Sabbath School Teaching Tip: When you have a visitor in your class, remember to welcome them and learn a bit about what brought them. If they are not Adventist, make sure your discussion includes broad themes of faith and life, not solely “insider” talk they may not understand. If you are discussing some highly Adventist-specific themes,  offer a brief explanation to them. This hospitality will help them feel included.

1. Does it weaken the authority of prophetic writings if we can see that the writer relied on the following:
   1. Other, previous writings? Why or why not?
   2. Other, previous literary genres and styles? Why or why not?
   3. Literary assistants whose particular style is also reflected in the writings? Why or why not?
   4. Why do you think that some people expect a prophetic writing to be a completely novel and unique communication to that singular prophet, in order to believe it is from God?
      What are such doubters failing to accept about how God works in salvation history?
      How might Jesus’ statement that even He came to not to abolish, but to fulfill, the Law and Prophets (Mt 5:17) relate to this question?
2. How might a person exercising prophetic gifts be better able to articulate a Spirit-led message if he or she has considered the recognized, authoritative messengers of God who came before him or her?

3. Our author points out that God never “removes” the real, historical human being from the prophetic process. How is that similar to your own experience of God using other real, historical people to reach you? Share an example.

4. Assuming that all of the real, historical people God has used to reach you were not infallible (that is, were sometimes mistaken about something), does that make you doubt that God used them? Why or why not?

5. Here is an excerpt from a 14^th century sermon that uses the everyday experience of people of that time with true and false weights in the marketplace: “Ye see well at the market how a false merchant useth a false weight and a deceitful balance to beguile the simple folk for a little lucre of silver, but he beguileth most himself, for his soul is forfeit to the fiend. Right so man, thou makest thy chaffer with the world; thou puttest thou vanity in the one balance and the commandments of God in the other, till the world weigheth down and thy soul is founden light.”
   We can understand the gist here—people “cheat” their own souls by falsely weighing the commandments of God vs. their own vanity. But would you rather have weekly sermons from this guy, or someone from your own culture? How does this example speak to God’s wisdom in using real people, fully immersed in their historical time and culture, to share His message in each age?

6. A prophet comes not from “another world” but rather is from the people of God, of the people of God, and for the people of God. Thus, in special revelation, it is not “the words” that come from outside this world (if so, how could we understand them?) but rather “the message” that comes from outside this world. Agree or disagree? Why?

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