Special Insights No. 13
First Quarter 2007
Adult Sabbath School Lessons
“Ecclesiastes”
(Produced by the Editorial Board of the 1888 Message
Study Committee)
The Conclusion of the Matter
Are you glad that these 13 weeks have come to an end, so that we can
say Goodbye to the old man with the flowing white beard pictured on
our cover?
He had wasted many years of his precious life that the Lord had given
him; he had abandoned the true “wisdom” that he was given
when he was a young king. Now Solomon must end his days with the message,
“Don’t do like I have done ” That’s now his
“gospel.”
It’s much like the “gospel” that we so often hear
from Seventh-day Adventists who are on our camp meeting platforms who
tell our young people, “Don’t do like I did!” when
they recount their years of rebellion when they were young in Sabbath
School or at the Academy or in college when they went to the world to
“taste” its pleasures of liquor, sex, drugs, etc. Finally,
broken and sorrowful they limp back into the church and get on the camp
meeting trek with their doleful message, “Don’t do as I
did!”
Is it possible for us to proclaim a “third angel’s message”
in our church schools and academies and colleges that will be such “good
news” that our youth will have the Christ-like courage to take
up the cross and yield self to Christ while they’re young and
never apostatize?
The answer is “yes!” if we will proclaim to them the new
covenant instead of the familiar and popular old covenant!
In recently reviewing Prophets and Kings, chapter 24, for a sermon
on Hosea, this writer was struck with the repeated emphasis therein
on the fact that the nation of Israel had entered into the old covenant
with the Lord at Mt. Sinai, and that this dearth of understanding the
new covenant had predisposed ancient Israel’s constant apostasy
into paganism and Baal worship. The history of the northern kingdom
is the saddest chapter in the Bible (2 Kings 17); but unfortunately
it is repeated in the later history of the southern kingdom which ended
in Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest and the captivity in Babylon.
The same old covenant legalism prevailed in the return from the captivity,
and the final fruit borne by the old covenant was the rejection and
crucifixion of the Messiah Israel had long professed to be waiting for.
Did King Solomon ever understand the new covenant?
For sure, he could not have apostatized into such a dismal fall into
confused immorality as displayed in his mature life. The first Israelite
who we read of in Scripture who came to understand the true significance
of Israel’s post-Sinai history (aside from Jesus, of course) was
Paul in his writing of Galatians. In his chapter 3 he details the new
covenant as proclaimed to Abraham (vss. 6-8, 15), then the true place
of the law as proclaimed at Sinai (vs. 17), how it was “added”
or emphasized “because of [Israel’s] transgressions”
(vs. 19), and that the entire Sinai and post-Sinai experience made “the
law” a severe “schoolmaster [disciplinarian] to bring us
unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (vss. 21-24),
the new covenant gospel.
Ellen White was overjoyed when she heard for the first time (in forty-five
years) the two 1888 messengers at Minneapolis explain this truth to
our legalism-confused forefathers. She later declared their “most
precious message” to be “the beginning” of the loud
cry of Revelation 18 and its preparatory latter rain of the Holy Spirit.
Thank God we can leave our 13 weeks with Solomon with this blessed
good news ringing in our hearts! He will come up in the first resurrection
and join the kindergarten of gospel truth; he will have lots of blessed
learning to do!
He talks much about death in his chapter 12, and our Lesson 13 keeps
emphasizing over and over that “we all must die.” What has
happened to “the third angel’s message”? Paul says
the opposite! “We shall not all die, But when the last trumpet
shall sound, we shall all be changed in an instant, as quickly as the
blinking of an eye” (1 Cor. 15:51, 52; GNB, NEB). “We who
are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not [precede]
those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven
with a shout, ... and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which
are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them ... to meet
the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” This
is the third angel’s message on which the Seventh-day Adventist
church was originally founded—the message of the cleansing of
the sanctuary.
And those who believe the message cherish what Paul said is “the
blessed hope,” “looking for the glorious appearing of ...
our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave Himself for us” (Titus 2:11-14).
Solomon, bless him, never had such good news to look forward to.
—Robert J. Wieland
(Note: A series of CDs on these lessons recorded
by this author is available from the office of the 1888 Message Study
Committee: 269-473-1888.)
Listen to the audio recording for Lesson 13 now in MP3 format.
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