purpose in the Great Controversy." We list three: (1) To bring His creation into a position of eternal security, in which sin shall never again arise, (2) To vindicate His government and law, and (3) To redeem and heal and thus restore humankind to harmony with the heavenly family. The quotations we've already given demonstrate most of these points, and I invite you to read all the references to especially understand these ideas.

Center of the Great Controversy: God's Love Demonstrated Through Jesus and the Cross

At the center of the chart you see the cross. Radiating outward from it a circle and arrows. Above it, "The Sacrifice of Atonement." Without the cross we would have nothing. There would be no salvation for anyone. Jesus' life was given in place of our own. He is both, our example and our substitute.

You see to the left, the text Genesis 3:15. That text has within itself the first promise of a Redeemer, the first promise of atonement. "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel." Whose heel? The heel of Satan's enemy, the enemy of sin.

In the center we have texts pertaining to the sacrifice of the atonement, Jesus' death for us on the cross (1 Corinthians 5:7; John 3:16; Hebrews 9:26, 28). Here is the great center of our faith, but by no means its entirety. Indeed, the impact of the cross was far more than to provide a substitute for us, but to provide power for us also to live God's way. The fullest application of the atonement comes in earths closing years (Hebrews 10:14-22). And so all these things focus on Jesus, the promise, coming, and high priestly ministry of Him on our behalf.

The Church

Finally, a row at the bottom of the chart reminds us that heaven's plan is that the church would be the theater of God's grace (Ephesians 3:10, 20-21; Revelation 12:17). Down through the hallways of time the lives of various individuals have witnessed with special power to the authenticity of the message of God (Genesis 5:24; 6:9; 39:9; Hebrews 11:5, 7; 2 Kings 2:11). The ultimate revelation of God is the life of Christ (John 8:46; 12:32; 15:10; 17:4). But at the end God has called us to give the ultimate evidence as a group. No other group has been so exposed to error and sin, and to the power of God for truth and righteousness, more than ourselves (Revelation 7:3-4; 12:17; 14:1-5, 12; 19:7-8; 21:27). This is a dimension lacking in most portrayals of Christianity. For Adventists, it is very important, and very beautiful, because all of this speaks to us, not of the importance of humankind, but of the watchcare and love of our Savior Jesus.

Conclusion

The message today has laid-out some important elements in understanding the great controversy. Christ is central. Evidence for God is crucial. His sovereign plan has included us and is a great privilege for us. There is no room for pride on our part. Remember the fantastic Ellen White quote we shared: "As the redeemed have beheld the power and malignity of Satan, they have seen as never before, that no power but that of Christ could have made them conquerors. In all that shining throng there are none to ascribe salvation to themselves, as if they had prevailed by their own power and goodness. Nothing is said of what they have done or suffered; but the burden of every song, the keynote of every anthem, is: Salvation to our God and unto the Lamb." (Ellen G. White, Great Controversy, pp. 665).

The glory of this story all goes to Jesus. This is why we must tell it better and better. Here is the ultimate answer to structure hunger.

Our next presentation will deal with sharing some of the crucial ideas of the great controversy by means of the Bible.

Pastor Larry Kirkpatrick is an ordained minister of the gospel. Since 1994 he has served in the American Southwest as pastor to several churches. He received his BA in Religion from Southern Adventist University in 1994 and a Master of Divinity from Andrews University in 1999 with a specialization in Adventist Studies. While in Michigan he was employed by the General Conference at the White Estate Berrien Springs branch office. More important than his scholastic preparation has been his immersion in the biblical and Spirit of Prophecy materials. He is author of the 2003 book Real Grace for Real People. Presently he serves as Pastor of the Mentone Church of Seventh-day Adventists, located near Loma Linda, California. Larry is married to Pamela. The couple presently live in Highland, California along with their two children, Etienne and Melinda.