Second Quarter 2005 Adult Sabbath School Lessons:
Jesus Through the Eyes of Mark

Insights to Lesson 2
Amazing Miracle Worker
April 2-8

(Produced by the Editorial Board of the 1888 Message Study Committee)

Our secular and technologically advanced Western world has challenged God and the idea of miracles. Christians are not immune from disbelief in the inexplainable. Modernism must give account for every cause by a plausible effect. The Laodicean church has been infected with deadly unbelief in the power of the gospel to cure sinners from sinning and prepare them for translation. This is an inability to believe the miracle of the gospel to bring sinners into harmony with God’s law.

But everything about God, Jesus Christ, the gospel, and the Bible, is miraculous. Creation, the incarnation, the death and resurrection of Christ, the Christian’s participation with Christ—the mystery of godliness—is miraculous.

It has been popular to explain the miracles of Jesus by the laws of nature or psychological models. It is reasoned that God doesn’t work outside these laws and models. It is true that God does not work outside the laws of nature, but who is so wise as to comprehend all the laws by which nature works? If man has observed a tiny fraction of how things operate, and then circumscribes God in having to function within that framework, then God is no bigger than the scientist making the observation. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in any man’s philosophy.

But God does not have to work within the prescribed limits of man’s theories. Extraordinary occasions call for extraordinary action, and why may not God work in any way that He pleases? After all, He is the Creator and “in Him we live and move and have our being.” In Him all things consist. He holds all things together. Therefore, God’s life determines the laws of nature. God manifests Himself in His creation.

By all laws known within the scope of man’s knowledge a dead person cannot be raised back to life. Much less can a Man who “lay down His life” in eternal death—extinction—be resurrected from the dead. This is contrary to the laws known by man. But it happened. And if we could explain it, then it wouldn’t be a miracle. If we could explain it by determining the laws of bringing one annihilated back to life, then we would be God.

Miracles are wonderful things because they are unexplainable. Such wonders prove the existence of God who is infinitely superior to man. But the devils work miracles too. And so we are not to believe in God simply for the wonders themselves. The wonders are a confirmation of God’s word. When God speaks we are to believe His promises knowing that the wonder of miracle will follow confirming His word. The Word of God is miracle.

The problem comes in when man disbelieves God’s word—His promise. This is the crisis of the ages with which God is dealing in the lukewarm condition of His people. Our Sabbath School lesson in Mark 1 and 2 illustrates the miracle-working power that “the everlasting gospel” will demonstrate when the earth will be lightened with the glory of the final message.

In 1844 God gave His people the Third Angel’s Message. The landmark truths were the first, second, and third angels’ messages. The landmarks included the law of God, the seventh day Sabbath, the sanctuary, and the non-immortality of the soul.

Then God promised shortly to give a message that would incorporate the Third Angel’s Message and give it the power of the gospel and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the latter rain. God made good on His promise in 1888. The cross would be uplifted and the true character of God would be revealed to the world (Rev. 18:1). This message would produce two harvests: one would be ripened for the heavenly reaper and the other would be cut for destruction.

The One walking amidst the candlesticks of the seven churches came very near the Laodicean church in 1888. He revealed Himself in a way not heretofore understood in the history of Christianity. His messengers pointed to long-overlooked truths in the Scriptures: the significance of the cross, the Savior of the world (justification); God’s love for sinners; Christ the Representative of humanity reversing our history from Adam. Christ was not ashamed to call us brethren by taking our sin and condemning it in the flesh. God has faith in the bride of Christ that she will respond to Him through the power of the gospel (Rev. 3:21).

If no one believes this most precious message, it still does not nullify the miraculous Word of God. It stands true as do the Ten Commandments written by God’s own finger. The message will be heard and accomplish what God sent it to do. The unbelief of man does not void God’s promise. God “calleth those things which be not as though they were” (Rom 4:17). He brings life from the dead. Apparently that’s how God intends to work in these last days!

—Paul Penno

Read the study notes for Lesson 3