In Genesis 3:19, Adam was told that, at death, he would return to the dust from which he was made.
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The same thing happens to us. Notice—we do not return to being apes, because we were not made from apes. We were made from dust, and it’s to the dust, at death, that we return.
Read Genesis 2:7; Psalm 104:29-30; John 1:4; Acts 17:24-25. What is the ultimate significance of these texts for us? How should [...]
As we all know so well, the first humans, perfect beings created in the “image of God,” fell into sin, which brought death.
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They had been warned, and they understood what they had been told. Eve even repeated to the serpent what God had said. Yet, they sinned anyway. At times we, like Eve, are led into sin by deceit; while, at other times, like Adam, we sin intentionally. Either way, we are sinners, guilty [...]
Read for This week’s Study: Gen. 3:21; Ps. 104:29, 30; John 1:4; Rom. 5:6-11;Gal. 3:13; Matt. 27:46.
Memory Text: “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22, NIV).
In the biblical account, Adam and Eve were created in God’s image, without any moral defect. But they did have free will, a prerequisite for them to be able to love. When Adam and Eve rebelled against God, they fell under Satan’s power (see Heb. [...]
“God created man in His own image.
Here is no mystery. There is no ground for the supposition that man was evolved by slow degrees of development from the lower forms of animal or vegetable life. Such teaching lowers the great work of the Creator to the level of man’s narrow, earthly conceptions. Men are so intent upon excluding God from the sovereignty of the universe that they degrade man and defraud him of the dignity of his origin. He who [...]
As we look at the mission field, we must look through the compassionate eyes of Jesus.
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We’re not looking at a target group or mere statistics; we’e looking at real people. They may have given up on church and religion, but they’e open to those who follow Christ and show the love and sympathy of their Master.
And if we’e going to minister to needs, we need to know what those needs are. We need to [...]
Read Psalm 92.
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What does this tell us, at least in part, about what the experience of Sabbath keeping should be like? Why, when thinking about the Lord, should we express the kind of joy expressed in this psalm?
The psalmist obviously knew the Lord, knew what the Lord was like, knew what the Lord had done, and knew what the Lord was going to do one day. And it is for these reasons that he expresses [...]
Read 2 Peter 3:3-7.
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Compare the description of the last day scoffers with our contemporary society. What do the scoffers deny, and why?
The scoffers claim that nature has continued on without interruption, a claim known among scientists as “uniformitarianism.” This is equivalent to denying that miracles occur. This claim is then used to deny that the Lord is going to come as He promised.
Notice, though, how Peter links their denial of the second coming of Christ [...]
Read Mark 2:27, 28.
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What crucial truth about the Sabbath does Jesus reveal here? How can we take this principle and apply it to our own Sabbath experience?
Jesus and His disciples had just walked through a field of grain, and the disciples, hungry, had picked some of the grain and eaten it. The act of picking grain while one was passing through a field was not a problem, as the rules of the society permitted this. Food [...]
Read Deuteronomy 5:12-15.
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How does the emphasis of the Sabbath commandment here differ from Exodus 20:8-11?
Here Moses reminds the Israelites that they should keep the Sabbath, and he states that they should do this because God delivered them from Egypt. The texts say nothing about the six days of Creation or about the Sabbath being God’s rest. Instead, the emphasis here is on Salvation, on deliverance, on Redemption, in this case the redemption from Egypt, a symbol [...]
In Exodus 20:8-11, the fourth commandment refers directly to the Creation week.
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This is important, because it points back to Eden itself, to a world without sin, a perfect world coming fresh from the Creator. “The Sabbath is not introduced as a new institution but as having been founded at creation. It is to be remembered and observed as the memorial of the Creator’s work.”-Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 307.
Read Genesis 2:1-3. How is the seventh-day [...]
